Tonight I am appearing at a panel discussion following the screening of the long-awaited film by George Galloway, The Killings of Tony Blair. I shall have the dubious pleasure of debating with John McTernan, who has never lacked brass neck but does deserve some credit for appearing to represent the forces of darkness before what I imagine will be a very hostile audience. The other panel members are Michael Mansfield and Lauren Booth.
The film has been predictably lambasted by the mainstream media. But it does include some very essential first hand evidence – myself apart, two other British Ambassadors tell what they themselves witnessed, as do Cabinet members. Noam Chomsky adds some important perceptions. This cannot just be dismissed by cries of “Oh look! George Galloway’s in a hat!! Remember when he was on Big Brother!!” The mainstream media’s response to this film has been unanimously puerile.
The Blair-loving Guardian gave the film two stars and called it “sanctimonious”. If one cannot express moral condemnation of a man who forced through an aggressive war, directly killing hundreds of thousands and destabilising both the Middle East and communities in Europe, and who then went on to make multiple millions of pounds promoting vicious dictatorships, then are we to suspend the very idea of ethics itself?
The Guardian subscribes to the world view propounded weekly by Nick Cohen, that to appear on an Iranian government TV channel is a far greater sin than to promote a war which killed and maimed countless thousands of small children. None of the many contributors appeared in the film under a mistaken belief that George Galloway is perfect. That George (whom I first met in Dundee in 1977) is not perfect in no way detracts from the evidence stated against Tony Blair. On Iraq, George was both right and brave. I would add that I did not for one moment consider refusing to take part on the grounds that George is a unionist.
Getting cinema screenings for an independent documentary film is extremely difficult. This is what is available so far.
I assume there are plans to make it available on wider platforms later.
The Killing$ Of Tony Blair – Official Trailer from The Killing of Tony Blair – Film on Vimeo.
Leytonstone Tube stabbing: Isis-inspired attacker Muhiddin Mire ‘thought Tony Blair was his guardian angel’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/leytonstone-tube-stabbing-attack-isis-news-latest-sentencing-muhiddin-mire-attempted-murder-tony-a7158841.html
Britain providing ‘safe haven’ to Gaddafi-era figures accused of embezzling millions from Libya
https://www.rt.com/uk/353375-gaddafi-libya-money-laundering/
Gaddafi, even in hid end-days thought Tony Blair was his mate
Three figures from the former government of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi are living safely in Britain despite being wanted in Tripoli for allegedly embezzling millions out of the country.
The three men are on a list of former regime figures wanted by prosecutors in Tripoli for allegedly fleeing the country with assets stolen from the state in 2011.
BuzzFeed News which carried out an investigation says the men have been given safe haven in the UK despite standing accused of laundering millions of pounds using British banks and property deals.
The news website’s investigation found General Ahmed Mahmoud Azwai living in Surrey, one of Britain’s wealthiest counties. It’s claimed he laundered millions through property deals in the Home Counties using offshore companies.
Azwai was reportedly in charge of maintaining Gaddafi’s Scud-B missile stockpile.
He denies stealing from the state, and apparently did not respond to questions about his role in Gaddafi’s military.
Brigadier Guima Elmaarfi, who now lives in a large house in southwest London, is suspected of escaping Libya with £14 million ($18.3 million) and is wanted for allegedly laundering stolen assets in the UK.
Elmaarfi commanded a military brigade in the town of Tarhuna.
Buzzfeed says he denies all allegations, and insists he was forced to leave his home country empty-handed.
His son, who fled with him to Britain, was jailed two years ago for stabbing a teenager with a kitchen knife and carving his initial into the abdomen of a man who had been beaten unconscious.
BuzzFeed says it has been banned from naming the third member of the Gaddafi regime found hiding out in Britain, after he hired law firm Mischon de Reya and top QCs Dinah Rose and Monica Carss-Frisk to obtain a gagging order from the High Court on Monday.
Lawyers and investigators acting for the Libyan state say the three former officials are among 240 regime figures suspected of hiding stolen assets worth £7.6 billion ($10 billion) in the UK.
Documents reveal the Libyan Transitional Government wrote to Britain’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in 2012 asking for assistance in recovering the money allegedly “obtained through corrupt or illegal means.”
But they say British authorities have done nothing to help them investigate, instead allowing all three men to settle in Britain and granting Elmaarfi and Azwai political asylum.
The revelations raise questions about the government’s repeated pledges to get tough on money laundering.
Since NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya has descended into chaos with an economy in deep recession and oil revenues tumbling.
Three rival government factions are still struggling for control of a nation gripped by war.
It was not so long ago that various commenters on this blog were praising Khaddafi and his (free education for all! free medical care for all! free housing for all! etc, etc, etc..)
I should imagine that those self-same commenters will now take the floor to praise Britain for offering “Khaddafi-era figures safe haven”?
you can talk and talk forever,your so very far distant in your snug little homes…maybe if your neighbourhood was being bombed…..houses all around you flattened..your friends dead…praying that your home isnt next…you bring your children to school…you dont have to wonder if youl see them again….your Mother,your Wife ,your Child is in hospital…what if your local school was blown up…what if your local hospital was blown up,i dare say old chap…..your comments might be different…its a movie that tells of death and destruction that most of us could not comprehend……
Talking of which there there was an incredible interview in R4 yesterday afternoon. A Canadian orthopaedic surgeon of Syrian parentage. He’s made repeated journeys to work in makeshift hospitals in Aleppo, with unspeakable horrors experienced daily from bombing by the Russians and Assad regime jets. It was a tale of extraordinary personal bravery himself and first hand testimony of the resilience of the Syrian people, many of whom had chosen to stay eve though they had the financial means to have left.
You’ll find nary a peep of support for those people on this site. Or the slightest acknowledgement of the reality he was describing.
Did the doctor say that the fighters remaining in east Aleppo are bombarding civilians in west of the city and have been every day for years? Or that the fighters in east Aleppo are al-Qaeda and they could allow their families and other civilians to leave any time?
Was the doctor asked if he knew whether or not the people in the rest of Aleppo wanted to be ruled by religious fundamentalists?
Don’t you think that if the Syrian wanted to live in a Saudis style dictatorship the army and people would have turned on Assad long ago?
So what are the al-Qaeda rebels doing in east Aleppo? What do they hope to achieve? Do they think Turkey will keep them supplied with food and weapons for ever? Turkey after the coup looks to be turning it’s back on the US and becoming friendly with Russia. So what is the plan?
No, I’ll take the testimony of a guy like him over your partial version of reality. He was too busy amputating limbs of ten year olds with no anaesthetic to bother about the sectarian nature of the conflict raging around him. Suffice it to say the people you refer to do not have modern jets at their disposal.
And the people did ‘turn on their dictator’ in the very earliest days of the initial uprising, before the sectarian hell destroyed their efforts. There’s ample evidence and testimony for this, but you’ll never see it acknowledged here. It’s all the Wests fault. Utter drivel but that’s the only permissible narrative round this way.
Thank you for those posts, Jim.
It was high time for a reminder that the cause of the entire sad story of Syria is that brutal tin-pot dictator Assad Junior.
The mistake the West made was not to facilitate his overdue overthrow before IS hijacked the liberation movement.
Hi Jim, I’ve been following your comments for some time and, given the nature of them – i.e. the emotional bombast, the hushed quoting of sources difficult to find etc., in short, the Daily Mail quality of them – I wonder why you bother posting here at all rather than at the Guardian or perhaps, say, Harry’s Place. But I’ve now realised that you’re a troll operating with your alter ego Habbabkuk.
Sorry George I’ve no idea what ‘hushed quoting of sources, difficult to find’ you’re referring to. I have no idea who Habbs is, we have quite different political leanings. I’d generally place myself on the left, just not far left.
George
I have to disagree with your characterisation of Jim’s posts. And note that you have chosen to launch an ad hominem against Jim rather than trying to demolish the points he makes.
BTW, welcome to the Club – I take it you are posting for the first time…? 🙂
The BBC only ever broadcast anti Assad reports. Watch Saving Syria’s Children for a perfect example of how the BBC promote a charity with very strong ties to the ‘rebels’ without once mentioning the fact. With regards to this particular surgeon, his interviews are periodically repeated, sometimes updated but always damning of Assad. Propaganda at it’s most effective. You forgot to mention barrel bombs and gas attacks.
Jim: agreed, it does look as though Aleppo is finally going to be liberated from your favourite mercenary terror groups and returned to the Syrian people.
Although you’re right that Syrian and Russian forces must take much of the credit for this, I think you should also tip your hat to the Turks, whose closure of the Incirlik airbase and the border with Syria appears to have cut off the main supply routes to your barbaric chums. No wonder Assad enjoys the overwhelming support of the Syrian people.
So Jim, I’m afraid you’re going to have deal with your pain then attach your affections to some new bunch of heart-munchers.
Hello again Jim, By “hushed quoting of sources difficult to find” I mean the serious weight you attach to one “Canadian orthopaedic surgeon of Syrian parentage” who you heard about on R4. You’d take the testimony of this chap over any one else’s “partial version of reality”. If I’m supposed to take this seriously then perhaps you’d like to supply a name and some links?
And as for being “left” and being “far left”, I think these designations are introduced to try and contain dissent. Isn’t that what happened to the labour movement to begin with? i.e. you have to have the appearance of allowing a voice to all quarters to maintain the facade of democracy. “New Labour” demonstrated this with a vengeance. In what strange universe was Tony Blair regarded as a “Labour” man? Answer: ours.
