The resignation of Savid Javid yesterday as Chancellor without even presenting a budget mirrors the resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father – and in so doing says something extraordinary about lack of social progress in the UK in the intervening 130 years.
Chancellor Randolph Churchill disagreed with then Prime Minister Lord Salisbury over his first budget, and resigned. The whole spat was carried out in a splenetic and emotional fashion which was almost certainly influenced by Churchill’s mental deterioration from syphilis – which the Eton and Oxford educated Randolph had caught as a result of a Bullingdon Club jaunt.
(There is no evidence a pig was involved. There is also no evidence Winston had congenital syphilis, or that Jennie Churchill caught it from Randolph, the latter being slightly surprising).
It is to me quite incredible that the UK is still at the mercy of the whims and foibles of degenerates from not only the same class, but from within the same tiny social institutions which still confer a hereditary ability to govern a state of 60 million people now, in 2020. It makes a mockery of the UK’s claim to be a functional social polity and it makes a mockery of the very notion that “democracy” has any real existence in British society.
Johnson’s drive to centralise power is not especially different to that of Thatcher or Blair; there is a slight qualitative difference in the degree of Cummings’ policy influence, but to date I regard the claims that there is a real discontinuity in the form of UK government as overblown. Westminster has always been the seat of a massive, centralised abuse of power; perhaps it is a little bit more visible at the moment. What has enabled the continuation of oligarchic hegemony in the UK has been the destruction of the power to resist of organised labour. Thatcher quite deliberately undertook that as a massive project of social engineering, involving the deliberate destruction of all the UK’s major productive industries and replacement by a service based economy.
Blair continued the Thatcher revolution, in particular in removing government services to private providers where organised labour was weak or non-existent. The massive concentration of wealth into the hands of the rich and removal of wealth from ordinary people that ensued from the Thatcher/New Labour right wing revolution led to the reaction of Corbynism, but the roots of organised labour having been ruthlessly cut away, Corbyn found there was no longer a sufficient well of social solidarity which could support a counter narrative to the massively concentrated media propaganda.
Wealth inequality is fast heading back to levels Randolph Churchill would have recognised as he and his Bullingdon boys went whoring working class girls in Oxford. The gap between the top 1% and the 99% is shifting apart radically and is the key measure- not the gap between the 10% and 90% which the government points to disingenuously as not changing much.
Notions of social solidarity which made so much progress from 1800-1980 have gone backwards and their survival in isolated areas as a majority view is primarily as expression of national or cultural identity, notably of course in Scotland but also among immigrant groups and in cities with a strong sense of identity and civic pride. Outwith that, the UK has been engineered by unscrupulous politicians to revert to a society which delights in licking the shoes of the man from the Bullingdon Club.
Remind me, which century is this?
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A touch unfair to the millions of people in England and Wales who didn’t support the Tories and who did support Corbyn, and to the very many people who are now prepared to consider socialist alternatives where they might have been entirely overlooked even ten years ago. I understand though, it fits your nationalist agenda to deny radicalism elsewhere in these islands. I sympathise and wish the cause of Scottish independence well, btw.
Moving past that, I would identify the left’s problem not primarily as a decline in social solidarity, I don’t believe that Thatcher and Blair made us all in their hideous image, but really in the erosion to vanishing point of communities within and from which solidarity, an alternative or oppositional working class culture could be expressed. As you argue, Thatcher and Blair certainly accelerated this process, but actually it’s an ongoing effect of capitalism. And so it’s in the rediscovery, recreation and defence of communities that we will find the means to revive the Left.
I would argue that it will be in local organising, mutual aid and solidarity economics that the Left will find itself again, and from that, or not at all, it will achieve moments of power, otherwise called revolutionary moments in which capitalism will be challenged.
Scotland too faces the same community-destroying effects of capitalism. As a Scots Nat you can argue until you’re blue (and white) in the face that an independent Scotland will be, by its very nature different, but the same winds blow north of the border, and only sufficient communities meeting real human needs through radical democracy can in the end protect human life.
Last two UK polls put the Tories at 49% and 47%. With the Tories polling sub 30% in Scotland, a pro rata correction can be applied to derive an E & W figure for Tory support. It’s 50% (average).
Vivian O’blivion – That might be as contrived by the current “Push Poles” asking stacked questions of specific groups and using a weighting system that slews the figures heavily to the right. Who own these supposedly independent poling companies and thus controls their agenda? The pre-election support for the Tories was part of a concerted effort to con the British public into thinking that the rigged election result was legitimate. The MSM did their bit and the BBC excelled at pumping out propaganda so that we could all accept the Boris Johnson victory that made no logical sense whatsoever.
On a new Blog that challenges the 2019 Election result “The Daily GasLamp” explains how the proudest accomplishment of unelected adviser to the PM, Dominic Cummings, used technology being directed at Brainwashing the public; referring to the “GE2019 as a PysOp – which stands for Pyschological Operation – part of Pyschological Warefare, a little known part of the art of warefare which is as old as Sun Tzu…” To read about this disquieting phenomenon go to: https://dailygaslamp.com/2020/01/28/pysop-ge2019/
Other Links to the Daily GasLamp are imbedded in my Reply #50210 posted on the Discussion Forum “Elections Aftermath: Was our 2019 Vote & the EU Referendum Rigged?” While this devious PsyOps tactic was deployed to collectively brainwash certain persuadable members of the UK population in the run up to the 2019 General Election and has helped reinforce the media propaganda that continues to support the fake news of a Tory Landslide victory, I doubt it would have been sufficient without vote rigging on an industrial scale. It is not too late to demand justice so please read, sign, share and link to this Petition on AVAAZ: 2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION. https://tinyurl.com/w4u9dwm
I agree the election was stolen. The suggestion northern towns would turn Tory is ridiculous, and had not Labour betrayed its northern strongholds over Brexit the steal could not have gone ahead and Corbyn would be PM. I noticed in the run-up to the election every poll I saw the Tories were favourite. Every single one. That’s just not possible, especially as Corbyn was popular allover the country. But the claim every poll was for the Tories showed either they lack the discipline to lose some polls in order to make the rig look real, or they need never worry about losing again because they’ve finally killed off free elections.
If they get away with it (and it looks like the media don’t give a damn), no other type of government will be permitted until we burn the country down and start again.
With fiddle factors like these the polls mean nothing at all.
https://twitter.com/NuPopulism/status/1195845942240514049
Did not Snowden reveal that GCHQ had trialled interfering in online polls?
Rig the polls, then rig the ballot?
Kim, you make sound points but I couldn’t help a small sigh of oh dear when I found you touting an Avaaz campaign. Avaaz, now there’s a good example of psy-ops at work. There’s plenty in the forums about avaaz and such organisations and how they are used to conduct “concern” safely to earth. A good start for anyone who needs awakening is Morningstar’s work on the concept of the ChIC, the charity-industrial complex. Or perhaps you are well aware and simply making use of all possible avenues, even the enemies’.
It’s Kim’s petition. It’s merely hosted by Avaaz. Others below if that’s a fundamental problem:
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/202/553/782/we-want-an-independent-investigation-into-the-implementation-of-the-2019-uk-general-election/
https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-demand-parliamentary-investigation-into-rigged-postal-votes-2019-election-38f08eba-444e-44d3-802c-a71ee851cef2
Oh I see. I didn’t realise that avaaz hosted petitions in that manner. Just for me, avaaz is a dirty word, like greenpeace, usaid, amnesty and the countryside alliance.
