Politicians Category
Politicans and world leaders making news and in the news, and spouting hot air
Prince Harry and Meghan: ghost voters and big banks
In January, Prince Harry (not HRH) sat down for talks with Saad-Eddine El Othmani, prime minister of Morocco, Peter Mutharika, president of Malawi and Filipe Nyusi, president of Mozambique at the UK-Africa investment conference. It was one of his last jobs as a working royal. The Mail says that after the formal chats: “The VIPs then rushed to a private room at the Intercontinental Hotel for an informal ‘catch-up’ chat – but unusually they insisted no No 10 or Palace aides were present to ensure the talks were kept private.”
What could they have to talk about they don’t want the commoners to know? Private Eye reports that Mr Nyusi might not be everyone’s cup of fair-trade, organic tea. His election last year was, we’re told, marred by “violence and a climate of fear”. Votes in Gaza province “exceeded the number of dual inhabitant by 300,000”.
Observers noted several incidents across the country where people were found trying to enter polling stations with extra ballots marked for Frelimo.
On Friday, the US embassy expressed “significant concerns regarding problems and irregularities” during the voting and counting which “raise questions about the integrity of these procedures and their vulnerability to possible fraudulent acts.”
The European Union’s election observation mission said “an unlevel playing field was evident throughout the campaign. The ruling party dominated the campaign in all provinces and benefitted from the advantages of incumbency.”
The Eye quips: “Just the sort of ‘progressive’ type a modern real wants to rub shoulders with.” But, of course, Harry did it out of duty. It was a State-run function.
Another Harry appointment, one attended in a private capacity with his wife Meghan, was hosted by JP Morgan in Miami. A “source” told the New York Post’s Page Six, the couple “headlined” the bank’s Alternative Investment Summit. “It was all very hush-hush, with a lot of security,” we’re told. The Mirror says Harry and Meghan could have been paid £400,000 for supporting the event.
JP Morgan:
In November 2013, JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, agreed to pay a then-record $13 billion fine to federal and state authorities in order to settle claims that it had misled investors in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
Trying to earn enough money to maintain your lifestyle might not be all that easy for post-royal Harry and Meghan, a couple so ethically right that he says buying fruit in plastic is “a dirty habit”. Spin the wheel, and hold your nose. Or retain as nurses.
Posted: 12th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, Money, News, Politicians, Royal Family | Comment
‘Tough Guys For Trump’ – Larry David’s epiphany
Larry David has yet to appear in a Bernie Sanders sketch. But he’s in one written for Twitter by Donald Trump.
In this skit, David is seen driving a small, foreign-made car. The liberal New Yorker, star of fly-on-the-wall documentary Curb your Enthusiasm, is wending his way along a sun-dappled road in California when his bad navigation skills and disregard for his fellow Americans causes him to drift and cut up a law-abiding biker.
The biker pulls up alongside.
David, sensing the error of his ways, is converted. In a moment of real epiphany he pulls on a ‘MAGA’ hat and vows to help the biker ‘Make American Great Again’. The buyer nods in brotherhood, politely advises David to “be more careful next time” and drives on.
Unless…
Posted: 12th, February 2020 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Nigel Farage celebrates Brexit with a portrait called ‘Mr Brexit’ – and are those lip fillers?
Michael Deacon was there to see a painting unveiled: Nigel Farage has just unveiled a portrait of himself entitled ‘Mr Brexit’. Jim Davidson is now giving a speech to mark the occasion. Happy Brexit everyone.”
Want a close up. Be brave…
Can you be our own waxwork?
Posted: 30th, January 2020 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
The Entartete Kunst – when Nazis banned ‘degenerate’ art and music
The Nazis were not ones for jazz and free expression. They damned all as entartete kunst (degenerate art). To let fellow Ubermensch know what wrong thinking looked like, the Nazis created a travelling exhibition called – predictably – Entartete Kunst. The show opened in Munich in 1937, displaying works deemed to be “an insult to German feeling”. How they flocked to be educated and disgusted by stuff purged from museums and stolen by the State for the common good. More than two million visitors attended the exhibition from July 19 to November 30, 1937, in Munich alone.
Part of the purge was listed in the 10 Rules for Combatting Jazz. The whole shebang of depravity formed a brochure, of which London’s V&A holds the only known copy of a complete inventory of Entartete Kunst.
