I am an unrepentant enthusiast for the European Union, indeed a European Federalist. I think the freedoms of movement of people and goods within the EU are the most profound political achievement of my lifetime, and have made the world a very much better place.
I am therefore flabbergasted by the group of unpleasant elitist bastards who apparently will lead the pro-EU campaign for the referendum. How could anybody wishing to win a vote believe that a Board including Peter Mandelson and Danny Alexander is going to help? While the appointment of Lord Rose seems to confirm belief in the “Michelle Mone theory”, that selling knickers grants universal expertise.
Most egregious of all, the Executive Director is Will Straw, whose main qualification is that his father is a war criminal. Founder of the rabid anti-Corbyn website Left Foot Forward and every bit as Atlanticist as Liam Fox, Will Straw is as insanely pro-United States hegemony and as ultra-Zionist as only an extreme Blairite can be. He really is a deeply unappealing figure.
I have no doubt they will be flooded with corporate money. But what I want to know is this. If this referendum is supposed to be a democratic exercise, where every citizen is equal, what grants this self-serving sample of the metropolitan elite the right to nominate themselves as the In campaign? I don’t see how any decent person can have anything to do with them. Having had a lot of respect for Caroline Lucas, I must say if she really is going to work alongside Will Straw then my respect for her is going to plummet.
The Stupidest Post by a Troll.
We now have a winner:
“Given the size of the population of the State of Israel compared to the populations of the Arab “states”* surrounding it, it could be argued that that ratio is distinctly to the disadvantage of the State of Israel.”
(For those who missed the occasion of this drivel from the Dead Sea: it had been pointed out that Palestinian casualties, caused by settler lynch mobs and Israeli policemen, far exceed the number of Israelis attacked by angry Palestinians. And the above was the clever response.)
http://angryarab.blogspot.ca/2015/10/these-are-names-and-ages-of.html
If that’s the usual suspect, Bevin, that’s pretty well par for the course. Useless to point out that, given the size of Israel relative to the rest of the world, any ratio, including, say, that of the production of pigmeat in Belorus to the consumption of falafel in Haifa, is vastly to the disadvantage of poor little Israel and is antisemitic. Like ambulances…
http://www.palestinercs.org/en/details.php?nid=1073
Should really have given the text from the above link:
Israeli Occupation Forces Intentionally Target PRCS Teams and Ambulances in Occupied Jerusalem
(11/10/2015): PRCS has documented 53 attacks against its teams and ambulances in which 37 emergency medical technicians (EMTs) were wounded and around 20 ambulances were damaged since October 3rd when the latest round of attacks by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians in the oPt, including Jerusalem, began. Furthermore. There are 24 cases in which PRCS’ ambulances were hindered and prevented from reaching wounded Palestinians near seam zones.
The majority of attacks (23) took place in occupied Jerusalem. PRCS affirms that these violations aim at hindering the work of its teams and at preventing them from carrying out their humanitarian duty, including reaching injured persons, providing them with First Aid and ensuring their transfer to hospitals. This has increased the suffering of injured persons and their families.
These violations constitute a grave breach of IHL provisions which stipulate that National Societies, such as the Palestine Red Crescent, must be allowed to provide humanitarian services to those in need. Moreover, occupation forces have infringed the four Geneva Conventions by arresting Palestinians from inside PRCS’ ambulances in a crying violation of the sanctity of ambulances and of the Society’s emblem, as well as of the right of the wounded to access medical care. The Fourth Geneva Convention in particular stipulates that the occupying power should assure access to medical services and medical personnel. These violations have forced the wounded to seek alternative means of traveling to hospitals, exacerbating their wounds and endangering their lives.
PRCS calls on the international community represented by political, humanitarian and relief organizations to take practical measures to compel the occupying power to cease all attacks and violations against the wounded, PRCS’ ambulances and teams. Israel should ensure the transfer of injured persons and to ensure that they receive adequate emergency services and are transported to hospital if needed.
