Robert Webb might well have been the only person in the Labour Party well to the right of Liz Kendall. In 2005 He told the Guardian in an interview the person he most admired was Christopher Hitchens (at a time when Hitchens was the lead propagandist for the Iraq War) and Webb characterised opponents of the Iraq War as “suicide bombers and their apologists”. Today the Guardian gives him an enormous puff for resigning from the Labour Party in protest against Jeremy Corbyn.
A genuinely unpleasant person. I confess to a personal grudge against Webb, but it is a justified one. he was deeply involved in plagiarising my memoir, Murder in Samarkand for the BBC Comedy The Ambassador. The production company involved, Big Talk, had actually invited me to their offices for a meeting to ask me to sell them the rights to Murder in Samarkand. I attended the meeting but I refused to sell them the rights. They went ahead and made the series anyway.
Having been brought up in Norfolk I am a Norwich City supporter, as explained in Murder in Samarkand. Webb’s The Ambassadors featured a Norwich City supporting ambassador to Tazbekistan (which he claimed was unrelated to Uzbekistan) and made fun of the dopey Ambassador’s concern with human rights. Numerous incidents were very plainly taken from Murder in Samarkand as well as the entire scenario, but I could not afford to take the crooked plagiarising bastards to court.
Robert Webb. One of the nastiest men in Britain. If Corbyn as Labour leader achieves nothing more than getting shot of Webb, that is still progress.
Fedup : I have forgotten my Western cowboy vernacular
Here you go. I* have translated your entire post into cowboy-speak.
*When I said “I”, I meant “The Dialectizer“
Life as a cancer nurse in Gaza’s main hospital
20 November 2015
Video 2.52
At the age of 27, Azza Jadalla has already lived through six wars – three in the past seven years alone. She is a cancer nurse in Gaza’s main hospital, Al-Shifa. Every day she deals with fall-out of the on-going conflict between Israel and Gaza’s ruling party, Hamas.
Living in a place with a failing economy means she faces daily electricity and supply shortages at work.
“Sometime we go for two or three months without pay,” she says. “But this doesn’t make me want to do my job any less, because it’s not the patient’s fault.”
Despite her dedication and due to shortages in Gaza, there is often only so much Ms Jadalla can do for her patients. For one patient Abdul (name has been changed), who is suffering from leukaemia, the only option for further treatment is outside Gaza.’
Look at the wrecked buildings in the background as Azza travels to work.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-34867911
PM To Meet Hollande For Talks On IS Fight
The meeting between the two world leaders comes as the UN agrees to co-ordinate efforts to wipe out Islamic State.
http://news.sky.com/story/1591572/pm-to-meet-hollande-for-talks-on-is-fight
‘Two world leaders’. Yet another laugh. Moral pygmies more like.
Hope the end result is better than the result of the UK/France (CameraOb and Sarko) effort in Libya.
Node tear are streaming down my face and everyone is looking at me strangely for laughing out loudly and for so long!!!
Thanks for the best laugh I have had in a while!!!
“A torrent of comments from RD this morning on this and the next thread. 10 here since 9.14am.
Interesting how they take turns on the comments sections of this blog.”
Unlike you Mary I have a job and family to look after so I cannot be here all the time. As for frequency of comments and insinuations about how I am part of a co-ordinated conspiracy perhaps you should look at yourself first.
Laughing in our faces contd.
Hang on to Your Wallets
Negative Interest, the War on Cash, and the $10 Trillion Bail-in
by Ellen Hodgson Brown / November 21st, 2015
In uncertain times, “cash is king,” but central bankers are systematically moving to eliminate that option. Is it really about stimulating the economy? Or is there some deeper, darker threat afoot?
Remember those old ads showing a senior couple lounging on a warm beach, captioned “Let your money work for you”? Or the scene in Mary Poppins where young Michael is being advised to put his tuppence in the bank, so that it can compound into “all manner of private enterprise,” including “bonds, chattels, dividends, shares, shipyards, amalgamations . . . .”?
That may still work if you’re a Wall Street banker, but if you’re an ordinary saver with your money in the bank, you may soon be paying the bank to hold your funds rather than the reverse.
Four European central banks – the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, Sweden’s Riksbank, and Denmark’s Nationalbank – have now **imposed negative interest rates on the reserves they hold for commercial banks; and discussion has turned to whether it’s time to pass those costs on to consumers. The Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve are still at ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy), but several Fed officials have also begun calling for NIRP (negative rates).
/..
http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/hang-onto-your-wallets/
How many £billions did they steal from us in the bank bailouts?
**
http://www.businessinsider.com/banks-discussing-negative-interest-rates-for-consumers-2015-10?r=UK&IR=T
My replies on ‘placeholder’ have been removed yet the senior troll’s reference remains. Strange that!
Habbabkuk,
There’s perfectly decent people who went to Oxford or Cambridge.
And then there’s Oxbridge c****.
Now jog on troll.
Did you shop around for a cfa to sue?
