A particularly mendacious lie by Danny Alexander puts the institutional start-up costs of Scottish Independence at £1.5 billion. That is a cool half billion pounds cheaper than Scotland’s share of the costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars, even on the Westminster government’s blatant under-estimate of the war costs.
So Scotland can afford criminal invasions killing hundreds of thousands to ‘bring freedom’, but cannot afford the smaller cost of its own freedom!!!
The £1.5 billion estimate is mendacious in two ways. Firstly, it is a simple recycling of a Canadian lie at the time of the Quebec independence referendum, apportioning with no argument 1% of GDP to startup costs.
Secondly, as nearly all the money will be spent in Scotland it is not a loss at all, but actually an increase to GDP, as any but the most nutty neo-con would be forced to acknowledge. And it would be the precursor of government money spent annually in Scotland rather than England for ever thereafter.
Thankfully Alexander won’t have a job much longer – and if he thinks a penny of Scottish public spending is going in future to support his huge arse and deceitful mouth, he is very wrong.
Jay
4 Jun, 2014 – 12:30 pm
http://www.channel4.com/news/china-ukraine-farmland-food-security-investment-overseas
“Says it all.”
What do you think it says Jay?
It’s pure western bullshit.
Read the report closely:
“There are many reasons behind China’s overseas land grab,[not “land grab” in the Israeli sense] not least their own problem with food standards.
With rapid urbanisation swallowing up large areas of their own arable resources, the constant drive to meet demand meant only one thing: quantity at the expense of quality.”
“As standards slipped, the number of food scares proliferated, from adulterated milk to rivers contaminated by dead pigs.”
Message: don’t buy Chinese food products.
“Intensive farming practices have not helped either. With no time to lie fallow, domestic farmland is now exhausted from constant over-use.”
Just what we do in the west.
Good reasons not to privatise the Land Registry.
‘Leaked minutes suggest that some want to steam ahead with ‘privatisation’ before official decisions are taken.
Three months ago in this space, I proposed abolishing the Whitehall department responsible for the wholly inadequate public consultation into the future of Land Registry. I now realise my proposal was too modest: I should also have invited the leaders of the body itself, specifically HM Land Registrar and chief executive Ed Lester and Mark Boyle, chairman, to consider their positions.
I reach this conclusion after reading the minutes of an off-site meeting of the Land Registry board on 25 March – five days after the consultation on converting the bulk of the registry into a ‘service delivery company’. The minutes, leaked to the Guardian newspaper, show executives steaming ahead with the assumption not just that the service delivery company option – in effect privatisation – will happen, but that one of the three options proposed by the consultation is to be picked.
/..
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/analysis/comment-and-opinion/land-registry-consultation-is-a-sham/5041127.article
8 May 2014
~~~
‘The changes, which were the subject of two public consultations conducted earlier this year, are highly controversial.
Among critics of the planned take-over of local land charge searches from local authorities is the Law Society, which said the change could lead to a worse service for conveyancers.
According to the government, other measures in the bill will simplify the process for making changes to development consent orders (DCO) by speeding up non-material changes to an order, and allowing simplified processes for material changes.
If passed the bill would allow certain types of planning conditions to be discharged upon application if a local planning authority has not notified the developer of their decision within a prescribed time period.’
http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/law/land-registry-shake-up-to-go-ahead/5041501.article
4 June 2014
John Goss (at 4.12 pm) – Isn’t it strange how one poem signposts the way to another? Melodies and lyrics tumble over each other when someone strums a guitar and starts on a folk song/hymn. From your recalling Kipling’s “The Way Through the Woods” there are branches off in many directions, from Thomas the Rhymer / Pilgrim’s Progress to Robert Frost’s “road not taken”; or the trail through the trees to the ghastly clearings – pun intended – of Hardy’s “Throwing a Tree”
http://www.hardysociety.org/resources/commentaries-on-poems-for-students
and Charlotte Mew’s “The Trees are Down”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poem/182312
This is not really – though it might appear so – a diversion from this website’s political themes. The devil claims to have the best tunes, but can the fallen angel really produce a neo-liberal songbook? or a Satanic anti-poetry anthology to match Neil Astley’s “Staying Alive”?