Expletive deleted.
De Gaulle said ‘NO’ and vetoed the UK membership. De Gaulle/France was anti-American.
And de Gaulle has been proved right. He feared the UK would be a Trojan Horse for the Americans, and the Brits have indeed pioneered “Anglo Saxon” economic policies in the EU, backed up by the neoliberal, neocon governments in Eastern Europe, whose rapid inclusion they (and the US) backed.
Clydebuilt
Sporting Injustice Rugby World Cup
An Irishman punches a Frenchman in an unprovoked attack, 23 seconds into a rugby match and gets a one-week ban.
An Australian knees a Welshman who is on the ground – no action.
South Africans high tackled Scots many times, one attempted a pile driver, no action.
But, two Scots clean out a Samoan who was on the wrong side of a ruck – three week
bans for each.
The ban decided by an English QC, after the incident was flagged-up by an Australian.
I suppose they had to ban our boys for the rest of the competition, otherwise we might have got to the final, and what would that have done for Scottish moral.
100.000 leave Afghanistan every month to seek a new future elsewhere and many are leaving for Germany. Merkel is regarded as the ‘mother of all refugees’, something she has to deal with and which will cost here the job at the next election, if she’s still there.
But why would these people flee their home country? Could it be that the last 15 years of NATO fighting and the re-surging Taliban has left them with no future?
Thank you NATO for destabilising the world, your time is up and you have not made the North Atlantic safer.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/fluechtlinge-aus-afghanistan-fuer-asyl-in-deutschland-riskieren-sie-alles-a-1057400.html
“I hope that you are sitting down Fred, because this may shock you but you have to be told: governments lie, the US government lies like hell and fascist coup governments don’t even consider telling the truth.”
And the Russian government lies as well but the worst liars of all are the ones who lie to themselves, the ones who alter reality to match what they want to believe.
Almost O/T, sorry, but a good bit of Strawiana:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11883017/Jack-Straw-used-Britains-consul-in-Hong-Kong-to-check-the-company-for-which-he-was-considering-working.html
What would be the chances of Joe Soap, researching a contract to run a fish-and-chip stand in Beijing, obtaining detailed consular assistance and time?
Churchill was an alcoholic, McMillan had mental health ssues, Wilson resigned rather suddenly, Healey was an admitted compulsive liar. The ‘winter of discontent’, Thatcher was deranged over 3 million unemployed and interest rates at 15% Blair/Brown are war criminals. Osbourne/Cameron sanction and kill the vulnerable.
Nobody’s perfect.
Jack Straw must be just the right calibre to review the FoI legislature, well, the only question left is who can he ask for advice before he commits.
The guile and cunning is definitely showing, thats how Labour choose their candidates, mind he has groomed his son since birth and he will try his best to repay daddy’s connectivity…
Although it looks as if daddy’s reign over Blackburn was not all it said on the tin. Blackburn was a backwater under Barbara Castle and Jack Straw made sure that it was kept that way, divided and manageable for his needs alone.
http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/blackburn/13846264.REVEALED__Blackburn_s_most_deprived_areas/
The main advantage to many Brits of the EU and it’s free movement of people is the avoidance of tax. It’s why I went to live in Portugal.
Of the often quoted Brits who live in Europe ex UK. I suspect that the majority of them go the sunny south of Europe to retire whilst relatively healthy and productive in their 50s and 60s and then return to the UK when they get ill or old and need the care of NHS in their 70s and 80s. Thus in general the Brits who leave would be net tax contributors to the state and would return as receivers.
Jonathan Cook from within the belly of the beast. He lives in Israel with his Palestinian wife.
As unrest grows in Israel and Palestine, Netanyahu seeks scapegoats
13 October 2015
Benjamin Netanyahu has announced a crackdown on Palestinian political leaders in Israel, blaming them for the current unrest, in what appeared to be an attempt to bolster his severely dented image as ‘Mr Security’. After a security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu directed officials to assemble the evidence to make possible the outlawing of the northern wing of the Islamic movement.