The museum notes:
The list of more than 16,000 artworks was produced by the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda) in 1942 or thereabouts. It seems that the inventory was compiled as a final record, after the sales and disposals of the confiscated art had been completed in the summer of 1941. The inventory’s two typescript volumes provide crucial information about the provenance, exhibition history and fate of each artwork.
The inventory consists of 482 pages (including blank pages and a missing page), split into two volumes. The entries are organised alphabetically by city, institution and artist’s name. Volume 1 covers the cities Aachen to Görlitz, while Volume 2 covers Göttingen to Zwickau.
It’s pretty much a guide to everything you should enjoy.
Spotter: Flashbak
Posted: 30th, January 2020 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Strange But True | Comment
Voltaire’s Mirror: Ruth Smeeth slaughters Jeremy Corbyn
“The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else’s eyes” – Voltaire.
Image: The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers in London, Viewed from an Interior – Thomas Cantrell Dugdale, 1936
Posted: 14th, December 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Diane Abbott wears two left shoes – what utter tosh
Out on the campaign trail with her fellow Labour MP for Hackney Meg Hillier, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott was pictured on Twitter apparently wearing two left shoes. She is fashion forward. And if you cannot keep up with her trendsetting, wait a while and she’ll circle back again. But surely this is fake? Not so says the Telegraph, which reports it as fact.
Why is the paper of record so lacking in circumspection? Sad stuff when the Press becomes monocular and far from right.
Other photos of the day show her wearing a more conventional pair of shoes.
Imagine being the subject of such fakery and bad reporting. Just horrible.
Posted: 12th, December 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Hypocrisy! France bemoans US trade tariffs; France wants British trade tariffs
France is upset that the US is thinking about imposing trade tariffs on French cheese, fizz, make-up and handbags. France wants to tax US business. A US ruling into French plans tells us:
The U.S. Trade Representative has completed the first segment of its investigation under section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and concluded that France’s Digital Services Tax (DST) discriminates against U.S. companies, is inconsistent with prevailing principles of international tax policy, and is unusually burdensome for affected U.S. companies. Specifically, USTR’s investigation found that the French DST discriminates against U.S. digital companies, such as Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon
Messy. And hypocritical of the French, mais no? If France believes tariffs are wrong, it should argue for free trade deal between the EU and the the post-Brexit UK. But it isn’t.
Posted: 4th, December 2019 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment
Mike Bloomberg says China is a democracy and Xi Jinping answers to his ‘constituents’
Michael ‘Mike’ Bloomberg didn’t get to be billionaire by being a dufus and doing no research. So why doe he tell Margret Hoover that China’s President Xi Jinping asnwer to his “constituents” and leader through the will of the people. Jinpins is, says Bloomberg, not a dictator.
in 2012, Xi walked at the front of the Politburo Standing Committee onto the stage at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. In 2017, “Xi Jinping thought” – an articulation of his political philosophy – was “enshrined in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party”.
Bloomberg created the news organisation Bloomberg.
In October 2019, it reported:
But the unrest underscored growing uneasiness with Xi’s style of rule, with U.S. lawmakers threatening sanctions over the government’s handling of Hong Kong and China’s mass detention of ethnic Uighurs. Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council — controlled by the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party — issued a statement condemning China’s “one party dictatorship.”
China: the dictatorship without a dictator nearly all the Chinese never voted for.
Posted: 1st, December 2019 | In: Politicians | Comment
LibDems and Labour to rebrand in change of election strategy
Hot on the heels of news that the LibDems are ditching their dire policy to revoke Article 50 and thus ignore a democratic vote, news reaches us that Labour are also changing direction mid-way through their election campaign.
As the LibDems realise that what sounds good in a Remain-biased Parliament does not reflect the country’s mood, Labour are experiencing a chastening time as they take their disingenuous Brexit policies out of Islington.
The LibDems realise Revoke is an elitist and undemocratic policy. They now want a second referendum. Maybe.
Labour are now telling voters in Leave voting areas that their desire for a second EU referendum is not an attempt at “Remain by the back door”. Ha. What tosh. Of course it is. We’ve been watching them trying to stop Brexit for two years. It turns out that in face-to-face meetings on doorsteps, voters are not all slack-jawed deplorables in need of a re-eduction.