Neveretheless, I shall carry my pomander and sign the petition.
By stating that the Petition I created is “on AVAAZ” I am indicating that it is hosted on their site; this distinguishes it from being an “AVAAZ Petition.” These days it is really hard to establish, with any degree of certainty, where to go and who can be trusted. The truth is very few organizations can be totally trusted 100%, but we must use all of the tools that are still available to us. By delegitimizing the fake news of a Tory landslide victory and working hard towards ousting Boris Johnson and his team from power we set a vital example to the world, so I chose a hosting site with wide global reach.
We cannot achieve the crucial goal of exposing the truth while the general public remains in a state of perpetual apathy. There are numerous people out there with far stronger social media connections than I have that could do their bit to publicize this important cause on various platforms and persuade a professional investigative journalist to work on this. My Petition focuses on the urgent need to secure UK elections by exposing the well recognized flaws in our Electoral System; this is only possible with an investigation of the 2019 vote. Do please read, sign, share and Link to the Petition:
2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION. https://tinyurl.com/w4u9dwm
@ J February 15, 2020 at 13:13
There is no reason not to sign all three of them; the other two are both way ahead of Kim’s in numbers (that is not a reflection of the validity of the petitions, but could simply mean they have better networking, or that their numbers have not been as suppressed as they may have been under AVAAZ.
No reason not to publicise all of them.
Each of the Petitions covers a slightly different angle on the protest against the 2019 Election and the need for action. The two on Change UK were started a lot earlier than the one that I launched and have therefore had time to collect more signatures. I do realize that they might also have got off to a strong start if launched by someone with more social media savvy than me. However, it was disheartening to see them both reach a sudden stopping point that might have signalled discovery and a concerted effort to grind them to a halt.
There are Tech companies out there with far greater power to manipulate what is made available to us. Another Petition launched on 38 Degrees vanished after it rapidly gained over 6000 signatures in the first 24 hours. Several calls and emails to 38 Degrees have not managed to resolve this issue. There was nothing controversial in the language so why was the Petition taken down?
I noticed that in early Google searches for my own Petition, even after typing in the complete title, Google failed to locate the Petition; something in the Google algorithm was working against us. This was not true in a Duckduckgo or a Bing Search so perhaps progressives should ditch Google.
I encourage people to sign all of the relevant Petitions and forward the Links to friends. It is true that I am not as well connected to the various social media outlets and this nearly prevented me from launching the Petition. This reality has to be a consideration when launching a Petition. It is a really tough slog getting any Petition noticed and signed so we all need as much help as you can provide by sharing and forwarding; thank you for your continued consideration. Don’t let this one fade into obscurity. our democracy depends on exposing the truth: 2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION. https://tinyurl.com/w4u9dwm
I have been scanning the Internet to see what UK Election related Petitions are out there and what the current status is in terms of signatures. There are a lot more Petitions than you would think, so I just posted a comprehensive list of them with links to each Petition on the Discussion Forum Thread: Elections Aftermath: Was our 2019 Vote & the EU Referendum Rigged?
I hope you will check out the Links and sign as many of the Petitions that you feel will help restore the integrity of UK democracy.
Thanks for your posts.
It’s encouraging to hear others have deep suspicions of the election results. Vote rigging and voter suppression cannot be ruled out and – the way I see it – is the logical choice of the oligarchy which includes all but a few of the MSM.
Britain is now in the grip of the far Right with an Orwellian outcome.
Vivian O’Blivion
I am not aware of the Tories ever getting over 30% in the polls in Scotland. However it is clear that there is a hard core of Tory support of about 25%. A chunk of the 25% is made up of working class Britnats of the orange order “no surrender” type who have succumbed to the British Empire divide and rule tactic through hatred of Catholics ( mainly Irish Catholics). Scotlands very own true union dividend – sectarian hatred.
Of course the Tories do not win elections in Scotland. The fantasy promoted on the Britnat TV of Ruth Davidson becoming First Minister of Scotland was just that – a total fantasy. She has more chance of becoming PM of the UK. That fantasy, of course, was also promoted by the Britnat media in Scotland.
The Tories like Labour and the Lib Dems know their real role in Scotland is just to be there to do Westminster’s bidding. Three British parties in a Scottish Parliament. Just how the Britnats like it.
“Millions”? A party under the leadership of perhaps the most decent man to offer a vision to this country got crushed in polls. This is all that needs to be said about who is being unfair here.
As for left organizing in communities, the whole basis and point of left wing policies is organizing them on national scale, to average out statistical outliers. One bad event can sink such local left wing organization leading to usual right wing idiots crowing about failed [insert whatever smear word here] policies.
Scotland, from my personal experience, is vastly better than UK in that regard, and funny how you mention democracy, when in last three years it became plainly obvious how much democracy Scotland has under UK: next to zero. How exactly do you propose the Scots will engage in this “radical democracy” of yours when they have no power to do so?
Paul Jennings
In 1983 I bought a Vauxhall Astra with overhead cam.
From this time commuting to rural village life on a daily basis allowed us to belong to the city and not belong to the ancient village community where we were parked. I now belong to an ancient rural community in public hairs of HS2 in Birmingham.
What will happen in 15 years time when rich owners of electric cars can waste energy on rural living but nobody else can?
Modern working man lives in his white van and works in a highly regimented industrial community which still is controlled by unions. Are we going to have an exemption on Vans for the despised construction industry?. Office dwelling Tories think buildings grow themselves like Mushrooms.
To be honest I do not believe that anyone shares the 130 year old Empire2 values of this government. The election was rigged by our intelligence services in order for them to be able to pretend that their completely bonkers strategy of proxy jihadist is working. This is like Gordon Brown saving the Thatcherite failed dogma by borrowing. The kinetic energy of Thatcher spinning in her grave would fire a power station.
I have to say, as a great sufferer under Thatcher, that she now looks quite sane compared with Cummings cabinet.
Britain is basically unchanged, but leaving the EU and aligning ourselves with US values has been arranged for us by the same deranged people who brought us Iraq and Libya.
Any agency that can serve up Skripalgate and the White Helmets as reality is living in Zionist cloud cuckoo land.
We are being served up crap which looks like news.
The real news is Johnson is a total fraud.
Do they really think if Johnson pays attention to the imagined wishes of northerners whose ballot papers were changed, that we will believe that real people voted for him?
We never will. It’s a zionist plot to harness Britain to the destruction of Iran. Maybe. Or maybe Cummings is just mad.
Do you not think that “the same winds blow north of the border” because that is the system that Scotland is coupled to at the moment? It’s not feasible to expect that we can change our approach in a way that we would like, while we are a part of the UK system, because we don’t have the means to do so at our disposal at the present time. You’re creating a false equivalence which would only be true if an independent Scotland were already in existence and had not made any attempts to do things in a way which was different from the Westminster model.
Paul Jennings
20 years of devolved powers in the Scottish Parliament have made Scotland different. Many but certainly not all of the (demonised by the right wing media) radical policies that Labour had in its manifesto have already been implemented in Scotland and well received. eg Free nursery school education has been in place up to a certain number of hours (16 per week I think) for some time now and is being extended to 33 hrs in August this year. Scotland is more Scandinavian than American.
