After such an extended break from blogging, you will be deeply disappointed that I restart with something as mundane and trivial as Jeremy Clarkson. I have defended the man in the past, because I much enjoy Top Gear and consider that much of what he has been criticised for in the past had been an amusing winding-up of the po-faced of the kind I employ myself. But nasty, indeed vicious bullying of a subordinate should always be a sacking offence.
That did not ought to be the question, though. He hit someone and they had to go to hospital. Where are the police? They are incredibly fond of sweeping up scores of teenagers for thought crime, but here we have an actual violent assault that spills blood, and it seems completely out of the question the perpetrator is brought to account. Why is that? I had a personal experience a couple of years ago when I was very mildly hurt – less than young Oisin – in an assault, and the police insisted on arresting the perpetrator despite my repeated requests to them not to do so. They told me rather firmly that the idea that it is the victim who has a say in pressing charges, is a myth. Why was Clarkson not arrested?
I cannot in my mind dissociate this from the non-arrest of Jimmy Savile for his crimes, despite their being well-known and reported at the time. That seems to link in to the wider paedophilia scandal, and the question of why no action was taken even in the most blatant of cases when there was compelling evidence, such as that of the extremely nasty Greville Janner MP.
But then I think still more widely as to why, for example, Jack Straw has not been charged with the crime of misfeasance in public office after boasting of using his position to obtain “under the radar” changes in regulations to benefit commercial clients, in exchange for cash. I wonder why a large number of people did not go to jail for the HSBC tax avoidance schemes or the LIBOR rigging scandal, which involved long term dishonest manipulation by hundreds of very highly paid bankers.
At the top of the tree is of course the question of why Blair has not been charged for the crime of waging illegal war. The Chilcot Inquiry heard evidence that every single one of the FCO’s elite team of Legal Advisers believed that the invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. Yet now the media disparage as nutters those who say Blair should be charged.
Then I think of all the poor and desperate people who get jailed for stealing comparatively miniscule amounts in benefit fraud, or the boy who was jailed for stealing a bottle of water in the London riots.
The conclusion is that we do not have a system of justice in this country at all. We have a system where the wealthy and governing classes and those associated with them enjoy almost absolute impunity, broken in only the rarest of cases. At the same time those at the bottom of the pile are kicked hard to keep them there. There is no more chance of justice against those in power in the UK than there is of the killers of Nemtsov being brought to book in Russia.
But what has really scared me is this thought. This situation has been like this my entire life: and I have reached the age of 56 before I realised it. A very great many people have still not realised it at all.
What does not scare me is this. I realise that if the system of justice is completely corrupted, then there is no obligation on me to follow the laws of the state. In fact it would be wrong of me to do so. I must seek my ethical compass elsewhere than in the corrupt power structure which weighs so hard upon the people.
” Those people out there signing the petition in support of him are just practicing common or garden neoliberal principles, because they can not figure out what he did wrong.”
No. They can’t figure out what they did wrong. People get pleasure from watching the program and they feel that pleasure has been taken away from them through no fault of their own. People wouldn’t have cared less what happened to Clarkson provided the show had gone out Sunday night.
I think that the best that can be said about WW3 is that the sort of person who believes what is said on worldtruth tv is probably the same sort of person who gets their info on Russia from RT.
“No doubt Hugo witnessed social injustice,in the mid 1800’s,and it probably influenced him to changed from being a royalist, to passionately supporting republicanism.”
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And no doubt Monsieur Hugo, if transported to early C21 Scotland would agree that social injustice there was as nothing compared to the social injustice in mid-1850s FRance about which he wrote.
So thank you for the quotation, RoS, but it is meaningless for present day purposes.
“You people are total vermin; the lowest of the low. I don’t want you in my country”
And which country would that be? You don’t even want yourself in your country.
“the same Ba’al whose brave ex-military boots do a runner everytime I engage him!”
He’s clearly terrified of your superior intellect, Macky.
Thanks, Dreo, but it’s simpler than that. Habbabreak is once again my friend.The lunatics here are one thing, but tedious 15-y.o. numpties shouting the odds are quite another. That’s two on the naughty step.
Thanks Fred, exactly that’s just what I said.
Or maybe just one. Their approach is remarkably similar.
The aurthorities would indeed not admit it but since the story is a complete invention there is nothing to admit.
If former military people really believe that sort of tosh then it is perhaps a bloody good job that they are former.
Are we really meant to take the re-tellers of, and believers in, such tosh seriously?
Far from being “tosh”, all of my posting happens to be true.
Just to demonstrate that all dingbats do share the prevailing orthodoxy of commenters here
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/25/mh370-hijacked-vladimir-putins-orders-flown-kazakhstan-aviation-expert-jeff-wise_n_6750148.html
“The only reason I’m sticking around here is to show up vile propagandists like you.”
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Nonsense, RobG; you’re sticking around because you’re having fun.
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“I don’t want you in my country.”
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Which country is that, RobG – England or France, where Mr Goss said you lived? 🙂
“Far from being “tosh”, all of my posting happens to be true.”
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And I’m the US National Security Adviser.
Or the Archbishop of Canterbury if you prefer.
We may not have reached the levels of immiseration of Hugo’s time, but Piketty’s book demonstrates that we have reached the levels of inequality of the misnamed “Belle Époque”, and are headed downwards from there.
I’m afraid there’s no remedy for the incorrigible stupidity of someone who cannot recognize that two obviously true, indeed trivially true statements are true.