If Labour want a new argument, better they change tack and tell voters what they really want to hear: “Jeremy who?” They can then rebrand as something people will undoubtedly find less nuanced and racist than Labour, like the Not The Tory Party Party, or perhaps something more in tune with what they represent, such as the Blame The Jews Party?
Two weeks to go until the big vote – don’t forget to show them what you think of them.
Posted: 28th, November 2019 | In: Politicians | Comment
Jeremy Corbyn isolates British Jews
Oy vez, Je-rem-meee Corrrrrr-bin. The Labour Party’s leader’s been hit with those allegations of anti-Semitism again and challenged over his commitment to deal with bigots in his party’s ranks. It turns out that parroting the line about his life-long fight for anti-racism and how much he loathes racism and how Jew hatred is wrong (who knew?) isn’t convincing everyone. Andrew Neil posed a few questions on the matter in a Q&A that gave Jews hope that their lot is not being ignored, boosted the Tories and assured Prince Andrew that he is not the worst person in interviews.
As Nick Cohen says of Corbyn’s unwillingness to apologise to Jews: “The best is to admit its guilt and reform. Labour cannot because Labour’s leader and his supporters are so contaminated by racial prejudice they lack the moral capacity to change, or even admit to themselves the need to change.”
The papers lead with the horror show:
Only the Daily Star and Mirror don’t lead with Corbyn. The Star looks at two big Lottery winners. The Mirror goes for a story on the NHS, those Lottery winners, a recycling “disgrace”, and a chance to win a “giant Olaf toy”, as seen in the films Frozen and Frozen 2. No room for those pesky Jews:
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is one of the many upset by Labour’s inability to grasp the situation. His open letter is here in full:
The overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety. The question I am most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?
The Jewish community has… learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised… and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear. Yet, I ask myself: should the victims of racism be silenced by the fear of yet further vilification?
The way in which the leadership of the Labour Party has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud. It has left many decent Labour members and parliamentarians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed.
It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root in the Labour Party.
Many members of the Jewish community can hardly believe this is the same party that they proudly called their political home for more than a century.
How complicit in prejudice would a leader of Her Majesty’s opposition have to be in order to be considered unfit for high office? Would associations with those who have openly incited hatred against Jews be enough? Would describing as ‘friends’ those who endorse and even perpetrate the murder of Jews be enough? It seems not. What we do know from history is that what starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews.
It is not my place to tell any person how they should vote. I simply pose the following question: What will the result of this election say about the moral compass of our country? I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt – the very soul of our nation is at stake.
And Labour’s response? If you watched the video above, you will have heard Corbyn refuse to apologise. And worse still, as Cohen notes:
Reassurance comes there none. In its place, Labour released its race and faith manifesto this morning. Buried in it was a commitment to ‘enhance the powers and functions of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, making it truly independent’.
It sounded a sweet aspiration until you remembered that Labour is the first party since the neo-Nazi British National Party to be the subject of a formal investigation into institutional racism by the commission. The commission’s lawyers have reportedly received thousands of documents, some from disgusted former Labour staffers detailing how complaints about the party were dismissed or ignored. We know the commission’s lawyers spent hours ‘forensically examining the depressingly mountainous evidence of anti-Semitism within the Labour party’ before deciding that there is ‘an arguable case that Jewish people are being unlawfully discriminated against by Her Majesty’s Official Opposition.’
And the response from Corbyn and his clique is to descend into conspiracy theory and question the commission’s independence.
There was no process in Labour to deal with anti-semitism before Corbyn was made leader, says Corbyn… Well, you know, needs must. Brendan O’Neill asks who sees Neil’s interview, looks at Corbyn’s record on Jews – that mural, the wreath, those ‘friends’, the lesson in ‘English irony’, the Jewish MP hounded out of the party – and still votes for him?
Why do so many decent people want to serve under him as an MP? Vote in Labour moderates to save the Party, say the likes of Tony Blair, a man who claims to be appalled by the racism rife in the party he once led. Egregious balderdash. Vote Labour and you get Corbyn, a man who heads a group lacking in the moral capacity to admit grievous error and move on.
Too often accusations of racism in his Labour are recast as ‘smears’, part of a conspiracy to do him and his down, say the fans. Who runs this conspiracy? Well, who runs all the conspiracies that lead to all your problems. You know who, that’s who. Nudge-nudge. Wink-wink.
