It says a huge amount about the confidence of the royal family, that they feel able to respond to their Nazi home movie with nothing other than outrage that anybody should see it. They make no denial they were giving Nazi salutes, no statement that the royal family did not support the Nazis. Of course the young children had no idea of the implications. But the adults most certainly did. The missing figure is the cameraman, future King George, who was filming his wife and brother displaying the family sympathies.
The royal family were of course German themselves – completely so. Since George I every royal marriage in line of succession had been conducted in strict accordance with the Furstenprivatrecht, to a member of a German royal family. The Queen Mother, who was of course not expected to feature in promulgating the line of succession, was the first significant exception in 220 years. She was evidently trying hard to fit in. But I am not sure German-ness has much to do with it. Nazi sympathies were much more common in the aristocracy than generally admitted. Their vast wealth and massive land ownership contrasted with the horrific poverty and malnutrition of the 1930’s, led the aristocracy to fear a very real prospect of being stood against a wall and shot. Fascism appeared to offer social amelioration for the workers with continued privilege for the aristocrats. It is completely untrue that its racism, totalitarianism and violence was unknown in 1933-4. They knew what they were doing.
Happily fascism was defeated. The royal family is of course only the tip of the iceberg of whitewashed fascist support – without even starting on industrialists, newspaper proprietors, the Kennedys, etc. etc. But the Buckingham Palace option of outrage that anybody should ever remember is very sad – still more sad that such a position gets such popular support.
We never did get round to shooting the aristocrats.
I am an optimist in politics. My experience of life has taught me that altruism is a far stronger human urge than selfishness. Modern political fashion is based on the denigration of the urge to cooperation, and I do not believe will survive.
Which leads me to believe we are now living in an embarrassing past. Future generations will look back at the massive and exponentially expanding gap between rich and poor, at the super state security services and near total surveillance, at the violent wars waged in ill-disguised annexation of resources, and be amazed that people could support it. I also think that enormous shame will attach to all those who support the excruciatingly slow genocide of the Palestinians. That will be part of our embarrassing past.
“Asking whether a person is right wing or not, is not a personal attack, Fred.”
Sticking a question mark on the end of your ad hominem attacks doesn’t stop them being ad hominem attacks.
I’ve always found people who attack the person not the issues to be of low intelligence and intellect and have parents who were closely related. How many fingers did you have?
See what I mean.
Pete Fairhurst
22 Jul, 2015 – 5:49 pm Thank-you. Postal voting fraud was examined here before the referendum and I believe Craig had reservations about this. I have no evidence myself that can substantiate this scam advised by Andy Anderson or those who might have premature access to polling data sources. I do know having done some consultancy work for DRS Data and Research Services that it would be real easy for GCHQ to obtain and manipulate polling or postal ballot data.
I have no idea where Scotland referendum ballot papers were printed or the algorithm used for validation security checks, including who issues and accounts for the blocks of numbers that are used to identify each paper.
I hope that a thorough analysis of the postal voting system, including security, can be accomplished forthwith, without delay with the results placed in the public domain.
http://tapnewswire.com/2015/07/how-the-scottish-referendum-was-rigged/
“A) Scots who are proud of their country, and concerns themselves with the poor and disadvantaged = NAZI
b) Royalty, who are champions and friends of Hitler, proudly photographed performing a Sieg Heil = “Children waving at something in the sky”
You expect this crap to be taken seriously by anyone, Fred?”
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Glenn he’s just taking the piss, there’s not a shred of evidence to support Scots who want independence, act like Nazi’s, in any way shape or form, and he knows it.
The British government and the Royals however, are a different matter, with their illegal wars and regal Nazi connections.
RoS: I’m coming to the same conclusion. Clearly, he’s just trying to throw the heat.
Given that many of the inmates there are convicted criminals who after serving prison sentences are awaiting removal to their home countries, and not refugees from countries we’ve attacked (which you claim most of them are) her comment is understandable. But as an attempt to make it appear that Dungavel is a concentration camp, where the inmates are brutalised by the screws and the punitive regime, the OD link fails miserably.”
_____________________________
OldMark.
Some of those people are held for over a year, for no reason at all.
The Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has called for a review into the practice of indefinite detention at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre.
The independent public body made its call a week after attempts to investigate reports of asylum seekers being denied food and living in poor conditions were blocked by the Home Office.
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) requested to visit the Dungavel detention centre in South Lanarkshire but was refused permission by the Home Office, despite the agreement of the centre’s manager.
