What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

Good Man! One can never make these things too simple for old codgers like me! Buttons that say "Push Me" are always a good thing.

And talking about pushing buttons, the UK government are pushing mine once again, by continuing to attempt to deflect attention from the burning skip that is our country by appeal to the baser instincts of our reptilian brains.

Two of today's papers lead with Rishi Sunak's 'crack down on crime' with suggestions that he will allow victims to "choose the punishment" of the criminals who have offended against them.

Sounds like a really good idea to me - we've already had the suggestion that specially designed jumpsuit wearing offenders should be put to public works such as cleaning off the graffiti they have painted, but I say why stop there? Surely the good oaken stocks of old could be brought out and dusted down. I never really saw the problem with public humiliation of the perpetrators of minor offences - I'd be up for throwing wet sponges into the faces of "yobs" thus restrained in our town squares. Give him one between the eyes, I say! I'll warrant that no-one ever came back for a second dose of the birch either! Good strong bobby - rolled up sleeves - bare-backed recipient bound to post - swish, swish - see him in church next Sunday what?

And the small boats crisis.

Let's be absolutely Frank. After the mishandling of the Palestinians, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the destabilisation of Syria and Libya, the fostering of the overthrow of the elected administration in Egypt, the provision of the armaments that are wreaking carnage on a daily basis in the Yemen, it is absolutely no suprise that that half the population of the Middle East wants to get the fuck out of Dodge and hot foot it to Europe. We have caused, by our disastrous interventionist policies in the region over three-quarters of a century, the biggest mass exodus of people in the history of the world. If there is an immigration problem in the West then we caused it! It's down to us, not the poor benighted individuals who wash up on our shores following the hazardous treck from the ruined countries we have left them. We owe them every gram of succour we can give them, not yet another bout of trafficking to a country that but a few short years ago was host to one of the most brutal massacres of ordinary people just trying to live their lives in the history of the modern world.

But I forget. Once taken in by that fount of human kindness, that now bastion of civilised tolerance, they will immediately find themselves in newly built accomodation, complete with parking space for their cars outside the front of the properties and beige sofas and pink curtains within.

Peter Hitchens observed the other day that, though we do not hear about it, in the wider world, our false virtuosity, our outrage and readiness to point out the crimes and failing of others while studiously refusing to see or admit to our own, is greeted with derision. The West has no clean record, we have no claim to the moral high ground, and we have no place to be calling out the sins of others while in denial about our own role in the state of the world.

And if you don't see the eastward expansion of NATO, the encirclement of China in the Pacific as part of this disastrous exercise of policy, then sorry, but you need to get back to your books. We've had a role in bringing the world to where it is, and it has by no means been an untarnished one.

[Skyweir]

I can appreciate the appeal of allowing victims to determine a perpetrators punishment but I can see all sorts of issues with that ~ I assume there will be limitations to those “choices” but honestly wouldn’t it be easier and less prone to abuse, for stricter penalties to be applied by the judiciary.

I am sympathetic with the approach but without knowing what such a proposal would look like and how it may be applied ~ it’s hard not to see it being a methodology for vengeance. Not necessarily unreasonable but has the potential for injustice annd un-just outcomes.

I know the justice system isn’t perfect but it is set up to mitigate biases ~ it’s why police can’t determine punishments or even guilt , it’s why we have a jury of our peers to determine innocence/guilt, it’s why the judiciary exercise sentencing discretion re: outcomes and not the jury.

[peter]

In truth Sky, it's no more than red-meat for the red-wall and Telegraph reading Tory voters. If the government thinks that the public want to hear it, then they say it. Simple as that. It's not good policy and it isn't good politics. But in the UK we are beyond the point of expecting either so it's just filling column space for the media really.

Speaking of which, I'm off to read the front pages and will edit this post with observations shortly

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

Buttons, buttons, buttons!