But fear not, Jews, because Corbyn knows racism exists in other places and will make sure the synagogues, shops and streets where Jews meet are well defended. But if they breach the Jewish school’s gates, these enemies possessed by a hate Corbyn can neither fathom nor identity, Jews can flee to Israel perhaps – the country Corbyn targets as the epitome of all that’s wrong with the world.
First they protect us for our own good. Then they block our escape route. Not again. Never again.
A vote for Corbyn’s Labour is a vote for racism. Please don’t do it.
Posted: 27th, November 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
The True Blue Cookery Book – cookies with Tories
The Truth Blue Cookery Book is is “an assembly of recipes contributed by the Conservative Members of Parliament and their wives”. No husbands can cook, or at least no husbands are prepared to share their recipes.
Published in 1977 in association with the Ruislip-Northwood Conservative Association, the people and recipes are a blast from a different age. In the same series, titles include: “Right Way To Make James”; “Deep Freeze Secret”; “Easy Wine And Country Drinks”; and “Choose A Wine”. Any wine. They all get you there, dear boy:
Spotter: Flashbak
Posted: 22nd, November 2019 | In: Books, Key Posts, Politicians, The Consumer | Comment
‘I am Jew’ : John Lydon slams Jeremy Corbyn and his ‘f***ing racist party’
Johnny Rotten is still swearing. The former Sex Pistol known as John Lydon has message for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party: “Just a quick mention to the @UKLabour Party… to @JeremyCorbyn and his f••king racist party…I am Jew!” John Lydon rock legend tells it how it is.
Via : @RabbiZvi
Posted: 8th, November 2019 | In: Celebrities, Politicians | Comment
A vote for Labour is a vote for racism
All those social justice warriors and anti-racist campaigns, can you just hold on a mo? Are you really voting for Labour and campaigning for Jeremy Corbyn to be PM? Is racism ok if it’s only the Jew on the receiving end? Is backing a party leader who is either an anti-Semite or a bloke who apparently acquiesces to anti-semitism ok if it means getting the train to run on time? Jew hatred is an evil. It leads to dead Jews.
Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906–December 4, 1975) understood this. In 1962, The New Yorker commissioned Ardent to report on the trail of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Who was the man who had murdered so many? Was he special? Was evil really so humdrum? In 1963, her report was published in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
Thanks to Hitler, anti-Semitism has been discredited, perhaps not forever but certainly for the time being, and this is not because the Jews have become more popular all of a sudden but because not only Ben-Gurion but most people have “realized that in our day the gas chamber and the soap factory are what anti-Semitism may lead to.”
That was then. Now Corbyn gives British Jews lessons in how to be English, likes anti-Semitic art and makes friends with those who would want them all dead. But he says he’s not a racist.
What he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.
But not to worry because Corbyn is an idealist – and the are the kind of people you an believe in:
An “idealist,” according to Eichmann’s notions, was not simply a man who believed in an “idea” or a man who did not steal or accept bribes, though these qualifications were indispensable. An “idealist” was a man who lived for his idea (hence he could not be a businessman, for example) and who was prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody. When he asserted during the police examination that he would have sent his own father to his death if that had been required, he did not mean merely to stress the extent to which he was under orders, and ready to obey them; he also meant to show what an “idealist” he had always been. Of course, the perfect “idealist,” like everybody else, had his personal feelings, but if they came into conflict with his “ideal,” he would never permit them to interfere with his actions.
Don’t vote for his Labour Party.
Posted: 6th, November 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Awful politicians and their 1972-1981 Doctor Who counterparts
Sarah Dempster has kickstarted a Twitter thread looking at “Awful politicians and their 1972-1981 Doctor Who counterparts”.
That last one cracked me up.
Posted: 22nd, October 2019 | In: Politicians | Comment
Harry Dunn: Invisible Anne Sacoolas shames America
Where is Anne Sacoolas? She’s no longer in the UK. She might still be checking her hair and make-up in a room at the White House, waiting to “ambush” Harry Dunn’s parents. But to the world at large, the middle-aged woman who legged it is invisible. We don’t see her. And we only hear her speak through a hired suit. Says Anne Sacoolas’ lawyer Amy Jeffress: “We are trying to handle the matter privately and look forward to hearing from the family or their representatives. Anne accepted the invitation to the White House with the hope that the family would meet and was disappointed.”
