Politicians Category
Politicans and world leaders making news and in the news, and spouting hot air
Going Prorogue – MPs fight to be the least democratic
The Government’s decision to prorogue parliament means MPs have less time to debate Brexit before the UK is legally obliged to leave the EU on October 31 – with or without a deal. Between three and eight parliamentary days will be lost. A parliamentary session usually lasts for one year but the current one has been going on for two years. The new session is hailed by the Queen’s Speech in which Her Maj lets us know the Government’s plans. Boris Johnson’s move is a high-wire act to achieve Brexit by giving MPs less time to block no deal, topple the government via a vote of ‘no confidence’ and keep kicking Brexit into the long grass with the aim of stopping it. The UK was supposed to leave the EU on 29 March. MPs rejected the deal negotiated with the EU three times. So the deadline was extended until 31 October.
Many protesting against a “coup” are more than happy to support a coup against democracy when the vote went against them. People like Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson. She tweets:
By suspending Parliament to force through a No Deal, Boris Johnson and the Government would remove the voice of the people. It is a dangerous and unacceptable course of action which the @LibDems will strongly oppose.
Noble stuff. the problem is that she also says she would do “whatever it takes to stop Brexit” and when she would implement Brexit in Parliament if voters backed it again in a second referendum replied: “No, because I was elected on a firm manifesto pledge for Scotland’s pledge in the UK and Britain’s place in the European Union and that’s what Liberal Democrats are here to do. That is the mandate that we have.”
Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle is upset by Johnson’s entirely legal move. He tells the Mirror: “If the government tries to drive no deal through by stopping parliament from sitting, we cannot just rely on the courts and parliamentary process. We need a mass movement of resistance, with marches, civil disobedience and protests in every village, town and city of this country.”
And what about Jeremy Corbyn, a man who lead by asking what others would do and then does nothing? He’s written to the Queen asking for her to stop it all. How’s that for sticking it to the elites?
Posted: 29th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Boris Johnson, Remainers or democracy?
Lots of noise about Boris Johnson checking the legalities of closing down parliament for five weeks from early September to mid-October. The buzzword is “prorogue”.
If the democratic chamber is muzzled, Johnson can get on with his Brexit plans to ‘do or die” on October 31. Brexit is all.
Which makes you wonder what the point of parliament is? If it is to uphold and enact the will of the electorate, then MPs’ (around 70% of whom voted Remain in the EU against 48% of the people) continued blocks on Brexit are anti-democratic. If parliament exits to serve the Government, then parliament is equally corrupt.
Posted: 26th, August 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Chinese fakery : goods rebranded ‘Made In Vietnam’
Last week US President Donald Trump pledged a hike in tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. Trump accuses China of bad trading practices and intellectual property theft. USA Today has news of a Chinese work-around:
“Dozens” of products have been identified, Hoang Thi Thuy, a Vietnamese Customs Department official, told state-run media, and goods like textiles, fishery products, agricultural products, steel, aluminum, and processed wooden products were most vulnerable to the fraud.
Vietnamese state media noted that in 2017, the Customs Department exposed a company called INTERWYSE for trying to rebrand 600 Chinese-made speakers and phone chargers with a “Made in Vietnam” label.
“It will sabotage Vietnamese brands and products and it will also affect consumers. We could even get tariff retribution from other countries, and if that happens, it will hurt our economy,” Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh told the Vietnamese National Assembly last week.
Vietnam does not have any legal requirements for certification of the “Made in Vietnam” label. The country’s current regulations require that goods be produced partly or completely in Vietnam, but does not provide a mechanism for determining the veracity of the label.
What price that big US trade deal Trump’s promising for a post-Brexit UK features American goods as ‘Made in Britain’?
Posted: 26th, August 2019 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment
Boris Johnson : the 30-day spin
When Boris Johnson met German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the outcome was, depending on your spin, a pledge to do a Brexit deal in 30 days or a threat to end it all after just 30 days. The backstop – the hope of avoiding a hard Irish border – can be re-negotiated. Maybe.