Today it's the turn of homeless people. The Telegraph (who else) tells us that the government are going to crack down (yes - crack down!) on vagrants blocking shop doorways and sitting in subways surrounded by their belongings. They are an antisocial eyesore and must be....errrr....cracked down on! Georgian anti-vagrancy laws are to be overhauled giving the police extra powers to move this smelly human detritus on and out of our visible sight.

Because we don't want to see these loosers of our 'caring' society do we. That there are upwards of 3000 people (a gross underestimate, but the official figures) sleeping rough in our towns and cities - people who have simply nowhere else to go - is not the point. Remove their offensive presence, with their begging and outstretched hands, from our sight (possibly into those concentration style camps we are constructing to house those illegal immigrants pouring off the small boats - that would be a good place for them).

Demonisation of asylum seekers, demonisation of petty criminals, demonisation of the homeless, the mentally ill and substance abusing victims who fail to succeed in the scramble for life that is the dark side of the capitalist system; this is the oxygen that is reviving the Tory fortunes in the face of their failure at every level, in every direction you choose to look, after thirteen years in power. As I've said before - they have nothing else. And unbelievingly, it's working. Polling shows that the Labour lead is slowly withering away (as I said it would, ages ago), not least because Kier Stamer simply isn't cutting it as a forceful opposition leader. If this carries on I may even get my vindictive wish to see Stamer trounced at the polls and see Sunak returned as PM, despite the pundits earlier prediction of a clear Labour victory come the election, and the miserable Tory performance as governing party. Sufficient time remains for the tories to redeem their chances, and with good distraction policies and the help of a compliant media they most probably will.

Oh joy, methinks, but in fairness it might not be all bad. Were Stamer to take it for a single lacklustre parliament, the risk is that the Tories in the interregnum, might reinvent themselves even further to the right than they are now. PM Braverman is not a prospect to be relished - not for the likes of me at least!

Another thing that you are going to be hearing a lot of in the weeks and months ahead is "the will of the people". As the devastation wreaked upon the UK economy by virtue of the decision to leave the EU becomes ever more apparent, their will be, every time it is brought up to a Conservative politician, recourse to the phrase.

"It was the will of the people", "we were following the will of the people", so the refrain will go. Of course it will have been nothing to do with them. They will not have been responsible for any part of the decision. They were just following the will of the people. Watch out for this. Recognise it for the trick of absolving themselves of responsibility for the course of action they concieved and promoted and ultimately convinced the British public to rubber-stamp. The fault is theirs. Make them own it.

[Skyweir]

In truth Sky, it's no more than red-meat for the red-wall and Telegraph reading Tory voters. If the government thinks that the public want to hear it, then they say it. Simple as that. It's not good policy and it isn't good politics. But in the UK we are beyond the point of expecting either so it's just filling column space for the media really.

Yup makes sense

[Skyweir]

Today it's the turn of homeless people. The Telegraph (who else) tells us that the government are going to crack down (yes - crack down!) on vagrants blocking shop doorways and sitting in subways surrounded by their belongings. They are an antisocial eyesore and must be....errrr....cracked down on! Georgian anti-vagrancy laws are to be overhauled giving the police extra powers to move this smelly human detritus on and out of our visible sight.

Because we don't want to see these loosers of our 'caring' society do we. That there are upwards of 3000 people (a gross underestimate, but the official figures) sleeping rough in our towns and cities - people who have simply nowhere else to go - is not the point. Remove their offensive presence, with their begging and outstretched hands, from our sight (possibly into those concentration style camps we are constructing to house those illegal immigrants pouring off the small boats - that would be a good place for them).

