Anorak

Politicians

Politicians Category

Politicans and world leaders making news and in the news, and spouting hot air

Stormy Daniels vanishes from twitter; Porn Barron lives the dream

Stormy Daniels, the walking aide to masturbation who claims she was squired by Donald Trump –  and to whom Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid a big was of cash to keep from spilling the beans about Trump allegedly spilling his beans in the run up to the 2016 election – has taken to twitter. She seen something unusual – and she’s seen Trump naked (allegedly):

So we did. We searched ‘Stormy Daniels’ on Twitter. We saw the system cough-up some Trump-themed tweets. But we don’t see any tweets from the adult movie actress. Is this a shadowban? The Urban Dictionary explains:

shadowban
Banning a user from a web forum in such a way that the banned user is unaware of the ban. Usually takes the form of showing that user’s posts/profile/etc. only to that user; other users never see them. Considered underhanded chicken-shit behavior.

So much for the tech.

But does anyone else think Stormy would have made a better First Lady than Melania – considering the bonus that the couple’s son would have had embodied the American dream; you know, what with his being a real-life Porn Barron?

Posted: 13th, April 2018 | In: Celebrities, News, Politicians | Comment

Indy journalist on anti-Semitism: ‘Why do some groups have so much power’?

anti-semitism

 

Have we forgotten about the Holocaust? You might think it’d be hard to. It’s taught in schools and there are some movies entertaining enough to keep industrial mass murder palpable, even humorous. But the mood has changed. The oldest story is back. Antisemitism is rife and mainstream.

Why?

Well, in The Spectator, Alistair Thomas outlines why Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party excuses alleged Holocaust denial, gives a safe space for members to deny and downplay “the reality of anti-Semitism” (the words of Christine Shawcroft, the head of the Labour Party’s disputes panel in her resignation apology for opposing the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial); and can have in its ranks MP for Bradford West, Naz Shah, who a year before she won her Commons seat shared an image of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the US below the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine conflict – relocate Israel into United States”, with the comment “problem solved”, compared Israel to the Nazis and stated “the Jews are rallying” – she said sorry and left her post as – get this – John McDonnell’s parliamentary private secretary. How does someone with such abhorrent views rise to high in Corbyn’s Labour? And there’s the mural, the Facebook Posts about “powerful” Jews and Corbyn’s “friends“. And Ken Livingstone. And… And…

For anyone unsure what anti-Semitism looks like, Andrew Neil has provided this handy guide:

 

 

Thomas writes:

…for Corbynites of my age (early twenties), the whole issue remains just another attempt to delegitimise Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister. That’s why Twitter accounts were awash with the hashtag #PredictTheNextCorbynSmear, which mocked all accusations of anti–Semitism. It demonstrates the Corbyn faithful’s remarkable capacity for indifference…

It’s all a conspiracy. And like any good conspiracy, it feature the Jews. You can read all about it on The Protocols of the Elders of Facebook.

They’ve all studied the second world war at school; they know how much Jews suffered and how dangerous discrimination is. Surely they must have a problem with that blatantly anti-Semitic mural that Corbyn himself had endorsed?..

They find Israel, as a country, guilty of all kinds of crimes, and regard Jews, anywhere, as Zionist sympathisers. Within the far left, the de facto position is one of hostility and distrust, not just towards Zionists but towards Jewish communities wherever they are. This attitude infects the whole party, even my friends.

 

"Jews for Jez" - with a yellow star, to boot. Some people, eh.

“Jews for Jez” – with a yellow star, to boot. These are Labour’s ‘Good Jews’.

 

anti-Semitic new statesman kosher conspiracy

Just Labour under Corbyn? The Labour Party supporting New Statesman had a question that might have been rhetorical.

 

The Jew can be a good Jew or a bad Jew. But being a Jew is what defines you totally. Jews are traduced and homogenised. Howard Jacobson understands, of course:

Christianity is key here…. Christianity’s had to leave [Judaism] behind, so it’s had to hate it, it’s had to say, we are not that, we are not that anymore, and then to say we were never that – so that’s a necessary hatred. And then out of that grew a sense of the possibility that all cultures have to have someone to hate. Not just a scapegoat. It’s more essential than that. Who am I, what am I? I am not that. To the degree you know that, you know who you are.

Today on Good Friday many Christians will utter their Prayer for the Jews. The third of the Solemn Collects in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England is as follows:

O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of any sinner, but rather that he be converted and live; Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Catholic Church’s Prayer for the Jews has been changed a little. This is the 1955 version (via):

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. (‘Amen’ is not responded, nor is said ‘Let us pray’, or ‘Let us kneel’, or ‘Arise’, but immediately is said:) Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The bigotry never vanished. The Jews continue to define what the righteous reject. And once again anti-Semitism is to the fore.

These are worrying times to be a British Jew. If you would not excuse any other form of racism, don’t excuse anti-Semitism.

Lead image:

 

In response to her tweet the writer who, as Stephen Daisley notes, contributes to the Indy added on Twitter (before blocking us):

 

A response to the tweets.

 

Vote now and vote often.

Posted: 31st, March 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment

Jeremy Corbyn supporters call anti-Semitism protest the work of a ‘very powerful special interest group’

How goes the Labour Party’s response to accusations of anti-Semitism in the ranks? Party leader Jeremy Corbyn admitted to “pockets of anti-Semitism” within the Labour Party. He then went on to talk of “newer forms of anti-Semitism… woven into criticism of Israeli governments… Criticism of Israel, particularly in relation to the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people, cannot be avoided. Nevertheless, comparing Israel or the actions of Israeli governments to the Nazis, attributing criticisms of Israel to Jewish characteristics or to Jewish people in general and using abusive phraseology about supporters of Israel such as ‘Zio’ all constitute aspects of contemporary anti-Semitism.”

Is the anti-Semitism really that “new“.

On Facebook, around 2.000 users purporting to be Jeremy Corbyn supporters have reacted to an open letter saying Monday’s Jewish-organised protest against anti-Semitism was the work of a “very powerful special interest group” wielding its “immense strength” to “employ the full might of the BBC”. The open letter posted to a open group garnered 936 comments before the admin disabled commenting, writing:

…exaggerating the influence/power of Jewish groups is a form of antisemitism. Jewish groups have the right to lobby and influence the same as other religious or ethnic groups do. You do not specify what ‘special interest groups’ you are talking about. If you are talking about groups like JLM etc, phrases like “very powerful” are totally inappropriate. I would also suggest the reason why the BBC ran the story at the top of it’s headlines all Monday is down to the Westminster clique, _not_ because of any Jewish lobby groups!

I’m turning off comments. The reason I’m not deleting this post is because screenshots are all over twitter, and keeping the post will help us get to the bottom of what’s happening here. Please do not delete it without talking to us first…

I deeply question the motives of the person that took this screenshot to score political points, rather than reporting it to us. This group has about 400 posts a day and about 10,000 comments. We are unpaid volunteers. We rely on people to report any concerns, especially when overwhelmed by a tsunami of posts from the subject being top of the news agenda.

One twitter screenshot is here:

 

facebook Jews Corbyn

 

Not everyone “endorsed” the letter as the Indy claims they did. Many who did respond have have. But, as noted, there have been dissenting voices, not least of all the group’s “admin”.