But as big as the story of politicking is, the remarkable bit is the realisation that even the Labour supporting Mirror now calls the Prime Minister ‘Boris’ and leads with an image of him looking jovial.
The Daily Express calls Merkel’s move “a major concession; The Sun says it is an “opportunity”. The i says Merkel has given “orders”. The Daily Telegraph says the PM has scored “a victory”. The Mail says Johnson could be “on the brink of a triumphant breakthrough”. The Guardian says Merkel has put “the responsibility for the UK crashing out of the EU firmly at the prime minister’s door”. The Financial Times hears the leader of German parliament’s foreign affairs committee says Johnson is using Merkel to show the British he had tried everything, so he could then blame EU when it all goes wrong.
Such is the spin.
Posted: 22nd, August 2019 | In: News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
Brexit: melting London saved by a new Berlin airlift
Can private jets save us from Brexit? “Operation Yellowhammer”, the super-secret, highly confidential document prepared by Her Majesty’s civil service that we’ve all seen in the Sunday Times outlines the horrors of now-deal Brexit. Who leaked documents, we cannot say. But we do know that after a no-deal Brexit the country will experience a “three-month meltdown”. The New York Sun looks to the skies and sees hope glinting in the vanishing sun:
..it turns out that a no-deal Brexit could coincide almost exactly with the 70th anniversary of the last time an ally like the United Kingdom was cut off from vital supplies sourced from other parts of Europe — only to be rescued by American and British grit. We speak of the Berlin Airlift that triumphed on September 30, 1949.
Back to the future!
Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
How to apologise for Brexit
Why are public figures so bad at apologising? Brexit is a mess. Are we leaving? Why can’t politicians just own up and say: we were utterly shocked by the referendum result and are still reeling from it; We want to stop it because the EU is an umbrella beneath which we can hide; I love chlorinated chicken.
Jay Hendricks has a guide to getting it right:
- Own up to the mistake. Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
- Focus on your emotions, not how you hurt someone else. Say how bad you feel about screwing up.
- Show how your mistake was an exception to the rule. You’re a great, thoughtful person who temporarily lapsed.
- Promise improvement and show what you’re going to do to fix any remaining problems.
Image: Operation Black Vote launched this dire campaign to encourage people from ethnic minorities to register and vote in the EU referendum.
Posted: 20th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton exhale : Jeffrey Epstein is dead
Convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his New York prison cell. He was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Suicide? So they say. But he was on suicide watch, reportedly, after an alleged attempted suicide attempt last month. So how did he give everyone the slip?
Super-rich Epstein cultivated powerful friends, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew. And now he’s dead.
Conspiracy theorists – away you go.
Posted: 10th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Royal Family | Comment
Multi-millionaire Jeremy Corbyn attacks Boris Johnson’s ‘Millionaire Friends’
Jeremy Corbyn never made it to the big Google climate shindig. As a man with an estimated net worth of £3million, chances are he wasn’t rich enough to afford a private jet and thus matter. As the right sort of stinking rich attempt to buy their way into Heaven by offsetting carbon and preaching from an exclusive, sun-kissed holiday spot, Corbyn was busy bashing the wrong sort of stinking rich. The first version of a recent video lambasted Boris Johnson’s millionaire friends. But Jez came across as a bit self-hating. So he changed it to Boris’s ‘billionaire’ friends.
And he got that wrong, too.
A 2016 investigation by Greenpeace revealed that some of the biggest recipients of EU grants that year included Queen Elizabeth (£557,707) and the UK’s youngest billionaire, the Duke of Westminster (£437,434). Other aristocrats earning hundreds of thousands of pounds from the EU – just because they own farmland – included the Earl of Moray and the Earl of Plymouth. Billionaire Brexiteer Sir James Dyson was also among the top 100 recipients of EU farm money.
Where there’s muck, there’s gold.
PS: Corbyn’s billionaire mates are the good sort.
According to a Forbes article in 2015, Chavez was worth an “estimated $2 billion at the time of his death [in 2013]. It is not known how many trees he planted.
