The reason that Mark Field attacked the lady who had just passed by him was that she wore a sash clearly identifying her as a climate change protestor. She had entered with the other guests, already wearing her sash, and making no effort at concealment. Field knew exactly that she was a climate change protestor when he attacked her: it is why he attacked her. Had she just passed by him without that sash, he would not have attacked her.
There is zero history in the UK of personal violence or terrorist attack by climate change protestors and nobody could claim they had a reasonable fear that a climate change protestor was carrying a weapon – something which has simply never happened. I could equally rationally grab Mark Field by the throat any time I saw him, and claim he might have been carrying a concealed weapon because he is a Tory MP. His excuse is a complete and utter nonsense, a post hoc effort at justification.
He only had a genuine fear of her carrying a weapon if he is suffering from a serious psychological derangement, and one dangerous to the public.
Unlike Mark Field, I happen to have led a life involving real danger, and had guns pointed at my head in both Uzbekistan and Liberia, whilst in the service of the UK. But in my sixty years I have never once raised my hand in anger to a woman. Field’s unprovoked attack was cowardly and ungentlemanly in the extreme (and I really do not care if you find my attitude outdated or not).
It is worth observing that there was not a gentleman at this gathering of Britain’s bankers and upper classes. Nobody stood up to try to assist the peaceful woman who had been grabbed by the neck. Sickeningly, they applauded Field on his return. I find the extraordinary tirade of Tory defence on twitter this morning says a great deal about the kind of party it has become.
One point that appears to have been missed in media comment, is that it seems to me extremely likely that the woman had an invitation or ticket for the event. She was dressed in evening wear as the other guests, but was not attempting to infiltrate or gatecrash or she would not have worn the sash. The most probable reason for someone to follow the dress code but identify themselves with a protest sash is that they were a legitimate guest wishing to make a point.
It is essential to our society that Mark Field is immediately arrested and charged with assault. If Tories are allowed simply to assault people lest they make a speech that Tories disagree with, society has turned a corner to somewhere very dark indeed.
The Guardian’s direct collusion with media censorship by secret services exposed
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/06/22/guar-j22.html
Last sentence: Not a word published in this imperialist propaganda sheet can ever be taken at face value.
Not a word. Even when it confirms your biases.
As Jonathan Cook put it these incidents serve both as diversions and a pretence that the MSM are really presenting an equal debate on both sides. Both the Frank Field and the Boris Johnson episodes serve the purpose of focusing on single issues whilst ignoring the bigger picture. Her we are with Boris Johnson almost being crowned as PM and the whole focus of the country and the MSM is on such episodes of theatre. The real discussion should be how inept Boris is and what a total catastrophe for the country it would be if he led for 1 single day. His links with right wing movements should be exposed, not whether he had an altercation with his girlfriend.The indications are all there in his history as mayor, his frivolity and his devil may care undiplomatic way of handling any issue of importance. He is the archetypal narcissist who uses people for his purposes and who does not care at all what other people think. Similarly the MarkField story appears to be serving the purpose of adding to demonization of climate change activism.
On the wider picture, the hustings un Birmingham showed how running scared the Tories are that a GE will almost certainly lead to a Corbyn being prime minister. To use this to frighten their own people to vote for one or the other demonstrates how desperate they are. They both do not care for the whole country, merely for the perception that the biggest threat to their party is not fulfilling Brexit. In this context it seems that the only electorate that now matter to this minority Tory government is the 30% of the population who are Tory voters who voted leave, somewhat the same proportion who voted for the Brexit party in the European elections. The rest of the population do not seem to matter to them.
Hunt’s main point in selling himself is that he is an entrepreneur, for which read an exploiter of people. And he is of course proud of his history as someone who united all NHS workers and telling him that he is unpopular and destroying the NHS. He has left the Health department with waiting lists worsening and target waiting no longer being counted.
Cook is a valuable voice but he is dreaming if he thinks the media might otherwise have been focusing on the City of London Corporation and its role in Tory austerity. I am surprised the media even highlighted these two incidents of Tory thuggery, especially when one involved a figure poised to become the next PM.
SA,
“Hunt’s main point in selling himself is that he is an entrepreneur”.
Indeed, not something to be proud of as far as most entrepreneurs are concerned. I caught the beginning of the Birmingham hustings and was absolutely astounded at one of Hunt’s opening gambits. I wasn’t paying sufficient attention to note his precise words but it was along the lines of “I am a successful entrepreneur. Hands up anyone here who runs their own business. … Ah, quite a few…. the Tories’ kind of people.” I thought I must have been imagining it but that was what he said. And that is really supposed to win him the popularity of the masses?