But England majority have voted for tories nearly every election since WWll
Read something yesterday to the effect that the churn of Education Ministers (E & W) was around one per 12 months. There hasn’t been a non-Oxbridge educated Education Minister for 10 years. Nuf said.
Thatcher at least had heavy hitters in Cabinet (Heseltine, Carrington, Howe, Briton) ’till they weren’t. Talk at the time was that Thatcher could be swayed by the “men in grey suits”, this may or may not have been accurate. Theresa May attempted to operate an elected dictatorship. Remember, the “meaningful vote” had to be forcibly wrestled from her by a united HoC.
Johnson is free to act without restraint. HoC majority of 50. Party purged of Europhiles. Masses of fresh new faces desperate to toe the line to get advancement. The BBC quaking in their boots. A Labour Party tied in knots with nonsense about bearded, self-identifying lesbians (this point also applies to the SNP).
And the uber woked Greens as well. Pace the Rev Stu minting a Wings party we yessers who are not deluded by wokeness (I’m a Biomedical scientist, No, just no way am I going to deny biological reality). I’m facing having to spoil both my votes next year. Here in the Yes City there is not much choice. The Greens don’t even stand locally.
Last Holyrood election I was reduced to a token far left vote in the constituency.
Imagine, being disenfranchise by a devotion to demonstrable reality.
SNP is the only party to vote for in Scotland if you want Scottish independence
Westminster would love it if SNP went outside UK law and declared independence
Thy would arrest politicians and close Holyrood
SNP have to abide by Scottish and U.K. law as. NS has said
Progress is being made
Scottish independence will happen
“SNP have to abide by Scottish and U.K. law”
The SNP has to respect the expressed democratic will of the people of Scotland, that is what they were elected for, that is what they are being paid for. Looking the other way and sitting on their hands while an England political party Scotland did not vote for, did not give mandate or consent to act, negotiate, make decisions or speak on behalf of Scotland to force brexit over Scotland is undemocratic. It is going deliberately against those who put them in power. It is going deliberately against the democratic mandate of the people of Scotland and against the sovereignty of Scotland. It is unacceptable. You cannot simply pass on to your opponent the blame for your not acting whey you had the power to do so and expect to remain credible and trustworthy. You don’t.
You talk about UK law. And what exactly is UK law? What counts as UK law? Whatever England MPs decide it counts? How can it be “UK “law if Scotland has not agreed to it? Where can we find the UK “constitution”? The only thing that you can find written is the Articles of the Treaty of Union, which was definitely agreed by both equal partners.
In line with that Treaty of Union there are 2 bodies of law, Scots law and English law. The SNP most certainly does not have to abide by English law, none in Scotland has to. It is Scots law what we have to abide by and popular sovereignty and the Claim of Right 1689 are fundamental principles of Scots law. Fundamental as they are, they have been thrown into locked drawer in order to stall the end of the union by attempting to credibly peddle the nonsense that the Kingdom of England’s representatives have to give Scotland consent for a referendum and by the look of it, in what very much looks like a move to fudge that Scotland has given its backing to the EU withdrawal bill and it could be passed on to be signed by the EU representatives. We know it was not. That EU withdrawal bill has been signed by the EU reps but it was never agreed by Scotland.
Progress is made, you say? well, In what measurable dimension, I ask?
It must be of true microscopic scale because not even using a supersized magnifying glass I can see it. 5 years on and nothing has moved forward while everything has moved backwards. Our powers have been stolen, our rights have been stolen, our dignity as an equal partner in a voluntary political union has been flushed down the toilet with that excuse of S30, and our sovereignty is reneged upon to give credence to the idea that the Kingdom of England owns us. Sorry, I do not call that progress. I call that regression with a vengeance, particularly when Mr Salmond never asked permission, nor a section 30 nor the transfer of powers to Holyrood to hold the referendum in 2014. All those things came rather swiftly after he announced it. So what exactly has changed? and more importantly, if those powers were already in Holyrood, who authorised the to be transferred back to the England MPs? I don’t remember the people of Scotland being asked where we wanted those powers.
“Scottish independence will happen”
Will it? Sorry, but 5 years on and simply claiming that “independence will happen” while apparently doing everything possible to delay, even stall it does no longer bear any credibility, never mind trust. The end of the union is what will give way to Scotland’s independence, the rest is just an illusion. Yet, we see no move from the SNP leadership to include the end of the union in their manifesto. They could have done so already in 2015 and in every single election we had ever since. Yet, they chose not too. It is as if they are allergic to talk about independence. It is as if they fear winning on that mandate and having to actually end the union.
“Westminster would love it if SNP went outside UK law and declared independence”
And that is the reason why the word “independence” is a hoax, a deliberate misinformation to deliberately underplaying the power of Scotland. The correct expression should be “ending the international political union between the kingdoms of Scotland and England” and then let the buffoon, its unelected sidekick and their handlers contest that decision in an international court of law. Let all those prove in the ICJ in front of the whole world that they deliberately abused an international treaty to take over another state, expand their territory and take over that state’s assets. Let them prove to the entire world that they have more rights than Scotland, its equal partner, to retain the UN seat and any other seat as the successor state of the UK.
Talking about “declaring independence” is just walking in to the trap of Westminster and prolong the myth, convenient for those who don’t really want independence at least not yet, that Scotland is the property of the KIngdom of England and therefore we need its permission. Doing so equals to accept too that Scotland’s assets are the property of the Kingdom of England. Well hell will have to freeze before I accept that. Actually, even if hell freezes I will not accept that. In my view Scotland has to end this international political union and THAT is the route to true independence where Scotland will revert to its original status of independent sovereign state while keeping control of every asset that is in its territory, including territorial waters in line with international law, plus a share of what has been accrued during the 300 years and a bit of political union.
So independence referendum? No, thank you. Make it the “End of the Union” referendum. That would do nicely, thank you.
The thing is the SNP have been given the power to end the union since 8th May 2015 in the form of a continuous majority of the Scotland’s seats in Westminster. They have had a pro indy majority in Holyrood and an unquestionable mandate for an referendum since May 2016 and yet, they have sat on their hands while our equal partner has violated every restriction in the Treaty of Union, have violated our rights as a equal partner, have violated our right to self determination, has abused its position of power to steal our own power in the name of a brexit we never voted for, never asked for and never gave consent for, and has now run a coach and horses through the fundamental principle of popular sovereignty to pass a withdrawal bill that has been signed by the EU counterparts and that should have never been allowed to reach the signing table without being contested in the international court of justice for violation of the Vienna Convention of the law of treaties by driving a coach and horses over the fundamental principle of Scots domestic law of popular sovereignty and, by giving NI a more favourable treatment in terms of trading, directly violating the articles of the Treaty of Union that state that all the United Kingdom must have the exact same advantages and fall backs in terms of trade.
And let’s not get started on the insane insistence of the SNP to continue abiding by a Scotland Act that has already been bulldozed and shred to ashes by our equal partner. It really beggars belief that after our equal partner has categorically made clear that it is not prepared to abide by that agreement by destroying the fundamental principles that all powers not reserved to Westminster at the time it was written are devolved and also he right of Holyrood to pass bills, the current SNP leadership insists that Scotland must abide by whatever is left standing of the battered Ac by our equal partner even if the goalposts have been moved without our consent 100 times over and beyond what is reasonable for somebody that is acting in good faith.