Posted: 9th, August 2019 | In: Money, News, Politicians | Comment
Meanwhile at the Democratic Socialists of America convention…
To the Democratic Socialists of America at their convention in Atlanta. This is not a parody (I think):
Posted: 5th, August 2019 | In: Politicians | Comment
The VIP paedohile witch-hunt: when belief is enough to damn the innocent
We enjoy digging up the dead to beat them with sticks for our moral gratification, but what about apologising to them? Carl Beech, aka the convicted paedophile and fantasist ‘Nick’ who titillated the media and excited the police with his “credible and true” stories of VIP paedos murdering children, is not dead. He’s in jail. But what about apologising to Ted Heath or Leon Brittan, both falsely accused of depraved crimes?
Nicholas Bramall, son of another man faslely accused, 95-year-old Field Marshal Lord Bramall, wants Tom Watson, the Labour deputy leader who helped to publicise and called for an investigation into Beech’s claims, to apologise.
Mr Bramall told Today on BBC Radio 4: “I’m not sure how much he was actually involved, particularly with my father’s case. He certainly added fuel to the flames of this whole business. I think any apology would be the right thing to do.” Watson never named Bramall. He claimed in parliament that there was “clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10”.
The investigation is travesty. A police fore looking to restore credibility in light of their failings over Jimmy Savile, betrayed evidence-based policing.
Posted: 26th, July 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Nick lied and lied and lied – biased police and desperate MPs believed every word as ‘credible and true’
They got him in the end. No, not the VIP paedophile killing children for kicks. They got the whistleblower, the man known in the tabloids somewhat appropriately as ”Nick’. Once the police had stopped treating his words as “credible and true”, they nicked him. And now Carl Beech, aka ‘Nick’, has been found guilty of 12 charges of perverting the course of justice and one charge of fraud.
The matter of why this criminal’s tosh was treated as fact should lead to heads rolling. The State created Operation Midland (cost: £2million) to investigate Beech’s claims. Innocent people had their names dragged through the gutter. Dead bodies were dug up and beaten with sticks. Why and how that came to be should worry us all.
No word yet on the Met’s detective superintendent Kenny McDonald who with all the circumspection of a dog sat by a steaming turd told us: “Nick has been spoken to by experienced officers from the child-abuse team and from the murder-investigation team and they and I believe that what Nick is saying is credible and true.” In what free country is what a copper believes worth anything without the evidence to support it?
In what free country worth a damn does a leading politician, in this instance deputy leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson, hear Nick’s unsubstantiated claims and call the dead and entirely innocent former Conservative MP Leon Britton “as close to evil as any human being can get”? On a par with Hitler, Stalin or the Yorkshire Ripper. Britton was that bad. Watson apologised for his choice of language. But the craven opportunism of a police force driven by self-serving PR and desperate politicians who see dead kids (real and imagined) as an opportunity to showcase their own morals is sick.
At Newcastle Crown Court, Beech, a convicted paedophile and former school governor who’d secretly filmed one of his son’s pals using the toilet at his house – all so predictable, right? – was finally found out.
Now what should we do with his enablers?
Posted: 23rd, July 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
That Labour manifesto in full : blame the Jews
The tweet was a smear, of course. “There we have it folks, proof if any was needed that the Labour Party IS institutionally racist and will be until Corbyn and his cronies go #EnoughIsEnough” was not written by a Labour Party activist awoken to the fact that the Party supports Jew hatred, advocates Jew hatred and acquiesces to Jew hatred. It was the view of a hacker. And once the NEC, NCC, NKVD and whatever panels and groups Labour uses to process matters via Twitter has investigated to the full, someone will be blamed – very possibly the Jews.
The BBC TV investigation into the Party’s ‘little problem’ proved only that you know who are behind utterly unwarranted attacks on a Labour Party led by a man who likes anti-semitic murals, endorses books alleging European finance is controlled by “men of a single and peculiar race” (“brilliant” – J. Corbyn five stars one big yellow star stitched on to your death camp clothing), pays tribute to Jew killers, counts a group who want to see all Jews dead as his “friends“, worked for Iranian state television, which peddles anti-Israeli conspiracy theories, and tells British Jews they are something other than British.