Demonisation of asylum seekers, demonisation of petty criminals, demonisation of the homeless, the mentally ill and substance abusing victims who fail to succeed in the scramble for life that is the dark side of the capitalist system; this is the oxygen that is reviving the Tory fortunes in the face of their failure at every level, in every direction you choose to look, after thirteen years in power. As I've said before - they have nothing else. And unbelievingly, it's working. Polling shows that the Labour lead is slowly withering away (as I said it would, ages ago), not least because Kier Stamer simply isn't cutting it as a forceful opposition leader. If this carries on I may even get my vindictive wish to see Stamer trounced at the polls and see Sunak returned as PM, despite the pundits earlier prediction of a clear Labour victory come the election, and the miserable Tory performance as governing party. Sufficient time remains for the tories to redeem their chances, and with good distraction policies and the help of a compliant media they most probably will.

Oh joy, methinks, but in fairness it might not be all bad. Were Stamer to take it for a single lacklustre

Honestly things won’t improve under the Torys ~ and what is most surprising these toxic policies are t even being hidden under a veil of diplomacy ~ they’re bold faced nationalist, populist swipes at the most vulnerable in society and as you rightly say it’s overt and explicit demonisation.

Appalling social policy approach and associated intentional subhumane deliverables.

[peter]

Trouble is that UK politics has traveled so far into the wilderness that it is hopelessly lost on all fronts.

The years of brexit upheaval with the pandemic thrown right in just as we actually left the EU......

Labour desperately trying to find its position on brexit and still failing to get that the Leave bubble has burst (even the frikkin'Tories are getting that now fer goodness sake). Styling themselves as mini-me versions of the Tories, purging the only elements of the party that actually make them the Labour Party in the first place

The Tories lurching to the right and pulling back to the centre - a see-saw of toing and froing that leaves the voters bewildered and disorientated. Threatening at every cycle to blow themselves apart.

And all against a backdrop of economic and societal meltdown that neither main party has the beginnings of an idea as to how to address, and to which the only response that the governing party has is to enact a series of dead-cat distractions, each one more pernicious and damaging to the collective psyche of the nation than the last.

I really don't know how this story ends, what place we find ourselves in, in a decade or so when the dust has settled. Thank frick I'll be either already gone or at least heading out of the door by then, but what a dismal vista to look out on at a life's end! This is a country that needs to find itself again. It has no idea what it is, where it stands in the world - hell, even if it wants to exist (half the damn populace want to break up the Union and go their own ways).

What are we going to do, what have we got (if anything) to offer to the world post Brexit and the pandemic. We're still a prosperous nation by comparison with others - but it's leeching away fast. We're falling down the league table of countries to do business with/in, inward investment is tanking and any country from outside the block looking to do business with Europe won't give us a second glance. Our much vaunted City of London financial hub is shrinking by the day. In the last week or two a number of major flotations that should have been done on the London Stock Exchange have instead been done in New York. Stupid Jeremy Hunt's pronouncements about development of our own "Silicon Valley technical superpower status" are just childish nonsense. He wants to create five more Docklands Projects up and down the country, just when the actual Docklands itself is shrivelling away as companies desert it for the continent. Think of it - hundreds of skyscrapers and business space developments. Who's going to go into them? Who's going to fill them up? Who's even going to risk the investment when the government is only putting up one tenth of a percent of the capital to construct them?

And the Freeport project of Tyneside? An independent little state within a state, a free for all in which anything and anyone can enter the country via, and with little to no state authority oversight. Is this, then, our future?

At least the Tories are now behind the scenes beginning to recognize what a right royal disaster brexit has been, and are making the kind of noises to Europe to get us positioned to try to undo some of the damage. Labour, as usual, will be one step behind and will fail on the back of their complete failure to check the national pulse on this and a thousand other issues.

But none of which will mitigate the damage we have done, the lack of direction we have as a country and the lost two or three generations that will bear the brunt of the suffering while we re-establish ourselves in whatever place we randomly find ourselves.

We were an empire in decline already prior to the brexit and pandemic disasters and these have merely served to hasten our fall. We were freeloading on our membership of the EU as a means of mitigation of our post-war decline, but in our stupidity allowed ourselves to be persuaded to cut off even this lifeline to a positive future. Now, alone and unsupported we face a period of reorientation, the direction of which we have not the slightest idea as to what it should be.