Khaddafi and Saddam Hussein died like the dogs they were.
I should not be surprised if the same fate awaits the wily Assad Junior.
There were ‘peaceful’ demonstrators, who fired on and into crowds of people and killed many civilians and police officers. Not unlike in Ukraine. External agitators, hired mercs, Saudi convicts, and all sorts of undesirables running were running around Syria on the West’s and the Saudi’s payroll. Bombs targetted government and military figures. One thing that can be said with certainty about your friends, Jim, about the Syrian branch of the CIA’s Al-Quaeda, is that they weren’t Syrian at all. Your defence of these people, the lies you tell for cash rewards makes you every bit as much a war criminal as the David Cameron, Obamas, those Saudi camel-fucker ‘royalty’ and the Netanyahu’s of this world. Sick twisted evil cunts. But lowly runts who strive to make it possible for them to do as they do, to excuse their most heinous crimes, who lie to play down outright genocide, will someday be exposed to public fury also, count on it. Their names will live on in lasting infamy, long after the rope has choked the life they never deserved from them. Despicable inhuman monsters.
George :
Good morning, sorry for the delay in replying, I’ve managed to go a whole evening without looking at the dreaded screen!
The R4 surgeon just happened to be something I listened to the their day, it was incredibly impressive and moving listening that’s why I mentioned it. I’ve been debating on here for many months on here on this subject amongst others. I’ve provided quite a lot of credible evidence over that time if you care to check. Osama Nassar in the Amnesty International link I posted is one. I will try to dig out some other links…I’ve seen very impressive and credible documentary length profiles of families very like the Nassars. Can’t deal with the rest of your post yet, I’m half asleep on the way to work! Cheers, Jim.
Does COMbbc bruit stories about headchoppers, cannibals and American terrorist godfathers? There’s plenty of propaganda for those that support the American terrorism in Syria for you there.
So admirable that you speak highly of a fellow-traveller of al-Qa’ida. There’s only al-Qa’ida in the form of al-Nusra left in rebel east Aleppo. The doctor must be working for them. And a small handful of civilians – those few who absolutely refuse to leave (as always occurs).
That habb below you supports al-Qa’ida is a given – it’s Israeli policy.
Because it’s mendacious jihadist agit-prop, Jim. Why do you support child-killers in destroying Syria, with added unctuous self-righteousness?
Also unspeakable bombing by FRANCE and AMERICA.
I am very much in agreement Niall. The ones you describe do not feel the pain. They cannot even imagine it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch
Moloch
http://www.france24.com/en/20160727-french-leaders-pay-tribute-slain-priest-notre-dame-cathedral
President François Hollande, government ministers and opposition rivals on Wednesday gathered at the symbolic Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris for a Mass in tribute to slain French priest Jacques Hamel.
Hamel, 86, was killed while giving Mass on Tuesday in the town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in northern France, in an attack that was later claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
The two assailants took two nuns and two parishioners hostage before being shot dead by police officers responding to the terror incident.
The moving gathering at Notre-Dame was a rare show of unity and respite from days of political sniping over repeated attacks on French soil, which right-wing parties say are due to the Socialist government’s failure to protect citizens.
The Mass was attended by leaders of France’s Muslim, Jewish and protestant communities.
“Those who drape themselves in the finery of religion to hide their deadly project, those who tell us of a God of death, a Moloch
who rejoices in the death of man and promises heaven to those that kill by invoking him. They cannot hope that man gives in to their illusion,” said Cardinal André Vingt-Trois at the service.
The Mass came after a meeting earlier in the day between Hollande and top religious leaders who warned French people against being drawn in by the IS group’s efforts to pit different believers against each other.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned that the goal of the attack was to “set the French people against each other, attack religion in order to start a war of religions”.
In an editorial, Le Monde newspaper wrote that France was under attack as it had one of the biggest Muslim communities in Europe.
“The jihadists’ aim is to provoke violent revenge attacks that will create a religious war in our country,” it said.
In case you didn’t see this in the mainstream press … Mr Smith goes to Orgreave — http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/07/28/former-miner-tackles-owen-smith-for-exploiting-orgreave-as-the-site-for-his-policy-speech/
Did you see the Secret Left-Wing Diary of Owen Smith, aged 46 and a half?
http://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/18442-the-secret-left-wing-diary-of-owen-smith-aged-46-and-a-half
“Dear Diary, I so much wanted to join all my left wing friends on the anti-war marches but the board meetings at Pfizer always seemed to be at the same time. So frustrating….”
This would be funny if it wasn’t so utterly in-one’s-face serious. Some of us remember the miner’s strike, the three million unemployed financed by North Sea Oil, and that it marked the beginning of the “Neocon Project” that has done so much damage in the world.
Let’s not mention Gladio:
https://off-guardian.org/2016/07/27/dont-mention-gladio/
The message was clear: be afraid, and hand over your freedoms to the nice government employee who will be along to save you soon.
Let’s not because, as I pointed out recently, Gladio is a thing of the past and a broken reed for the purposes of lambasting the West.
(I note that no one disagreed with me when I wrote that).
You obviously never clicked on that link otherwise you would have found the PDFs, which in turn contain many more links and information on Gladio.
Who the hell are ISIS, anyway?
http://www.spyculture.com/disinfowars-27-who-the-hell-are-isis-anyway/
“Al Baghdadi was previously captured and interned by US forces in Iraq in 2004. Though there are a lot of conflicting reports, some saying he was held until 2009, fully five years, and that would take us up to only a few months before he was announced as leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. It is another 18 months before the State Department lists him as a specially designated global terrorist, and he then goes on to found the Syrian extension of Al Qaeda in Iraq and then announces this merger with ISIL. Or ISIS.”
So he spends five years as a prisoner in the US, and they let him go, obviously because he wasn’t seen as a threat during his five years in custody???
And Habba believes this stuff??? Maybe they didn’t waterboard him hard enough???
Of course it is a ‘thing of the past.’ Whoever suggested otherwise? But in the past you (being a mouthpiece for authority and its security industry) denied its existence. Just as now you deny the existence of successor secret programmes, such as supplying Al Nusra with modern weaponry, recruiting ‘jihadi’ militias to infiltrate the Caucasus and the Middle East; such as Israel’s humanitarian assistance to Al Qaeda wounded, its purchase of stolen Syrian oil and its alliance with Daesh/ISIS against Syria.
You need to tell a few of your friends on here that it’s a thing of the past. But will you convince them, I wonder? 🙂
How is Gladio a “broken reed”? It’s existence and impact have barely been discussed in the mainstream, and yu want to sweep it away? And that’s not even getting into Gladio B – which Sibel Edmonds says is a plan to destabilise the former Soviet Union with Islamic “terrorism”. We can see such a plan in action. The idea it’s also being used in Europe right now to pull the reluctant Europeans into line over TTIP etc is not just plausible it’s something that should be being discussed
Habb.
Is quite clearly an establishment figure, he was caught out recently, and stated that he was keeping “his beady eye” on CM ‘s blog, for whom he provides this service is unclear.
Anything that countermands the official narrative will be dismissed as poppycock by our fellow commentor Habb.
You have been warned. ?
Love you too, RoS 🙂
Yes, yes, I know – Gladio B exists because Sibel Edmonds says it does.
Judging by your post, Gladio B is for you what the Rothschilds are to Mr Goss.
I know this won’t convince you Habbabkuk but Gladio A were not exactly front page news at the time. Perhaps back then somebody (let’s just call her Susan Edmonds) may have tried to draw attention to them. You might expect her to be conveniently bumped off but that may draw attention to her claims. So she’s allowed to talk as long as it can all be denounced as “conspiracy madness” (and it always helps if you can paste in a little bit about UFOs, reptiles from the fourth dimension and allegations of anti-Semitism). My point is that if there truly was a Gladio B then you wouldn’t expect to be hearing about it much except from those who will be demonised by the mainstream.
I hadn’t heard of Off Guardian. Who funds it?
Well I searched all the papers for a report on the film and the discussion, and it appears that only the Express took any notice:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/694093/Cherie-Tony-Blair-sister-Muslim-Lauren-Booth-Killings-film-Iraq-War-Chilcot
Craig is not mentioned.
An interesting feature of this blog is the amount of stick, both direct and indirect, handed out to The Guardian newspaper (the most recent example being a post by one “George” – a first time poster apparently 🙂 )
It’s interesting because you would imagine that the Lefties on here would be far more exercised by the likes of the Daily Mail, Mirror, Sun, Daily Telegraph and The Times.
I wonder if any commenters have any idea why this should be so?
Is it the rejected lover syndrome? Or a reaction against what the Lefties see as political adultery?
Well you can fool some of the people all the time (take a look in the mirror, Habba) and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but The Guardian has achieved a state where it isn’t fooling anybody.
Perhaps we should ask, why has the Guardian got into such a pickle.
Why non-stop print stupid stuff,
that even to the semi-intellect is twaddle,
who would be their demographic, surely not the ordinary factory workers, not the silk mill weavers, the canal diggers, then who?
And incase you think there are no move silk mill weavers left in Good Old England,
quite close to some of my relatives in Rural Hampshire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitchurch_Silk_Mill
There was a sad piece on the T.V. last night, Up North somewhere, Lancashire /Yorkshire
an eloquent young man, bemoaning the closure of almost all factories within daily travel, now if you want to avoid the dole you are taken on he claimed “like a day-labourer”
as people used to queue up at five in the morning for a day of graft at Liverpool docks.
I think part of his families implication was immigration
and now the people of his area had no trust in the career politicians of Labour and they now vote UKIP.