Sorry, this is demeaning Scotland and demoting it to the status of a dominion of the kingdom of England, pure and simple. I expect that kind of treatment from the colonialist stooges in tories, labour and libdems, walking on their knees in the hope that their England masters will throw at them some crumbs of patronage, but I did not expect that kind of demeaning treatment from the SNP, quite frankly.
5 years on, plenty of reasons to end the union, plenty of time to end the union, plenty of time and reasons to drag our equal partner to an international court and demand a suspension of the treaties and yet nothing. Not a peep.
So will independence happen? Yeah, sure, but at this lice step pace, it will happen once the English ruling elite has sucked up the last dribble of oil and gas Scotland has and have transformed Scotland into a barren, polluted and inhabited place that has nothing left of value that is worth fighting for.
Gosh, I am furious.
Maria
You make a lot of good points.
The separate Kingdoms of Scotland and England continue to exist. As much as some people may like to wish the UK is a unitary state and as much as the Britnat media and Britnat politicians totally ignore the two kingdoms and the Treaty of Union it is still true to this day – two kingdoms. The two Kingdoms are referred to in The Scotland Act. Two monarchies. Two Royal standards. Two Royal seals. One monarch.
Time to end this Union as it is disrespected by the Kingdom of England and get Scotland a monarch or President that will look after Scotlands interests, not set them aside to benefit England.
No Treaty of Union no Scottish legal profession, no Scottish courts, no Scottish legal system. No Treaty of Union no Church of Scotland no Scottish education system. Over the years the Kingdom of England has tried to whittle away our rights and broken articles of the Treaty. More recently Blair and his UK Supreme Court was at it trying to diminish the authority of Scottish courts. He didn’t succeed.
Legally a Union in practice an English dictatorship.
Johnson wanted Javid to replace all his ( Javid’s ) political advisers. It seems that this request with some 50 MP majority is a harbinger of dictatorial patterns yet to unfold.
The intention of the new Attorney general to take back power from the courts is another harbinger.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/13/new-attorney-general-wanted-to-take-back-control-from-courts
Courtnay Barnett
harbinger of dictatorial patterns
Cummings is mad. Big head . No brain.
Dictatorial patterns, yes, including regarding who controls state money.
Got to wonder who will get whacked first, with their brains blown out onto the pavement. It’s coming.
That control over state money is up for grabs is clearly apparent from the timing of recent exits by intending budget-deliverers in both Edinburgh and London. Dominic Cummings supposedly failed to get his man Andy Haldane installed as the governor of the central bank, so he hasn’t had everything his way. That’s very important, that is, and you wouldn’t get an inkling of it by uncritically listening to commentators, the same twats who have made Cummings into a cartoon figure without having a clue what this is all about.
We can expect more fireworks to come.
“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”
“We must cause the enemy to regard our straightforward attack as one that is secretly designed, and vice versa.”
Hundreds of billions or even trillions will be lost when the crash comes, and a tiny few will pocket an enormous amount. (I’d like to say the two amounts will be equal but since the currency is likely to collapse that won’t be so.) All of the scumbags in every faction know this.
Sonia Khan, the spad who was escorted out of Downing Street by armed police on Dominic Cummings’s say-so, has filed a claim for unfair dismissal. Cummings was presumably flashing back to his time at his family business the notoriously heavy Klute nightclub in Durham. Ever heard of a nightclub not mixed up with drug dealers and gangsters? (And then he went off arranging flights between Samara in Russia and Vienna in Austria. A lot of “business demand” was there, on that route?) But the Khan story is more interesting than that. Khan was sacked for remaining in contact with previous chancellor Philip Hammond. WTF was going on? The interesting angle in the Khan story isn’t Khan. It’s Hammond. And more than him, it’s the ding-dong power struggle that was and still is going on for control over the state’s money.
I can’t remember any other case when someone who has left the official government’s main economics office has been thought to have retained influence over that office to such an extent that a person believed to be a tool or conduit for his influence (or the influence of whoever owns him) has been dramatically sacked on the spot. A “cliffedge Brexit” didn’t happen on 31 October 2019, but for all some people knew it could have done. There was a big chance that it would happen. And there’s a lot of money in uncertainty. It’s going to happen within less than a year now. Huge fortunes will be made as the country gets Venezuelaed.
Meanwhile the media keep saying “Europe” in the same breath as “coronavirus” – and all GPs are being prepared to play their little money-grabbing order-giving roles in what will, in effect, be a war.
Fit like are the social demographics at the BBC, News & Current affairs (a quasi public body,I should add)?
Presenters and reporters. Methodology; list generated by Wiki, bios by Wiki, presumption of State education if not specified in bio.
40% of presenters & reporters privately educated. 25% Oxbridge graduates.
UK population 60 million? try 80 million plus. Back in 2007 several supermarkets did a population count based on the amount of foodstuff being consumed and concluded the actual population was somewhere between 77 and 80 million. Utility companies have carried out similar studies and reached the same conclusion.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/city-eye-facts-on-a-plate-our-population-is-at-least-77-million-5328454.html
That methodology is deeply suspect to me. A person can only eat one meal? What? The richer a society is, the more food it buys (and wastes). I’d maybe believe this count if UK was on the continent, but it’s an island and controlling the amount of entries (inane fables of racists notwithstanding) is rather easy. I can’t see 17+ million people somehow waltzing past the border checks unnoticed, especially not with last decade of xenophobic, anti-migrant policies driven by more and more right wing governments…
Doesn’t take any consideration of the millions of tonnes of food thrown away by consumers every year.
The belief that many people in the working class are a waste of food is common in the middle class and ruling class in Britain. The same idea comes up AGAIN AND AGAIN:
* give them baths and all they’ll do is put coal in them
* give them food at low prices and all they’ll do is throw half of it away (Gordon Brown said exactly this) [*]
* give them education and you’re wasting your time because they’re born with low IQs and it won’t have any effect on them (Dominic Cumming and his pal Robert “twin studies” Plomin say this, and here’s an article by eugenics guy Toby Young promoting the idea – and look what magazine it’s in)
* save them from tuberculosis etc. and you’re committing a crime against nature (this is pure Malthusianism)
Note
(*) On food waste: has anyone else noticed that nobody mentions any more how the supermarkets throw away such a huge amount of food every day? The lie is kept to that they give it to animal shelters or whatever. Of course they f***ing don’t. Comparable lies include the lie that nuclear power is clean, and that foxhunting doesn’t happen any more.)
I don’t know what drugs you’re on, but nuclear power IS clean. By all available metrics, be it by number of deaths caused (almost zero, especially compared to solar and wind, which are very dangerous during installation), damage to environment (dirty secret of “clean” renewables is how many rare earths they devour, precious resources that could be used in far better ways, not to mention fueling blood mineral wars for said rare earths and extremely toxic solar panel production), compactness (tiny building, as compared to enormous, dead glass deserts needed for solar), anything really. If not for imbeciles in greenpeace and other troll organizations, we would have cheap, fifth generation nuclear plants right now burning 99.9% of radioactive metals during operation leaving small amounts of waste, instead of old, inefficient plants using only 5-10%…
Enjoy your swim in the ‘clean’ waters off Fukushima then Mr. V, and your country ramble around Chernobyl. Or are you just another cheer-leading hypocrite for nuclear?