 

we support jeremy corbyn

The busy We Support Jeremy Corbyn group. Screenshot: 29/03/18

 

The open letter on the Facebook group “We Support Jeremy Corbyn” runs:

“Yesterday we witnessed the full onslaught of a very powerful special interest group mobilising its apparent, immense strength against you.

“It is clear this group can employ the full might of the BBC to make sure its voice is heard very loudly and clearly. It is a shame not every special interest group can get the same coverage…

“But, and it is a very big BUT, we live in a democracy, a one member one vote democracy and no special interest group, regardless of their history or influence, can be allowed to dictate who the rest of us can vote for or how we vote.

“I am writing this letter to say that I support you and I trust you, more than I would trust any politician, to do the right thing in terms of racism, antisemitism, and any hate mongering from anyone against anyone.

“We know that any politician who stands for the many and not the few will have very many powerful enemies and it is expecting an awful lot of a person to put up with the pressures that are put on you. But thank you, thank you, for your inspiration and steadfastness and be sure that you still have my support.”

As said, not all reactions have been supportive of the letter – the majority have been, but not all:

“Do people not realise how how absolutely ironic it is that in response to accusations of antisemitism that people accuse people of Jewish background of backroom organising and conspiracy?”

Beneath a link to the story on the letter published by the Indy, there is talk of conspiracy:

This is the first time ive actualy seen first hand how a smear starts from actually reading the letter in question when put on the group to how they have spun it in an almost villian like way

Anyone with an iota of common sense realises the anti semitic problem is an attempt to wreck the labour party. When it has the full support of the BBC it is patently obvious that there is collusion with the tory party, as we all know it is now totally controlled by these corrupt brigades who are up to their necks in corruption. The only way you would get an honest answer from them is if they were constantly wire up to a polygraph. We must bring them to account for the sake of all of our futures. Make no mistake we are being manipulated by pure evil…

And:

Just to alert you guys. There’s a journalist mole on this group who’s shared Frances Naggs letter.

Over on the BBC, the Jewish-organised anti-Semitism protest was followed by a new revelation. We meet Christine Shawcroft, 62, head of the Labour Party’s disputes panel who has “quit after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial”. The accused Labour Party member denies any wrongdoing.

Are attitudes towards Jews finally changing within Corbyn’s Labour? Will Labour finally extend its self-aggrandised and self-hymned intolerance of all racism towards its members who attack, bait and demonise Jews with calls for them to be mass deported (that was from a serving Labour MP), monstering them as a people so uniquely barbaric that Jews are not worthy of the Holocaust – which, you know, might all be big ‘fake news’, a revolting and sneaky claim which makes liars of every survivor, their families and the murdered millions? Thankfully, we live in a democracy. So you can give two fingers to racism at the next election.

Vote now and vote often!

Posted: 29th, March 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment

The racist Left, ‘Jews for Jez’ and Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to spot anti-Semitism

Only around a thousand people turned up on Parliament Square to protest against anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The polite request was that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn works to expose and confront the hatred of Jewish in his party’s membership – and that he stops acquiescing to anti-Semitism. Some Labour MPs did attend. And that’s great. But only about a dozen of them bothered to make the shot walk from the Commons to the grassy roundabout.

 

Jews for Jez

 

Accompanied by chants of “enough is enough”, the crowd heard from Haringey Council leader Claire Kober, and Labour MPs John Mann, Louise Ellman and Wes Streeting, Ian Austin, Chuka Umunna and Luciana Berger, who said antisemitism is “very real” and “alive in the Labour Party”. Some Conservative MPs also turned up, including Priti Sushil Patel, and cabinet ministers Sajid Javid and Penny Mordaunt.

Mr Streeting told the throng: “To those Jewish members who felt enough is enough and cut up their membership cards and walked away, our commitment to you is to work with every ounce of strength to drain the cesspit of antisemitism in the Labour Party so you can come back. We know what needs to be done. We don’t need any more mealy-mouthed statements from the leader of the Labour Party, we need actions. The actions are very simple: Ken Livingstone should not be in the Labour Party. Antisemites need to be drummed out of the Labour Party. And that whitewash of a report – the Chakrabarti Report – can we at least implement every one of those recommendations. We had a wishy-washy report, it got someone a place in the House of Lords, but let’s at least make sure its delivers a genuine fight against antisemitism in our party.”

Slippery and nuanced Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t there, of course. He never is. But he did address the Jews via a letter:

“I recognise that antisemitism has surfaced within the Labour Party, and has too often been dismissed as simply a matter of a few bad apples. This has caused pain and hurt to Jewish members of our party and to the wider Jewish community in Britain. I am sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused, and pledge to redouble my efforts to bring this anxiety to an end. I must make clear that I will never be anything other than a militant opponent of antisemitism.”

Not a single world on how he has contributed greatly to that “pain”. Not a single word from his supporters, those intolerant people who if this were a Tory or anyone else they did not like giving a big thumbs up to anti-Semitism would be demanding their resignation. They screamed in outrage when Conservative MP Anne Marie Morris said “nigger in the woodpile”. They howled for Toby Young’s removal because he’d tweeted about women’s looks and described wheelchair ramps as part of “ghastly” inclusivity in schools. They pilloried Tim Farron for his views on homosexuality (he called it a “sin”) – ubiquitous Corbyn fan Owen Jones called Farron’s comments “an absolute disgrace”.

To his supporters, Corbyn can do no wrong.

Some Corbyn fans are Jews. A small number arrived carrying signs that said “Jews for Jez”, the words written on a yellow star. If Brass Eye did protests:

 

"Jews for Jez" - with a yellow star, to boot. Some people, eh.

“Jews for Jez” – with a yellow star, to boot. Some people, eh.

 

Instead of being upset by Corbyn’s links to anti-Semitism, his supporters tasked themselves with getting the hashtag #PredictTheNextCorbynSmear to trend on Twitter. Blessedly, not everyone thinks anti-Semitism is no big deal:

 

 

 

 

Corbyn did have more to say. And it, as ever, vague:

“Sometimes this evil takes familiar forms – the east London mural which has caused such understandable controversy is an example. The idea of Jewish bankers and capitalists exploiting the workers of the world is an old antisemitic conspiracy theory. This was long ago, and rightly, described as ‘the socialism of fools’. I am sorry for not having studied the content of the mural more closely before wrongly questioning its removal in 2012.”

 

Corbyn racist art

 

Amazing, no, how Corbyn, a man who presents himself in public as highly sensitive to anti-Semitism can looks at the picture above and not realise its might be even a tad anti-Jewish without “study”. Is he blind to anti-Semitism or does he think it’s ok?

As Brendan O’Neill puts it: “Corbyn is in essence saying: ‘Ah, I didn’t notice the anti-Semitism.’ And that is precisely the problem. This section of the left never notices anti-Semitism. It always seems to pass them by. Or worse, they acquiesce to it in the belief that objecting to it might lose them support among some of their key bases, in particular the old left and young Muslims. I didn’t see it, they say, not realising that their failure to see anti-Semitism is the crux of the problem. It is a wilful blindness to hatred that they would treat as unforgivable in relation to any other racial or religious group.”