On two earlier points, however, I beseech you – like Cromwell in his letter of 3 August 1650 to the Church of Scotland – that you may be mistaken. At 1.25 pm on 3 June you said that de la Mare’s “The Listeners” was good … “apart from the scansion”. I’d argue that the best English poets – Shakespeare, George Herbert, Christina Rossetti, Auden – keep rhyme and rhythm interesting by allowing natural speech patterns to take liberties with strict scansion and perfect rhymes. In this de la Mare poem, notice how the last lines bring each stanza back to order.
How can I persuade you that – pace your 4 June 9.56 am post – Joyce is joyful? No-one expects to finish Finnegans Wake any more than to swim across the Pacific; but diving into these strange linguistic reefs is to have “a new planet” swim into ones ken. Why not try Joyce himself in 1929 on the Anna Livia Plurabelle passage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grJC1yu4KRw ?
or listen to
http://www.geoffwilkins.net/fragments/Joyce.htm
where Geoffrey Wilkins reads the same passage with the text on screen? That makes it easier to spot all the rivers and – much more important – to roll the words around your mouth like a baby learning to babble.
May and Gove are at each other’s throat. Smoothface intervenes.
Cameron steps into extremism row
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27706675
I am sick of the sight and sound of the whole lot of them.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrarian_society
Mary me to, we don’t seemed to have learned anything from previous generations of government.
It’s like we are going backwards. Although how far would you want to go to find someone to emulate.
They are going over basics that are simple ideals that are not even debatable.
Child care and exploitation are basic requirements that go without question
Basically society here needs a good kick up the arse and snapping into gear,
Me included.
@Jay @Mary: I just wish some(shouldn’t need too many) Lib MPs would develop a backbone, and withdraw their support for the Condem coalition. That would bring us a general election before next years business even starts to be debated. It could happen… the majority is 54, I think, which would mean just 27 swapping sides.
“There are basically no Russian troops abroad while US troops are everywhere. There are US military bases everywhere around the world and they are always involved in the fates of other countries, even though they are thousands of kilometers away from US borders.”
So said Vladimir Putin today. Some might argue where Russia’s “abroad” begins, but that’s essentially what planet earth looks like today. The globe is crawling with mostly-forced insertions (past and present) of US capital. It’s an infection that may well kill the host if these nutters insist on pressing ahead with a military confrontation with Russia and/or China.
Within the current paradigm, the US has to dominate Eurasia if it is to stay as top dog. And that means first containing and then neutralising what it sees as the China/Russia threat.
That’s got quite a big fucken risk attached to it.
You know what? If I had to pick which leader would fire the first nuke, it wouldn’t be Vladimir Putin. Not with an out-of-control war economy that lied to kill a million Iraqis on the other side.
Iain Orr I have heard Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken mentioned three times in the last week. In e-mails received etc.
So I have just read it again. So profound and enigmatic too.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-road-not-taken/
One of my own favourites is ‘Wolfwatching’ by Ted Hughes. Love ‘Church Going’ by Larkin too.
‘A serious house on serious earth it is.’ And the final few lines, heralding a return to a kind of ancestor worship. Beautifully controlled.
No – modulated.
Peacewisher
I am glad your so optimistic,
Peace.
@Jay. I’m serious – that will be the only way they can save their seats… and with the coalition so unpopular, these MPs will be seen by the people as National Heroes! Perhaps they should throw in a bit of Euroscepticism into their personal general election campaigns, and they will surely be re-elected.
Iain Orr, I grant you that Geoffrey Wilkins reads Joyce as well as anyone I could think of, and there is a certain lyrical flow to it. As to scansion, and the rights and wrongs of it, I have no prejudice. I once had a robust discussion with Roy Fisher on the merits of rhyme over blank verse. His belief is that searching for a rhyme dictates the poem and does not allow a poet to express true feelings. My belief is that those who know the craft can make their poems say exactly what they want and still maintain rhyme and metre. I agree pedantry is a cumbersome burden, but laziness, in a fast-moving world, is no excuse for slipshod work. As to Christina Rossetti I have to smile come Christmas and that beautiful first verse of “In the Bleak Mid Winter” fires up the imagination (where are the snows of yesteryear?) and the harmonies ring out.