So your problem with The Guardian is that it isn’t making money?
An interesting but unoriginal reply, Alan, the main drawback of which is that it doesn’t answer the question.
Try again if so inclined.
“Try again if so inclined.”
Let’s put it this way Habba, would you pay good money for The Guardian?
An open letter to the The Guardian’s ‘Get Corbyn’ crew – shame on you.
July 27, 2016
To all those working on the ‘Get Corbyn’ strategy at The Guardian…
Do you remember all those articles you were running a few years back on how people were apathetic and disillusioned with politics in the UK? So much so that they could scarcely be bothered to vote.
Here let me remind you.
http://www.sodiumhaze.org/2016/07/27/an-open-letter-to-the-the-guardians-get-corbyn-crew-shame-on-you/
It sold its soul.
I would rather read the WSJ. It treats it’s readers with more respect.
I would rather read my very old copies of “Billy’s Weekly Liar.” That publication was far more accurate.
Keith Waterhouse?
Habbakuk said:
“An interesting feature of this blog is the amount of stick, both direct and indirect, handed out to The Guardian newspaper…
…you would imagine that the Lefties on here would be far more exercised by the likes of the Daily Mail, Mirror, Sun, Daily Telegraph and The Times. I wonder if any commenters have any idea why this should be so?”
The Herman-Chomsky propaganda model answers your question, but I’d like to credit you with already knowing that, you mischievous little monkey.
The psychological fiendishness that are our smart phones. How easy is it to get addicted, having to cognitive reasoning changed by design?
Hence, I only operate and old nokia, just about good enough for texting.
“If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.
Does this effect really work on people? Yes. Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parks combined. Relative to other kinds of gambling, people get “problematically involved” with slot machines three to four times faster according to New York University professor Natasha Dow Schüll, author of “Addiction by Design.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/smartphone-addiction-is-part-of-the-design-a-1104237.html
‘having your cognitive’ …..dooooh
Given the similarity to a lab rat’s life (do maze, press lever, get rat snack, repeat) it should be possible to induce some beneficial conditioned reflexes along with the addiction. Here at Zevulcon we are prototyping an app which makes the buyer buy a new Mercedes every time he disagrees with a Guardian article online.
Hilarious. here at nebelmind, to borrow habby’s favourite spittle, we are working on a Brexit app,, its not perfect yet as we haven’t planned it, to make it as real as possible, but every step and level will be adhoc, but immensely satisfying as your click will land you nowhere at all, or in the canteen were you can buy oversized doughnuts for thrice the money. Just to ensure the app is profitable we charge per minute.
Jim
July 28, 2016 at 07:25
“And the people did ‘turn on their dictator’ in the very earliest days of the initial uprising, before the sectarian hell destroyed their efforts. There’s ample evidence and testimony for this, but you’ll never see it acknowledged here. It’s all the Wests fault. Utter drivel but that’s the only permissible narrative round this way.”
…………………………………………………………………..
Jim, where is the “ample evidence and testimony” you refer to?
You seem to be a Habbabkuk clone that presents dubious statements as fact without giving any references for others to check out what you say.
The posts on this blog should be evidence based don’t you think?
Doug Scorgie :
How about having a little chat about reality with Osama Nassar?
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/03/underground-and-under-fire-an-activists-life-in-syria-since-2011/
Or is Amnesty International part of the western axis of evil too? Christ there’s no end to you people’s credulity and wilful blindness. You’ll be linking to ‘Moon of Alabama’ next or ‘global research’.
Amnesty is certainly given to skating very close to the west’s governments. Its most recent CEO in the US took the job after leaving the Department of State where she had been an Under Secretary. During the NATO conference in Chicago Amnesty plastered the city with posters thanking NATO for its ‘work’ in Afghanistan and Kosovo.
As to http://www.globalresearch.ca/ it features articles by many different authors. Most of them are extremely useful. You are not among fellow spooks here: if you have any objections to B at Moon of Alabama or any of the contributions to Global Research you must explain your objections, not smear and sneer to disqualify critics in the eyes of the impressionable, submissive and conformist.
Nobody objects to different points of view or criticism but your tedious and tendentious mind games are boring and time wasting. Why not take that churning gut and those rose tinted spectacles through which you view the criminal oligarchs of NATO and find a book to read?
Almost any history of the Empire will show you why it is the ‘west’ which sensible people blame for wars in the middle East and elsewhere in the post colonial world and Palestine.
As I’ve pointed out ad nauseam, global research and Moon of Alabama are transparent Putin propaganda sites. A child can see through this stuff. I’ll take Amnesty International’s credibility any day of the week, and the credibility of the testimony of people line Osama Nassar too. There are whole documentaries about families like the Nassar’s, I’ll try and find them again.
What you point out ad nauseam is not necessarily so, despite your alleged success in using this technique on children.
You merely make assertions which only those who do not read the sites could possibly believe. Global Research is full of writers who are critics of Putin and the liberal economy he supports. As to moon of alabama, it is a site which is critical (in the best sense of the word) of imperialism.
Your objection to both is understandable given your support of imperialism and persons who cannot stand to read criticism of the empire should probably give up any intellectual activity including visits oi these websites.
As to Amnesty it is still capable of doing excellent work but it is far too closely linked-for its own good- to the imperialist political castes. It is one of the many NGOs which have been corrupted by opportunists in search of vast salaries. None of their employees should be paid more than the ‘average industrial wage’; this would not only ensure that charitable donations went where donors intended them to go but also that greedy careerists would look elsewhere for employment.
Mr Scorgie
Your solution to the problems of evidence-based posting is never to post anything of substance.
Don’t you think?
I always find Doug’s contributions most interesting-as are those of very many others here. Is it the case that you have some sort of problem with freedom of speech and expression?
Habbakook, still asking you, would you pay good money to read the Guardian? Please feel free to answer “No!”
Why does everyone keep referring to the start of the war in Iraq being legal because of a UN resolution or after MPs approval.
The ilegal war started at least 6 months earlier when the PR arm of the war criminals created the NO FLY ZONE.
Any FOI request that seeks dates and the targets bombed during this period with define when the illegal war started, all without approval.
If most of the Canal Building, Silk Mill Weaving, Cotton manufacture, Coal Mining, coal fired train building, Coal Fired Clay Pot making,
Coal Fired Electricity Making is no longer needed.
tell us, why would we need 500,000 immigrants coming into the United Kingdom each year?
When virtually everything that has been manufactured is imported, surely we would no longer need an unskilled -semi-skilled or even very-skilled work force.
Most farms these days only have a few people working on them, when a hundred years ago they might have had scores.
not many fishermen either these days all fish is stolen by the European Empire.
Televisions, they used to be manufactured in Cumbernault.
I myself, when young helped to manufacture printed circuit boards, now there are no manufacturing plants within five miles.
We used to make bricks – not any more round here, yet people still live in brick houses.
Let’s face the ordinary working person is almost redundant.
So who does the Labour Party Represent?
Water supplies and sewerage were continuously degraded for almost a decade, deliberately to spread contagious disease, while the Britnat Broadcasting Corp said it was anti-aircraft facilities ‘our’ boys were bombing. Certainly one of the RAF’s most shameful episodes. Documents have even been uncovered from within the US, proving categorically, that bringing about the outbreak of deadly epidemics, typhus, typhoid fever, dysentery, was to be given absolute priority over all else. It’s very probable doses of chemical and biological weapons too were dumped on these poor people, to add to the radioactive and highly toxic depleted-uranium deposited there to go on poisoning the land, the water and the people for countless thousands of years. Most essential services had never been repaired since the first Gulf War of 1991, when the second one was started, as replacement and spare parts, tools etc. were not permitted under sanctions. We are dealing here with intentional genocide; rightly enough, but not for the reasons given, oil was at best a secondary consideration, killing entirely for its own sake, religious and racial supremacism was always foremost, and it has surpassed so far anything known in human history. Formal justice beckons those responsible ineluctably, but there is no punishment that can possibly be imagined that fits this crime and give meaning to the word Justice, but surrendering the whole cabal responsible, to the people of Iraq and Syria for them to determine their fate, would be a start of their eternal torment.
Face it, we have witnessed one of the most shameful periods in human history.
The net is closing, will close on them, for what they have wrought.
On the specific subject of Tony Blair ratcheting up the war drums against Iraq, I have my own story to tell: The benefit claimant, the muggers, the Prime Minister’s ‘spin doctor’, the Spectator article and the Mail on Sunday.
There are also Blair’s war crimes against disabled and disadvantaged benefit claimants in collaboration with dodgy global corporations that are seeking to undermine the sacred trust between psychotherapists and counsellors on the one hand and their clients or patients on the other, toward the dismantling of the welfare state. I refer your readers of this blog post to the detailed comment i made on your previous blog post regarding the Overton Window. As I pointed out there, context played a major part in how the DWP made publicly palatable the fact that there were Incapacity Benefit claim closures due to claimant death while Blair’s government wanted to cut the benefits budget.
There is also the matter of BBC non-reporting and even deletion of previous reports regarding ties between American ‘health insurance’ company Unum, formerly ‘Unum Provident’. For information on that and how a Labour Government under Blair was more keen to collude with the word of an outlaw company, I draw attention to a researcher’s letter to the Chairman of the BBC Trust: Complaint about partial reporting of Unum and Atos – 26 August 2011.
The Supreme Court has ruled against the Scottish government and deemed their proposed Named Person Scheme illegal and that it contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights.