Anti-Semitism is a sickness. It’s been excused time and time again under Corbyn’s watch. You can look at Corbyn and his fans and ask yourself: if it looks like a duck, quack likes a duck and talks like a duck, what is it? And you can vote in the election.

Posted: 27th, March 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Stormy Daniels will reveal all about her candlelit romance with Trump if he returns $130,000 hush money

You know how it goes: you shag the billionaire and take his hush money. Then the billionaire becomes president of the US of And you realise you undervalued your services. And so it is that adult film star Stormy Daniels says she not longer wants the $130,000 she claims Donald Trump paid her to remain tight lipped about their affair. She thinks it best that she return the cash and place her story on the public record.

 

Stormy Daniels

Hush ‘n’ tell

 

Daniels, nee Stephanie Clifford, has laid out her plan in a letter to Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. She has set a deadline of Friday for the return of the cash. She will then be at liberty to “speak openly and freely about her prior relationship with the president and the attempts to silence her and use and publish and text messages, photos and videos relating to the president that she may have in her possession, all without fear of retribution or legal liability.”

“This has never been about the money,” Clifford’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, told NBC New. It’s the principle, right? “It has always been about Ms. Clifford being allowed to tell the truth. The American people should be permitted to judge for themselves who is shooting straight with them and who is misleading them. Our offer seeks to allow this to happen.”

 

Generous it is, indeed. And should Trump fall into a a trap marked ‘TRAP’ with huge arrow pointing at it, we can all marvel at how a man who outlined his mating ritual as “Grab her by the pussy” really treats women he fancies.

You can read Daniels’ letter in full here.

 

Posted: 13th, March 2018 | In: Celebrities, Money, News, Politicians | Comment

Lizards are spying for Israel says top Iranian advisor

Over the years, various countries have accused the world’s only Jewish state of using a variety of less conventional secret agents. To date, they have identified the following creatures as being Israeli spies:

A Falcon (Turkey)
A Dolphin (Hamas)
A Shark (Egypt)
A Eagle (Syria)
A Griffon Vulture (Saudi Arabia)
A Vulture (Sudan)
A Bee-eater (Turkey)
A Boar (Palestinian Authority)
A Hyena (Palestinians)
A Rat (Palestinian New Agency)
A Kestrel (Hezbollah)

Today brings news that the Israelis are in cahoots with lizards, naturally.

Hassan Firuzabadi, a former chief-of-staff of Iran’s armed forces and key advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says Israel is using lizards to  “attract atomic waves” and spy on his country’s nuclear program.

“Several years ago, some individuals came to Iran to collect aid for Palestine… We were suspicious of the route they chose,” he tells the ILNA news agency.

“In their possessions were a variety of reptile desert species like lizards, chameleons… We found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium mines and where we are engaged in atomic activities.”

Lizards, of course, are not spying for the Israelis. They are spying for their fellow members of the House of Windsor.

Spotter: Daniel Sugarman

Posted: 14th, February 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment

Anti-Semitism expert Jeremy Corbyn wants to ban Spurs Yid Army

spurs yids

 

Jeremy Corbyn is something of an expert on anti-Semitism – which given his role as leader of the Labour Party, ‘friend’ of Hamas and a former presenter on Iran’s Press TV is no great shock. Corbyn has spotted something anti-Jewish in the ranks of Tottenham Hotspur fans. No, he’s not swapping allegiances from Arsenal to Spurs. He wants Spurs fans to sing what he tells them to and stop cheering for the ‘Yid Army’.

He told the Guardian before Spurs and Arsenal played each other yesterday: “There has been racist abuse at past matches between Arsenal and Spurs – instances of antisemitism and homophobia. Yes, football fans get very passionate but that is not acceptable and not allowed.”

“Yid chants are unacceptable,” adds Corbyn. “It plays into something that’s not very good and we should be saying: ‘We’re the Spurs’ or ‘We’re the Arsenal’. Stick to your club; it’s your club that unites you. The idea of adopting a term to neutralise it doesn’t really work because it is identifying a club by an ethnic group or faith, whereas you should be identifying clubs through supporters.”

You might at this point suppose the Guardian has been duped by an arch-satirist. You’re looking for Shami Chakrabarti to pop up and say that she’s never heard a thing – and for Corbyn to nationalise Tottenham and install Dame Shami as the club’s new striker. But the real Corbyn is no fan of Yid Armies, so it is very probably him doing his bit for his core electorate.

Image: A Labour campaign slogan?

Posted: 11th, February 2018 | In: Arsenal, News, Politicians, Sports, Spurs | Comment

Me Too and the Mob: ‘sex pest MPs’ should be anonymous

“‘Sex pest’ MPs to keep anonymity while under investigation over harassment claims,” says the London Evening Standard’s front page. It’s interesting stuff. Given that false and mistaken accusations can ruin lives, might not circumspection be right and proper? Does every victim want their claim and potential victimhood publicised, something that could leave them unable to move on with their lives?

Under new proposals drawn up by a cross-party committee, MPs ruled to have harassed staff will have to write a letter of apology and undergo training, be suspended or forced to face a public vote. At the moment, MPs don’t have any formal disciplinary procedures.

Helping readers to make sense of what is a thorny and important matter is Kate Maltby, the well-connected Tory activist. Maltby is the woman who alleged Damian Green MP made inappropriate advances towards her, including “fleetingly” touching her knee in 2015. She said he sent her a “suggestive” text, which made her feel “awkward, embarrassed and professionally compromised”. He has apologised for making her feel uncomfortable.

She tells the Standard, which counts a number of her friends among the columnists:

“I am pretty concerned about anonymity for those accused, particularly of sexual harassment,” she said [sic] because what we know in all of these cases is it is almost always the case that someone accused, plausibly, of sexual harassment is a serial offender, and that when one woman makes a complaint, others are finally emboldened to do so.”

Why can’t the accusation be examined on its merits? Why do we need a group to bring the accused down? Isn’t assuming that one accusation is the thin edge of the wedge, prejudicial to a fair hearing? How does trial by media achieve justice?

Ms Maltby said: “This working group is clearly a step in the right direction. I think there is a lot still to be hammered out.”

The Standard cites more voices calling for the accused’s name to be made known.

Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, says: “It’s a concern that the risk of malicious and vexatious complaints features so prominently in this report. None of the allegations that triggered the review were found to have been malicious so having this so high up as an issue to be addressed is misplaced. It triggers all those myths about hysteria and witch-hunts that have been such an unfortunate feature of this issue.”

Isn’t the risk of one innocent being wrongly convicted worth the caution?

Leader of the Commons Andrea Leadsom adds: “This is a big day for Parliament and our politics. It is in the context of this that the confidentiality issue is so concerning. We know that confidentiality can protect victims but it can also be used to protect the guilty and party reputations. The whole Me Too movement has shown just how important public disclosure can be to victims who are otherwise ignored and mistrusted and might not feel confident in coming forward.”

Isn’t that alleged victims, Andrea? Many people who have said #MeToo have yet to have their claims tested in court. Have we not learnt anything from ‘Nick’, the man who claimed to have witnessed MPs murdering children for sexual gratification, whose allegation were branded “credibly and true” by the police, who after such fanfare and trawling found no evidence for any offence?