1.In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.
All right so far, but then you get verses two and three.
2. Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
3. Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
but his mother only, in her maiden bliss,
worshiped the beloved with a kiss.
And then a return to normality almost.
4. What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him: give my heart.
And yes I am in agreement that one poem or poetical idea can breed others as did the Villon thought “Where are the snows of yesteryear.” It was Georgy Ivanov who led me to Villon. And so the cross-fertilisation goes on.
In brief I have enjoyed the poetry interlude.
Unfortunately there are soulless things happening on part of the globe. I would much rather be concentrating on art
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2399-omidyar-and-the-oligarchs-code-enabling-extremism-monetizing-dissent.html
“The chief aim of Omidyar’s new media venture, it seems to me, is to domesticate dissent. There is virtually no chance that First Look Media will challenge the essence or legitimacy of the actual ruling system: oligarch-corporate dominance backed by a militarist state. No doubt it will tear the bark off a few wild outgrowths here and there — which can be a useful exercise for keeping various factions within the Security State in line, or allowing them to “let off steam” by taking down their internal rivals a peg or two. Fear is not just for foreigners and the home folks out there; every system of domination employs fear against its own agents as well. And certainly there will be genuinely spontaneous revelations too, not just strategic leaks by inside players jockeying for position.
But again, all this will take place in an arena controlled by one of the chief beneficiaries and big-time players in the system itself. It will take place in a domesticated setting. The powers that be will know that the system itself is not under threat. They will know that the only goal of any revelations will be “reform”— or sometimes not even reform, just “debate.” And “reform” and “debate” can always be managed by those who control the levers of power — and the media where the “debate” takes place. ”
Infiltrate the dissenters. Ez pz.
Putin answers Resident Dissidents lies that Russia had troops in Ukraine. I asked him for evidence of that statement and did not hear from him again. He asks the same question of Obama whose country has been spreading the lies that sucked in RD.
http://rt.com/news/163676-putin-ukraine-french-us/
Nice to see all the poetry weaving through a vibrant political Stage ( blog )
John
i would tend to agree with Roy Fisher… i often feel the poem sometimes has to write itself..be allowed the freedom … i attended for a while at the Greenock writers Club..they were vitually all of them adherents to for Rhyme it had to Rhyme…
i don’t mind Rhyme…but sometimes a beautiful poem cant… Take Robert Hardy Books..Tess for example Poetry most of the Book just beautiful writing…
Anyhoo.. since it’s on topic – o.t
here is one of my own aboot the Highlands
Mountain Pulse
Soft Blues, and Heather hues
Fade away, in rugged miles
Where Highlands and Munros
Graze a chill Sky
The Mountains so High
Dazzling peaks in wintry shroud
Glazed by days of arctic wind
and star splashed, open nights
Just bellow the brilliant whites
of lofty, frozen peaks
Whispering, trickling Streams
Then fast Rivers rush
The silvery veins
in a thick heather hide
Surge down the hill, and over cliff walls
Cascading, waters fall
And rainbows rise, amid the spray
Living colours, shimmer and heave
A gentle pulse, as the mountains Breathe.
Effin EDIT button Lol…
A line got lost…has to be put right
it should be –
Then fast Rivers rush
Crystal waters, tumble and gush
The silvery veins
in a thick heather hide
Surge down the hill, and over cliff walls
A Zen rhyme
clap
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Rich pickings for the PFI vultures. The offer their thanks to Messrs Blair, Brown and Milburn.
Exclusive: How private firms make quick killing from PFI
Companies earn hundreds of millions by selling on 25-year contracts for hospitals and schools awarded to them by the last government
04 June 2014
Private contractors have pocketed hundreds of millions of pounds of profits in the past four years by exploiting deals that were controversially awarded to them by the last Labour government.