What more private than a televised big reveal? How about this, Anne and Amy: why doesn’t she just hop on a plane back to the UK and go and see Harry Dunn’s parents? Why doesn’t she call the British police? Why doesn’t Anne Sacoolas do the right thing?
Can it be that Anne Sacoolas, 42, is so valuable an asset to the US that the country cannot function without her? She returned to the United States under diplomatic immunity days after the crash which killed Harry, 19. She said she would not flee. But she did.
Meanwhile, Harry Dunn’s parents are behaving with admirable stoicism. “Meeting Anne Sacoolas in the White House yesterday wouldn’t have brought any healing to her or us,” says the teenager’s grieving mother. “We all accepted right from the off it was a tragic accident. She has to live with that”. Mrs Sacoolas should “do the right thing and set an example to her children… Come back to UK soil and face the justice system and then we can all sit in a room and then we can all start the healing process.”
Of course, that is to assume Anne Sacoolas’s children are not entitled diplo-brats learning the vital lesson that you can leave a foreign teenager dead and get away with it Scot-free if you’ve the right spouse and connections.
And get a load of the Sacoolas family’s representative on the world stage. Having laughed off the accident and attempted to turn the horror into a trite reality TV show, President Trump told media: “My meeting with the family, it was beautiful in a certain way. [Mrs Sacoolas] was in the room right out there, we met right here. I offered to bring the person in question in, and they weren’t ready for it… they wanted to meet with her and unfortunately when we had everybody together they decided not to meet. Perhaps they had lawyers involved by that time, I don’t know exactly.”
Such is the level of bullshit that shames the USA.
Posted: 17th, October 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Jewish MP Louise Ellman shows Jeremy Corbyn the red card for racism
MP Louise Ellman has quit the Labour Party. She says Jeremy Corbyn is “not fit” to become prime minister. The MP for Liverpool Riverside MP is “deeply troubled” by the “growth of anti-Semitism” in Labour under his leadership. She “can no longer advocate voting Labour when it risks Corbyn becoming PM”.
This is the same Corbyn who spends chunks of his day supporting hashtags to stop racism at the football. But away from the working-class oiks at the match, Corbyn is ok with Jew hatred when it’s in his gang. Although Corbyn and his tame dame say they can’t see it. And some of Jezza’s “friends” in Hamas (pledge: kill all Jews) doubtless agree with their assessment. But Ellman has heard and seen enough of the blatant and rife Jew hatred in Corbyn’s Labour.
“I believe that Jeremy Corbyn is not fit to serve as our prime minister,” she says. “With a looming general election and the possibility of him becoming prime minister, I feel I have to take a stand… Jewish members have been bullied, abused and driven out. A party that permits anti-Jewish racism to flourish cannot be called anti-racist. This is not compatible with the Labour Party’s values of equality, tolerance and respect for minorities. My values – traditional Labour values – have remained the same. It is Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, that has changed.”
Ellman has shown Corbyn the red card. Faced with relentless racism, the Jewish MP has walked off. The Labour crowd baits the Jews. But Corbyn can hear nothing wrong. Time for decent Labour supporters to leave the field of play. Time to show Corbyn and his apologists the red card.
Posted: 17th, October 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Harry Dunn: hating Anne Sacoolas, star of Trump’s reality TV trap
Anne Sacoolas only speaks through her lawyer. The suit likes to tell us how pained his client is. How sorry she is. How she is deeply affected by the “tragic accident” that left Harry Dunn dead. How she will do all she can to help British police in their investigation into the teenager’s death. CCTV showed a car travelling on the wrong side of the road when it collided with the innocent teenager on his motorbike.
Harry Dunn’s father, Tim Dunn, puts it better than Anne Sacoolas’s mouthpiece for hire: “She knew Harry had died, she had been told that, and what I really struggle to understand is if you knew that you have killed somebody, you think it is the right thing to flee the country.”
Sacoolas, a mother of three who reportedly had her 12-year-old son in the car when the crash happened, was spoken to by police the day after the crash. Did she, a US citizen, have any plans to leave the country? ‘No,’ came the reply. Her husband is a diplomat. Wary of the abused privilege of diplomatic immunity, police applied to the US embassy for a waiver to allow them to question her. The waiver was refused. And in any case, Anne Sacoolas had fled back to the US. She faces a lifetime of being wrong. But she’ll get over it. Her friends in the US system will help her all they can, in the same way the Mafia help and hide one of their own when faced with allegedly criminal actions.