/..
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2015-10-13/as-unrest-grows-in-israel-and-palestine-netanyahu-seeks-scapegoats/
‘Israel is a terrorist state’
12 October 2015
The violence rocking the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and now Gaza is on the verge of spilling into Israel, Palestinian leaders in Israel warned. A wave of unrest has swept Palestinian towns in Israel over recent days. Aggressive policing, vigilante-style attacks by Israeli Jews and a crackdown on the Palestinian leadership in Israel have quickly heightened tensions.
/..
http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2015-10-12/israel-is-a-terrorist-state/
In Sickness and In Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years Paperback
by David Owen
‘In Sickness and in Power’ is a unique study of illness in heads of government between 1901 and 2007. It considers how illness and therapy – both physical and mental – affect the process of government and decision-making, leading to acts of folly, in the sense of stupidity or rashness. The author is particularly interested in leaders who were not ill in the conventional sense, and whose cognitive faculties functioned well, but who developed what he calls a `hubris syndrome’, which powerfully affected their performance and their actions. Such leaders suffer a loss of capacity and become excessively self-confident and contemptuous of advice that runs counter to what they believe, or even of any advice at all.
Long fascinated with the inter-relationship between politics and medicine, David Owen uses his deep knowledge of both to look at sickness in a wide variety of world political leaders.’
/..
http://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Sickness-Power-Illness-Government/dp/0413777081
Habbabkuk: “Just for the record, the UK letter rate is not out of line with that of most Western European countries and the letter delivery service (including Saturday deliveries) is much better than in some of them.”
In other words, “Not much worse than some other European countries” – not exactly a ringing endorsement of a once proud British institution. Which is getting rapidly worse, of course. The Dutch postal service (with which I have some familiarity) is terrible following its own privitisation, because of a simple and obvious fact – in order to make increasing amounts of money, you continually cut the service, increase prices, and make the conditions less favourable for employees.
Profit, not service, is the primary concern of profitised utilities. Can anyone think of an example of the country being better served by one of its institutions being sold off, usually on the cheap, and very often to foreign profiteers?
I suspect that the majority of them go the sunny south of Europe to retire whilst relatively healthy and productive in their 50s and 60s and then return to the UK when they get ill or old and need the care of NHS in their 70s and 80s.
Geoffrey- your suggestion may well apply to early retired Brits in Iberia or Greece, but not those in France, who frequently compare French healthcare favourably with that available on the NHS. Anna Raccoon’s blog is peppered with asides praising the arrangements that pertain in France when compared to the alternatives in the UK.
FWIW another measure of the relative underperformance of health services in Club Med could be the number of medics from those countries who choose to work over here in the NHS rather than in their home countries. On the personal,anecdotal level I’ve had hospital consultations in recent years (on the NHS) with Spanish, Italian, and Greek specialists but have never once been treated by a French doctor.
Anecdotal information is probably the best there is in this area, given the failure of the Department of Health hitherto to respond to this FOI request made in 2010-
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/number_of_foreign_doctors_workin
the http://www.ipt-uk.com/ have judged the UK to be a bunch of subversive terrorists who all need to be monitored, closely, all the time for their own good
!
statements made historically in Parliament in the name of democracy are just rhetoric, hyperbole
What a terrible shame.
Scottish Ebola nurse Pauline Cafferkey ‘critically ill’
4 minutes ago
Earlier her condition was said to be ‘serious’.
YKMN – Interesting issue. The background to which shows that although the Wilson Doctrine was, as far as Parliament knew, in place, the security agencies had rewritten their own rules, without any reference to Parliament,* to ignore it, especially where it might have applied to devolved and European Parliamentarians:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/23/intelligence-agency-policies-fail-protect-mps-spying-mi5-mi6-gchq
* They’d rewritten the bit that required them to tell the PM they’d done that, too.