One of Thatcher’s popularity schemes was to throw taxpayers’ hard-earned money at ‘entrepreneurs’ and give them tax breaks to encourage the growth of employment figures to make the Tories look good, whilst lining the pockets of said entrepreneurs and gaining their votes and hopefully those of the employees. That was fine until the funding dried up and it was discovered that those entrepreneurs were frauds who, as the saying goes, couldn’t organise a p*ss up in a brewery but were themselves, by then, nice and wealthy at the expense of the non-entrepreneurs in society. Jeremy Hunt no doubts hopes that this will all have been erased from memories with the passage of time. But some of us haven’t forgotten and have a sense of deja vu.
SA: I know you meant Mark Field, not Frank Field. Rare kudos to Mrs May for taking Mark off the payroll. Frank is no coward, and he doesn’t go in for gratuitous thuggery.
The country and airways are mesmerised to distraction about Field and BJ. I tried to flag up on another of Craig’s posts on the Gulf but was told off by the moderator. While we are concerned about the likes of Field and BJ vis a v women….I wonder what the women of Iran are dreading at the moment. Patrick Cockburn has a article in the Independent about his thoughts on a war (attack) on Iran as being very likely. There are reports that the US has conducted a cyber attack on Iran and keeping it quite ???
We’ve already had Trump pull back on air strikes in Iran. The cynic in me says that this would be bigger news, after the last post, but it doesn’t fit a narrative. Feel free to argue otherwise.
it certainly fits a “poor trump victimized by bolton” narrative.
For what it’s worth my interpretation is that Iran brought down a modern Global Hawk drone that had stealth capabilities. The US tried to take down Iran’s radar and missile facilities with a cyber attack but found it couldn’t. It therefore abandoned the mission knowing that its rubbish F-35 stealth jets were toast if it didn’t.
Let us guess that it was the girlfriend of Boris who was acting unreasonably and mostly not Boris, he may have spilled a little red but hardly a crime. The story is that Boris was wired for sound, any indiscretion was going to be spotlighted,
but was it just the Guardian, or are there actors behind the Guardian.
More conspiracy theory twaddle. it’s pretty obvious what happened. The man is a jerk. An entitled jerk.
Has the Guardian released the recording?
What is the UK coming to? In light of the Jo Cox murder, does this mean that all MPs should now fear for their lives should any citizen or protester get oo near? If we condone Mark Field’s actions here as self-defence on the gounds that the protester could have killed someone, then where does that leave us? It is indeed possible that any protester might plausibly kill an MP. So, is the next logical step that Mr Fields (or any MP) would be perfectly entitled to kill such a protester in a pre-emptive strike?
This line of thinking is a one way road into the mindset of a dictatorship, where the members of government are protected from the citizens. There was a time when what made democracies so powerful and unique was that even the very president himself would meet and mingle with the citizens, talk with them, answer their questions, shake their hands. The politicians knew that they could be killed, but put themselves out there anyway. This current mindset in the UK and US of treating the citizens as a potential threat only serves to widen the gap between the powerful and the serfs, and will have a terrible erosive effect on domocracy.
We don’t even have an elected president and we are subjects not citizens in this country.
We are citizens not subjects and have been since 1983.
https://www.gov.uk/check-british-citizenship/born-in-the-uk-or-a-british-colony-before-1-january-1983
It’s a myth that we are still subjects of the queen.
OK the law was updated to take account of the modern world but, and a very big but if as follows:
1. New citizens are awarded citizenship after swearing allegiance to the Queen and her successors.
2. Top Civil servants and high government office holders and privy councillors have to swear allegiance to the queen.
3. The law of high treason still applies. I wonder how that could be applied to Scottish secessionists?
4. There is no proper constitution.
‘..That Mark Field Feared a Terrorist Attack is Clearly a Lie..’
No need for a second option. But you have to give him some slack – he is a politician, after all. That (with very few exceptions) is their MO.
Forget all the excusing nonsense, he admitted why he acted the way he did; he just didn’t like his dinner being disturbed !
“He continued to grip me by the neck and the arm all the way to the door of the building. Then, when we got to the door, he shoved me outside on to the street, and said: ‘This is what happens when people like you disturb our dinner.’
https://twitter.com/ScouseGirlMedia/status/1142120886310506496
Ha indeed Macky.
He must have been starving… these boarding school types and these who associate with them were brought up with bad habits of wolfing their vittles down or risk getting it robbed by their fellow bully boys and girls.
They never got enough and always wanted more!
They are brainwashed into thinking they are more equal then the rest of the population.who aren’t good enough to be in their hallowed sanctums but in reality there is a built in monopoly of power and cruelty with a head boy/girl appointed by the owners, to be their Lord of the flies … the dressing up and masonic mumbo jumbo there to hide the ancient hunger that will never be appeased.