We have no manufacturing base from which to springboard ourselves into the future. We have a tolerable education system that, particularly in the higher education sector is still appealing to the outside world, but any technological innovation therefrom will immediately, upon development, move (as did James Dyson, arch brexiteer and innovator) either to the EU or to the East, from where far greater advantages of location can be enjoyed. We have a service sector which still functions well and is in demand - but just not from here.

Basically, for the next half-century, until we sort our act out, we're screwed.

[Skyweir]

The free port bid is very interesting to me as I have family from Newcastle. My mother and grandmother both being geordie’s ~ I can’t see how this isn’t a missed opportunity.

Sunderland MP Bridget Phillipson, who is also Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “Like any public spending decision, the choice of where to create a freeport should be based on evidence, not what’s in the interests of Cabinet Ministers.

“I’ve asked several Parliamentary questions in the last two days to understand whether this is the approach the Government is taking. We need every corner of our country to succeed, not just eight areas chosen by the Chancellor.”

As from a cursory reading it’s all about shoring up the nations key maritime ports.

I agree with one MP saying there is as much value if not more in an upgrading of NE UK ports as there was in Teesside.

Particularly given the strength of NE UK trade history.

But I’ve not kept across the state of affairs in the UK since the Brexit fiasco

[Skyweir]

Yes it’s not looking all that great for British politics at the present.

But all that should surely change ~ people get sick of the same old tired priorities and look for change.

[Skyweir]

The North East bid scored high for regeneration and innovation, medium/high for deliverability of proposals at pace, and medium for trade and investment, and private sector involvement.

That put it narrowly of successful bids in Teesside and Liverpool, and it was a significantly better ranking that the Solent and East Midlands freeport bids, which were also successful.

The Treasury documents say the North East and Teesside bids were “comparable”, and as the Government had ruled that only one bid from each region could be successful, Teesside was chosen because of its “stronger alignment with Government policy (in particular the Net Zero agenda and the Prime Minister’s recently published 10 Point Plan).”

Also Teesside is in North Yorkshire Sunak’s constituency

[peter]

Basically, for the next half-century, until we sort our act out, we're screwed.

But of course, the thing that could change all that is war.

[peter]

The decision by Kier Stamer and the Labour executive that Jeremy Corbyn should be barred from standing as the Labour candidate for Islington North, the constituency he has represented for forty years has not even made the news.

Corbyn, as party leader, took the party to within a hair's breadth of winning a general election in 2017, garnering over forty percent of the vote and beating the records of both Ed Milliband and Gordon Brown, neither of whom have been required to step down.

The reason I make the comparison was that Corbyn's failure in 2019 was the only reason alluded to in the perfunctory memorandum on the subject released by the party leadership, no mention now being made in respect of the now discredited allegations of antisemitism, for which reason Corbyn was ostensibly brought down and relieved of the party whip.

This quiet and shadowy removal of a longserving party member is redolent of the whole Corbyn affair. He was a thorn in the side of the establishment and had to go. Once brought down, he could be brushed into the dustpan and disposed of with the same inattention as any other piece of household detritus in which interest had been lost. A media perfectly satisfied with Stamer as "the right kind of Labour leader" (ie, basically a soft tory, who can fill in for a few years every now and then, just to give the illusion that we live in a democracy) is happy to oblige and thus Corbyn's removal from any place where he can continue as a reminder of what might have been, that for once we the people nearly had a leader, a PM who represented us, and not just the vested interests of the establishment elite, is achieved without so much as a ripple.

But I wonder if this story has a sting in the tail.

Peter Hitchens, no fool when it comes to seeing what people are really about and who knows his political onions, is far more questioning of Stamer than the rest of us, including the media and establishment who have taken to him as their poster-boy for what an opposition leader and potential next PM should look like. Hitchens refers to Stamer's past and points out that he was a dyed in the wool radical. A full scale red under the bed Trotskyist, who, like Thomas a' Beckett of old, could turn out to be far less than the harmless one term stand-in between two tory administrations (because even their most staunch advocates recognise that the party needs some time and space to get its act together) that he is seen to be.