Let’s stick to the facts and hold people accountable for their actions. But let’s not ruin lives and careers on the strength of an  allegation, however morally right and powerful it is.

Posted: 8th, February 2018 | In: News, Politicians | Comment (1)

Anyone who cares about freedom should look at Iran and abandon Labour

iran labvour

Iran

 

The Labour Party is unfit for purpose. Nora Mulready is relinquishing her Labour membership after 20 years:

In recent weeks, Labour could not make a simple statement in support of those protesting for freedom in Iran. It couldn’t give a straightforward condemnation of a regime that stones people to death for adultery, publicly hangs gay people, and forces women by threat of criminal punishment to wear headscarves in public. The hard left’s virulent anti-Americanism renders it ‘just not that simple’. No, with the influence and influx of ‘Stop The War’ ideologies, Labour has been dragged so deeply down the rabbit hole of anti-imperialist theories that they cannot condemn dictatorial, theocratic, repressive Iran in case it somehow strengthens, or implies support for, democratic, secular and free America. My Labour would see America is a necessary bulwark against Iran, yet the Labour we have sees Iran as a necessary bulwark against America. I cannot in all good conscience tell a single person to vote for that.

Read it all.

Posted: 30th, January 2018 | In: Politicians | Comment

Stormy Daniels is ‘Making American Horny Again’

stormy daniels tou

 

If you want to see what Donald Trumps did or didn’t see you can catch aid to masturbation Stormy Daniels at The Trophy Club in Greenville, South Carolina, tomorrow.

The show is part of Daniels’ “Making America Horny Again Tour”, her entrepreneurial reaction to the Wall Street Journal’s claim that Trump paid her $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged shag. In 2009 In Touch magazine reported Daniel’s story about her alleged sex with Trump.

“He saw her live. You can too,” oozes the ads on The Trophy Club’s Facebook page.

What else Donald’s eyes see in the throes of passion can be only guessed at. But for the fuller experience, I suggest taking along a pack of Cheetos and a child’s mitten.

Posted: 26th, January 2018 | In: Celebrities, News, Politicians | Comment

Toby Young, The Fabian Society and eugenics for life

Is Toby Young a eugenicist? Young has been riding high on the news cycle ever since we was given a job at the Office for Students (OfS). People held up Young’s offensive tweets and, depending on your prejudices, either hounded him from a job he was well-equipped to perform or exposed a pervert who benefitted from friends and family in high places to score a job he was unfit for. Under pressure, Young resigned from the position.

Prejudice has played a part in Young’s undoing, of course. Labour MP Angela Rayner wanted Young banned from the OfS for his “historical comments”. That’s the same Rayner who supported her fellow Labour MP Jared O’Mara, the charmer who labelled his fellow humans “sexy little slags”,  “poofters” and “fudge-packers”. Angela Rayner told the BBC’s Today Programme: “I am happy to sit alongside him, because he made those comments 15 years ago… People do change their views…it is important that they recognise that and apologise and correct that behaviour.”

And what of Labour’s shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, who called Tory MP Esther McVey a “stain on humanity”? He mused: “Why aren’t we lynching the bastard?” Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, has described Mr Young – who apologised “unreservedly” for previous “ill-judged” comments – as “horrible”. Appearing on BBC Radio 5Live, Thornberry was asked if she believed Mr McDonnell should apologise. “I think that those who remember what it was that she [McVey] said around the time that she was cutting benefits to disabled people will be horrified to hear that she is now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.”

Isn’t that, you know, victim blaming?

What of death threats aimed at McVey following McDonnell’s attack? “Well, that is wrong but what she needs to do is she needs to ensure that she educates herself properly about what the effects of cuts to benefits have on real people on a day to day basis,” said Thornberry, who saw no need for McDonnell to apologise.

And there’s more. On the BBC’s Question Time last night, the matter of Young’s attendance at a get together called the London Conference on Intelligence (LCI) at UCL was raised. The London Student Coop site highlights some of the matters discussed there: “The London Conference on Intelligence, is dominated by a secretive group of white supremacists with neo-Nazi links.,, Among the speakers and attendees over the last four years are a self-taught geneticist who argues in favour of child rape, multiple white supremacists, and ex-board member of the Office for Students Toby Young.”

Private Eye says the conference “serves as a rendezvous for academic racists and their sympathisers”.

Young says:

Yes, I heard some people express some pretty odd views. But I don’t accept that listening to someone putting forward an idea constitutes tacit acceptance or approval of that idea, however unpalatable. That’s the kind of reasoning that leads to people being no-platformed on university campuses.

Fair point, no? If attending equates to approval, what of working for the Iranian regime? Nick Cohen noted:

Jeremy Corbyn has been paid £20,000 to appear five times on the totalitarian Iranian regime’s propaganda channel, which was banned in the UK for its role in filming the tortured forced-confession of Iranian liberal journalist Maziar Bahari… Iranian democracy campaigner Maziar Bahari’s own thoughts on Corbyn, who he describes as ‘a useful idiot’, and goes on to say:

People who present programmes for Press TV and get paid for it should be really ashamed of themselves — especially if they call themselves liberals and people who are interested in human rights.

The Iranian regime executes gay people, democracy activists, Kurds, and orders the rape of female prisoners. But Corbyn is happy to take their money and aid their propaganda campaign. Watch the end of this clip as Jeremy hosts a caller who describes the BBC as having hosted ‘Zionist liars’.

And what of inviting Hamas and Hizbollah to Parliament? Corbyn called them his “friends”. That’s Hamas which calls for all Jews to be killed and states:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.

Double standards? Of course. That much is certain.

And as for eugenics being, as Question Time panelist comedian Nish Kumar called it “some dark Nazi shit”, well, not all eugenicists are Nazis. There’s Marie Stopes, the family-planning pioneer, who in a book called Radiant Motherhood denounced any society that “allows the diseased, the racially negligent, the thriftless, the careless, the feeble-minded, the very lowest and worst members of the community to produce innumerable tens of thousands of stunted, warped and inferior infants.” Helen Keller said that allowing a “defective” child to die was simply a “weeding of the human garden that shows a sincere love of true life.” In 1910, ardent socialist George Bernard Shaw’s lecture to the Eugenics Education Society was reported in the Daily Express: “A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.”

Polly Tonybee, who like Bernard Shaw did, writes for the Guardian, also forgets history. Does she forget that the Fabian society once advocated eugenics? The Fabian Society, as the Guardian notes, “joined with the trade unions to found the Labour party”. Says Tonybee in that paper:

Despite the non-emergence of an “intelligence gene” and the predominant importance of environment over heredity, the far right’s search for reasons why the poor are inferior has a long history. Steve Jones, renowned geneticist, puts it this way: he points out that wealth is considerably more heritable than genes. He says moving to affluence increases a working-class child’s IQ by 15 points. As for super-breeding, Darwin asked a racing dog breeder how he succeeded: “I breed many and I hang many,” was his reply. Not so easy with humans.

Young’s New Schools Network is an odd beast, a charity drawing £2m, 90% of its income, from the state, to advocate and help people set up new schools. But there haven’t been any successful applications since before the 2015 election.

The closing date for the renewed contract to the NSN is 19 January – though it has always gone to the same outfit. Toby Young earns some £90,000 per year as its head. There is, in the tender, no mention of applicants being fit and proper – or non-eugenicists.