O/T but just in from der Spiegel. VW has yet to react to this news.
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/volkswagen-dutzende-manager-in-vw-skandal-verwickelt-a-1057741.html
First paragraph freely translated by moire.
“The current investigations of internal revision and that of the solicitors chamber Jones Day at the VW concern show in information discovered by ‘der Spiegel’ that the pollution fraud’ committed for years, by use of a forbidden software was not at all the offense of a ‘small group of managers’, as VW has claimed up to now. A few dozen VW managers were obviously involved, insiders are talking of at least 30 persons. They should take their holidays.”
Nevermind, you are surely mistaken. Afghanistan is a model democracy, where the happy citizens enjoy a standard of living only equalled by that other romantic mountain fastness, Switzerland. Poppies, Kalashnikovs and corruption are unknown there. Instead, the country’s economy is fuelled by the numerous hedge funds based there because of its stability and low taxes, as well as turquoise futures and gold brick options. The once-troublesome warlords, now their tribesmen have all accepted Jesus, engage in nothing more hostile than competitive knitting. Kabul’s internationally renowned gourmet restaurants and shopping malls have opened branches in Herat, Helmand, and the Hindu Kush, and a 16-lane highway has been built through the Khyber Pass, whose former counterfeit arms industry has given way to the licensed manufacture of Korean motor scooters.
Oh, sorry. I seem to be picking up signals from the Brain of Tony Blair. Whose wife is currently in Tbilisi, stitching together a contract for Omnia to teach the Caucasians how to attract foreign investment legally. More details on An Apology thread, as usual.
Don’t you love how the American self=appointed elite operates!
For example, Hillary and Sanders calling in last night’s Democratic candidate debate for Edward Snowden to face trail when he has not yet been indicted. only charged.
Snowden is totally misguided if he ever returns to the USA because anyone with a bit of power wants him to face the music no matter what the score is.
And then Sanders backs Hillary over ending the Benghazi email controversy.
I do too, once DCI General David Petraeus is exposed for trying to manipulated the security there to help his Mossad mistress spy Paula Broadwell, and Republican candidate Mitt Romney pull off another ‘October surprise’ in the November 2012 presidential election.
Just amazing how it teams up somehow when the elite faces exposure, but is ready to railroad any leaker who attempts to expose it or override it.
Just ask murdered John Wheeler!
John Helmer on the Dutch Aviation Board report:
http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14322#more-14322
There is no evidence in this report of the Novorussians (or Russians) being responsible for an event which the EU and its master have used to justify sanctions against Russia.
Right, the Ukrainian Army was the only one who had a motive for downing what it thought was President Putin’s plane because Washington would reward it greatly if it had succeeded.
There is no evidence in this report of the Novorussians (or Russians) being responsible for …the event…
It’s admirably reluctant to reach conclusions on the identity of the murderers. However, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of the Ukrainians (or the CIA) being responsible either. Nil-all.
which the EU and its master have used to justify sanctions against Russia.
And there’s me thinking the sanctions were imposed in response to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and military support for the Donbass rebels. Which were very definitely the reponsibility of the Russians and the, er, Novorussians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during_the_Ukrainian_crisis
Still, handy to know the Kremlin’s authorised version.
Talking about Postal Services.
My Postie has just delivered my mail. None of it is for my benefit! One letter is begging money for cats. (I will give them something when they answer their phone, or phone me back).
The other is a cat-alogue for men’s clothes. I have NEVER been in touch with either, yet, they know my name and address???
My Postie has his hair dyed redder than his bag!
It is my own fault, I suppose, I said to myself, “I am needing a new free flowing black pen”. I have one now!. As well as a note book, place mats, cards with envelopes and address stickers. None of them Scottish. Of course us Scots are mean with money, so say the English Press.
RAF air rescue handed over to Bristow today.
Today
‘Rescue pilot ‘sad’ as RAF mission end
38 minutes ago
They have been a familiar sight all over Britain – but the RAF’s iconic yellow sea king helicopter has carried out its final rescue – ending a mission that first started more than 70 years ago.