Wouldn't it be lovely if Stamer and Corbyn have pulled a blinder; deliberately gone separate ways in a pincer movement that draws attention away from Stamer, sets him up as said poster boy, as soft tory/establishment puppet, and then 'bang', having used the media machine and the establishment old-guard (and most deliciously, business finance to make it all happen) to work the oracle, once in power turns up his true colours as being red, red, red.

Oh man - that would be a thing of beauty. It isn't I suppose very likely - but if I was a true socialist radical who wanted to achieve power against a backdrop of an establishment stranglehold on the means to get it, it's how I'd do it! And Stamer has never made any bones about that it is all about getting into power. He made his 10 (red) pledges as candidate for the leadership, promptly dumped them on winning this and changed, chameleon like, to what was necessary to lull the establishment into the sense of security that would stop them from doing a 'Corbyn' on him. He's now in with a shout at the Big Prize (a difficult place for any Labour leader in our entrenched society to achieve), and who can know what he'll morph into if he gets it.

Who knows. Jeremy Corbyn might get the last laugh after all.

[Skyweir]

Basically, for the next half-century, until we sort our act out, we're screwed.

But of course, the thing that could change all that is war.

Really you’re locked in with the Tories for 50 years unless there’s a war.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

[…]

… Corbyn's … now discredited allegations of antisemitism …

[…]

How you figure?

[peter]

Basically, for the next half-century, until we sort our act out, we're screwed.

But of course, the thing that could change all that is war.

Really you’re locked in with the Tories for 50 years unless there’s a war.

The Tories were once described as being the party who would perfectly happily have beheaded the Queen in Trafalgar Square if it would have kept them in power. War's or nothing will shift them now. And even if we did get a one-term Labour interregnum it would only be in the form of a shadow version of the same. With the current Labour executive and leadership we are effectively a one-party state; there is no effective difference, neither in practical policy terms nor in ideology. Stamer has abandoned every policy promise he made during his leadership election campaign that would have given the party any qualitative difference.

Wos. Kier Stamer's own commissioned independent inquiry as carried out by the barrister Martin Forde KC demonstrated that under the Corbyn leadership antisemitism within the Labour party decreased rather than the opposite. The report was given no publicity on its release and has been conveniently forgotten about by both the current Labour leadership and the media ever since. It is now widely accepted in the UK that the allegations were politically motivated, the earlier accusations of (in order ofappearance) being an IRA sympathiser, a fratenizer with Hamas, and a Russian spy, all having failed to land. Finally they alighted on the charge of antisemitism, which has the particular quality about it that denial is almost seen as an indicator of guilt in itself. It was a fantastic ploy.

Aided (most shamefully in my opinion) by the Jewish elements of the right of the Party - in particular Dame Margaret Hodge and the Jewish Labour Movement - they constructed a spurious set of accusations whereby any criticism of Israeli policy in respect of the Palestinian people (and Corbyn had been vocal on this) could by default be construed as antisemitism and of Corbyn's having deliberately interfered with ongoing complaints of antisemitic violations within the party. The motivation behind this was purely and simply to achieve success in unseating Corbyn and the Left from the position of party leadership (where those other attempts had failed) which, to the horror of the Blairite right of the party, had achieved power almost by accident, following the leadership election in which he had been put forward almost as a joke candidate, to show that all factions of the party were being given a chance. Little did his proposers realise that Corbyn was a man who people trusted, respected, liked. He was a quiet honest man who the disenfranchised young of this country flocked to, and suddenly, to their horror, the controlling right of the party found themselves saddled with a left wing leader with whom they had less in common than even their Tory opposition.