@Lysias
Here’s a quote from a review of Bloodlands:
“Another debatable exclusion of Bloodlands,” he says, “is that of mass murders carried out by third parties, in other words by agents other than Nazi Germany and the Soviets. […] Snyder leaves out mass murders perpetrated by agents of the state, or others, in the region – Baltic, Polish, Ukrainian or others. Part of these massacres were massive: this applies for example to the extermination of three hundred thousand Jews by the Romanians on the territory taken from the USSR, or to the hundred thousand or so victims of Ukrainian nationalists who died in the anti-Polish actions of Volhynia and of Galicia. The reasons for excluding these events is not clear.”
I thought I’d have a look at Bloodlands to check this claim – and it is of course garbage – on page 326 Snyder refers very clearly to 40,000 Poles having been massacred by Bandera’s UAP with further details on the following pages. The reviewer clearly did not read the book properly – the Snyder article I linked to earlier discusses the political motivations of Stalin and now Putin (and his puppets) to reinterpret the history of the Ukraine to support their political positions – Lysias has inadvertently provided yet more evidence for that thesis.
Forensic experts have confirmed that fragments of metal found in the wreckage of MH17 are from a BUK surface to air missile.
http://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/buitenland/evidence-proving-flight-mh-17-was-taken-down-buk-missile
I read Bloodlands when it came out four or five years ago, but my memory of it is vague. I do believe I remember feeling Snyder was too kind to the collaborators with Nazism. But I read the review I quoted much more recently, and that no doubt is what was uppermost in my mind when I made my comments. If I was wrong, I stand corrected.
Habbabkuk (la vita è bella)
20 Mar, 2015 – 9:13 pm:
“Nonsense, RobG; you’re sticking around because you’re having fun.”
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Grow-up, you piece of shite, and try to comprehend that the likes of you will be put up against a wall and shot.
My immediate reaction when MH17 was shot down was that the separatists probably did it, but that they were triggerhappy because of the way that they had been being bombed by aircraft of the Kiev government in the preceding days. I also suspected and continue to suspect that MH17 had somehow been lured into crossing over the war zone. All of this for the sake of influencing public opinion, and possibly also a pretext for action.
I have so far refrained from expressing these beliefs and suspicions because I didn’t know for sure what had happened. But, if MH17 really was shot down by a ground-to-air missile of Russian origin, I think it is worth putting my thoughts and suspicions on the table.
Unite one the UK’s biggest unions,has said its prepared to,carry out illegal strikes if the Conservatives win the General Election.
Len McCluskey, the Unite General Secretary, said that he is so concerned that a majority Tory government will bring in anti-strike legislation that the union is prepared to remove the words “so far as may be lawful” from its rule book.
The Conservatives provoked a major row with the trade unions over sweeping plans to ban them from taking strike action without the support of at least 40 per cent of their members.
Mr McCluskey,like many others,realise that another five years of Tory government,will lead us down the path, towards a more Dickensian society.
“Grow-up, you piece of shite, and try to comprehend that the likes of you will be put up against a wall and shot.”
Which of course is why the likes of you should never ever be allowed near power.
Moderators, the person I refer to as “a piece of shite” has very often threatened other posters on these threads with physical violence.
If you want to be taken seriously, perhaps you should consider removing the GCHQ Johnnies from these threads.
They are both an embarrassment to the concept we call ‘democracy’, and also to Craig’s blog.
I find it amazing that I still have to say this stuff in the 21st century.
ROS
I sometimes wonder if McCluskey is an agent for the Tories – Central Office will be rubbing their hands with joy at his latest utterances.
MrG
Might I suggest that you improve the quality of your drink – Good Burgundy makes you mellow rather than induce paranoia.
For any new readers:
Resident Dissident and Habby are trolls. They have no intention of listening to anyone else’s point of view.
The rest of the posters represent an interesting cross-section of views, but sometimes we go on a bit, and sometimes we are unnecessarily insulting to each other.
“Grow-up, you piece of shite, and try to comprehend that the likes of you will be put up against a wall and shot.”
Mmm, with such contributions you really are spoiling us, ambassador.
All well, otherwise, everyone? Just dropping in to mention that the NHS continues to be sold off behind the public’s backs and that another £60 billion in ‘cuts’ (for which read continued devastation of the poorest) are due to be ‘found’ by 2020. These and more stats apparently under ‘comedy’ in the Huff Post link below:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/03/17/budget-2015-george-osborne_n_6884266.html?1426590928
David Cameron,is rallying loyalists to form a Praetorian Guard,around him in the event of a hung parliament.Cameron has already asked his loyal supporters to take to the airwaves to thwart a leadership challenge,after the GE.
Detractors of Cameron,in the Tory party,are linings up a leadership change,with the current mayor of London,Boris Johnson ttipped to fill the position.
Hello Technicolour, good to see you.
This is why Russia needs to move into Ukraine to protect the people of Novorossiya as they did with Crimea. We are arming the fascists. There has been no vote in parliament. We are electing dictators who have no consensus from the electorate. Russia should move fast. I realise this is risky. But the Yanks are full of lies and deceit. If they do, and say they have done, I will be happy to concede that the weapons there are weapons and not combine harvesters. Follow Russia Today.
http://rt.com/news/242257-uk-us-ukraine-training-mission/
I see Fred’s still pushing his puerile shit.
For any new readers – Peacewisher is a troll.