I have a guilty political secret. I do not detest Gordon Brown. That is such an unfashionable opinion that I don’t really expect any comments at all to agree with it. And yes, I do realise that he went along with the Iraq War and all the other horrors of the Blair era. Interestingly, I don’t remember the question of what Gordon Brown really thought about Iraq ever being discussed; he deserves condemnation for having not tried to stop it, and perhaps he was indeed an enthusiast. And I am well aware that the Private Finance Initiative is a terrible disaster, and that he oversaw creeping privatisation in the health services, and – worst of all – the introduction of tuition fees.
And yet I cannot dislike him. Probably because I just know too many people who have known him through decades, who are themselves good people, and who like him. Around Edinburgh and Fife you will find it hard to find people who actually know him who share the hatred and contempt he seems to arouse among the political and media classes of London.
As a general rule I do not like or dislike people according to their politics, but rather according to the sincerity of their political beliefs and the goodwill with which they hold them. I am sure Anders Breivik is sincere in his political beliefs, but those are lacking in goodwill. Sincerity is not enough – humanity and inclusiveness are also important.
There are one nation Tories who seem to me perfectly decent people, genuinely trying to do good. I don’t hate them because their political conclusions on the best way to do good are different to mine. Gordon Brown I put rather in the same category – I feel he was trying to do good for ordinary people, he just got it wrong.
Blair is in a whole different category again – insincere, absolutely focused on attaining personal power, and with a Messianic belief that what is good for him must be good for the World. The Guardian is publishing some emails around the Blair Brown rivalry this week. I don’t care and won’t read them. But while I see Blair as quite properly damned for eternity to the seventh pit of hell, I don’t think Brown deserves anything worse than North Queensferry.
I have been in Ghana the last 20 days living in a house with no internet connection and working (extremely hard) in an office with virtually no internet connection – not enough to load WordPress. I hope to get more chance to blog shortly.
Just to correct “Emmpey” of the Hitler avatar, the British government did not state that Operation Entebbe was staged by Israel. Rather, an unnamed contact once told a diplomat in Paris that this was the case. The total lack of any kind of detail or corroboration for this story has not stopped conspiracy loons posting it all over the internet; I must have seen it at least 500 times.
Anon is sounding more and more like Habbabkuk. Are they one and the same. I think we should be told Ed.
There are food banks in Surrey now for his information.
http://www.royalsurrey.nhs.uk/food-banks-and-emergency-aid
Not all the lanes are leafy. Drains are blocked, weeds grow in the gutters, the roads are potholed.
Unemployment too.
http://www.964eagle.co.uk/newsextra/poverty-line-unemployment.php
La vita non e bella
₪************$
Mary, I don’t know whether they all sit in a row in the Shillroom, or whether they are individuals. I was amused the time three of them all hit the button at exactly the same time. Don’t know whether they agreed it by phone or whether they share space. But you are right. That is why I refer to them as the “shower of shills”. A shill incidentally need not be selling because there are political shills too all watched over by the paymaster general. Best ignore them and be happy for them in these days of mass unemployment.
Congratulations to Mary for spectacularly failing to address my points of 10:04 & 10:16 am, And to John Goss for chipping in with his usual evasive dross about trolls and shills.
I have thought that for some time John.
Mr Yaki Lopez. Dep Israeli ‘Ambassador’ Nairobi.
Talent spotted at Disneyworld!
http://about.me/yakilopez
Yaki Lopez’s LinkedIn
Diplomat & Foreign Affairs Specialist
Israel: International Affairs
Current
Deputy Ambassador & Spokesman at Embassy of Israel – Nairobi, Kenya
Diplomat at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel
Past Experience
Marketing Manager at Harel Finance
2005 – April 2010
Cultural Ambassador at Walt Disney World
2000 – 2001
Education
University of Maryland University College
Bonn American High School
~~~~~
Have you noticed that winners of game shows often say that they will spend the money on a family holiday to Disneyworld? We think that this is suggested to them beforehand in the ‘green rooms’ as it is such a common occurrence.
Jon: “Villager, you seem quite incapable of discussing something without some new rudeness or hostility, against me or others here. It’s not only unnecessary, it’s counterproductive. I’ve no idea what you believe you might achieve by it.”
Ain’t that the truth !