Anne Sacoolas left behind a dead teenager and a family determined to get justice for the son they loved. Harry’s Dunn’s parents travelled to the US, where Anne Sacoolas is not immune from prosecution.
A moment of horror on a provincial road is international news. Foreign secretary, Dominic Raab urged the US to “do the right thing”. Boris Johnson said, “I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose.”
And so Harry Dunn’s parents found themselves in the White House. They met Donald Trump. And then things got nasty. Trump revealed Mrs Sacoolas was in a room next door. “I looked to my side and I saw at least three photographers ready to almost do a press call,” said family spokesman Radd Seiger. A meeting with grieving parents had been turned into a reality TV show. Sick. Callous. Cruel.
But Harry’s parents, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, did not plummet into the elephant trap Trump and Team Sacoolas had set for them. They felt “a little ambushed” by the offer.
And so to business. Would Trump order Sacoolas to face the music in the UK? No. Would he show the UK a level of respect a trusted ally deserves? No. Did Anne Sacoolas do the right thing? No. US national security adviser Robert O’Brien told the family that Anne Sacoolas “was never coming back” to the UK, Mr Seiger said.
But Ms Charles remains hopeful. She said after that White House meeting: “When [President Trump] held my hand, I gripped it a lot tighter and I was honest with him and just said… ‘if it was your son you would be doing the same as us’. He actually gripped my hand a little bit tighter and said ‘yes I would be’. And that’s when he said he would try and look at this from a different angle. I can only hope that he was sincere enough to consider doing that for us. He’s the one in control here, but we’re the ones in control of our situation as much as he can be – we still want justice for Harry and we will take it as far as we possibly can to ensure that that’s done. We do feel that we have done as much as we can at the moment.”
Harry Dunn’s family have been given the brush off. Trump has already acted as judge and jury, telling everyone that it was a “tragic accident” and that driving on the “wrong side of the road” is a hazard for all Americans in the UK. In the clip below, US officials laugh as Trump gives his judgement, finding Anne Sacoolas blameless. Hey, “it happens”, says Trump. His fellow Americans shrug and laugh. A teenager with all his life ahead of him is dead. The suspect legged it. C’est la vie. Shit happens:
Insult upon insult is being poured on this country by the US. The country has no intention of putting Anne Sacoolas on a plane to the UK. Anne Sacoolas won’t do it under her own agency. No dignity is being afforded to Harry Dunn and his family. No sense of duty compels Anne Sacoolas and her US protectors to do the right thing. She did not flee the scene in a blind panic. That much would be human and understandable. She was measured. The US has displayed a callous disregard for UK laws and process. And we should all be appalled.
Posted: 16th, October 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
How to understand Brexit through your morals
Remainer or Brexiteer? Right or Left? Straight or Kinked? Social psychologist Peter Ditto, of the University of California, Irvine, wanted to find out how our morals shape our politics. He put our fears and desires into five categories: harm, fairness, loyalty, tradition and purity.
Spotter: Aeon
Posted: 7th, October 2019 | In: Politicians | Comment
Jacob Rees-Mogg finds his Man Friday in the Times
To the Tory conference in the company of Times sketch writer Quentin Letts. He’s a-billin’ and a-cooin’ over Walter Softy-styled MP Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is catholic in his quotations. His speech on day one of this conference embraced Dryden, Disraeli, Daniel Defoe and Georgie Porgie.
One’s a rhyme about a feckless toff, the others are in turns: a poet, a politician and a writer. Daniel Defoe (writer) gave us Robinson Crusoe. But according to Letts, who given his adoration of Rees-Mogg could be cast as the MP’s Man Friday, he also wrote Gulliver’s Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts by Lemuel Gulliver.
Mr Rees-Mogg used Dryden to reflect on this violent rage among the left. “In friendship false, implacable in hate, resolved to ruin or to rule the state,” he said. Moving to Defoe, Britain was like Gulliver “tied down at Lilliput by a ragtag, motley collection of feeble, fickle, footling politicians, desperate to cancel the largest single democratic mandate in our history”.
Gulliver was written not by Defoe, but by Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift. As Swift put it: “Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style.”