And, the process does not ‘burn’ anything; it is not a chemical reaction, like burning your garden rubbish then putting the ash on your veggies to help them grow, it’s a physical process called nuclear fission. You don’t want what’s left after that on your land, do you?
Don’t forget the decommissioning cost the public has to bear when the private shareholders walk away.
You’re a moron, robot. Of course I’d swim at Fukushima, it’s literally LESS DANGEROUS THAN A PLANE TRIP. Let me repeat so you can understand this simple point – water off Fukushima has so little concentration of radioactive substances it’s literally more dangerous to smoke a cigarette (which, you know, also has radioactive substances inside, not that ignoramus screeching about NUKULAR would know it) or fly a plane, which, being high in the atmosphere, is exposed to the radiation from outer space.
I also like how you parrot the only two nuclear accidents you’ve heard for (want a list of several thousand far more dangerous industrial accidents?) while ignoring Chernobyl is now by far most diverse nature preserve in Europe, not the nuclear desert that only exists in your imagination:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-chernobyl-disaster-might-have-also-built-a-paradise/
As for burning, yes it does, you idiot, it’s called throughburning reactor, do educate yourself:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429444999/chapters/10.4324/9780429444999-7
And yes, you completely ignorant hysteric, I wouldn’t mind that “in my land” as it’s about as radioactive as solid coal ashes leftover from normal coal plant operation. Not that you’re aware that it’s radioactive too, because you either failed elementary grade education, or only read scaremongering anti-NUKULAR propaganda instead of doing your own research…
Mr V ranter.
“You’re a moron, robot.”
“you idiot”
“you completely ignorant hysteric”
You resort to this level of ad-hominem, then you’re desperately on the defensive.
As I said in my post, “Don’t forget the decommissioning cost the public has to bear when the private shareholders walk away.” The by-product (electricity) of this infernal process called nuclear energy will never pay for this.
It has but one purpose: munitions manufacture.
“Too many mouths to feed, what with the government downplaying immigration” could become a big thing in the near future. It need not necessarily be said openly by opinion purveyors. It could be spread around beneath the line, and then suddenly one day become “what everybody knows”. Who’d want to be a “denier” then? “There are too many people in London, and most of them aren’t white” is already a standard view among the middle classes in most of Britain.
The supposed data that suggests that the real population size is 77-80 million is sourced to a “big supermarket chain” (in 2007 only four had market shares above 5%: Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury, Morrison, and the implication is that the one in question wasn’t Tesco; between 1% and 5% you had another six: Co-op, Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Aldi, Lidl, and Iceland [*]) and “a major, non-commercial agricultural institution”. OK, who have we got on the list for the second source? Do we have some Steinerite levers being used here? Whenever ideas are being spread about agriculture, “food security”, etc., look for them.
(*) Assuming such a supermarket chain actually existed and did make the case as Martin Baker alleges, my guess would be Aldi or Lidl, both of which have trebled their market share since 2007, mainly selling food to the working class and poor.
It is the deliberate dumbing down with Downton Abbey , X-factor , Love island pornification and creation of the new servile classes – the progress of the 15 minutes of fame soma.
I’ll be happy not to have to see Javid doing hos noddy head from the front bench at every utterance by bozo.
The examples of the fate of Javid and what is happening to the BBC should be a lesson of how even servility to narcissists like Johnson will not protect you.
But maybe that is not bad. Javid will now be free to snipe from within the party. Governments with big majorities can only be controlled by internal dissent.
There is an unpleasant modern elitist theme to this – much like the superiority of the anti-Trump Resistance.
Turning one’s nose up at the Bullingdon club and hinting at Pig scandals (as if you are too high brow to have even watched Black Mirror to know where those rumours came from).
It is a long long way from making proposals that gain popular support of actual voters.
To do that you need to know why most Brits voted Brexit (which had nothing to do with the EU).
To understand Somewhere Britain vs Anywhere Britain (David Goodhart).
To understand the huge reversal in inequality in the last 35 years (which you do at least hint at)
To understand that the support for Brexit (and for SNP in Scotland) is mostly a protest that no major party listens to anything it does not read in the mass media.
There is one simple recommendation for any party that wants votes – dump GDP stats and replace them with median earnings and bottom 75% wealth as the targets for all politicians (and the key factor for 75% of potential voters). Ignore the top 25%, they and their mass media can take care of themselves.
” Most voters voted Brexit ”
Nobody has ever asked that question from the public especially May and Johnson. May said she got it, the people hated foreigners and the algorithms went wild.
They really do hate foreigners but had never had an opportunity to say it. IMHO, if Corbyn had said he got it, the British hate the EU, we could have used those algorithmic data to ask the EU to modify its behaviour.
But no. May selected racism from her own nasty little mind.
Talk about building a castle on quicksand.
“…hinting at Pig scandals (as if you are too high brow to have even watched Black Mirror to know where those rumours came from).”
Didn’t Lord Ashcroft allude to the ‘pig hazing incident’ in his biography prior to Black Mirror?
I have never watched Black Mirror. Don’t think it is anything to do with being highbrow though. I mostly watch sport and for fun really weird conspiracy theory documentaries on the History Channel.
The weird conspiracy theories sound interesting. Is that a paid for or free channel?
Why would anyone want to pay to hear or watch that crap?
Because it interests them
If you have the time root out “Rubicon” – all your suspicions will be confirmed.
Michael Droy
You make a very interesting and surprising comment that support for the SNP in Scotland is mostly a protest vote. Care to expand on how you come to this conclusion? It is certainly not something I have ever heard anyone in Scotland suggest – both those for and against independence.
@Michael
“you need to know why most Brits voted Brexit (which had nothing to do with the EU)”
The reason can be summarised in three words: it’s because they think “Enoch was right”. I’d be interested to hear your view.
“To understand Somewhere Britain vs Anywhere Britain (David Goodhart)”
Are you serious? That’s just the idea of “peasants” versus “people like ‘us’ with higher horizons”. Needless to say, Goodhart’s publisher got him some useful gigs on the BBC pushing that line for which there is clearly a market. It’s basically a new way to say “the working class smell like cow dung”.
Thatcher could only crush the unions and historic industries (steel, coal, rail, shipbuilding/merchant navy, hydro-workers, electricity workers, British car manufacturers etc) with the tax revenues from Scotland’s oil & gas. She spaffed all that wealth up the wall for her tory ideology and the Establishment rewarded her with a ‘State’ funeral.
Norway put its same wealth from oil/gas into a social fund.
With the Pyper Alpha disaster, it is evident the unions never got a grip on the oil industry.
Yes the rail unions got well and truly crushed didn’t they.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50614066
That’s the first time I’ve heard the Norwegian oil fund called a “social fund”. Most of it is invested abroad in shares – it owns more than 1% of the world’s total – and the profits (at least until stock markets collapse) are allowed to stack up under lucrative management agreements. Norwegian economists are indoctrinated into thinking that investing in Norway itself would cause the country to suffer with “Dutch disease”. Fees paid including to interests based in the City of London are huge. Basically the elite rob the sh*t out of the country, Saudi style. But what else is new?
Norway doesn’t have appreciably more social spending per person than Sweden which has far less oil.
N
A very interesting and novel argument that having the world’s largest National savings fund is a bad thing.