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/11/shoot-to-kill-and-news-management/
Resident Dissident
21 Nov, 2015 – 11:09 am
“ I am a believer in a broad church – political parties that support a single narrow viewpoint have a pretty awful history.”
…………………………………………………………………………………..
You speak through of your fundament ResDis.
You are an arch Thatcherite and Royalist. Like Thatcher you probably admired Pinochet and his “broad church” politics.
[The Pinochet dictatorship was established after the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by a CIA-backed coup d’état on 11 September 1973.]
Fred
21 Nov, 2015 – 11:49 am
“A lot of people who had never voted Labour in their lives paid their £3 for a vote and elected him.”
……………………………………………………………………………
Who were they Fred?
Doug, RD’s pal the Resident Inquisitor doesn’t like the Spanish judge Garzon who was responsible for Pinochet’s prosecution, so that sounds like a good guess.
Loans and donations to political parties.
Summary of political parties’ donations and borrowing for quarter three 2015 (July to September)http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/194228/Q3-2015-Donations-and-Loans.pdf
~~
Richard Caring, owner of The Ivy, is the largest donor to the Tories. He’s a non dom. Friend of Lord Levy, he once loaned Labour £2m, since repaid.
Tycoon owner of The Ivy and Annabel’s hands Tories £290,000 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/21/richard-caring-annbels-the-ivy-biggest-tory-donor
Poor Robert Webb, effortlessly managing to be the less talented member of the Mitchell/Webb comical duo. Despite his education he found himself reduced to endorsing price comparison advertising, flashed his genitals for public amusement and locating minor continuity discrepancies in Hollywood films. He now discovers his attempt to ingratiate himself with what he imagines to be the power elite by distancing himself from a revitalised Labour Party under Mr Corben has put him at odds with human rights campaigner Craig. Well, if I was Craig I would have been upset to find a serous historical document lampooned in the style of Mad magazine. Luckily, at this stage in his career, nobody cares what Webb thinks about anything and nobody’s credibility is enhanced by being featured in The Guardian. The problem with all lampoons is the same as with irony generally, it destroys but it does not replace what it destroys. It is essentially nihilistic, in that respect it is more like the spirit of our present age. Would that it were not so. If only Webb’s energy were directed in a more constructive way.
“You are an arch Thatcherite and Royalist. Like Thatcher you probably admired Pinochet and his “broad church” politics.”
Wrong on every count. A lot of those around Putin were all rather keen on Pinochet – as I have pointed out a number of times. Just like I have mentioned I am a Republican – and if you bother to read what I have written about economics, you will see that I am no Thatcherite.
I appreciate that you may find it a little difficult to cope with someone whose views do not conform to one of two sterotypes that you have in your mind. My advice is to read wider and educate yourself before your next return to this blog.
Another nonentity leaves Labour. She admires NuLabour types like Blair and Brown and quotes Robert Webb. Enough said. She is someone I have never heard of. She used to work for New Musical Express.
Why I’m leaving the Labour party
Barbara Ellen
I can’t stay in an organisation where ‘moderate’ has become a dirty word
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/22/barabara-ellen-why-i-am-leaving-labour-party
Any chance of the talentless hypocritical Blair-supporting droning Billy Bragg joining Robert Webb in the celebrity C-list coat-tail-hangers-on served-their-useful-idiot-purpose retirement home for has-been self-serving arse-lickers?
Another nonentity leaves Labour. She admires NuLabour types like Blair and Brown
No she doesn’t
https://www.google.co.uk/search?sclient=psy-ab&rlz=1T4GGNI_enGB603GB604&biw=1680&bih=923&site=webhp&q=barbara+ellen+on+tony+blair&oq=barbara+ellen+on+tony+blair&gs_l=serp.3…2992.9983.2.10895.13.13.0.0.0.0.98.1025.13.13.0….0…1c.1.64.serp..5.8.648.Hu86JIw64tA&pbx=1&cad=cbv&sei=VftRVrjwOoi3UcfrsLAG
Not even 1 shade of grey when it comes to Mary and her totalitarian mindset I’m afraid.
Yes, I find the idea of people leaving the party now, whilst staying in long after Blair – and the party – has been disgraced by the Iraq invasion, well I find that a curious position to take. To each their own of course. I for one have never, in my entire adult life, seen a labour party worth joining, so perhaps I’m not qualified to comment on someone’s decision to leave.
It’s looking increasingly clear that Corbyn has simply not been accepted by the Nu Lab establishment, and never will be. They don’t accept his victory, not in the slightest. So, they’ll call another leader spill, in such a way as to ensure Corbyn isn’t on the ticket. I give Corbyn till maybe next summer. It will be interesting to see what happens then though. My guess is, Labour tank in the polls, as some drone repeats whatever Cameron says, and so they lose the election anyway, by a landslide, but still blame the Corbynistas. Sad really that Nu Lab can’t see the problem – it’s the war and the economy, stupid.