From that moment onwards the goal of the Party executive became to unseat Corbyn and his radical agenda, and return the Party to the establishment fold. To this end they diverted the funds that ordinary Labour voters were giving in support of the Corbyn general election campaign, and actively went out onto the doorsteps to campaign against their own man. By their actions Corbyn was most likely denied an election win in 2017, which he missed by a whisper. The Labour executive would seriously have rather seen the Tories win (and they did) than seen a left wing leader carry their party to victory.

Subsequent to this, and in panic, the accusations of antisemitism began.

Jewish voices in support of Corbyn - and there were many - were ignored, and the undermining campaign began, with the aid of the media, to stick. The left wing Jewish Voice for Labour (famously dubbing themselves "the wrong kind of Jews" and now one of the proscribed groups on the left that have been thrown out of the party by Stamer) was given no airtime to voice its support for the leader, but the right wing Jewish Labour Movement spokespeople could be found on virtually all media outlets, telling of their vile treatment by the leadership. I remember at the time listening to an episode of the political show Question Time in which, amidst all of the anti Corbyn rhetoric, a single young lady in the audience spoke up, telling us that she was a jew and that not one word of what we were heating was true, that it was a scam being orchestrated to unseat Jeremy Corbyn. And when Stamer, on assuming his leadership and wanting to cement his credentials as 'the man who rooted out antisemitism from the Labour Party' (because once having fabricated the accusations in the public mind, they stick, even if not substantiated), appointed Martin Forde to prepare a report on the situation. But Forde turned out to be less compliant than expected. His report showed that while, as with the Tories and right across the British society, there were antisemitism problems within the party, they were (as Corbyn had said) no worse than elsewhere within the political establishment or in society more generally. On Jeremy Corbyn, he said that under his watch complaints had fallen and were being dealt with more swiftly. This was absolutely not what Stamer wanted to hear, and the report disappeared into the long grass, ignored by him, his leadership and the pundits and media in general.

But it isn't going away. The entire affair has been dramatised by the membership of the Jewish Voice for Labour and a play called (you guessed it) The Wrong Kind of Jew opened in the North of England this week. A Jewish lady who was interviewed at the opening performance, laughingly said that she expected the play to be such a success that the media establishment would report and review it such that we could expect it shortly to be transferred to the West End for a long and successful run......(not!)....

And so the story of the traducing of the reputation of an honest and honourable man on the back of machiavellian political chicanery goes on. The wishes of the youth of this country to be represented by a man who had their interests at heart, who was for a brief while, a hope for the ordinary people of this country that things might actually change, were snuffed out, crushed underfoot like a snail under the boot of a cruel child.

My stepdaughter went, a couple of weeks ago to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She spent a few hours touring the site and returned, both sobered and moved by the gruelling testimony to the evils of antisemitism that she had witnessed. That the memory of these poor, poor, people should have been coopted by of all people Jewish people themselves, to aid and abet the political ends of a Party........ Used for no other reason than it was the one accusation that could be made to stick, the one accusation, that by weight of the gravity of the history behind it, had to be listened to (because no-one would be so callous as to use this of all things for a political end would they....)..... Do I need to say more.

Shame on them. Shame on Stamer. Shame on the media and establishment that allowed it.

To be cont'd.....

[Skyweir]

wowza!

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

[Avatar]

Sadly, many Israeli's do not see it that way. (Not to mention many of their non-Israeli / non-Jewish supporters.)

--A

[peter]

Av, Sky. I'm thinking you might miss the post I've just made in answer to Wos, because there was much editing going on at it was put together. If you have a moment, give it a read. It's an important story for people to hear.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

wowza!

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

Tru 'nuff.

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

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

[peter]

+JMJ+

wowza!

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

Tru 'nuff.

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

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

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

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

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

[peter]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mmm......

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

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

(This post has a bit of a sniff about itself as well. In fact a lot of it. I find that I repeat the same words without awareness in different parts of my posts very often - you might have noticed - but it's okay, I like it, and so I'll leave it in. My post, my choice! )