A similar argument that Britnats tend to say that Scotland having a wealth of oil and gas resources is a major problem. So best not to have any savings and let the UK waste it all on illegal wars and all manner of mispends in England.
It certainly is a point of view.
@Cubby:
“A very interesting and novel argument that having the world’s largest National savings fund is a bad thing.”
You’re right – it’s actually quite counter-intuitively fascinating. There really isn’t any alternative for Norway than to run a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF). Just stop and think for a few moments what the repercussions would be for the Norwegian economy if it *didn’t* offshore all those dollar earnings, and attempted to spend them domestically.
Firstly, the dollar earnings from its oil exports would need to be exchanged for Krone, because that’s the national currency of Norway, and they don’t accept dollars for transactions, or in payment of taxes. The Krone is one of the strongest currencies in the world as it is – if you have been there in the past few years you will have seen how unbelievably expensive everything is, and the minimum wage is already around £18ph. Imagine what would happen to the exchange rate of the Krone if the one *trillion* dollars(!) in the SWF was exchanged for even more of them! The rate would skyrocket, making everything else the Norwegians tried to export (including its tourist industry) unaffordable anywhere; Dutch Disease on steroids.
Secondly, the Norwegian economy is tiny; the population is just 5 million people. What would happen to domestic prices if all those dollar earnings, exchanged into Krone and spent into the local economy, would do, taking into account the huge amounts of extra currency chasing more or less the same amount of goods and services in the economy – inflation would be rampant! There is already very little unemployment in Norway, and the economy is running more or less at capacity, so any more than minimal extra spending would be immediately inflationary. Taxes, already high, would have to increase *dramatically* to hoover up the excess in order to avoid inflation – which would cancel out any possible benefit from spending the SWF domestically.
Thirdly, the Norwegian government has no need whatsoever for any of the dollars in its SWF – it has its own central bank, the Bank of Norway, which is the monopoly creator of the sole acceptable domestic currency, the Krone; it can create as many of them as it likes, and indeed does so, generously enough, every day – the standard of living in Norway is already exceptionally high.
In fact, in a way, the Norwegian SWF is a kind of curse – it cannot be safely spent domestically (the limit is around 1% per year), so it just accumulates and accumulates, in overseas stocks and shares, property, and foreign government bonds, growing and growing like Topsy. What good does it do anyone, let alone the Norwegians? Yet they can’t spend it in Norway without hugely damaging repercussions to their economy! It’s a beautiful conundrum really.
Mr Shigimetsu
So they look to build massive infrastructure developmentd like their proposed £40billion coastal road/bridges/floating tunnels to improve the country.
I don’t dispute the points you make but on balance it is still better to have it than not have it.
Dear Cubby,
Any infrastructure spending that takes place in Norway will be financed by the Bank of Norway creating the requisite amount of Krone, via a computer keystroke, and crediting it to the reserve accounts of the banks of the initial recipients of that spending (contractors, engineers, land purchases, etc) in the normal way.
There is no need whatsoever to seek recourse from the SWF in order for the Norwegian government to command these resources for infrastructure improvement from the private sector. The SWF’s existence makes absolutely no difference to domestic spending decisions – as I explained, to spend any more than the 1% they currently draw down annually would create resource shortages and domestic inflation.
Nations that issue their own sovereign fiat currencies (like Norway, UK, US, Japan etc) have no need whatsoever for “war chests”.
But Norway’s SWF is actually more like an offshore store of radioactive waste – you can’t bring it home because of the damage it would do!
Here’s a really curious aspect of the English caste system. English actors currently active in Hollywood. Methodology; list by IMDb.
An astonishing 60% of English actors currently active in Hollywood are privately educated.
Lots of counterintuitives in there, Tom Hardy is a posho Colin Firth ain’t.
No idea what this actually means. Does early life in a Boarding school teach the unfortunate sprogs to hide behind false personae? Do American casting directors hire English actors to exclusively play posh characters (Jimmy McNulty excluded)?
A developed aside. On a pro rata basis, Scottish, Welsh and particularly Irish actors are disproportionately successful in Hollywood. Of Scottish and Welsh actors listed by IMDb, only Tilda Swinton jumps out as having been privately educated.
It might be how you surmise though it is more likely that private schools put on more school productions on a regular basis than state schools do. With overworked, cowed state teachers who can find time for such pursuits?
In boarding schools there is a need to fill up pupil’s free time, the devil makes work for idle hands remember. So lots of sports, cramming and relief from that in performance, set building, lighting designing etc.
I grew up in NZ where the teachers still took a full gamut of sports at the weekends and in exchanges with other schools and there was at least one production each year.
The school my kids went to here in Dundee is regarded as the best state school yet not one production was put on in their time there. Not one.
I played parts in primary school, intermediate school and at secondary I as Fyedka in Fiddler on the Roof and Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s dream. We had a kerosene fog machine and it got an outing in both productions. Demetrius and I did a kind of dance with swords extended while our puck dived under them into the fog misdirecting us.
Should have used an upper case P in puck. Had me thinking about ice hockey, but then I am ill educated Weegie scum.
😉 I should say our Puck was female, a short blonde haired slight girl who was fantastic.
Getting a job in the creative industry is about WHO you know or more who your mummy and daddy know.
The BBC still functions like a personal fiefdom for many generations of the same families.
If talent and dedictation were the deciding factors the dumb posh boys and girls would never cut it.
The only merit based actors I see are the Black British who can’t be easily mimicked and because a lot of entertainment and advertising is aimed at that demographic.
Samantha Morton grew up on a council estate apparently and Peter Bowles….but they are exceptions
There WAS a generation of them between C4 starting and upto about the 00’s – but it is tumbleweed mostly now.
“Does early life in a Boarding school teach the unfortunate sprogs to hide behind false personae?”
Yes. Or worse. Gotta cope somehow.
But note: ~7% of school pupils in Britain are at private schools, but only ~1% are at boarding schools. Most private schools don’t have any boarders at all.
I think these events answer the suggestion by some that Boris and his cronies would have an interest in letting Scotland go to give themselves a permanent majority. They want to control everything and keeping Scotland under their thumb is part of it. They’ve got a majority now and probably believe they can keep it forever; look out for our devolved Parliament being undermined and reduced to non-existence.
Think using A, V. Dicey’s power of the Lords aka Law of the Constitution to stop Parnell’s Home Rule permanently was more central.
The pro-Boris press is notably out in force crowing about how Javid was sacked. Which is adorable myopic spin.
Javid is from the banking world, where autonomy to hire your own team is written in stone. These types of power-plays are everyday happenings in the City. He knew he could be sacked if he defied Boris, so instead he resigned to retain leverage if he’s ever to return to the cabinet.
What’s curious to me is whether Javid’s calculation that Boris will need him again in the future, a calculation borne from his professional background, plays out in his favour. Alternatively, Javid, who is not of aristocratic stock, will never be allowed back inside the tent. That’s how the Boris’ of the past would have behaved, I guess we’ll find out if that is still the way the world works.
His professional background is notable only for having profited from CDOs that played a key role in the 2008 financial crash.
You need some some excellent political skills to climb as high and fast as Javid did.
This is not to endorse his choice of career or all the ways he made money, it’s a mere observation that he was very good at navigating the higher echelons of banking.
Javid may well leave politics at the end of this Parliament or even before.