The BBC’s Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale spoke to Sergeant Duncan Bowden of 22 Squadron in Chivenor in North Devon about the job, and his sadness at the service coming to an end.
Chivenor hands over air rescue services to private firm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34438763
~~~
4 October 2015
‘An RAF air rescue team based at Chivenor in north Devon has handed over its role to a private firm.
Bristow took over from the military at RMB Chivenor at 13:00 BST and will fly out of St Athan in south Wales.
The handover was delayed by four days because Bristow said it needed extra time.
Aberdeen-based Bristow won a 10-year contract to take over the service, which is being privatised around the UK.
The £1.6bn search and rescue deal with Bristow ends 70 years of search and rescue from the RAF and Royal Navy.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34438763
‘Bristow Helicopters is a British civil helicopter operator originally based at Aberdeen Airport, Scotland which is now part of the U.S. based Bristow Group (NYSE: BRS, S&P 600 component) which in turn has its corporate headquarters in Houston, Texas.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristow_Helicopters
All under the command of Mr Baliff who did some bombing in Iraq in the First Gulf War from a Phantom.
http://www.bristowgroup.com/about-bristow/management/senior-leadership/jonathan-baliff/
Is there anything left for them (HMG) to privatize?
No need to provide any examples of abduction by the Western security services, most notably the CIA. They are too well-known to require any listing.
Funny that to mention such well-documented crimes should be regarded as “conspiraloonacy”.
But of course it’s all in line with the CIA’s long-time policy of branding any ideas — factual or not — that it dislikes as “conspiracy theory”. When anyone who has studied history knows that history is full of documented conspiracies.
Evidence lacking of CIA et al. wanting to get rid of Putin’s Russia?
It goes way back into the Cold War, especially when it hoped to catch Putin by surprise in March 1986 with a non-nuclea assault on its boomers in the Barents and White Seas, and its land and air forces on the Kola Peninsula which was prevented by spying by Ames et al.
James Bamford brought it all back into focus when he wrote his article about the most wanted man in the world Snowden in June 2014.
Bamford showed that Snowden was the most damaging spy ever because he could continue to divulge top secrets with near imputing, and despite Ptuin’s assurances the he wouldn’t
Little wonder that America spooks tried to kill Putin as fast as the could, but, as usual, only killed about 300 innocents.
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr is the victim of sectarian insanity by the Saudi King. He is enraged at being deceived by USUKIS by being given a green light to pour billions into sectarian violence in Syria only for Assad to be bolstered and the millionionaire jihadis to be bombed by their ally Russia.
A Saudi regime that uses Israeli pilots to bomb Yemen, sends its sons to learn English and promiscuity in UK language schools, terrorists to dispossess and murder the sunni populations of Pakistan and Syria, has only itself to blame for its own insanity.
It executes all opposition to its own insanity. They are the new Gaddafi and Saddam.
Old Mark,the point I was generally trying to make is that generally it’s the Brits who pay into the system and are economically productive that go to live elsewhere in the EU,and then return when they are old and feeble and in need of medical care. (France may well be an exception).
I also suspect that a lot of ex-pats nip back to the UK to see their GP, get their prescriptions and have their operations.
So,I suspect many British emigrants still cost the UK.
It would be very interesting to see figures of the average age of Brits leaving the UK and those returning.
They were far more benevolent and tolerant than these sock puppets ruling the benighted land of Hijaz. The fact that Saddam and Qaddafi were vilified to the nth degree made them look far more worse than they actually were guilty of.
The sock puppets lording it over the land of Hijaz are the most pernicious and virulent dictators committing atrocities that one can only read in bible; crucifying their opponents and letting them die of a slow agonising death.
Yet the same bunch of blood thirsty vermin are treated with genteel care, as “our sons of bitches” and get a very good press, whilst their crimes get swept under the carpet.