BrianFujisan : “I am certain, that Villager (s) ip is being used by more than one person, If not before, then certainly now, i find it impossible to believe that one adult’s mindset, ways of expressing one’self Esp regards writing style, can almost exactly match another individual’s mindset style in a matter of months – ( H ) is back”
Try replacing the word “adult” with either “juvenile-like” or just “juvenile”, and think of the ten months of clever grooming, and you will realize that there is no requirement to spoof IPs,!
BrianFujisan: “So you have so Closely studied every post of (H) that within moments you remember that, that’s either sinister or Sad, Still highly supect”
Yep, you’ve got there ! Villager has been successfully programmed; mission accomplished, the Habbu-Troll’s greatest achievement & last laugh, but very sad for Villager, and the rest of us who now have to put up with this obnoxious whining “one trick pony”.
Jon, nobody would blame you for ridding this Blog of Villager, whetever he is indeed a juvenile or really an adult with a juvenile mind-set, he is clearly out of place here, and disruptively so. There is a reason why there are age/maturity qualifications for many things, especially in political matters, as he so clearly illustrates, and it would actually be an act of kindness as it’s obvious that he has no self-awareness of how cringingly he is in fact humiliating himself here.
Anon: “Take, for example, Pakistan, where just 0.5% pay income tax, and to which the British tax-payer sends £446 million a year.”
So you be on the next plane there, both to take full advantage of this tax haven , & to live the life of Riley, free-riding on the backs of us poor British taxpayers ? No, I didn’t think so. Words are cheap, and even meaningless when devoid of intelligence.
“Anon is sounding more and more like Habbabkuk. Are they one and the same. I think we should be told Ed.”
Anon, Villager and HabbabK don’t sound remotely alike. And Jon is usually very good at picking up people who are posting under more than one name.
And if you don’t mind me saying so, Mary, you posting
looks suspiciously like gloating. Your nemesis is gone. Just drop it why don’t you.
Hi Macky, and thanks for engaging! 🙂
“Anon: “Take, for example, Pakistan, where just 0.5% pay income tax, and to which the British tax-payer sends £446 million a year.”So you be on the next plane there, both to take full advantage of this tax haven , & to live the life of Riley, free-riding on the backs of us poor British taxpayers ? No, I didn’t think so. Words are cheap, and even meaningless when devoid of intelligence.”
Could you elaborate on what you mean by this, please?
Deep Green Puddock
Perhaps he was brain washed at the manse. Gordon Brown became a member of Labour Friends of Israel and is an avowed Zionist.
‘The report acknowledges the fact that the Church of Scotland was once a believer in the right of the Jews to the ancient land of Israel and a Scottish minister, Alexander Keith, may even have coined the famous phrase: “A land without a people, for a people without a land.” Another celebrated Zionist Scottish minister, John Brown, father of Britain’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, visited Israel and was an enthusiastic supporter of the Jewish state.’
http://www.davidhocking.org/blog/?p=3885 and reported elsewhere.
Dreoilin You were not at the receiving end of it.
btw which one of these would you like for Christmas? Stay out.
http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/samgrandy/samgrandy0510/samgrandy051000016/248975-assortment-of-wooden-spoons.jpg
Uh-oh, it’s the Mary & Dreoilin Show!
I suggest Dre goes for the wooden spoon and clobbers Mary on the head with it.
N_ @10.58p : “Certainly most Muslims in the West aren’t Christophobes;”
Really? How did you come by such certain knowledge? There’s a big difference between saying something and thinking it. How can anybody be so sure what anyone else thinks unless they honestly inform you? I don’t think many would go around admitting that they’re “Christophobes”.
Maybe you made an assumption based on limited personal experience in your neighbourhood and on what you see on TV and extrapolate that to apply to “most Muslims in the West”? I’m not sure how useful these kinds of unsubstantiated generalisations are.
Anyway, here’s a bunch of peaceful protesters engaging in a non-phobic street march last week –
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/police-gas-sydney-protesters-20120915-25yrb.html
One sign reads – “Behead all those who insult the prophet”
“Dreoilin You were not at the receiving end of it.”
No, Mary, and neither were a lot of other people who have commented.
“btw which one of these would you like for Christmas? Stay out.”
Stay out of what? I won’t be censored, Mary. I take my cues from Jon, not you.
anon: “Could you elaborate on what you mean by this, please?”
Certainly; 1) it’s very easy to say anything, say like taking to completely unrelated things, meshing them together to create a false dichotomy, any fool can do it; 2) It’s oxy-moronic to imply that the giving charity/aid should be dependent on the proven ability to pay tax, if you can’t see that then it’s no accident that you are drawn to the oxy-moronic.