Is it a “witch-hunt” as Young says it is?

Brendan O’Neill says it is. He sees a cull:

…the worst thing about this days-long, now successful demand for a metaphorical head on a platter is that it will intensify one of the nastiest strains in British politics right now: the urge to purify public life; the thirst for harrying and hectoring and shaming out of polite and political society anyone who isn’t fully au fait with PC-speak, who isn’t completely versed in the new and prudish sexual strictures, who doesn’t believe that men can become women, who thinks it’s okay to make jokes about things, and who isn’t an obedient bower and scraper before the worldview of a staggeringly narrow but sadly influential section of society. Toby Young’s fate confirms the intellectual straitjacketing of public life, and the borderline criminalisation of eccentric, daring or simply daft thought and speech.

If we’re all being judged by people so certain they are right and another is wrong – people who have stopped arguing with themselves and now occupy a settled position where disturbance is taboo, differing views must be destroyed and uncertainly, that force that creates ideas and humour, is ended – an essential part of what it is to be human dies. In which case, can please hurry up with those robots…

Posted: 12th, January 2018 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Read the leader of Iran’s Communist Party’s open letter to Jeremy Corbyn

Nora Mulready wonders why Labour is not upset by the uprising in Iran. She points us to a letter written by the leader of the Workers Communist Party of Iran written to Jeremy Corbyn, formerly a presenter on the Iranian State’s Press TV. She notes: “Well worth reading. Remember, communists & students started 1979 revolution & were butchered by Islamists at end. Takes real courage, not dinner party grandstanding, to be a communist in Iran.”

To: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party

7 January 2018

Dear Mr Corbyn

In solidarity with the heroic struggle of the people of Iran against one of the most despotic, brutal, anti-working class and misogynistic regimes in the world, and on behalf of the largest working-class party of the left opposition in Iran, I am writing to ask you to distance yourself immediately from the disgraceful comments made yesterday by the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry. I am asking you to break your silence and to come out unreservedly on the side of the people in Iran in their heroic struggle against their oppressors.

Siding with the oppressors of the people or even staying silent or prevaricating on the rightful protests by the workers, women and the youth in Iran against the corrupt and reactionary Islamic Republic, whose leaders have amassed billions, while subjecting workers to abject poverty, smashing workers’ organisations, throwing trade unionists to jail, committing state-sanctioned discrimination and violence against women and LGBT people and executing dissidents in their tens of thousands, would be a grave political folly for the Labour Party. Once this regime is overthrown by the ongoing heroic rising of the people, the people of Iran will not forget who was on their side and who sided with their oppressors.

Your declared aims of fighting for a better world, for economic equality and for social justice won you great following among millions of people in Britain and internationally, who enthusiastically supported you in your leadership campaigns and in the 2017 general election on a progressive platform to address the widening inequality and the growing injustice in the UK.

However, these are exactly the same issues – on a far harsher and more brutal scale – that have brought millions of people onto to the streets of Iran today. The workers, women and youth in Iran are protesting against grotesque levels of inequality, lack of basic political and social freedoms and a medieval religious dictatorship that is an affront to the collective conscience of humanity in the 21st Century. People in Iran do not want the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the 1% and the billionaire clergy while they try to survive on a minimum wage that is one-fourth of the official poverty line. They do not want the vile state discrimination against women, which officially defines them as minors and the property of their male guardians; they do not want compulsory veiling and gender apartheid. They do not want the imposition of a religious state and religious thought. In one word, the people of Iran do not want the Islamic Republic. They have risen up against the Islamic Republic because they want economic equality and political and social freedoms. They want a better world and a life worthy of human beings. They are right to demand this, and should have the people of the world’s unreserved support.

Siding with such an obnoxious regime and disgracefully declaring, as Emily Thornberry has, that it is not clear who is right or wrong in this struggle of the oppressed against their oppressors will forever stay in the memory of the people of Iran. It will seriously harm the credentials of a progressive and egalitarian party that you are trying to build. It will disillusion millions of your supporters who rushed to your support precisely because they believe in equality and social justice everywhere. It will alienate your grassroots from the leadership, and mark a shameful moment in the life of your new party. It will be an irredeemable political folly and a historic moral disgrace for the Labour Party.

I hope the utterances of Emily Thornberry were an isolated case, which she will come to regret and openly apologies for. In any case, I urge you, as the Leader of the Labour Party, to distance yourself in the clearest terms from those comments and to come out unreservedly and unambiguously on the side of the people of Iran in these momentous days.

Hamid Taqvaee,
Leader of the Worker-communist Party of Iran

Spotter: Nora Mulready

Posted: 9th, January 2018 | In: Politicians | Comment

Data shocker: Westminster workers less likely to watch porn than the rest of us

In 2010, Online MBA produced a porn infographic. It claimed to know that 70% of men visited porn sites in a given month. Dan Savage, a Seattle-based sex columnist, had a word on the demographics of porn watchers. “All men look at porn, ” he stated. “The handful of men who claim they don’t look at porn are liars or castrates.”

Only men like to look?

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz claims women are fans of online porn, too:

Speaking to Vox in an interview about how Google data proves that most Americans lie about their sexual preferences, the researcher and author of “Everybody Lies” asserts… “Porn featuring violence against women is also extremely popular among women…It is far more popular among women than men. I hate saying that because misogynists seem to love this fact,” he added. “Fantasy life isn’t always politically correct.”

In 2014, the US Public Religion Research Institute, said 29 percent of Americans think watching porn is morally acceptable. That’s a lot of people feeling guilty about watching other people having sex.

Which brings us to news that the burghers of Westminster are not like the rest of us:

Staff working in Parliament tried to access online pornography once every nine minutes in the last couple of months, despite a crackdown on inappropriate sexual behaviour, new figures show.

More than 24,000 attempts were made to get onto adult websites from inside the Parliamentary estate – around 160 requests per day – although most were blocked.

Users on the Parliamentary network, including MPs, peers, staff and contractors, used their devices to try and connect to banned content almost 25,000 times in just four months.

Is that a lot?

At the end of January 2015, the headcount of the number of people employed by the House of Commons was 2,040

Add on 650 MPs, 800 Lords, their staff and media workers, and you can add another, say, 2000 people to the Westminster head count. Given the figures supplied for the popularity of porn, Westminster looks relatively clean.

Here’s the date from the MBA company:

 

porn statistics watching

 

Posted: 8th, January 2018 | In: News, Politicians, Technology | Comment

Fire and Fury: Michael Wolfe’s Donald Trump expose is available as a pop-up book

“I’ve made a pop-up easy reader version of Fire and Fury so Donald can see what all the fuss is about,” tweets Happy Toast. The book, by Michael Wolfe, is making waves, accusing Donald Trump of not wanting to become president and being a doofus.

 

 

Spotter: @IamHappyToast

Posted: 6th, January 2018 | In: Books, Politicians, The Consumer | Comment

Survey finds Conservative voters not like Labour voters

Hold the font pafe! the survey is in and it turns out that not everyone agrees. The Guardian thunders:

Conservative members are “a breed apart” from members of the other main political parties, with much stronger tendencies towards socially illiberal and authoritarian attitudes and completely different views on Brexit, a study has found.