In paragraph 73 of the ruling it says:
‘The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way. As Justice McReynolds, delivering the Opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States famously put it in Pierce v Society of Sisters 268 US 510 (1925), 534-535:
“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”’
https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2015-0216-judgment.pdf
Fine comments from those judges.
The things that humans do…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_children_of_Francoism
You need to watch the slippery slope fallacy.
Totalitarian regimes also have members who put their trousers on one leg at a time, after all.
The Scottish government says, it will amend the Named Persons act so that it can be passed, at a later date.
I can see that details of the private lives of families, should not be available to all public bodies, however, if the amended act saves the life of just one child, in my opinion it will be worth it.
Totalitarianism must always be resisted.
MJ Strange then that charities including Barnardos, would back such a totalitarian act.
I’m sure you know more about the welfare of children, than Barnardos does?
Not all that strange when you think about it.
An opinion poll showed 64% thought the named person law would be an unacceptable intrusion into family life.
Strange how the SNP can hold public opinion so dear when it suits them and ignore it and do as they like when it doesn’t.
“Strange how the SNP can hold public opinion so dear when it suits them and ignore it and do as they like when it doesn’t.”
_________
Nothing strange about it, all governments do it, thankfully the act once amended will probably still go through, though, next months deadline will not be met.
I just hope no children die, between now and then that might have been saved had the act passed.
An “unacceptable intrusion into family life”, or a check upon parents’ dictatorial control over children?
I wish there had been such a provision protecting me in my childhood; I’d be a lot less fucked up than I am. It’s not just about saving lives; it’s about protection from all sorts of emotional, psychological, indoctrinational and sexual abuse of children by parents. Yes of course most parents wished to maintain dictatorial power over “their” children.
If society is so screwed up as to apparently justify this sort of law it needs to fundamentally change because it is broken and no law is going to mend it. How do you change behaviour. You don’t. Behaviour is intelligent it changes itself. As long as we love life, play and engage with one another there is hope. If we disengage, lose hope, lose meaning and fail to connect then we go downhill.
Fwl, read Island, by the visionary Aldous Huxley. It’s a bitter-sweet fiction encompassing family life and political power, but the bitterness is in the politics, the sweetness in how families could be. Or maybe The Origins of Virtue, popular science by Matt Ridley. Humans are not adapted to live in the modern insular way, and until it changes it needs to be compensated for.
fwl, we can each try to connect. But connections are made through other connections. There’s a positive feedback effect, and for those who fall below the break-even threshold, it may be impossible to get back. No one trusts someone who’s short of friends. The converse also applies, which is why Tony Blair will never go to prison for his crimes.
I will have a look at Island. No one should despair of loneliness. No one should be confident that their future is assured. We are all alone and together. No one knows their future. Our present and future is set by out past for there is no getting away from cause and effect. Yet we are always free to choose yes or no, black or white, or to see meaning or to see no meaning. To repeat or to be free.
You can help save 158,000 by opposing abortion.
K Crosby.
Shouldn’t that decision be up to the mother? whether or not to have an abortion I’m sure MJ would feel that by opposing abortion, you are promoting totalitarianism.
150,000 what, tiny clumps of formless cells?
Surely you’re not trying to equate blastocysts with living, breathing, thinking persons?
K Crosby, I’d have been better off aborted than adopted; I have spent nearly half my life wanting to kill myself. Would you really have unwanted birth inflicted upon another 158,000 humans every year?
And can I assume you’re vegetarian?
Fwl, every cell your skin has shed was life. The bacteria you kill when you take antibiotics; that’s life, too. The red corpuscles you flush down the loo on tissue after you have a nosebleed. All the billions of sperm in an ejaculation, and all the cells discarded during menstruation – they’re all life. When you wrote “so if you abort you deprive life of its expression”, you meant individuality, not life. And some individuals are not wanted – and some are, though for very unpleasant reasons.
– “…though I don’t see why some men get so fanatical about it” – Simple. Not one of your chain of ancestors, in an unbroken lineage back to the first living cell, died without reproducing. Apart from rape, women hold greater power over who gets to reproduce than men do. So some men seek power to force women to carry pregnancy full term. Just selfish genes, just evolutionary psychology in action.
Clark, I know what you mean, but life is a mystery and we really are something almost unknowable and more than the cell, more than the programme. We only get a glimpse of this, but that is enough to start with.
Fwl: May I join the conversation?
Yes, life is precious. But not so precious that we want to fill every square foot of the planet with a human being – upright, fed by some sort of technology, to maximise the number of people currently alive, do you agree?
So we have to have a limit to population growth – more and more is not better, can we still agree?
Humans have their place in nature – otherwise, there’s no sustainability to the planet, particularly while we’re ravaging its resources as if it all had to go as soon as we can manage it, in some giant fire-sale. Our planet cannot sustain the current population, and our population is getting larger all round. The ecological footprint of every one of those humans getting greater on average by the year.
If you really are interested in the greatest number of people being alive, that has to happen over time too. And the way we are going, we have not got many generations left at all.
Glen, I would not worry about nor try to limit population growth. I do worry about people who try to limit life. Life is limitless. It is not about endless growth whether in population or economics. Of course people should exercise some control and try not to have more children than they can love and nurture, but that is for them.
You wouldn’t worry about population growth? But the planet is not of infinite size. Are you completely unconcerned about the other living beings with whom we share the Earth, and do you really think there is no upper population limit that should concern us?
No offence, but your lack of concern suggests a failure to look at the problem realistically.
Glen, did you watch Utopia?
Poor old Malthus gets denounced a lot, but his real mistake was failure to predict the agrarian revolution. The cycles of population growth and crash can be observed in other species, and there’s the entire fossil record to consider. It’s just typically human arrogance to assume that because we’ve got away with it so far it’s never going to apply to us. Unless humans have the foresight to start drawing carbon from atmospheric CO2 and/or oceanic sources and synthesizing it into hydrocarbon liquid fuel…
The human population growth rate has slowed; the population is still rising, but it looks like it will level off. Average family size falls with female empowerment, literacy etc. and access to contraception, of course. I suspect that abortion doesn’t figure much in that.
But giving birth is highly traumatic. It’s a hell of a thing for men to lobby that pregnant women have to go full term. Brain size at birth can’t increase, it’s getting the baby’s head through that makes it so hard on the mother. Intelligence is the special feature, humans’ “killer app” in both positive and negative senses of “killer”, so humanity in its natural state looks likely to be an evolutionary dead-end…
In most people the evolutionarily more recent rational parts of the brain are subjugated to the older, more primitive animal desires. Just contradict a person’s self-image, watch the rationalisation process switch on and you’ll see what I mean. It may be possible to overcome, with education, meditation, introspection etc.; there’s really no way I can know since my own self-image / rationalisation system is presumably capable of tricking me, just as I observe others’ tricking them. But the new parts of the brain can’t get any bigger without a redesign of the human form, so we’ll always produce technology and weapons more powerful than our wisdom can handle.
But you can see what’s going on here. Why would anyone want to be around someone with such depressing thoughts as mine? So what incentive is there for anyone to introspect? Nah, come on mate, let’s go out and get pissed, chat up a nice bit of skirt…
Replying to Clark (July 29, 2016 at 19:48)
I’d coin a term for them, from limbic, limbeciles. We’re stuck with it however, its not ‘us and them’ but ‘them, and us’ all of us, for better or worse, excepting some individuals who might not even be aware, nor is there any objective means of another determining, that they’re in any way exceptional. Evolutionarily many were probably eliminated, after being eaten by lions, trampled by wildebeeste or similar, as they remained calm when they should have come out fighting or ran a mile. We all suppress fears to simply function or perform risky tasks, some of the time not even out of any necessity, because flirting with danger is an experience, a rush, fun of sorts for individuals and if it doesn’t impact on not so willing others and bystanders, is not to be proscribed generally.
Quite apart from the hard-wired precedence under stress of lower instinctive and autonomic reactions, the software side is not what the higher brain has absorbed and retained, but lower-level too, the endocrinological inhibitors and catalysts and agents in circulation round the system in constant flux from one moment to another, taking that (flawed itself) hardware on a trip out of its calm homeostatic comfort zone.
It’s there in all of us though necessarily, and without it that “get things done”, “strike while the iron’s hot” immediacy of action, even if rash and unhelpful much of the time, is lost. Sitting around two-pipe cogitating matters unduly, especially important matters affecting us all though should not be the preserve of those singularly unsuited for this, and those who’ve negotiated the careerist, competitive paths to positions of momentary power, are probably the least suited to make decisions admitting only of rational and logical criteria. Lacking a functioning media that presents rounded educational coverage of issues, instead appealing to bogus tradition, symbolism and myth the public aren’t in a better position either, in referenda or in any further evolution of direct democracy, to avoid knee-kerk reasoning.
fwl: “Glen, did you watch Utopia?”
No – I don’t actually watch much television. That was a programme on a year or so back, if I recall? Quite bloodthirsty, and it revolved around grim state operatives if that’s the one we’re talking about.
You do appreciate that the planet is not infinite, I trust? Would you agree that scores of billions of humans, but nothing in the way of wildlife, would not necessarily make for a better world than the one we have even now?
The new English Supreme Court (formerly the Law Lords) has no jurisdiction in Scotland, its authority is challenged vigorously by almost the entire Scottish legal establishment, and it’s a purely political body. They can huff and puff all they bloody well like, they’re an irrelevance.
Two of the five judges giving the ruling are Scottish judges.
SCOTTISH SOUR GRAPES – AGAIN
Do we really need 10,000 troops on the streets to deal with a ‘terrorist attack’..? or are they rolling out the police state?