Dreoilin: “looks suspiciously like gloating. Your nemesis is gone. Just drop it why don’t you.”
Stop being a sour-puss, let Mary have some light relief after ten months of vile abuse; she earnt & deserves it !
Anon: “I suggest Dre goes for the wooden spoon and clobbers Mary on the head with it.”
Anon adopts yet another of the Habbu-troll role’s, as new Squabble Encourager.
“I should say that I agree with Villager, Anon and RD insofar as saying that commenters of a conservative hue are encouraged to post here. I reiterate my request that, whatever your politics, you put your views forward with respect, and that you automatically lose whatever debate you are having if you call your opponent a moron (etc etc).” — Jon
This is what the moderator has posted. Why don’t people stop whining about trolls and just get on with it, for heaven’s sake.
This place is a long way from what it used to be. And blaming Habbabkuk and Villager and Anon is sheer blindness.
Anon 23 Sep, 2013 – 10:53 am
A correction? Proper pathetic, you even manage to get a mention in of ‘Hitler’ (nudge nudge wink wink) alongside your ad hominem; ‘conspiracy loons’. Good going chump. You seriously think that ‘one single uncorroborated source’ is what I base my statement on. You’re simply protecting the official narrative despite much more (factual and circumstantial) evidence than you claim. The mere fact it enetered the Cabinet minutes suggests a lot more than you give it credit for.
Entebbe was staged, why would Palestinan terrorists be flying to Israeli controlled Uganda in the first place? (and do not even dare tray and suggest to me that Amin was anti-Israeli)
If only 0.5% of Pakistans population is paying income tax, then the vast majority must be very poor.
With an intensity of deprivation grade of %3.4% of the population and 27.4% in severe poverty, the comparable paltry sum of 446mill., when one regards the historic interchange and trade Britain has had with Pakistan, the migration patterns, should make us blush, indeed.
http://hdrstats.undp.org/images/explanations/pak.pdf
“The most recent survey data available for estimating MPI figures for Pakistan were collected in 2006/2007. In
Pakistan 49.4 percent of the population lived in multidimensional poverty (the MPI ‘head count’) while an additional11 percent were vulnerable to multiple deprivations. The intensity of deprivation –
that is, the average percentage of deprivation experienced by people living in multidimensional poverty
–in Pakistan was 53.4 percent. The country’s MPI value, which is the share of the population that is multi –
dimensionally poor adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, was 0.264. India and Bangladesh had MPI values of 0.283 and 0.292 respectively. “
Thanks for posting that link, Jemand.
“Late in the afternoon a lone man from outside the group shouted: “Shame on you for promoting murder in the name of religion.”The crowd swarmed at him attacking him and sparking a second wave of violent clashes with police.Police rushed to the man’s aide and dragged him out of the park under a rain of waterbottles, sticks and abuse.”
What you fail to understand is that the protesters are all Mossad-controlled Zionist patsies, a fact evidenced by the suspicious Jewish man selling face cream down the road, and that the lone outsider was forewarned by his Israeli handlers of a possible violent attack, allowing him to nip into the supposed “face cream bar” and apply Mossad special-issue fake blood. Also, you will note that Israeli presence at Sydney railway stations amounts to a co-ordinated “infrastructure of terror”, which your security services are too afraid to tackle. When will you Australians wake up?
@Jemand
“N_ @10.58p : “Certainly most Muslims in the West aren’t Christophobes;””
Really? How did you come by such certain knowledge?
How did you miss it?
“There’s a big difference between saying something and thinking it. How can anybody be so sure what anyone else thinks unless they honestly inform you? I don’t think many would go around admitting that they’re “Christophobes”.”
Yeah, sure, I can’t prove what isn’t in people’s heads. You really are trying to argue in favour of something that you’ve already assumed, or perhaps you don’t care whether it’s true or not, because it doesn’t matter what you say to the goyim?
“Maybe you made an assumption based on limited personal experience in your neighbourhood and on what you see on TV”
Goodness, what a little insulter you are.
“and extrapolate that to apply to “most Muslims in the West”? I’m not sure how useful these kinds of unsubstantiated generalisations are.
Go and insult yourself.