I not going to waste anymore time debating Dungavel with you, you’ve read one link, and comment, like you’ve bought the T shirt and read the book, so to speak.
http://www.scottishlegal.com/2015/05/07/human-rights-commission-calls-for-dungavel-review/
Labour’s interim leader, Harriet Harman, learned this the hard way. First elected to the House of Commons in 1982, she saw how long it took for Labour to restore itself after the Bennite madness of the early 80s.
That’s why after this year’s election she was so quick to resolve that Labour had to show the public it got the message over welfare and that it would not automatically oppose all the Conservatives’ welfare changes.
Tony Blair’s old political secretary John McTernan, writing for the Telegraph newspaper letting us know in no uncertain terms, that Labour will not necessarily be the Tories opposition.
Combine this with Blair urging Labour not to shift to the left, and you have the rumblings to undermine Jeremy Corbyn.
https://archive.is/R3JLg
RoS: You may find this of interest – don’t be put off by the title.
https://commonspace.scot/articles/1951/james-mcenaney-why-we-should-welcome-tony-blair-s-intervention-in-labour-leader-race
Good survey of the issue, IMHO
What is particularly striking, however, is the irrationality of Labour’s ongoing implosion. Listening to some of the louder voices in the party would have you believe that their share of the vote collapsed in May (it increased by 1.5 per cent), that the Tories achieved a decisive and unanswerable victory (they won a little over a third of the popular vote and their majority of 12 is barely even workable) and that this means that the only way to win a UK election is by winning over what one might call the ‘soft Tory’ vote.
But look closer and it becomes clear just how ludicrous this belief is. The single most striking figure from the 2015 General Election is 33.9 per cent – the proportion of the population which did not vote at all.
This figure, almost exactly halfway between the Conservative and Labour results (36.9 per cent and 30.4 per cent respectively) should be what is keeping Labour strategists and parliamentarians up at night, not the tiny numbers who shifted from red to blue.
These missing millions are far more likely to see their lives damaged by the policies of this – and any other – Conservative government, with the Electoral Commission identifying factors such as unemployment, deprivation and disability as some of the key drivers of political exclusion.
In short, the very people that a genuine Labour Party should exist to represent could easily provide enough votes to win an election.
Their loss: your gain. South of the Border, it’s a bit more problematic.
(One of the commentators correctly points out that the non-voting figure was actually greater than the % vote for any party. (total voters 100-33.9 = 66.1%: Con:36.9% of 66.1%, Lab 30.4% of 66.1%))
Glenn he’s just taking the piss
I have exhaustively tested this hypothesis against the null hypothesis that, like most here, he is interested in some sort of rational debate. Your hypothesis is the one that fits all the available data.
I was not defending Nazism. I was just trying to explain in what sense it can be called (and called itself) socialist.
The thing that scares me about modern politics is the speed and depth of communication. Exactly the same story is being carried by the Batley News, the Portsmouth News, the Yorkshire Evening Post, Bedford Today, the Shields Gazette, the Bexhill Observer, and many, many more local papers. Printed verbatim, this is a Press Association feed for mindless ‘journalists’ to cut-and-paste. They;re so crap at finding local stories that there’s room for it.
Meanwhile, the same story, in different words, with heavy bias, has been circulated and picked up by other local rags. Again, they print this, from the AP agency, verbatim.
Who supplied the text of these releases to the agencies? Why, the Office of Tony Blair, undoubtedly, while his contacts in the BBC ensured that his maunderings to Progress today headed the news bulletins there, and very much on his terms.
We badly need Press regulation.
Mark 4.00pm
Thank you for posting this brilliant comment.
Craig’s website is so good.
We learn.
It’s official. We know who – Brittan, Hayman, Morrison and van Straubenzee but not what took place, to whom or when.
Key Westminster Figures In Child Abuse Papers
The Government reveals that unreleased files relating to child abuse allegations do exist which name key Westminster figures.
http://news.sky.com/story/1523577/key-westminster-figures-in-child-abuse-papers
Key Westminster figures from the 1970s and 1980s have been named in a series of Government child abuse documents.
After months of requests from Sky News the Government has revealed that papers exist that relate to Margaret Thatcher’s former parliamentary secretary Sir Peter Morrison, former Home Secretary Leon Brittan, former diplomat Sir Peter Hayman and former minister Sir William van Straubenzee.