“This account was briefly hacked. It has now been re-secured,” says Labour.
As Labour fights to control the media (chiefly to regain control of it’s twitter account and the biased BBC from you know who), the Equality and Human Rights Commission continues its investigation into whether Labour has “unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish”. To which Labour might well argue: can we change the law which as everyone knows is run by you know who.
Posted: 12th, July 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
John Rhys-Davies is Adam Ant on Question Time
For those of you missed John Rhys-Davies’s performance on the BBC’s politics as circus show Question Time last night, here is the man himself channeling the great Adam Ant. Green MP Caroline Lucas is his audience of one:
Oh Woman, no Cry…. Oooooh Woman!!!!! no cry:
Note: John Rhys-Davies is (looks at web) an actor.
Posted: 26th, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, TV & Radio | Comment
Labour Group linked to John McDonnell says Jewish group ‘stabbed Labour in the back’
An article on the website for the ‘Labour Representation Committee’ (LRC) – Honorary President: John McDonnell, the current shadow chancellor – appears beneath the headline: “JLM Stabs Labour in the Back.” JLM is the Jewish Labour Movement. This week the JLM voted to pass a motion of no confidence in Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over the party’s handling of anti-Semitism. They says he is unfit to be Prime Minister.
The LRC states its mission: “The task for today’s LRC, founded in 2004, is to fight for power within the Labour Party and trade unions and to appeal to the tens of thousands who, during the Tony Blair years, turned away from our party in disillusion and despair.”
The LRC article says the JLM has “declared war on Labour”. The JLM “want the Tories to win”. They aim to “feed the allegations of ‘institutional antisemitism’ against Labour, and as such has been eagerly gobbled up by the Tory press”. It spots an article that “points the finger at Israeli intelligence in helping to refound the dormant JLM”. It ends: “They are stabbing us in the back. That is insupportable. The JLM must be disaffiliated from Labour as soon as possible.”
JLM Vice-Chair Joe Goldberg tells the Jewish Chronicle: “This article makes it clear that they will blame Jews for any failure at the ballot box, further enabling racism towards Jews. The language of ‘betray’ and ‘backstabbing’ are dogwhistles to antisemitism that Jews have experienced too many times to monstrous effect… They continue to deny and obfuscate the scale of anti-Jewish racism within the Labour Party, and attack Jews for standing up to racism, citing conspiracists and fake news as their evidence. Yet the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, continues as its president. The Labour Party cannot in good faith claim to be acting against antisemitism and whilst its leadership in the shadow cabinet and the NEC associate themselves with this organisation.”
Nasty stuff.
The LRC website says it’s affiliated to the sensitive Fire Brigades union. Interesting to hear if they have anything to say on this.
Posted: 10th, April 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Shami Chakrabarti to Jews: don’t panic Corbyn won’t be leader forever
Shami Chakrabarti, given a seat in the House of Lords and made a Dame after telling us there is no anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, was on the telly this morning telling the Jewish Labour Movement they should remain in Labour because Jeremy Corbyn “won’t be the leader forever”. True. But have you see who they want to follow him?
Raus!
“My plea to the Jewish Labour Movement is to stay in the Labour movement and to tackle racism together, not to personalise it and make it about Jeremy Corbyn, because he is one person and he won’t be leader forever.”
You can tackle racism with the rest of Labour just as soon as, er, the leader Shami fully supports and wants to govern the nation has gone. In the meanwhile, your presence in Labour is an endorsement of the Party accused of being rife with Jew hatred.
Don’t worry, turkeys, says the turkey farmer looking at his full Christmas order book, next year we’ll all be vegans and things will be great.
Time for Jexit.