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/689774/President-Francois-Hollande-Nice-France-terror-Schengen-border-guards
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/10000-troops-put-on-standby-to-protect-london-from-terror-attack-a3121166.html
The 10,000 troops malarky from both the French president and the British PM perhaps indicates that this is scripted.
Apparently you are going to get a “National Guard” RobG
http://www.france24.com/en/20160728-hollande-france-form-national-guard-counter-terrorism-threat
French President François Hollande on Thursday confirmed that a National Guard would be formed from existing reserve forces to better protect citizens facing terror attacks.
Hollande said parliamentary consultations on the formation of the force would take place in September “so that this force can be created as quickly as possible”.
A National Guard is just so “American” n’est pas?
Alan, I’m a member of the south west France Conspiracy Society. We had a meeting last week and one of the members didn’t show up. The meeting went on long into the night.
No Alan, the idea was French.
Yes, but when they get a couple of dozen alphabet agencies as well, in order to provide “intelligence”…
Do you think the UK setting for Children of Men was a coincidence?
Britain will be next, and unlike France, in Britain it’s already all written into law (due in large part to Theresa *psycho* May).
Is that Islamaphobic Theresa May?
Rob/Alan.
I’d imagine that is the whole idea, more armed personnel on the streets, under the guise of protecting the public. If other EU nations such as Germany follow the French lead we could see a reduction in civil rights. Such as freedom to demonstrate.
People would do well to remember that in the US, the Patriot act came into force after a terrorist act. Unprecedented laws were enacted in the US to be used domestically, along with wide ranging tools on surveillance and communications. It gives the US government a almost carte blanche to collect data, under the pretense of countering terrorism. From there in my opinion just about anyone could be arrested and held uncharged for an indefinite period of time. Add to that Obama signed the HR 347 Bill which restricts protests and demonstrations.
Europe could be going in the same direction as the US, using “terrorist events?” To impose civil restrictions.
Has the Patriot Act affected the rights of Americans to demonstrate?
Yes.
Bevin
Please explain how, giving examples based on reliable sources. Thanks in advance.
“Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano indicated that this bill may inhibit free speech protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, as saying something that the president of the United States does not like while staying at a hotel across the street from him could be considered a felony.[3] Other media outlets have said that this act may restrict freedom of assembly and dissent.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Restricted_Buildings_and_Grounds_Improvement_Act_of_2011
And.
President Obama recently signed into law H.R. 374, which makes it a felony to protest politicians who are under the protection of the Secret Service.
“Secret service agents can decide where there are no free speech zones… And anyone protected by the Secret Service can ask those agents to ban protests wherever they are. I can think of three violations: speech violations, association violations, the right to petition the government for the redress of your grievances. What good is free speech if the people in the government are so far away from you that they can’t hear you”
http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=3030
Finally.
“Section 802 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Pub. L. No. 107-52) expanded the definition of terrorism to cover “”domestic,”” as opposed to international, terrorism. A person engages in domestic terrorism if they do an act “”dangerous to human life”” that is a violation of the criminal laws of a state or the United States, if the act appears to be intended to: (i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping. Additionally, the acts have to occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and if they do not, may be regarded as international terrorism.”
“Section 802 does not create a new crime of domestic terrorism. However, it does expand the type of conduct that the government can investigate when it is investigating “”terrorism.”” The USA PATRIOT Act expanded governmental powers to investigate terrorism, and some of these powers are applicable to domestic terrorism.”
“The definition of domestic terrorism is broad enough to encompass the activities of several prominent activist campaigns and organizations. Greenpeace, Operation Rescue, Vieques Island and WTO protesters and the Environmental Liberation Front have all recently engaged in activities that could subject them to being investigated as engaging in domestic terrorism.”
By the sounds of it, if the Patriot act were in place in Britain today, anyone demonstrating at Faslane over nukes, could fall into the category of a terrorist.
Yes a script written by the late Robert Ludlum. I wish I knew who whispered in his ear.
Thanks RoS for that post.
fwl.
You’re more than welcome ?
Yes! I already told you my friend’s 19 year old kid sister got 5 months in jail for demonstrating at Fort Benning.
http://soaw.org/about-us/pocs
“245 SOA Watch human rights defenders have collectively spent over 100 years in prison. Fifty-one people have served probation sentences. Their sacrifice and steadfastness in the struggle for peace and justice provide an extraordinary example of love in action and have given tremendous momentum to the effort to change oppressive US foreign policy and to close the SOA/ WHINSEC.
SOA Watch is proud to be a movement of people who speak out for justice! With our minds and our bodies we will close the SOA and put an end to US militarization in the Americas!”
Don’t forget the anthrax attacks, which were used to jolly things along; ie, to terrorise Congress into passing the Patriot Act.
And in Britain, the Anti-Social Crime and Policing Act (passed by parliament in 2014) has a provision called the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). The PSPO gives authorities (including private security firms) the power to ban demonstrations.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/08/pspos-new-control-orders-public-spaces-asbos-freedoms
This is just one of many that’s been written into law, just like the nazis did.
Doesn’t sound very Nazi-like to me. But then I am reasonably sane:
“Public Spaces Protection Order (Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014)
A public spaces protection order is made by a Local Authority if satisfied on reasonable grounds that two conditions are met. Firstly, that (i) activities carried on in a public place within the authority’s area have had a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality; and (ii) it is likely that activities will be carried on in a public place within that area and that they will have such an effect.
The second condition is that the effect, or likely effect, of the activities is, or is likely to be of a persistent or continuing nature, such as to make the activities unreasonable, and therefore justifies the restrictions imposed by the notice.
A public spaces protection order is an order that identifies the public place and prohibits specified things being done in the restricted area and/or requires specified things to be done by persons carrying on specified activities in that area. The order may not have effect for more than 3 years and the Local Authority must consult with the chief officer of the police and the local policing body before issuing the order.
Failure to comply with a public spaces protection order is an offence.
Example
Examples given by the Home Office (in “Putting Victims First”) to show where the order could be used include to prevent groups from using a public square as a skateboard park and to discourage drunken ASB in the same place by making it an offence not to hand over containers of alcohol when asked to do so; and to prevent dogs fouling a public park or being taken into a children’s play area within that park.
Our Analysis
This power replaces the Designated Public Place Order, Gating Orders, and Dog Control Orders and so should make things more streamlined and therefore more effective, especially as it can now be used more widely than previous legislation permitted. Previously a Local Authority could not issue an order such as this without having it signed off by the Secretary of State. Now it can be done at a local level, and Local Authorities and Local Police need to work together to achieve improved quality of life in public spaces, not just to issue an order but to ensure compliance with it.
In practice, the issue of PSPOs has often been contentious because Councils have chosen to use it to ban things like rough sleeping, swearing and busking. There are calls for improved guidance on how the consultations are undertaken before a public spaces protection order is implemented.”
Habba, your long-winded post condemns you. PSPOs are written into law and effectively make demonstrations illegal. Just because they haven’t used the full stretch of this law yet doesn’t mean that they won’t do so sometime in the future.
Now, maybe you can tell us what the anthrax attacks were all about?
Oh yeah, it’s the twerrorists, innit.
RobG
Sorry the length of my post taxed your reading powers.
Can you tease out for me how PSPOs “effectively make demonstrations illegal”?
Thank you for admitting that there are no examples of PSPOs (now two years old) having been used to ban demonstrations.
Good night.
Habba, I was both appalled but interested in these powers because they can be useful at times. I was somewhat reassured to hear that some conservative councillors refuse to exercise such powers and require council staff to try all less draconian methods first. Nonetheless when such powers are there if there are sudden changes in society or in those who represent us these powers might easily be abused.
PSPOs have been around for about two years now.
Any evidence that they have been used to prevent peaceful demonstrations?
Examples and cases please, based on reliable sources (o Cgris Spivay for example).
Thanks in advance.
Yes! PSPOs were used in an attempt to make Brian Haw leave Parliament square
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Haw
As preparation for implementing the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 began, Haw won an application for judicial review on 28 July 2005, successfully arguing that a technical defect in the act meant it did not apply in his case. The act states that demonstrations must have authorisation from the police “when the demonstration starts”, and Haw asserted that his demonstration had begun before the passage of the act, which was not made retrospective. Although the commencement order made to bring the act into force had made reference to demonstrations begun before the act came into force, there was no power for the commencement order to extend the scope of the act.[15]
Not the same Act, Alan.
Any examples of demonstrations having been banned under PSPOs , as RobG claimed?
Dianne Abbott facts first, please.
Why is the United Kingdom keen on new nuclear – it is only those who will make money out of it who are keen.
Ever since Tony Blair committed the UK to new nuclear in 2006, successive governments have argued that new nuclear is necessary as part of our generation mix.
If Tony Blair recommends it, will the lying scum be making money out of it?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36897180
Clark has given pointers to this, the fissile material in their nuclear bombs needs to be continually replaced, along with most of the other components, batteries capacitors etc. within them periodically. Nuclear power plants are as Tony Benn long ago said, “bomb factories for the Pentagon”. Any nuclear power plant on such a small island like this precipitates exterminating the entire population, our cumulative dose already is thousands of times above background exposure, still, from testing through the fifiies and early sixties, daily releases from fission reactors adding to this all time. The seas once teeming with life are now dying and almost barren.