Companies that were awarded contracts to build and maintain state schools for 25 years have been doubling their money by “flipping”, or selling on, the Private Finance Initiative (PFIs) projects just four years after finishing them.
/..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/exclusive-how-private-firms-make-quick-killing-from-pfi-9488351.html
Brian thanks for your comment. I am not the law on how to write poetry but one of the things that dictates my own is making good use of figures of speech to make the thing sing or the harmony ring. Rhyme is one of the first items that comes into our lives with the bedtime nursery rhymes. It also acts as a mnemonic. So we learn the difference between thing, sing and ring and teach it to our offspring. I agree it can be overdone, and does not always achieve it’s intended purpose. Sometimes rhyme can simply be a bit of fun, an experiment in wordplay, and perhaps in that respect Roy Fisher is right. My criticism is, I suppose, as with art, that unless minimalism can be shown to have substance, which it can, it is no more than a skeleton on which to throw some flesh. So e. e. cummings is not for me, but I don’t doubt some get turned on by his work. Similarly I would have nothing by Damien Hirst because I think his work amounts to nothing.
As to Thomas Hardy, I love his prose, not keen on his poetry, but he made another contribution as well as his great novels. Together with his father he was a collector of folk songs. Like you say “Tess” is a brilliant piece of writing but best of all “Jude the Obscure” which really shows the difference between the privileged classes and poor self-educated Jude who treks to Christminster (Oxford) only to be made fun of by the so-called academics. Disillusioned he treks back, lives in sin with his cousin Sue Farley. This was the book which the church banned. What a powerful piece of writing! But because it was banned Hardy turned to poetry. I don’t know why everyone waxes lyrical about The Darkling Thrush. To my mind his concentration on poetry was an opportunity cost against the world getting more great novels from his pen.
Sorry Brian I got carried away and meant to mention that your own poem is a beautiful example of words conjuring images. Thanks.
Abbott is handing over the search for the MH370 plane to a private company. You can’t beat a nice bit of privatisation it would appear.
‘Curiouser and curiouser’!
Missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370: Now Australia outsources the daunting search for missing aircraft
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/missing-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh370-now-australia-outsources-the-daunting-search-for-missing-aircraft-9488603.html
More poetry please. It is doing something. There have, thank God, been no reports of death in Eastern Ukraine today, though numers of women and children have evacuated to a refugee camp in Russia because there is no water in the town.
numers= numbers
“A Zen rhyme
clap”
Velly funny!
Yes Brian. Me also. Full of admiration for you, that poem, your photos, your outlook and your take on life.
http://www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/hand-gestures/hand-clapping-smiley-emoticon.gif
Ba’al, very witty. But not many lawyers come out of the profession with their morals intact.
Which was almost certainly the point. ‘Iolanthe’ mocked contemporary mores and hierarchies. In context, the Chancellor is being conspicuously scrupulous in order to further his own unworthy ends. Still a familiar political strategy.
NHS
In addition to the letters in yesterday’s Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/04/addressing-huge-challenges-facing-nhs
there is this one.
NHS risks ‘chaotic failure’ if parties do not come up with plan to save it
Politicians must acknowledge crisis, health chiefs say
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/nhs-risks-chaotic-failure-if-parties-do-not-come-up-with-plan-to-save-it-9486920.html
The NHS Confederation is meeting. Messrs Hunt, Lamb et al will speak today. There will be wringing of hands, more empty words and more empty promises but nothing will stop the planned dismantling of the NHS by the current cadre in power who meet with no political opposition. In fact, with a year in office remaining, the process will be speeded up.
Jeremy Hunt speaks at the NHS Confederation conference: today in healthcare – live from Liverpool
5 Jun 2014: Full coverage of the event, including keynote speeches from Jeremy Hunt, Norman Lamb and Andy Burnham
http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2014/jun/05/jeremy-hunt-nhs-confederation-conference-today-in-healthcare-live
I recommend Theodore Roethke’s wonderful poem In a Dark Time. It articulates the personal struggle with ego and fear which afflict us all. And isn’t it the effect of these twin ogres on society that is the substance of Craig’s posts and all the debate that goes on here?
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172120