The “aristocratic stock” factor will come to a head shortly. Cummings may want to “tax the idle rich”, “revive the forgotten North of England” and “rebalance the economy away from financial services towards manufacturing”, but his starry eyed idealism must meet head to head with Johnson’s 944 years of established practice. My money’s on more serfdom.
There’s no real policy vision, just a bunch of slogans meant to be politically effective. This is more of a personal thing. If you’re a commoner schub like Javid, you shut up and sing. Any speaking out of turn gets you kicked to the curb. Rees-Mogg in contrast can commit no sin.The upper crust are weird bastards.
Another thought: who are these Princes of Darkness like Lynton Crosby and Dominic Cummings really working for? Who are the real puppetmasters?
I have no idea if this thread in today’s Twitter is true. I post it without comment.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1228279980884463619.html
It seems to all hang together – we should be better informed about Elliot and his connections with SCL/Cambridge Analytica and postal vote rigging in the referendums.
But more worrying is that he was also Braverman (Fernandes) boss who she has plenty to owe – including the rubberstamping of Assanges extradition no doubt.
We are as expected being run like a porkbarrel US state and national debt is going to double again straight into these US rightwing nuts pockets as planned and predicted.
Hope the likes of Warsi are proud of what they have let happen.
Thanks for posting this link, it made for a very alarming read. There is a lot of seriously scary information being uncovered here, but no one is fighting back. To ram this agenda through our parliament required a sizable Tory majority; the “landslide” victory delivered by vote rigging. With widespread public awareness to cause a significant outcry demanding an investigation and Petition Challenge to the 2019 vote we can extricate this toxic regime before it is too late. It is not too late to demand justice so please read, sign, share and link to this Petition on AVAAZ: 2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION. https://tinyurl.com/w4u9dwm
@ Kim Sanders-Fisher February 15, 2020 at 11:41
cimarrón posted the link yesterday on your election thread; I was going to repost it here as it is obviously relevant, but I was going through the comments to make sure no one had posted it already.
Re the petition as commented above, there is no reason not to also advertise and sign the other two petitions on the same lines that J mentioned:
https://www.thepetitionsite.com/202/553/782/we-want-an-independent-investigation-into-the-implementation-of-the-2019-uk-general-election/
https://www.change.org/p/european-parliament-demand-parliamentary-investigation-into-rigged-postal-votes-2019-election-38f08eba-444e-44d3-802c-a71ee851cef2
They both have considerably more signatures than your petition. I have signed all three.
You are giving too much credibility to a few white front nutcases.
They’re expendable.
Real threat is elsewhere.
Do your homework.
For anyone putting forward the proposition that Scotland is similar politically to the rest of the UK they may want to look at the total number of votes cast in the election for a new Tory branch manager in Scotland (funnily often called the election of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader by the Britnat media in Scotland).
Take a guess then check it out.
Jackson Carlaw was the winner, my local MSP, not even a household name here.
All these British parties brand themselves “Scottish” but are 100% controlled by London.
Exactly
The people who vote Tory in Scotland hide the fact that they vote Tory they don’t want anyone to know
Certainly the ratio of voters to members is much higher for the Scottish Tories (~80) than for the SNP (~10).
I checked the prices too. The Scottish Tories seem to run a “pay what you like” policy, but they encourage members to pay at least £25 per year. (Got to wonder how many Tory members throw in tuppence three-farthings, hoping local party officers won’t get to hear of it.) The SNP charges most members £12 a year, or £5 a year if they’re students.
N
Care to show your workings for these figures good chap. I don’t want to sound too critical but there may be an error somewhere.
For those who could not be bothered looking at the voting figures:
Carlaw 4,917
Balantyne 1,581
It looks like not many Scots are bothered who is the Britnat Tory leader in Scotland.
Carlaw called it a great victory. I guess you will find a politician who after a nuclear Armageddon would claim it was a good result for their party.
Carlaw like Davidson also claimed he would be next FM of Scotland. I forecast like Davidson he will be the next trougher to find themselves in the House of Lords for services to keeping Scotland subjugated in the UK. Carlaw has a track record of presiding over two failed car sales businesses before jumping on the gravy train that is Britnat politics.
Carlaw used to say Johnson was unfit for any office now he licks his boots.
Carlaw used to say it would be a disaster to leave the EU now is comfortable with a no deal Brexit.
Johnson is consolodating power, and placing (whether they be talented or not) yes men and women around him. Its pretty obvious Johnsons is now taking a leaf out of Trumps book.
Ironic that even Trump has fallen out with his mini-me Johnson.
Smoke and mirrors – I believe this ‘fallout’ is overblown in the media to put some ‘clear water’ between the two; remember when Clegg was caught on open mic whinging to Cameron that they should have something that they can disagree about, so that Clegg didn’t come across as the powerless enabler of Cameron?
The 5G things is absurd nonsense that only makes any kind of sense to people that have no understanding of data-comms equipment, how the network operators use the equipment, and most importantly – that Huawei’s 5G equipment has no backdoor access for the NSA.
People should be told the truth about 5G.
It’s like running a microwave oven – if it were possible – with the door open.
The problem is not so much with the towers, but the ‘smartphone’ itself. The inverse square law applies, and using one of them right next to one’s brain is a fools game.
Wouldn’t use one if it was a free gift.
Brain Aneurysm, anyone?
What do
[censored]consumers actually think they need a 5G phone for? Most of them don’t know what a bit rate is, and few nowadays even download films.5G is the final coffin nail.
The rollout needs to be stopped.
It is a microwave weapon, first and foremost.
Craig says:
the roots of organised labour having been ruthlessly cut away, Corbyn found there was no longer a sufficient well of social solidarity which
could support a counter narrative to the massively concentrated media propaganda.
This is not true. The 2017 election proved that Labour under Corbyn could win an election. in 2017 he came from way behind with an articulate left-wing narrative and almost won the day. Labour lost the recent election because Corbyn’s inability to make a coherent position on Brexit, unsurprising because he has imho always been brilliantly undiplomatic on all foreign policy matters, and because of his complete failure for related reasons to understand the nuances of the antisemitism debate.
You might say the Labour party was disorganised and that also contributed, but if Corbyn hadn’t been so confused himself he would have been able to unite it.
Conjunction
Labour Party MPs refused to follow Corbyn’s plan to make a purse from a sow’s ear of leaving the EU.
He himself wasn’t confused at all. Brexit would never shut down movement of people or goods so Labour could afford to go along with it. But no , the Blairites, brownites and wet behind the ears fresh from uni no respect for elders brigade knew best. The MPs were daily fermenting opposition against Corbyn in order to trash their Labour competitors, Were they thinking this old codger will burn out with stress if we do a Tory and rock the school bus? If I was Corbyn I would have dismissed 90% of the party for disloyalty. The 90% who are now clucking and looking for worms in the ploughed turf of the selection process.
And we’re supposed to choose a leader from the chief cluckers and ego-boosters? Not to mention Maragaret Hodge who has successfully mated the Chief Rabbi, going by the amount of clucking and strutting. Did she find any worms in that particular compost or was she just being completely disloyal?
There isn’t any evidence that Randolph Churchill died of or had syphilis. The original source for the claim was Frank Harris, who famously only told the truth when his imagination failed him.
The important thing about Sajid Javid’s resignation is that he had – for the second time – been ordered to dismiss the advisers he chose and accept ones selected by Johnson and Cummings. He was to become their puppet and display that he was their puppet.