I don’t think this new station will ever be completed or if run ever, only briefly for tests before some calamity renders the whole area a contaminated exclusion zone of around a hundred miles and the whole thing an expensive and lethal assortment of scrap for the forseeable future, for later teratogen-afflicted generations to curse our stupidity, short-sightedness, wickedness and greed, before death ends their fruitless pain-racked existence too. This station and site is accursed, everyone is preternaturally hearing alarms sounding.
I wouldn’t want to be on the same island or hemisphere with this bitch.
I think most of the money is made in construction, fuel fabrication and reprocessing and yes, these are cash-cows and their vested interests lobby for the PWR and BWR designs that they cater for.
Power stations were indeed the source of weapons-grade plutonium in Benn’s time – Chernobyl, the US Navy PWR programme and the British Magnox programmes were all examples of military-civilian cross-over. But this is not the case any more – you only have to look at the quantities involved; the total global demand for weapons-grade plutonium is comparable with the fuel requirements of just one single nuclear power station. Ironically, the common PWR and BWR reactor designs were deliberately promoted globally by the US for electricity generation, despite the dangers of loss-of-coolant disasters (eg. Fukushima) and the large quantities of waste they produce, because they are difficult to turn to production of weapons-grade plutonium, even with reprocessing. This seems to be the reason they chose the reactor designs that produce the dirtiest and most problematic waste – it’s too fucked up to make bombs out of.
At present, nuclear electricity generation is used to supply sufficient electricity base-load. However, if we compare the growth curves of nuclear power’s six decade history with the two decade history of intensive development of renewable sources it is clear that renewables will soon overtake nuclear and be more cost effective, even disregarding the much larger sums that have historically been invested in development of nuclear power. Shortage of base-load can be overcome by continent-scale high voltage DC power grids. So governments’ enthusiasm for new nuclear power projects would seem something of a mystery.
But look at what the Western powers do to countries they attack such as Iraq and Libya – they smash all the infrastructure using air-strikes, due to public opposition against sending in ground forces. Well you just can’t do that to countries with operational nuclear power stations, especially the common PWR and BWR reactors. These designs need a working power grid and they need to be tended, or they will melt down, blow up and spread contamination everywhere, including the attackers’ own territory. To attack a country with functioning PWRs or BWRs the attacking military needs to be able to take, secure and tend those nuclear power stations, a far more difficult and costly military objective, not a particularly safe bet, and there’s a shortage of nuclear engineers, let alone ones willing to be dropped into an active war zone. So I strongly suspect that governments want nuclear power stations as a form of strategic security. I can’t think what else would justify the costs involved.
Thanks for the insights Clark.
From the point of view of strategic security, a diverse and distributed system would be the more desirable than the centralised all eggs in one basket, monster station and greater distribution losses, single point of (potentially catastrophic) failure and so on, and the least adaptable or versatile in terms of the impact of any inevitable downtime if this beast blows a fuse or gasket, or its lid into the stratosphere. The need for continuous external grid-power, a nuclear sector-wide weakness, laughable when the base-load argument is made for nuclear, when something else not-nuclear must generate that very base-load as a basic safety requirement for permitting any nuclear plant to brew-up or shut-down non-destructively, again nullifies further any idea of strategic security, leaving it frail and in full-blown panic mode, diesel generators, jump leads and cans of fuel being much in demand, it would need an adjacent, fossil-fuel or large renewable power source on its doorstep, to even guarantee that it operates with at least some ability to stop engines and abandon ship in an orderly fashion, by candle-light probably, to give a religious air to go with the prayers the frozen with fear operators and neighbourhood would be intoning.
Tony M, maybe I didn’t make myself clear. By “strategic security”, I meant governments making their own country too toxic to be attacked, by placing massive, unstable, self-destructive capsules of nuclear contamination called “pressurised, water cooled nuclear power stations” dotted about their own territory. I did not mean “strategic security of energy supply”. For the purpose I describe, bigger is
bettermore effective, since each one that explodes does so more violently and releases a greater quantity of contamination – bear in mind that a single gigawatt-scale power station can release an amount of contamination comparable to an all-out global nuclear war. If my suspicion is correct, the building of nuclear power stations is a mad response to the insane threats of modern “shock and awe” warfare.Yes, for energy security, a distributed, cellular system would be far more robust. A high-voltage DC grid is required, and I don’t see any being built.
Back-up electricity for nuke plants can be supplied by other nuke plants – it doesn’t have to be a non-nuclear source, because there’s no reason (other than war) why all the nuke plants would fail simultaneously. However, a functioning grid is essential. But in modern attack scenarios (eg. Iraq, Libya), the power grid has been a primary target, and nuke plants are uniquely vulnerable to such attack. So by having interlinked PWRs and/or BWRs, a government ensures that any attack on its power grid contaminates the attacker’s own population by contaminating the global atmosphere and oceans.
I like the use of the word ‘tend’ too, suggests it’s a little new-born lamb. Instead of an altogether less cuddly creature, but there’s nothing in the animal kingdom so incomparably without a single redeeming trait I could substitute without doing the animal (world) a dis-service.
Huh. Some lamb, I’ll agree, but the term is appropriate – these pressure-cooker reactors need to be tended, coddled even, or they throw their toys out of the pram in a highly lethal manner. It is fledgling* technology, if you’ll pardon that term also; remember that the basic design has barely advanced since it was introduced six decades ago – it’s primitive.
* It also quite literally doesn’t fly; the Nuclear Aircraft programme was abandoned. I’m very glad that we don’t have airborne nuclear reactors hanging over us like the Sword of Damocles, but to stretch the allusion to infants still further, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater when the Molten Salt Reactor project was axed, since this is the design that offers the safest way of destroying the nuclear waste. I know you don’t like MSRs but I think you should research them more deeply; they’re not inefficient. I wouldn’t advocate them myself except that I think we owe it to future generations to clean up the toxic mess already made.
I also approve of research reactors and isotope production reactors. These are indispensable parts of science and technology; for instance, americium smoke detectors have saved countless thousands of lives and homes. Research and isotope production reactors can be operated safely and their scale is a tiny fraction of that required for electricity production. Also justified are reactors for space exploration. But the sheer scale required for nuclear to provide any significant proportion of electricity generation precludes safety no matter which reactor design is employed, so nuclear power stations need to be phased out as renewables are phased in. But for that we need continent-scale HVDC grids, which in turn require international cooperation and rule-of-law to provide the necessary security. You surely can’t do it with the US bombing all over the planet whenever the fancy takes them. Until that is brought under control (or civilisation self-destructs), governments will build PWRs and BWRs with all their attendant risks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lectricit%C3%A9_de_France
Hinkley Point C
An EDF board member resigns just before a meeting tonight to vote on whether to invest in building a new power plant in Somerset
If you read the BBC you would think it is a done deal, which it is not.
Does the BBC only do stories the government approve of, are they twinned with the Guardian?
The two new nuclear reactors now given the go-ahead at Hinkley Point C have failed every test bar the one that finally mattered – political expediency.
The plant, to be paid for by UK energy customers, could cost them £37bn and is a leading contender for the most expensive object ever built on the face of the Earth. A former Conservative energy secretary calls it “one of the worst deals ever” for Britain.
It faces formidable commercial, technical and legal obstacles to getting built remotely on time or budget, or indeed at all. And while the rest of the world is accelerating ahead with the smart energy systems of the 21st century, Hinkley is a throwback to the nuclear age of the 20th.
But the French government, which majority-owns Hinkley’s builders EDF, wants to preserve its national nuclear industry. The UK government, blinded by the dazzle of a mega-project, is happy to let its citizens pick up the bill.
It has taken almost a decade to get to this point. In 2007, EDF said British Christmas turkeys would be being roasted with its nuclear electricity in 2017. The earliest possible switch-on now is 2026, another decade away.
What is scary is that reaching the final decision to go ahead was the easy bit. Now they have to deliver a giant and fiendishly complex construction project, described by one nuclear engineer as like “building a cathedral within a cathedral”, that is, “unconstructable”.
EDF has never managed to build the types of reactors intended for Hinkley. Its two attempts so far, in France and Finland, remain many years behind schedule and many billions over budget. Perhaps they are hoping for third time lucky.
Yet the commercial foundations for this engineering miracle are incredibly shaky. EDF is on the ropes financially and had to be given a €3bn bailout in April by the French government. That may well be challenged under EU state aid rules, which would join an ongoing state aid legal case brought by Austria against UK subsidies for Hinkley.
It gets worse. The French Financial Markets Authority raided EDF this month, investigating allegations that it misrepresented the cost of Hinkley and other projects. Banks and other financial institutions already loathed the Hinkley plan, with EDF warned of further credit rating downgrades if it goes ahead, making its huge debt more expensive to maintain. Areva, the French state-owned company which makes the reactors, is being taken over by EDF but it is being investigated by France’s Nuclear Safety Authority over “irregularities” in 400 parts. Areva also faces a state aid investigation.
Even many of the staff inside EDF think Hinkley is a colossal white elephant. The company’s unions, who are represented on the board, fear the project will sink the company and have started legal action to delay the decision, while its finance director resigned in March.
With foundations this unsound, you would think the UK could get out of the deal easily if it turns sour. But think again. The deal to be signed with EDF contains a “poison pill” which could leave taxpayers with a £22bn bill if a future UK government shuts the plant down.
The government is adamant that Hinkley, which could provide 7% of the UK’s electricity, is a vital part of a secure low-carbon future. But a barrage of recent reports from serious players say the opposite. The future is not gigantic centralised energy plants, but widespread networks of renewable energy and storage, interconnected across the continent, bolstered by energy efficiency measures and the smart management of demand.