“Anyway, here’s a bunch of peaceful protesters engaging in a non-phobic street march last week –
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/police-gas-sydney-protesters-20120915-25yrb.html
Sorry – I only play sarcasm with professionals, mate.
“One sign reads – “Behead all those who insult the prophet””
Shove your hasbara.
Was it carried by someone wheeling a pushchair carrying a toddler in a mock suicide belt?
Or wearing a New-York-style hat (oh the irony!) saying “I (hear) Osama Bin Laden”?
Others (I don’t care about you) may ask whether they’ve ever met or encountered any Christians who do insult the Prophet.
Nevermind,
“If only 0.5% of Pakistans population is paying income tax, then the vast majority must be very poor.”
Indeed, that is the case, but only 30% of its vastly wealthy politicians pay any income tax.
———-
Macky, you have completely misconstrued the point I was making. It was not to say that Pakistan should not receive aid on the basis that 0.5% of its population pays income tax.
To go back, Mary had previously made the point that, as we pay £3,000 (on average a decade’s earnings) to the families of Afghan civilians killed in operations, our attitude to the lives of “brown-skinned” people is therefore cheap, vile and disgusting. I pointed out, using the example of aid to Pakistan, that this cannot be the case given that this country plays a large part (£446 million) in propping up a “brown-skinned” country where next to no income tax is paid.
I would also add that the attitude ascribed by Mary is one that I have seldom ecountered in “brown-skinned” countries, a good deal of which are thankful for Western aid, charitable donations and such like, but rather seems to be the preserve of largely white, self-loathing middle-class liberals.
I hope this helps
I got this from a Kiwi: Christchurch Earthquake. If it hadn’t been for him…
I most certainly didn’t see it mentioned anywhere in other MSM outlets, but I can be mistaken. Did any of you know?
And N_ responds to Jema ds considered post with…
“Shove your hasbara.”
(I thought N_ was meant to be one of the leading intellectuals around here!)
“Others (I don’t care about you) may ask whether they’ve ever met or encountered any Christians who do insult the Prophet.”
There is a world of difference between insulting ‘the’ prophet and calling for those who do so to be beheaded. I’ve warned before that Murrayistas are on to a losing streak when they seek to make apologies for this kind of behaviour, but apparently to no avail.
Dreoilin,
I think that was a sock-puppet masquerading as Habbabkuk. Ignore it, is my advice.
Maybe Jon will remove it since comments by Habbabkuk have been so removed since his summary execution.
The voice in my head: “You know you’re not wrong…. Aha… You haven’t explained it well enough! Try again.”
The little personal experience I have from working 3 months in The Gambias, is that I could see the ghostly fingers of the west in local/political matters [when I was there, there just had been a coup] and lots of Chinese products in daily life. As every part of Africa has been someone’s colony and they still speak the language of their former masters [English in The Gambias and French next door in Senegal], I wonder how much the multinationals pay in kickbacks to keep all this unrest going, literally everywhere [and perhaps with the support/help/financing of various governments]. Someone has to benefit from all this chaos and bloodshed, but most certainly not the populace without the right connections, the ones who’re dying, maimed or raped.
“Mai Mai drink blood, so bullets don’t hit…”
The place (WestgatE Mall) is on fire now.
Anon, quite correct. Muslims do themselves no favours by quoting the more interesting bits from the Koran.
Jemand,
All this talk from N_ of insulting the Prophet, omnipresent Jews, goyim, and hasbara agents, I’m beginning to wonder whether he isn’t a scowling, placard-waving Islamist himself!
Very true. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian.
‘The best defence is a sense of proportion. The “war on terror” has failed on its own terms. It had made dozens of countries not pacified but terrified. By deploying violence against a succession of Muslim states, the world’s leading powers have made their business its business and invited retaliation. They have not crushed al-Qaida any more than they have suppressed extreme Islamism. They have refreshed rather than diminished that extremism, and made the world less safe as a result.’
Kenya mall attack: David Cameron’s rush to ‘solve the crisis’ won’t help
Cameron has helped send al-Shabaab to the top of the terrorist charts by summoning Cobra. Shopping malls, like Westgate, are easy targets for extremists
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/23/kenya-mall-attacks-david-cameron
On a serious point, though, let us all remember that there is really very little difference between your average Murrayista and those other loons on the right whose views they profess to hate.
Simply swap Jews, goyim, hasbara for Muslims, dhimmis, taqiyya, and, hey-presto, you’re on a right-wing nut-job site!