All four have passed away and the contents of the papers have not been revealed.
In January Sky News forced the Government to release the details of a file prepared for Mrs Thatcher’s office on the ‘unnatural sexual’ behaviours of one of the men Sir Peter Hayman.
Peter Morrison, Leon Brittan, William van Straubenzee, Peter Hayman
The new batch of file names reveal there were further Government papers relating to the former MI6 man and career diplomat.
The revelation comes after the Wanless and Whittam review of Government papers last year that failed to find many of the relevant abuse files held by Government departments.
Gallery: Westminster Figures In Abuse Papers
The Cabinet Office apologised for the ‘flaw’ in the way they responded to the request for information.
Permanent Secretary Richard Heaton wrote to Whittam and Wanless in May saying: “I deeply regret that the Cabinet Office failed to identify the papers in question when you first asked for them.”
The papers also reveal that the Kincora children’s home in Northern Ireland was at the heart of further correspondence involving the security services.
Allegations of abuse and trafficking of children to England have centred on the home in Belfast.
The papers reveal former intelligence officer Colin Wallace raised concerns about abuse at Kincora – the papers had been stored by the Cabinet Office.
The contents of the papers have still not been revealed but have been shared with the police and will be passed to the Child Abuse Inquiry led by Justice Lowell Goddard.
plus photos and video.
Chapter and verse on the ’embedded’ British military personnel.
RAF personnel assigned to US unit carrying out drone strikes against Isis
Following calls for government to come clean over role in US air force unit, MoD says such UK personnel are ‘effectively operating as foreign troops
‘Fresh questions have been raised over British military being embedded with US forces after a joint US-UK defence memo provided details of RAF crews assigned to an American unit conducting controversial drone strikes. RAF personnel assigned to US unit carrying out drone strikes against Isis.’
[..]
Jennifer Gibson, a lawyer at Reprieve, said: “The CIA’s secret drone programme has killed hundreds of civilians in countries such as Yemen and Pakistan, where neither the US nor the UK are at war. It takes place in the shadows and beyond accountability – and so far the British government has claimed it has nothing to do with them.
“Ministers must come clean to the public on the part the UK has played. And they have a duty to British personnel to ensure they do not embroil them in the CIA’s illegal assassination programme.”
Chris Cole, founder of the campaign group Drone Wars UK, echoed Gibson: “These complex and opaque methods of sharing personnel and equipment between nations come on top of a real erosion in international law norms regarding when and where military force may be used … it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell which nation is involved in which armed conflict in which part of the globe.
“As one of the states to be involved in these ‘creative accounting’ type arrangements with our military forces, the government has an increased duty to be open and transparent with both MPs and the public about how and when our forces and aircraft are being used.”
/..
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/22/raf-personnel-assigned-us-unit-carrying-out-drone-strikes-reprieve-charity
Kuenssberg replaces Robinson as BBC Political Editor. He moves to Radio 4 Today in the Autumn.
BBC names Laura Kuenssberg as political editor
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33628087
Nick Robinson: former chair of the Young Conservatives.
Laura Kuenssberg: self-publicist, anti-Labour on occasion (but has written book reviews for New Statesman )-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30117186
-talks too much –
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/steerpike/2015/06/labours-attack-dog-turns-on-laura-kuenssberg-over-bbc-debate/
Former ITV Business editor, went to Newsnight on £200K/yr.
Scottish. Of the Glasgow McKuenssbergs probably.
It is worth remembering just how long before WWII knowledge of Nazi acts of violance towards Jews in Germany were recorded, reported and published in Britain.
I have an original copy of “The Yellow Spot: The Extermination of the Jews in Germany” (Victor Gollancz: 1936), with an introduction by Herbert Dunelm, Bishop of Durham. The Nurnberg Decrees (depriving Jews of all rights, of citizenship and reducing them to “pariah” status) were passed by the Reichstag in 1935. Chapter II of ‘The Yellow Spot’ is titled “1933: Blood-letting begins”, and there reports the Manchester Guardian, 27th March, 1933, from which I have extracted this quotation from its report:
“The worst excesses here in Berlin occurred on March 9th [1933], most of the victims living in the Grenadierstrasse. Many Jews were beaten by Brown Shirts until the blood streamed down their heads and faces and their backs and shoulders were bruised…. …. A man and his wife were both beaten and robbed…. …. Hundreds of Jews have been beaten, but not one dare say so publicly or dare complain without the risk of another beating”.