Bodies including the government’s own National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), the National Grid, industry group Energy UK, all point to a smart system that is more secure, cheaper and faster to build. They all use the same word – “revolution” – for the fast changes now happening in energy, while the International Energy Agency talks of a rapid “transition”.
Hinkley’s reactors are a revolution only in the sense that they overturn all logic. Energy efficiency could deliver six Hinkley’s worth of electricity by 2030, interconnector cables to Norway, Denmark and France could add another two or three Hinkleys to the grid by 2025 and four Hinkleys’ worth of electricity could be saved by 2030 by increasing the ability to store electricity and making the grid smarter, with the latter alone saving bill payers £8bn a year. Solar and wind power are also cheaper than Hinkley’s nuclear power.
EDF had said its decision on Hinkley would be made in September at the earliest. So why the sudden rush, after so many years of delay? The company’s announcement that the decision was being brought forward came on the evening after Theresa May, keen to signal post-Brexit Britain remains open for business, had met Francois Hollande for talks. For Hinkley, as with Brexit itself, political chicanery has triumphed over economic reality.
I’d imagine such a complex power plant, will go way over budget, and run well past its opening date. Maybe I’m just being cynical, but I’d also imagine a good few people or firms, will make a fortune in backhanded contracts and pay offs.
Therefore the power plant, in the eyes of some, will be considered the best way forward, to meet Britain’s energy needs.
I’m pleased the Scottish government is moving away from nuclear power, when something goes seriously wrong with the turbines on a windfarm, the supply drops.
However when something goes seriously wrong in a nuclear power station, Chernobly happens.
I’d like to say however that England has a much greater need for electricity, with its much larger population. Smaller nations like Scotland are more suited to clean energy and require less of it.
“I’d like to say however that England has a much greater need for electricity, with its much larger population. Smaller nations like Scotland are more suited to clean energy and require less of it”
Whereas more densely populated countries are more susceptible to the sort of thing that has happened at Fukushima and involve incredibly complex propaganda and PR campaigns to obscure, trivialise and-until the cancers become epidemic-deny.
Bevin.
You don’t have to cross to the other side of the world regarding nuclear disasters, Britain had its very own, in the shape of the Windscale disaster, which was 5 in severity, out of a scale that only goes to 7.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
Windscale had its name changed to Sellafield, probably in an attempt, to banish the name and ergo, the disasterous event from peoples minds.
I bring this up, due to the new larger nuclear plant, that’s to be built at Hinckley Point, sometime in the future.
U.K. Govt Holds Off On Hinkley Point C Nuclear Plant Approval
Électricité de France says it will press on with Hinkley Point C, regardless
but the United Kingdom Government puts off approving the £18bn project until Autumn.
http://news.sky.com/story/hinkley-point-nuclear-plant-gets-go-ahead-10515529
The Government has said it will not make a final decision on whether to build a new nuclear power plant in Somerset until Autumn, despite the French firm behind giving the project the go ahead.
The EDF board voted 10-7 in favour of investing in the site to replace Hinkley Point B, which is due to be decommissioned in the next decade.
It seems that after BREXIT
we in the U.K. must re-evaluation our spending pledges and so forth.
U.K. Government are not as fucking gung ho for this as the government of France.
Several points to keep in mind.
1) the present administration of France is very unlikely to be in power a year from now.
The next administration of France may have other compelling matters to deal with other than fobbing off their chums the Brits with white elephants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2017
2) no single nuclear plant in the world is yet up and running, using the AREVA EUROPEAN PRESSURE REACTORS
3) there have been annomolies in the ends of the reactor pressure vessel of the only plant using this system causing MAJOR GRIEf,
Flamanville.
They may have to disassemble the roof, to remove the EPR and replace it.
AREVA -EDF are being coerced to merge by the Hollande Regime, until this is complete you would not be entirely clear who you are dealing with, particularly if this merger is not a done-deal before Hollande is hoiked out by the French Electorate.
4)Everything is on a knife-edge, politically and economically.
The Eurozone may zone-out before this deal is enacted.
Deal on HOLD
Plans to build the first new U.K. nuclear plant in 20 years have suffered an “UNEXPECTED DELAY” after the government postponed a final decision until the early autumn.
FRENCH firm EDF, which is financing most of the £18bn Hinkley Point project in Somerset,
approved the funding at a board meeting.
Contracts were to be signed on FRIDAY 29/07/2016
But Business Secretary Greg Clark has said the government will “CONSIDER CAREFULLY” before backing it.
According to reports, EDF’s chief executive Vincent de Rivaz has cancelled a trip to the UK on Friday following Mr Clark’s comments.
Critics of the plan have warned of environmental damage and potential escalating costs.
They are also concerned that the plant is being built by foreign governments. One third of the £18bn cost is being provided by Chinese investors.
EDF still hopes to have more than 2,500 workers on site by next year.
Announcing the approval of investment earlier, EDF described the plant as “a unique asset for French and British industries”, saying it would benefit the nuclear sectors in both countries and would give a boost to employment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36903904
RoS, July 28, 19:23:
– “…when something goes seriously wrong in a nuclear power station, Chernobly happens”
Fukushima’s the one, or rather three. The world was actually lucky at Chernobyl. Two or three seconds after the steam explosion that blew the 2000 ton lid off the reactor, the ejected and wrecked core underwent a prompt-critical explosion like a fizzled fission bomb. This blew the core apart, terminating the chain reaction. It was this that prevented ongoing meltdown like the three at Fukushima.
Credit where it is due: Amnesty have just produced this report on Syria:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/4227/2016/en/
Amnesty International twice removed Children should not pay the price for conflict” – Amnesty International article I linked to on the Iraq war – They also reported a presumed violation to the Charity Commission who requested my application details.
https://geopolitics.co/2016/06/19/soros-funded-amnesty-international-interferes-on-dutertes-decisive-drug-campaign/
Do you still believe that Boris was responsible for the lorry jihad in Nice?
Re Boris, yes I do, 100%.
Do you you believe ISIS or Daesh was responsible for the Nice event? Even though the official narrative is full of anomalies.
[Mods: comment about Richard Gutjahr deleted
While Gutjahr did video some of the Nice incident, he merely retweeted a link to a video of the Munich incident, as posted by a witness. The origin of this is at the bottom of the page linked:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/multiple-people-killed-shooting-munich-shopping-mall
]
If the French destroy all the evidence and CCTV coverage available, lets hope there is one judge preventing it, then that would mean Mr. Gutjahr’s coverage and that of some other phone camera’s are the only evidence available.
Maybe he would be so kind and tip of the police next time when he hears whispers and packs his bags.
Who is trying to break Europe’s balls? who is trying to cause chaos here? Is it because they did not get their way on trade deals, so far, touch wood ? Is it because Syria must make way for cheap pipelines from Quatar and Saudi, however many billions it costs them.
Europe’s stance on Palestine is not in Israel’s interests, and causing trouble would be nothing new to order from some proxies. Viva Argentina. The House of Saud is very supportive of Israeli goals, their interests in the Golan and parts of Syria not to speak of the offshore reserves that can be siphoned off, are all issues that weight much, but as long as they look after Al Nusra and other terror groups in their hospitals, patching them up to fight Assad once more, the Saudi’s are happy and we all are behind their efforts.
Are we not?
Is European obstinacy to comply with other agenda’s the trigger to tear it apart? Somebody does not like us and it has nothing to do with religion.
To be clear, are you blaming Israel for the terrorist attacks across Europe in recent days?
I second Anon’s question.
Please clarify.
Then there is the pressure on the police to change their statements, and conclusions. One of the police officers has come out fighting and and is not prepared to acquiesce to demands of changing her initial statements and conclusions.
Or maybe we can ask his daughter as well (she’s from Gutjahr’s previous marriage)…
http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2016/07/senior-thamina-stoll-discusses-live-tweeting-munich-shooting-aftermath
The web site linked to above is from Duke University…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_University
… where Thamina is currently studying. She just happened to be in Munich during the shooting spree and Tweeted it live.
Anyhows, I’ve got to go to another meeting of the south west France Conspiracy Society this evening. The venue has had to be changed at the last minute, so it looks like it’ll be another long meeting.
Get a life.
I have seen the signature of the purest evil imaginable, right here on this message board today. It doesn’t get badder than these wretches.
Clearly Craig doesn’t believe in ‘no-platforming’, if such daily exhibitions of foulness from these habitually lying swine is permitted.
Quousque tandem abutere, Tony M, patientia nostra?
@ 21.01
Could we have the Latin for ‘Do one!’.
Abi in malam rem!
…was what we knew at school. Nowadays though a quick search finds many far worse than that, which I won’t repeat.
Tony, ‘evil’ is a very real force (and I say that as someone who’s not the least bit religious).
But so is ‘goodness’.
The age old battle, and all that.
If you eschew dubious websites and confine your reading of the MSM to Le Monde and the Osservatore Romano you won’t go far wrong.
Trust me.
“You may not trust me, but let me prove my loyalty to you over time. Then you decide if you can trust me or not.” Bingo. You’re in.
Dianne Abbott?
For those who praised the illustration used by George Galloway to promote ‘The Killing$ of Tony Blair’, here’s a post from the always excellent Mary telling how it came about –
http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/thread/1469633772.html
Good stuff on PSPOs, RobG.
The War on Terror – remember that? – is all about values, you know.
Western capitalism as a dynamic force is dead. We’re just living with the smell.
mike
I suppose you live in the UK. Do you feel you’re living in a Nazi-like state?