This explains the Harry Potter >> Super Power exceptionalism >> GOT arc of full spectrum brainwashing entertainment perpetrated upon the population
(who happily consume it like so many foi gras geese lining up to be force fed their corn daily.)
Anyway enough about the voracious City of Laannden and their demanding ways – can we not talk endlessly about the unprovoked assault by a giant turd in evening dress upon a lady in red instead?
I think when Potus was summoned by the ancient Luddite god botherers to HQ he was tasked to step in and do something to make their hard brexit happen, kill the EU and stop the Corbynites – by starting another war in the ME so that the UK goes rushing into all out conflict and suspends its barely normal parliamentry democracy completely and avoids a GE – terrorist attacks will be furnished and blamed on isis – err Iran!
Donald was introduced to his partner in this criminal escapade, the chosen one, Jammy Runt a real head boy!
But … lets stick to the poor starving wankers and their identity politics eh?
A fine week of mid summer madness begins – hey look! theres that guy who’s head has been turned into an actual ass running around royally jesting as the conspiracy unfolds.
Happy Monday to all.
(yes you trollbots too)
Hope I’m wrong, but I’m not sure that Boris will ever be allowed to become PM; Hunt is a much safer pair of hands for the Establishment, and more of a credible opponent to JC in a GE.
Right again Boris was just a stalking horse to get the chosen one crowned, because Hunt is incapable of being elected by their membership never mind winning a GE against the Corbynites.
I have long believed that Hunt has been the lead man of the pathocracy in this government. His primary task being the fattening of the NHS for the abbatoir – kaiser permanante (wot a name!!) and the like. He would not move from his post until it was in the bag. Nobody else could be trusted to see it through.
He never really bothered gurning on the front bench at pmq’s choosing to stand at the end so that he could jeep his beady eyes on making sure that the grunts were performing their tasks.
But he has had to move and take on the lead role because he knows they screwed up on delivering the hard brexit they always wanted on 29 March at 11.00 PM.
Mostly by failing to stop Labour achieving the meaningful votes taking place.
The circumstances for that Labour success were caused by a failure to have a sufficient majority – which was caused by failing to thrash Labour at an election (that is still not due for anothet year!) and thus cause Corbyn to resign and allow one of their Blairite partners in crime to regain the Opposition – which would then carry on the two party single agenda to carry on.
They flopped in that hit and run whiz, because Corbyn resonates the voters when he can be seen beyond the monstering he was/issubjected to. That is why they resist to the ultimate, the decision to go to the country
Brexit has always been a project supported by the City and the pathocrats of the world as the taxman finally threatened to cometh via EU regulation.
They expected to run down the clock and be ‘forced’ to have a ‘disorderly exit’ as legally stated in A50. That failed. Their 2 week extension failed. They were gamed by the EU to accept a further 6 months and now rely on that deadline forcing the EU to finally end A50 and hand them a hard brexit.
And they still can’t dislodge Corbyn.
So Hunt has to look at even more desperate measures – take over the FO role and coordinate with the world wide pathocrats to achieve their long term aims.
Being paychopaths they don’t flinch from using war as a means to these ends. Even as their imperial pathocracy is being beaten back along the whole eurasian frontier/ Africa and South America.
It is not just a little local difficulty the tories are dealing with.
off, but on topic.
American courts have made an important decision which pitches all young people who want to live a more sustainable life and are trying to stem the tide of consumerism, pollution and wholesale degradation of ecosystems, that there is no right to demand a sustainable future. From.4min.14 it becomes obvious.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baMXpJRiT4U&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0G5EX7vKE5A4CCc2ATzdNAj7IlH8r-pLdtnT_zQLo0Xfqph-dkW_QNA6o
Trump removed environmental protections because he wants to accelerate this negative loop so America makes money and is coming out on top of a pile of polluted rubbish in the end.
Now is the time to organise and I could make more than one case arguing that an Independent Scotland is only possible if it is built on a sustainable base.
Then other side of serial rat behaviour , Tory austerity and war crimes is mental breakdown, bankruptcy and loss of social and economic security.
All equally horrible results of extreme selfishness, not a question of moral relativity.
Thanks, Craig, for the comparison between the Hillary and the Donald. I’m English, so don’t have a US vote, but if I had, 2016 would have been the first presidential election since 1972 (Nixon-McGovern) in which I would have voted for the candidate of either major party. I stayed up all night on the night of 8 to 9 November 2016 and it was with great relief that I finally went to sleep knowing that Clinton had lost and that the likelihood of another major war starting in the near future was greatly reduced.
Trump has made a lot of mistakes, particularly in the weird appointments he has made to senior positions. He has made a lot of domestic enemies, which may partly explain why he has gone to such lengths to keep on the right side of the Israeli government, whose support he might want to help him stay in office.
No he is not insane ,that is his nature, different kind of being vet him a little and see.