Found? Maybe another study can help the paper find those 52% of the electorate who supported Brexit…

Posted: 4th, January 2018 | In: Politicians | Comment

A terrifying talking Donald Trump robot debuts at Disney World

 

No sooner has Disney taken over Fox, President Trump’s favourite new bringer, than a terrifying talking Donald Trump robot debuts at Disney World. TrumpBot stands alongside other American presidents, like Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, and George Washington. All can be seen at the Mouse House’s Hall of Presidents.

Mickey Mouse Presidents, you say? Mickey Mouse is defined by the Urban Dictionary as: “Substandard, poorly executed or organized. Amateurish.” Bit harsh.

Anyhow, here’s roboDon:

“From the beginning, America has been a nation defined by its people. At our founding, it was the American people who rose up to defend our freedoms and win our independence. It was why our Founders began our great Constitution with three very simple words: We the people. Since that moment, each generation of Americans has taken its place in the defense of our freedom, our flag, and our nation under God.”

He does not say, “Grab her by the pussy!”

 

Posted: 19th, December 2017 | In: News, Politicians, The Consumer | Comment

Damian Green: flagrant abuse is what we love best

The Daily Damian: a look at Damian Green in the newspapers. The story so far: the Deputy PM is accused of having porn on his PC and chatting up a younger woman, whose knee she says he touched. The Cabinet Office is investigating. Damian Green say he’s innocent. Now read on…

The Sun (page 6) says Education Secretary Justine Greening “all but called for him to be sacked”. Greening told BBC viewers to Andrew Marr’s Sunday morning show that  “most employers” would think it unacceptable to watch porn at work. On the other side (ITV) was Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, telling everyone that he trusts Damian Green and “I believe what he says”.

 

damian green

0800GREEN – HOW MUCH ABUSE CAN HE TAKE?

 

On Page 10, Trevor Kavanagh says the story is based on a “politically motivated vendetta” against Green by two “bitter” former police officers, Bob Quick and “co-conspirator” Neil Lewis. We learn that Quick “led the scandalous raid” on Green’s office in 2008 over alleged leaks from the Home Office. Quick “seized the computers. Lewis fund the porn.” And then comes the worrying bit: “thousands of perfectly legal images were copied – against orders – and squirrelled away by Lewis for future use.” Kavanagh alleges it’s part of moves to get back at Theresa May for threatening to “smash  their Mafia-style trade union”.

Over in the Mirror (page2 ), Justine Greening is telling Green to “fall on your sword”. Which isn’t a euphemism for masturbation, rather a euphemism for career suicide, or maybe actual suicide. On page 8, Kevin Maguire wonders if the Tories would back an “ordinary worker” – are MPs made extraordinary in anything but the glorious building they occupy? – “if police found thousands of indecent images on his or her desktop.” Dunno. Maybe police should all check their PCs and let us know what occurs?

And how is watching porn on your PC any different from watching porn in a magazine or newspaper, say, perhaps one that on Page 41 offers readers the chance to call premium-rate phone numbers and get some “X-RATED CHEAP CHAT” from “18-94 years olds” and “REAL HOUSEWIVES”? The Mirror does. And it offers no warning against doing so whilst at work, nor displaying the porny images that go with the adverts lest it offend workmates and paymasters.

The Mail (pages 6 and 7), says Lewis “could be prosecuted – as watchdog accuses him of ‘flagrant violation of the public’s trust in police.” New Met commissioner Cressida Dick says the force is thinking about investigating Lewis. Dick, you will recall, was in charge when armed police shot dead innocent Jean Charles de Menezes as he waited for a train on the London Underground. No police employee was disciplined for that.

Speaking on BBC Radio London today, Dick said: “All police officers know very well that they have a duty of confidentiality, a duty to protect personal information. That duty in my view clearly endures after you leave the service. And so it is my view that what they have done based on my understanding of what they’re saying… what they have done is wrong, and I condemn it.”

We also hear in the Mail from Eleanor Laing, who says deputy speaker of the Commons, who says in a letter dated November 14:

A member of my parliamentary staff has told me that, several years ago, before we had effective screening of our parliamentary computers, she used to find pornographic images on her computer every morning when she switched it on…

She was certainly not accessing pornographic sites deliberately or even accidentally. The material was just there on her computer every day. She simply deleted it. This happened before 2010.Thus, it would appear that material found in the parliamentary computer system can be proved to have been put there by some other means than by the deliberate actions of the person operating the computer.

Lax security in parliament. Who knew?

Over in the Guardian, a columnist thunders: “!If Damian Green harassed a woman or lied, he must go.” Yeah. If. But do consider it for as long as it takes to read 500-odd words about today’s burning issue.

In other news: I took up porn to help me stop smoking, says man looking for five-minute work break.

Posted: 4th, December 2017 | In: Broadsheets, News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment

Media obsession over Kate Maltby and Damian Green is something Rotherham girls can only dream of

It’s always big news when a journalist becomes the story. Access is easy.  The newspaper with the hack’s number on speed-dial gets to ride high on the news cycle and be relevant. And all other media can take sides and judge. Kate Malby is the young Conservative activist in the limelight, writing in the Times about how “awkward I felt” when Damian Green, the Tory MP and first secretary of state, allegedly came on to her. He denies doing so. But the story is out there. And it’s open season on Green and Maltby, teh story veering between the invasive and the endemic.

Maltby kicked off her story with context. “After the Weinstein scandal we are asking new questions about the sexual abuse of power: all to the good,” she wrote, linking a powerful Hollywood figure’s alleged rapes and serious sexual assaults to her experience. What did Green do? Was it criminal?

Mr Green is almost exactly 30 years older than me. He has always cropped up in the peripheral circle of my parents’ acquaintances; he generously agreed to be interviewed by my school newspaper when I was the 16-year-old editor and he the shadow education minister.

Oh, god no!

I did not conduct the interview myself, and had no contact again until I became involved in Tory activism in my twenties.

Ah. Phew! The 16-year-old and the man in this 40s is not a story laced with sex and crime. We rejoin the story with Maltby in her twenties…

At that point I began to ask him for advice on internal matters. We met for a daytime coffee in 2014 to discuss a political essay collection I was co-editing. He was helpful and avuncular…

We fast forward to 2015, Maltby and Green are meeting once more:

He steered the conversation to the habitual nature of sexual affairs in parliament. He told a funny story about finding himself in a lift with the Cameron aide Rachel Whetstone and her alleged lover, Samantha Cameron’s stepfather, Lord Astor. He mentioned that his own wife was very understanding. I felt a fleeting hand against my knee – so brief, it was almost deniable. I moved my legs away, and tried to end the drink on friendly terms. I then dropped all contact for a year. I wanted nothing to do with him.

Awkward, right enough.

For a while I wondered if I’d imagined the incident. I had no proof. And was I self-regarding to think myself attractive? Women are trained to doubt our desirability.

Only women? Aren’t men also presented with ideals? They go loopy for a man with his shirt off drinking a Coca Cola or serving a yoghurt, but can only pity the hapless husband who can’t operate soap. And aren’t men now being recast as suspects? An LA Times article told us: “Sexual harassment is neither a Republican problem nor a Democratic one. It’s a man problem.” Like womanhood before liberation, manhood is a restrictive condition.