The “Volkische Beobachter” made clear, and very public (for foreign journalists to report without undue research required) the methods it proposed be adopted by the Nazi Party (whose views it represented), and from 1933 by implication, to be adopted by the Party of the German Government. Without going further, all of this material provides a considerable volume of evidence that was available to the British public and opinion-formers, if they wished to be informed.
Please read “violence” above.
Top headline on the Daily Mirror web site at the time of posting…
“MI5 ‘helped Margaret Thatcher cover-up paedophile Tory MP’s activities’ new documents reveal”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mi5-helped-margaret-thatcher-cover-6120006
There’s absolutely nothing new in this Mirror piece, and it should be noted that there’s no mention of the Australian 60 Minutes programme at the weekend, and Exaro News coverage, in which Lord Mountbatten was named (a cousin of the Queen), and an unnamed high ranking member of the Labour party, who allegedly sexually abused children very recently.
There’s also no mention of the Ben Fellows trial, which is going on at the Old Bailey at the moment, where there’s been some jaw-dropping revelations.
It’s nice to live in a free and open society, isn’t it…
Mary approves of Mr Golding’s “reply” to my cut-and-paste on the Greek NHS and its insufficient use of generic rather than proprietory drugs:
“You are spot on Mark and quite correct to challenge the content of the copy and paste about the Greek health service from the resident on here.”
____________________
The only problem with Mary’s ringing endorsement is that Mr Golding didn’t actually refute, with evidence, what I quoted on the subject.
All he did was to say
“The argument that Greece should be using a greater percentage of ‘generic’ drugs is so lacking insight and compassion as to be abhorrent.”
and then followed up with
“Greek health service doctors have been made redundant and many hospitals closed. Those Greeks who are ill and lacking financial resources are dying”
which may or not be true (I have no figures – does he?) but has nothing to do with the Greek NHS still not using enough generic drugs despite the govt’s commitment that it would do so.
Ie, the usual high quality of argument one has come to expect from this bog’s commenters. 🙂
“..from this bog’s commenters” = that was a typo but I think I’ll let it stand.
“Devonport workers entombed in submarine ballast tank
22 July 2015
Contractor Babcock International refits Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet at Devonport
Two workers were accidentally entombed inside the ballast tank of a nuclear submarine, it has emerged.
Colleagues had mistakenly sealed the tank at Devonport base in Plymouth, where Britain’s nuclear submarines are refitted.”
_______________________
It is of course entirely typical of Mary to leave it to the link to tell us that the two workers were in fact found and saved.
She was – typically – incapable of including that bit of good news in her little “summary” (= cut=and=paste)of the link.
A good example of what I meant when I wrote about some posters’ unremitting negative thinking and obsessive hatreds.
Rob: You’re familiar with this site, I take it?
http://enenews.com/
You’ll probably like it, it compiles information/news reports about the energy industry, with particular emphasis on the nuclear disasters at Fukushima and elsewhere. Doesn’t make for light reading.
@Glenn
22 Jul, 2015 – 11:29 pm
I’m a longtime, and somewhat infrequent, poster over at ENEnews (where I post under my own name, as I do here).
If you want more literal stuff about the ongoing horror story that is Fukushima you can try here:
http://www.evacuate-fukushima.com/
Or maybe here:
http://www.save-children-from-radiation.org/
Or Lori’s Fukushima Diary, which is one of the best when it comes to translating the minutae from Japanese to English):
http://fukushima-diary.com/
(some people think that Fukushima Diary has been taken over by the psychos, and Lori has been consigned to a watery death).
Mary at 8.35am (and anyone) I wonder about Bl1ar being shoved in our faces aprop os of nothing at all
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-33624357
Mary, a quick thanks for all that you do and:
RobG: noted, thanks
ROS Im’ not Scottish, just an English earthling (beep)
Fred: Please
HabbaHuliHoo: you’re Garbage
Tony Opomoc: Please, keep them coming, yes.
Tony Golding: The Tony Prize
Or it would be except you’re a Mark 🙂
And why is my Avatar pink? Is this irony?
Former ITV Business editor, went to Newsnight on £200K/yr.
Scottish. Of the Glasgow McKuenssbergs probably.
Ba’al- she’s grander than that; her grandfathers’ wikipedia entry states that the family name is actually Von Kuenssberg-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekkehard_von_Kuenssberg
That’s fine seems we are all in the pink right now. It’s no longer just the Commies.