Image: The King of Brobdingnag and Gulliver by James Gillray (1803), (satirising Napoleon Bonaparte and George III). Metropolitan Museum of Art
Posted: 2nd, October 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Set the language police on our MPs
Have you called the language police on Boris Johnson? You might need to wait a while because a few others could be getting the knock first. Johnson has been upbraided for saying the best way to honour Jo Cox, the MP murdered by a man who yelled “Britain first” as he killed her with a gun and a knife, is “to get Brexit done“. He will not stop using the words “surrender bill” to explain the act MPs pushed through to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
Labour MP Paula Sheriff demanded Johnson “moderate” his language and stop using the words “Surrender Act”. Referring to Jo Cox, she said: “Many of us in this place are subject to death threats and abuse every single day. Let me tell the prime minister that they often quote his words – surrender act, betrayal, traitor – and I, for one, am sick of it.” Johnson replied: “Mr Speaker, I have never heard such humbug in all my life.”
He’s pressing buttons. And many opponents are answering the call.
“The prime minister’s language and demeanour yesterday was nothing short of disgraceful,” opined Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. “Three years ago our colleague Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right activist shouting: ‘Britain First. This is for Britain. The language that politicians use matters – it has real consequences. To dismiss concerns from honourable members about the death threats they receive, and to dismiss concerns that the language used by the prime minister is being repeated in those death threats, is reprehensible.”
You readers may recall Corbyn using language to case British Jews as something foreign and lacking in British decency, and calling a group who want all Jews dead his “friends“.
Corbyn’s fellow Labour MPs are also hot on language. “The use of language yesterday and over the past few weeks, such as the surrender bill,” says Jess Philips, “such as invoking the war, such as betrayal and treachery, it has clearly been tested, and workshopped and worked up and entirely designed to inflame hatred and division. I get it, it works, it is working. It is not sincere, it is totally planned, it is completely and utterly a strategy designed by somebody to harm and cause hatred in our country.”
Previously:
And here’s the Shadow Chancellor:
And another of Corbyn’s colleagues:
And to ensure all things are even, here’s Ed Davey, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats:
Can we agree that at least some of the outrage at Johnson’s language is based on political expediency.
Posted: 30th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Class War Death Race: Labour summon Grim Reaper for Corbyn and the Queen
The Sunday Times leads with news that Jeremy Corbyn’s senior aide Andrew Fisher has resigned. Who? Fisher, we learn, was head of policy and author of the party’s last election manifesto. He’s now reportedly of the mind that Labour “will not win” a general election.
A memo apparently has him telling colleagues: “I no longer have faith we will succeed.” He says Corbyn’s team is compsite blend of a “lack of professionalism, competence and human decency”. He can no longer stomach their “blizzard of lies and excuses”. The paper also notes:
He also claimed “class war” has gripped the upper echelons of the party — a dig at Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s senior aide, who was educated at Winchester and Oxford.
The Guardian, on the other hand, looks over Fisher’s CV, writing:
The 40-year-old has been a controversial figure within the Labour movement. He was suspended from Labour in 2015 for apparently supporting a Class War candidate against Emily Benn, Tony Benn’s granddaughter, in the general election, and Benn called for him to be expelled. He also appeared in a video saying he had “very violent, bloody nightmares” about hitting former Labour cabinet minister James Purnell.
Confused?
The Mirror is taking names?
Sources say only seven people had obtained the bombshell memo before it was leaked to the Sunday Times.
And spinning:
Multiple Labour sources confirmed Mr Fisher’s resignation, saying he still remained loyal to Mr Corbyn personally.
Nothing screams loyalty more than a resignation. But he did it to be loyal – honest:
A more anodyne statement was later circulated in Mr Fisher’s name saying he would resign by the end of the year to spend more time with his young family.
The Sun tells its readers:
“It comes amid rumours that the Labour boss himself, who is now 70, could quit because he’s under “incredible pressure”.
And the Times notes:
Sources say Milne and Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s gatekeeper, are also concerned Corbyn might be forced to stand down after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) investigation into whether Labour is institutionally anti-semitic.
The EHRC has emails that, it is claimed, will cause resignations among Corbyn’s closest aides.
“You’d be rationally frightened of a 70-year-old man dropping down dead,” said an ally. “But the more rational fear is that only those people know what the EHRC has. When that report comes out they are all finished. It’s about planning for what happens if they get decapitated.”