In May 2016, Maltby was” persuaded by The Times to write a piece about the history of corsets… It ended up being quite light-hearted, and I was talked into posing in a not-very-revealing corset.” The phone rang. It was Green:

“Long time no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid I feel impelled to ask if you are free for a drink anytime?” I ignored the message.

Indeed. She “wanted nothing more to do with him”.

Six weeks later, David Cameron fell and Mr Green was suddenly one of the most important men in Theresa May’s cabinet. As an aspirant political writer, it seemed impossible to avoid him professionally. So I sent him a message. “Many congratulations on joining the cabinet — you and your family must be delighted. I’ll look forward to seeing what you achieve in government.”

Cue Jan Moir, Mrs Michael Gove, the apogee of school gates knowing, who tells Mail readers:

Clearly driven mad with lust by the sight of the 31-year-old in a lace-up bodice and lumpy leggings, Green had only one thing on his mind. The brute! So she ‘actively ignored him’ until this June, when he was suddenly promoted to Deputy PM in Theresa May’s new government. The fact that Green was suddenly hugely important did not escape the single-minded Miss Maltby, who put the trauma of what had happened behind her and began texting him again.

 

maltby green

 

Will anyone stick up for ‘Miss’ lumpy legs? The Mail won’t. It’s Team Green, backing the man allegedly involved in Daily Mail scoops? The Mail’s double-page spread comes with a free hatchet:

One very pushy lady: Kate Maltby’s dad is a banker who dated Ann Widdecombe, and a family friend of the minister she accuses of touching her knee. ANDREW PIERCE profiles a woman determined to make it in politics – whatever the cost

Isn’t being determined a good thing?

Kate was brought up in Geneva, Switzerland, before the family moved back to Britain and into their £5 million home in Holland Park, West London. Kate, a highly- strung teenager, dropped out of Cheltenham Ladies’ College and moved to the £25,000-a-year St Paul’s Girls’ School.

Well-travelled, well-connected and well educated. Maltby can either spend her days lunching or work hard to put her nous to good use. Good on her for having a go, right?

In 2012, Maltby moved into a £1.3 million flat in Notting Hill… She bought the flat, now worth around £2 million, with no mortgage.

Which surely garners the reaction: so what? If this were a story about how anyone seeking a career in media needs to have private means, then we’d get it. We’d expect every Mail’s byline to come with a word on the writer’s schooling, market rate of their home and a family tree linking them to the owner. But it’s a story is about a woman feeling uncomfortable.

While she was in Notting Hill, the ambitious Maltby targeted Samantha Cameron… One member of the now defunct Notting Hill set recalled: ‘She was relentless and persistent in courting Mrs Cameron and others. We all got bombarded with emails and calls from her after she just sort of appeared in our midst. But I’m afraid there was something not quite right. I wasn’t sure we could ever fully trust her.’

And who better to trust than the anonymous source? The same or maybe it’s another anonymous voice tells us: “She might be more careful the next time she’s asked to write a piece trashing a decent man.”

Team Green is in full cry, then? But in the New Statesman, Sarah Ditum says Maltby is “paying the price” for speaking out as a woman. Damian Green’s relations with Maltby are being investigated by Cabinet Office. Green is also being investigated for alleged misuse of his Commons computer, namely to access porn, something he denies. Anna Soubry, a Tory MP, says he should be suspended. A “senior figure” tells the Sunday Times Green should contemplate suicide: “It’s time for the whisky and the revolver.”

Ditum wonders: “How posh does a woman have to be for her account of a man’s behaviour to be dismissed? How ambitious?”

The questions are rhetorical. It’s also clear Ditum is writing less about Maltby than the Mail’s reaction to her. You see. Media loves to talk about media. It’s the easiest news beat there is.

And if accusations of betraying friends, shaming family and publicising herself are too mild for you, don’t worry: Jan Moir is there on the facing page, calling Maltby “poison”, “disingenuous” and “not afraid to use all her charms to get herself noticed”.

But what about Maltby?

When a woman comes forward, she knows her credibility will be undermined, her past picked over and her character demolished. She might, like Labour activist Bex Bailey when she reported a rape, simply be told to hush up.

Rape? Is the heinous crime of rape relevant to Green? Isn’t that, you know, a bit unfair? Isn’t this about an alleged light brush of the knee, and flirtation? And if the media wants to investigate young vulnerable women being abused by older men, why don’t they talk more about attitudes to poor women in Rotherham and elsewhere? No #MeToo hashtags for the poor, ordinary and isolated. You stat to wonder if this about women or class? To rework Ditum’s question: How poor does a woman have to be for her account of a man’s behaviour to be dismissed? And does she have to live in London?

She continues:

When a national paper is willing to go to war for the hand on the knee and the presumptuous text, it’s not because they fear for one man’s career (which, again, was never threatened by Maltby): it’s because these are the things that keep women where we are.

Which is…where? Writing a column in a national newspaper or magazine? Four days after her original story, Maltby wrote in the Times:

Baroness Helena Kennedy QC came forward to confirm that I had confided in her a year ago about Green and was unlikely to have fabricated the story. At least two other women have said the same in public — and there are others who have offered to give similar evidence in private to a forthcoming Cabinet Office inquiry.

So my accusers changed tack. Seeming to accept that I genuinely believe my own claims, “friends of Damian Green” now suggest I may not have been able to tell the difference between the touch of a human hand and the flicker of tablecloth. This is the only story in a very difficult week that has given me reason to crack a hollow smile. Women know the difference between a hand and a tablecloth.

Women do. But do men, who are clueless when it comes to household items and laundry. Discuss.

Posted: 3rd, December 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Daily Mail reported Mugabe’s demise 2 days before he went

As Robert Mugabe spends time with his money, it’s worth noting how the Mail knew he was going well before anyone else. On November 19 at 5:08 pm, the Mail thundered: “Robert Mugabe STEPS DOWN to end 37 years in power.” The was wrong, of course, Mugabe resigned two days later.

robert mugabe daily mail

 

How did the Mail know? And what were those people celebrating – Mugabe’s staying and going? The Mail’s Facebook page published this update:

 

robert mugabe daily mail error

 

Follow the link and the Mail story now reads: “Robert Mugabe now faces impeachment after REFUSING to resign”. Indeed, the paper’s Twitter link is confused. Having stated that Mugabe was gone, the updated teaser was picked up and tells readers: “Robert Mugabe REFUSES to step down.”

 

 

Such are the facts.

 

Posted: 2nd, December 2017 | In: News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment

Donald Trump and Britain First: a Twitter romance made in a safe space

Is a retweet an endorsement? It is if you’re cuddly Donald Trump, who has amplified anti-Muslim propaganda tweeted by Jayda Franse, the woman who fronts Britain First, the odious far right group.

That Trump has the brain of a cretinous adolescent is certain. It’s also a sure thing that when Trump tweets, it’s news. Four national newspapers lead with Trump’s retweets. The Times, Telegraph and Guardian all lead with Theresa’s May’s condemnation of the tweets Tump broadcasted to his millions of followers.

The i goes further. It says Trump’s sad, deeply pathetic and short-fingered grasp on the big issues of diplomacy, bigotry and racism, his undermining of the weight of high office, call into question his State visit to the UK. His retweets, says the paper, constitute “an attack on Britain”.