Javid’s advisors were escorted by police from Downing Street. Cummings has metaphorical syphilis.
I can think of no better metaphor for someone who rejects their partner, the EU , and goes tarting across the Atlantic for investors for the NHS. Politically speaking. Metaphor. You can’t lock me up for poetic allusion.
Answer came there none , and that was scarcely odd because, they’d eaten every one.
I didn’t think anybody still believed that Lord Randolph Churchill had syphilis, the fact that neither of his children or his wife contracted it rather mitigates against it. He is known to have had a left side brain tumour which could explain his mental deterioration.
We would all be better off if Dominic Cummings could be persuaded to go away.
The so-called united kingdom continues to disintegrate and the world looks on and laughs – rightly so.
Doug
It certainly does. If it is not enough that the TV screens and newspapers ( except The National) in Scotland are all Britnat controlled pumping out Britnat propaganda Johnson is spending £5 million of taxpayers money on more propaganda to be broadcast in cinemas in Scotland. I forecast booing in cinemas.
We look away, embarrassed for such a sad case, actually
Sadly, if you want real ‘change’ in the UK, you’re going to have to pick up a gun and take it.
please don’t shoot yourself
they really aren’t worth it, or anything at all
I predict a ‘Noah’s Castle’ (the short TV series of the 1970’s) scenario following a ‘hard brexit.’
Remember butter tokens?
Eventually the people will revolt – and elect Sir Keir Starmer.
he’s already revolting
Yup he rubber stamped JA’s illegal detention by telling the Swedes ‘don’t you dare’ drop the fake non charges against him!
How can he be trusted?
Quote Craig
“says something extraordinary about lack of social progress in the UK in the intervening 130 years.”
I think you will find that quite a few new ministers are of ethnic roots that come from the Indian Sub-Continent.
So some things must have changed in 130 years.
I see the leading Ayn Rand nut and arch austerity fanatic Sajid Javid has joined the long list of ghoulish Tory “rebels” lauded over the past few years by the fake left. There cannot have been a time since the 19th century when have liberals have more starkly exposed their true selves than in the period since Corbyn’s election and the Brexit vote. But to now see professed, professional “Corbynites” like Paul Mason wailing like a Taxpayers Alliance spokesman about a lack of “fiscal discipline” in a Tory government . . . It just shows how many kidders there are lurking in British public life. Cynically playing people, over and over and over.
One of the reasons Javid has been dumped is because Johnson, now understands, Austerity does not work.
He wants to borrow, while rates are low, to kick-start
the U.K. Economy, which has been flat-lining for five years.
Javid was a bit of a stick in the mud.
The Hand brake has been released.
HS2, Scotland-Ulster bridge, Northern Power House, Freeports.
michael norton
Not to forget Hinkley Point C.
The most expensive construction project that GB has ever undertaken.
And they have the nerve to call it ‘green energy.’
Windscale, Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, Fukushima…
Then there is the decommissioning cost, that will be much more than the revenue raised from it’s by-product, the electricity generated.
That, of course, is when the private shareholders throw their cards in and walk away.
‘Private profit, Public liability.’
Michael Norton
Scotland-Ulster bridge total fantasy. It would be interesting to see the nuclear subs dodge the workers/ engineers construction – not if you live anywhere near it though.
Plus all the smuggling opportunities across dodgy/leaky borders into the EU, and tax havens.
Seems you like fiscal irresponsibility
Seems you’re a fan of permanent austerity.
How so?
The Mad Roman Emperor Caligula was someone else who also tried to a build a Bridge across the sea.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/roman-emperor-caligula-and-floating-bridge-baiae-002452
He also made his horse a Senator.
https://museumhack.com/caligula-mad-emperor/
He came to a sticky end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula
from CM post >> ”It is to me quite incredible that the UK is still at the mercy of the whims and foibles of degenerates from not only the same class, but from within the same tiny social institutions which still confer a hereditary ability to govern a state of 60 million people now, in 2020.”
i find it incredible that people at the mercy of that same class of degenerates from tiny social institutions actually vote to keep them in power, there’s an awful lot of turkeys voting for christmas.
It feels a little unfair to call Blair a centraliser when he actually carried through on the promise of devolution referendums and even gave Wales some autonomy in the face of less than enthusiastic support. (Although I do accept that a lot of this was probably Brown rather than Blair.) It was only a massive majority that allowed Blair to even contemplate such legislation.
Of course, the attempts to do the same in England (which might have helped to rebalance our whole UK economy a bit) were largely stymied by some very unpleasant populist “anti” campaigns that involved a certain Mr Dominic Cummings. Whatever happened to him?
Timely and accurate piece. I doubt, actually, that even Johnson is calling the shots, despite his alleged democratic mandate. Democracy in this country is a carefully constructed sham, with the Conservative Party not really a meaningful political party at all but one of the heads of the establishment hydra, along with the monarchy, the military, the media and the foreign intelligence agencies.
Not surprisingly, the Labour Party can’t compete with this, despite its huge membership – partly because the establishment will stop at nothing to stop them being elected, and partly because Labour and Labour supporters appear conditioned to accept that role of self-abasement, preferring to blame the leader, poor policies, anti-semitism, too soft on Brexit/too hard on Brexit etc, rather than pointing the finger where it should be pointed, at a rigged system. Labour supporters are strung along by the media into believing a new leader will change things next time but it won’t. Nothing will change until the upper-class clique running the country are forced out.
I never watch TV, however this evening caught the bit of the news in which BoJo was presiding over his cabinet, and putting them through their talking points. The scene was reminiscent of Idi Amin holding a cabinet meeting and putting them through their paces. I wonder if anyone else has seen that clip?
CM – “Johnson’s drive to centralise power is not especially different to that of Thatcher or Blair”
But didn’t Blair bring in devolution to Scotland, Wales, N.I. and to London.
The attempt to devolve power to the North East was scuppered by Cummings.
FranzB
Labour were “encouraged” by the Council of Europe and the EU to make the UK more democratic. So they created a Scottish parliament that they thought they could run in perpetuity in coalition with the Lib Dems or even the hated (joke) Tories. Better Together wasn’t created in 2012 it was long before that.
Oh yes , that’s very true, bettertogether has existed all my politically interested life so I’ve known of bettertogether since the 1970s
I always thought it odd that my relatives at the time just couldn’t believe it
They had lived in Dundee all their life and thought Labour looked after them
I was born in Dundee but lived away many years different countries , looking in through the window from outside I recognised the hypocrisy and the lies told by Labour every election they promised the same things every election people must have thought
“ oh , they promised that last time ? they surely ran out of time to deliver it “
The truth was
The promises were empty promises there was never any intention of delivering them
We still get those empty promises from the tories Labour Lib Dem’s but I think the internet has allowed discussion to flourish and view to change
It’s been a modern internet enlightenment
CM = “Wealth inequality is fast heading back to levels Randolph Churchill ”
CM’s link poiints to an article about income inequality. The only wealth inequality graph I can find indicates that in 1895 the top 1% held 70% of the wealth in the UK. In 2015 the top 1% held 20% of the wealth in the UK, which is probably an underestimate given all those dodgy tax havens sqirrelling away the wealthy’s hidden wealth. Wealth inequality may be increasing, but I doubt if it’s moving to the levels of 1895.