Blame the Jews, then. And ditch Queen, say Labour members in YouGov poll
Form an orderly queue at the guillotines – the Sunday Times also reports: “Ditch Queen, say Labour members in YouGov poll.”
Posted: 22nd, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Royal Family | Comment
David Cameron: the cannabis years
In 2007, it was reported that David Cameron had smoked cannabis in 1982, when the future Prime Minister and then leader of the Conservative Party was a 15 years old pupil at Eton College. The incident led to the expulsion of seven of Cameron’s peers. He was merely gated.
When asked if he’d taken illegal drugs whilst at Oxford University, Cameron told the Observer: “I had a normal university experience.” Prodded he added: “‘There were things I did as a student that I don’t think I should talk about now that I am a politician.”
That’s not to say they are irrelevant. In 2007, Cameron told media: “If it can be proved that there are real benefits, medicinal benefits and scientific evidence for it, I would be relaxed about that. My decision would be to licence it if it could be proved to have benefits.”
Fast forward to this week and Cameron is plugging his memoirs. When he went to boarding school his mum coped by “taking large dose of Valium”.
A few friends had started getting hold of cannabis. In those days it was mostly in the form of hash, typically dark brown and crumbly, although occasionally some “Red Leb”, supposedly from the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, would show up. Instead of popping behind the school theatre for a fag, we started going for a joint.
Not everyone is a fortunate as Cameron. If your caught with cannabis you can get a formal (recorded) warning and a police caution. You may also be referred to the police Youth Diversion Scheme. And Cameron believes firmly in upholding the law, stating when eh was PM:
This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated…If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment”
Unless you’re connected…
Posted: 19th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment
Punching low down : The Guardian attacks David Cameron over the loss of his child
The Guardian’s view on David Cameron’s memoirs was widely read for all the wrong reasons. For those of you who missed the toxicity, this is the cut that spread like a virus over the web. The background to the editorial sniping at Cameron’s “privileged pain” is that the former Prime Minister’s son, Ivan, died in 2009 at the age of six.
Revolting stuff.
Anoosh Chakelian assesses the nastiness for the New Statesman, the Left wing political magazine that once gave full throat to “a Kosher Conspiracy” and then like many Labour Party supporters wonders how anti-Semitism went mainstream. The NS apologised for that bigotry. And the Guardian has apologised for its:
“The original version of an editorial posted online yesterday fell far short of our standards,” a spokesperson for the paper has commented. “It was changed significantly within two hours, and we apologise completely.”
Says Chakelian:
Punching up has turned into punching anyone you disagree with, and it’s everywhere – normalising online poison that is bound to spill over into mainstream formats like the Guardian’s editorial pages.
In an extract of his memoirs published in the Sunday Times, Cameron notes: “Nothing, absolutely nothing, can prepare you for the reality of losing your darling boy in this way. It was as if the world stopped turning.”
His wife Samantha told the Times in 2017 her son’s death “overshadowed everything” and rendered the outside world “meaningless”. “Like anyone else in my situation, I just kept going. You have to deal with it, because you have no choice.”
Posted: 17th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Donald Trump turns Congress blue giving three f***s at City Airport
Members of US Congress used swear words such as “asshole” , “fuck”, “shit” and “bitch” 1,900 times on Twitter in 2019. That’s a tenfold rise on 2016 – before Trump’s election, the number was 193.
Can we blame Donald “grab ’em by the pussy” Trump for the coarsening of debate? What about airport bookshops?
Nick Gibb, the schools minister, is upset that “three of the top 10 ‘Airport Exclusive’ books at London City WH Smith have ‘fuck’ in the title.”
Lamentable stuff – today’s politicians are just so unimaginative:
Posted: 13th, September 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Brexit madness: Labour and SNP unite to keep ‘tin-pot dictator’ in Number 10
So much for Boris Johnson’s being a “tin-pot dictator“, as Nicola Sturgeon First minister of Scotland, labelled him. The SNP, the party she leads in Scotland, has rejected his call for a General Election. The SNP, Labour, the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru will unite against the government or abstain in Monday’s vote on whether to hold a snap poll.
Just when you think you’re getting some movement – finally – on the Brexit referendum, the MPs block it.
Ways to ‘defend democracy”:
- Shut ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ to anyone who vote leave (see LibDems)
- Call for another referendum to decide things ‘once and for all’
- Ignore the vote
Posted: 6th, September 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