 

Trump tweets britain first

 

Should the UK be a safe space, where Donald’ Tump is banned from entering?

Trump takes pride in claiming to be saying the ‘unsayable’, telling it like it is. In his head, Trump’s engaging in home-spun wisdom. He’s a plain talking pioneer stripped of politicians’ artifice and cunning. His Twitter account’s a virtual stoop wherefrom he shares wisdom with the simple folks who gather at his feet. Little surprise he finds kindred spirits in fringe groups who purport to be doing the same, self-styled brave souls daring to speak the truth at a time when free expression is increasingly oppressed.

As debate withers and dies on the vine – free speech stymied by policed speech, activists posing as journalists and offence-seekers watching us for any misstep; when accusation is enough to establish guilt; when identity is all (and you know who agrees with that liberal view? Yeah: Nazis) – extremists with loud mouths position themselves as the voices of freedom. You want an alternative to the suffocation. There it is on the side, circling life’s plughole.

The last word is with Trump. Having been called out for his actions, he tweets:

@TheresaMay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!

 

No, Donald. No! That’s the wrong Theresa May.

 

 

America. Would someone over there please take Trump’s phone away from him and put him to bed. Grown-ups are talking. Well, we will just as long as those progressive liberal voices who view human interaction as a potential crime scene allow it…

Posted: 30th, November 2017 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment

Trumpy Bear: your very own Donald Trump-themed teddy to groom

Stuck for gift ideas? Looking for a warm hug ? Want something to groom? Well, Trumpybear is the answer.

 

Trump bear

 

Trumpy Bear is a plush 22″ bear with an attached 28″ by 30″ flag themed blanket. $39.90 plus $6.95 shipping. Trumpy has a zippered neck where the blanket is stored. Texas residents will be charged sales tax at the rate of 8.25%- all other states are neither collected nor remitted.

Do not set detonate your bear, pull its hair nor delve inside for sign of substance:

There is a 30 day money back guarantee for product price only. Shipping charges non refundable. Sorry, we cannot accept returns of intentionally damaged bears. Most orders are shipped within three business days. However, during periods of excess demand, please allow up to 6 weeks for delivery.

 

Trump bear donald trump tedy

 

‘God bless Anerica. And Good Bless Trumpy Bear!”

 


Spotter: TrumpBear

Posted: 29th, November 2017 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, The Consumer | Comment

BBC: Jeremy Corbyn pays tribute to ‘Prince Harry and Hezbollah’

Jeremy Corbyn wants to say a few things about “Harry and his brother”. Or as the BBC’s subtitler puts it: “Harry and Hezbollah.” A typo or is ‘Hezbollah’ the new nickname for Meghan Markle? Bit harsh.

 

harry and hezbollah jeremy corbyn

 

Spotter: Giles Dilnot

Posted: 28th, November 2017 | In: Politicians, Royal Family, TV & Radio | Comment

Lily Madigan: Labour, women and a terf war

Lily Madigan was once Liam Madigan. Lily is now the women’s officer for the Labour Party branch in Rochester and Strood in Kent. She’s been in the news before. In October 2016, “Brave Lily” (Kent Online)  received an apology from St Simon Stock Catholic School, Maidstone, for sending her home for “wearing the wrong uniform” and “preventing her from using the girls’ toilets and changing rooms”.

Said Lily, who threatened to sue the school: “I decided to come in dressed in the girls’ dress code, which basically meant I was wearing a top instead of a shirt. It made me feel so happy, until I was sent home.”

Lily, 19, was born male but identifies as a woman. The Times explains how her new job works:

Labour Party rules state that “the women’s officer must be a woman”.

Why? Can only women understand and represent women? Do you need to have been a girl to know womanhood?

Ms Madigan said it was “misguided” to suggest she could not fulfil the duties of the role, simply because she was born male.

That part at least sounds right.

Teresa Murray, Medway councillor and vice-chairwoman of the executive committee of Rochester and Strood CLP, says “Lily will have to work very hard to convince other people that her very presence there is not going to undermine them”. Adding: “Someone who is an accountant would probably make a better treasurer initially, but that doesn’t mean we should only give the role to an accountant.”

Accountants are born for the job, of course. It’s not something you can learn. It’s something in you. It defines you. You’re just built that way. Accounting is in the genes. But that’s not to say others don’t think accountancy more representative of their true selves. If they want to dress in grey suits, part their hair to the side and carry a briefcase, then that is their right.

Ella Whelan has more background:

Madigan hit the headlines after arguing that Anne Ruzylo, a Labour Party women’s officer in a different constituency, should be sacked for being ‘transphobic’. Ruzylo, a lesbian, feminist and trade unionist, had criticised the sanctification of the trans movement. For this, she was labelled a ‘terf’ (trans exclusionary radical feminist) and was harassed by transgender activists online. Eventually, the executive committee of Ruzylo’s local Labour branch resigned in protest at her mistreatment.

“I feel quite violated,” Ms Ruzylo told The Times. “I’ve worked as a trade unionist for 30 years and I’ve never been shut down in this way. It’s disgusting… Debate is not hate. If we can’t talk about gender laws and get shut down on that, what’s next? What else are we not allowed to talk about? We’re going back to the days of McCarthyism. It is disgraceful.”

“I don’t care if I get called a transphobe, says Whelan adds, “Lily Madigan is not a woman. At 19, he is barely even a man.”

Ouch.

One thing is certain: if you cannot express yourself, we are all the worse off for it.

PS:  The Times, which is on the Madigan beat, reports

The transgender teenager at the centre of a Labour Party row has applied for the Jo Cox Women in Leadership programme, angering and dismaying party members…

The leadership programme was started last year in memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox, with the specific aim of encouraging more women into politics.

Critics say that it defies the whole point of the scheme, which attracted more than 1,000 applications for 57 places in its first year, to include people who are biologically male or who have lived part of their lives as men.

What price equality?

“Women in the party are fuming,” said one Momentum activist who accused the leadership of quietly redefining the meaning of “woman” without consulting the membership.

Good grief.

Posted: 25th, November 2017 | In: Broadsheets, News, Politicians | Comment

Arsenal balls: after Mugabe Zimbabwe Gooners demand ‘Wenger Out’

As Robert Mugabe is toppled, protesters in the depot’s native Zimbabwe turn to the next great dictator: Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

 

wenger arsenal mugabe

 

Lest we forget:

 

 

“I used to live in Zimbabwe and I’ve watched Robert Mugabe ruin the country, and Wenger is doing the same. He’s the Mugabe of Arsenal.”

 

Seems fair.

Posted: 19th, November 2017 | In: Arsenal, Back pages, Money, News, Politicians, Sports | Comment

Steve Mnuchin and his wife posing with dollar bills is wonderfully revolting

Steve Mnuchin, the US Treasury Secretary, and his fragrant wife Louise Linton (top notes of mink perineum and aviation fuel over a puppy farm base) walked into the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington DC to see his signature on the new notes posed with the new lucre.

 

 

For purposes of identification, she’s the one dressed as Dick Dastardly’s getaway driver.

 

 

Go internet!

Posted: 17th, November 2017 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment

Contact Us Writers