I’m still waiting for you to tell me what the 2001 anthrax attacks were all about? the anthrax attacks that came right on the heels of 9/11 and helped terrorise Congress into passing the Patriot Act (which was the largest and most egregious piece of law in American history).
I should also add that weapons grade anthrax was used in these attacks (ie, no way did it come from someone sitting in a cave in Afghanistan).
This anthrax was eventually identified as coming from a weapons laboratory in the United States… and I’m going to stop there for the moment.
You obviously haven;t been to a Job Center recently (or whatever they’re now called)..
You have to make an appointment before being allowed near a job centre (private agency).
“Do you feel you’re living in a Nazi-like state?”
The problem with Nazi-like states is that only the “terrorists” who feel that they’re living in one.
Following on from comments on The Guardian: They have egg salad bacon and more egg on their face with their front page this morning having gone to bed way too early compared to Times and Telegraph.
FRANCE’s EDF approves Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor ( in the mind of Francois Hollande)
http://www.france24.com/en/20160728-france-edf-approves-hinkley-point-nuclear-reactor
The board of French EDF on Thursday gave the go-ahead for the state-controlled utility’s controversial project to build two nuclear reactors in Hinkley Point, Britain, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
https://www.rt.com/news/347637-fukushima-meltdown-cover-up-tepco/
Only complete psychos would pursue nuclear energy; but. oh yes…
Ah like the Russians for example?
https://www.rt.com/business/324005-russia-egypt-plant-loan/
Not forgetting Iran either but of course CND says that’s alright.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-turkey-turkstream-idUSKCN1061T2
Perhaps they’ll be able to convert it into a theme park: See this article on the Kalkar nuclear plant in West Germany that was never put into operation (the nuclear plant bit is about half way down).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalkar
Michael – Yes EdF have approved Hinckley Point but not before a further board resignation and a 10-7 vote in favor. This is the first time that the EdF board has ever been split.
Literally hours after the EdF vote the British announced that they were to conduct a further review into the project thus negating the PR value of the French vote.
If this project ever moves to the construction phase then interested observers would be well advised to study the tragedy that is the Olkiluoto project in Finland.
Years of deskilling and offshoring of jobs have left a dearth of workers in Europe able to undertake safety critical large scale precision engineering and construction.
Siemens have something of a reputation for competence and innovation – but it was all too much for them and so they withdrew from the project some years ago. Rumors abound that they were effectively replaced by a largely Eastern European labor force supplied by and controlled by the Mafia.
No doubt the residents of Somerset will welcome many thousands of Mafia employees into their communities. If they do not, then they will of course be racist – and what kind of civilized person really cares if racists are given a large dose of radiation sickness.
The man is a Breath of Fresh air Node
I recently asked some British Soldiers if they approved a recent Murder by an Idf Coward..The young girl was not even facing them… She was Murdered by Cowards in full riot gear Helmet ect… Frankie Boyle and Myself, could have disarmed her naked, with our Arts.
Here are the thoughts of Michael Foster, the strongly pro-Israel businessman who brought the unsuccessful Corbyn leadership election action to court:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3532042/Ignorant-Godless-Hateful-Corbyn-s-contempt-Jews-disgrace-withering-attack-Labour-leader-donor-backed-party-400-000-2015-Election.html
And here is his friend and supporter, former Independent editor-in-chief Simon Kelner, writing in his old paper before the court verdict:
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/friend-tried-salvage-labours-chances-high-court/
Wasn’t ‘Lord’ Levy a rich media agent before he started funding Blair? Or would it be antiagentic of me to say so?
And here are the thoughts of the Judge in the trial.
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-cb26-Jeremy-stays,-Foster-pays
It would appear that the judiciary were not impressed by Mr Foster’s claims.
Good luck in getting anything useful or meaningful out of John McTaliban
It appears that James – son of Diane Abbot MP (Labour) – attended the City of London school from the age of 12 up to taking his GSCEs.
The City of London school fees are approx. £10.000 per annum.
James went on to Cambridge University and apparently now works in the FCO.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now, I have no problem with James attending a private, fee-paying school. But quite a few of Mrs Abbot’s Labour Party colleagues apparently did. And mentioning the matter appears to have caused some little agitation in the ranks of the far-left on this blog 🙂
Habbakuk,
“Now, I have no problem with James attending a private, fee-paying school.”
How kind and generous of you.
“But quite a few of Mrs Abbot’s Labour Party colleagues apparently did.”
They need to get their heads straight.
“And mentioning the matter appears to have caused some little agitation in the ranks of the far-left on this blog.”
I’m sure the little smiley face at the end of that last sentence will mollify your “far-left” friend ‘Jim’.
By the way, I take it this latest ‘contribution’ is a strategic scaling back of the accusation you yourself made at 20:38 on July 29th:
“Left wing Labour politicians who send their children to private schools are therefore guilty of being … hypocrites.”
If it is not, a number of us are still awaiting evidence and argument to support your earlier accusation of hypocrisy.
Why a scaling-back?
Some commenters asked for the “facts”.
Since it is fairly well-known that Diane Abbot is a Labour Party politician on the left of the party, I took the request to mean facts about her son’s private, fee-paying education.
You now have the facts.
It is unarguable that politicians of a party which is against private, fee-paying education are hypocrites if they send their own children to be educated outside the state system.
Note that I do not say “bad parents” – on the contrary. Just hypocrites.
They would gain more respect if they came out and said up-front : “My party is against private education but nevertheless I am going to send my children to a private school because….etc”. I realise that is hypocritical of me,” rather than waiting for the press to ferret out the information
Habbakuk,
At its simplest people describe hypocrisy as ‘saying one thing, and doing another’. But, for example, if I maintain it is wrong to eat sea bass, but habitually eat farmed bass, that is not hypocrisy. The ‘one thing said’ and the ‘another thing done’ have to be opposites. So it is better expressed as ‘saying one thing, and doing the opposite’.
Some Labour politicians send their children to private school. What is the statement that that action is the opposite of? It is surely the statement “It is wrong to send your children to private school”. So, Habbakuk, has any Labour politician, Dianne Abbott in particular, made that statement, and maintained that despite sending their child to a private school? If not, they are not guilty of hypocrisy.
“Some Labour politicians send their children to private school. What is the statement that that action is the opposite of? It is surely the statement “It is wrong to send your children to private school””
_______________________
I think not.
It would be the statement “I do not (or “I will not”) send my child(ren) to private school”.
Dave Price :
Hypocrisy is related to a moral position, in this case regarding fairness. It’s a very simple thing to understand. Diane Abbott is very high profile advocate for fairness in society, it’s her whole life as a politician for goodness sake. There is no moral position to take regarding the ingestion or not of Sea Bass, what on earth are you going on about? Stop trying to deny the obvious. Michael Rosen’s criticism is incontrovertible, how can you try and deny the obvious facts? It’s mere semantics and word games you’re trying, feeble stuff.
And she makes even Gove look good as a consequence ;
https://youtu.be/cOW7d2ft9dU
Habbakuk said:
It would be the statement “I do not (or “I will not”) send my child(ren) to private school”.
————————–
It makes no difference: do you have evidence of Dianne Abbott saying “I do not send my children to private school”, whilst still sending her children to private school?
Jim,
I think the reason you and the far left (to use Habbakuk’s phrase) get so exercised about people who advocate socialism sending their children to private schools is that you forget that we are not yet living in a socialist society. There is nothing hypocritical in maintaining that the current system is unfair and working to change it, whilst doing what is best for yourself and your family in order to survive in that unfair system.
As for fish: Sustainable and unsustainable bass
By the way, Habbakuk, I know you like to collect interesting facts, as you often get your collection out for the benefit of others, so I thought you might like this interesting fact:
It is only the far left (who wring their hands about it) and the far right (who rejoice at the discomfiture of the far left) who claim it is hypocrisy for a socialist in a non-socialist society to send their child to a private school. Everyone else says shut up and get on with improving the world (to the left winger), and shut up and get off my land (to the right winger).
Those are not facts, just your opinion.
Ah, I think I see: an ‘interesting fact’ to one person is a ‘just an opinion’ to another. I’ll bear that in mind when you regale us with more of your ‘interesting facts’. Thank you for the clarification.
Cheap at half the price. Eton is £37,500 PA. plus plus.
Dianne Abbott quotes please. Facts please.
I wonder if Nevermind is Up For Doune… Is Squonk On Too For This Year …….
I will go there First to Meet Up
the Fire Man Gannet..
Sorry Clark.. Is a MUST For Doune…. Tree Climbing ..Ect… Astronomy Roon the Fire…
This is a rum old do. The US appears to have just handed over one of its surveillance planes to Russia:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3712608/US-spy-plane-makes-emergency-landing-Russia-problem-landing-gear.html
Off the wall, and the topic, Iain Duncan Smith has endorsed Donald Trump. Would I lie to you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign_endorsements,_2016
IDS may be found under ‘National ministers and secretaries’.
Nigel Farage, Naguib Sawiris (Blair’s rich pal) and a couple of members of the Russian Duma, neither poor, also appear on the list.
ThisWall Will Fall With You n Caraig..Great to Se Bright Eyes
Vanessa Beeley
Some interesting names in there, warmongers like Dick Cheney, alternative newsmakers like Alex Jones, and some making an input because they have reason to despise the Clintons and in one case Obama’s half-brother.
Juanita Broaddrick, former nursing home administrator, accused Bill Clinton of rape[548]
Paula Jones, former Arkansas state employee, accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment[549]
Malik Obama, half-brother of Barack Obama[550]
Well Said John
I note, with surprise, that my comment on the Democratic party has been removed.
Why?