Posted: 7th, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, Politicians | Comment
Brexit: Hurrah for Corbyn’s “Marxist, antisemite-led government”
Brexit has coughed up all manner of MPs whose names are new to many of us. Meet Caroline Johnson, Tory MP for Sleaford and North Hykeham since the by-election on 8 December 2016. She says Theresa May talking Brexit with Jeremy Corbyn represents “ushering in a Marxist, anti-semite led government”. Just as Rowan Atkinson is always a “rubber-faced comedian” and gauntlets are always tossed down, will Corbyn be forever known as “the anti-semitic Labour leader”? And for how many people will Jew hatred be the hook that finally convinces them Communism is the right way?
The New Statesman says Johnson’s surmising of Corbyn’s politics offers no comment on the man. It simply “reflects just how weak a hold Downing Street has on party discipline”. The magazine considers the comment unworthy of investigation.
May duly explained her current position:
“When we suffered a chemical weapons attack on the streets of Salisbury, it was me as Prime Minister, this government that stood up against the perpetrators of that attack. [Mr Corbyn] said he’d prefer to believe Vladimir Putin than our own security agencies. That is not the place of somebody that should be prime minister… I want to ensure that we deliver Brexit, I want to ensure that we do it in an orderly way, without fighting European elections. But to do that we need to find a way of this House agreeing the Withdrawal Agreement and agreeing the way forward. And it is on that basis that I have been sitting down with members across the House and will continue to do so in order to ensure that we can find a way forward that this House can support.”
The Times quotes one “veteran Tory MP” who says Mrs May is isolated from mainstream party opinion: “She’s like a prisoner on death row, getting another two-week reprieve. The truth is she is no longer in control of events.”
May’s on Death Row, then, although the date of her execution is not yet fixed. Like racing snails, would-be Tory leaders jockey for position. See the person not the MP, goes the message. But whoever commissioned Parliament to be televised, and created entire channels for the purpose, should have known that familiarity breeds contempt. The smart move is to hand the show to Simon Cowell. Cut-away shots of the public galleries, where an emotionally corralling mix of the physically handicapped, telegenic and whooping can direct us at home to which way our sympathies should bend.
“I cried when Boyzone, split up,” says one audience member, before turning to Theresa May and asking “How do you feel?”
Posted: 4th, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Brexit: tabloids hail detectives May and Corbyn
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn will join forces to solve Brexit, forming the kind of made-for-ITV drama partnership mouth breathers will love. In episode one of Chalk ‘n’ Cheese / Marx and Narks / Remain & Remain we see the intrepid duo meeting for “national unity” talks. The tabloids preview the show:
The Sun (front page): “PM TO CORBYN: HELLLLPP!!” May’s locked in a room with scented Liam Fox and Geoffrey Cox’s Voice of God. Can Corbyn get into Number 10? “After 7 hours of Cabinet lockdown, May’s gone soft over Brexit mess,” says the Sun. May’s “bright idea” is to think Corbyn can help. His face appears superimposed on a screw-in lightbulb, evoking the time the Sun did the same to then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, telling readers to turn the lights off if he got into power. Kinnock lost that time but soon trotted off to a massive salary in Brussels, from where he and his ilk will be soon controlling the UK post-Brexit. Votes, who needs ’em?
But in Brexit terms it’s earth hour, says the Metro. The lightbulbs are about to go out across the UK if a deal with the EU cannot be done. Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill says a no-deal Brexit will “make the country less safe, cause food prices to rise by ten per cent and lead to a recession”.
Daily Mail (front page): “May delays Brexit AGAIN and kills off No Deal — Boris leads Tory fury as Corbyn invited to ‘compromise’ talks”. The talks have been compromised! If you don’t know which side the Mail is on get a load of the billing: only Boris Johnson is on first-name terms with the paper’s readership. Johnson arrives on page 2 to accuse “Mrs May of betrayal”. But Michael Gove backs May. He backs lots of things and so long as you don’t back into him, all is good.
Johnson is all over page 6: “You’ve handed Brexit deal to Corbyn, bitter Boris tells May.” He’ll vote against any deal with the Labour leader. One page on and Henry Deedes gives his verdict, employing language familiar to anyone who spends afternoons chemically coshed in front of reruns of the BBC’s Antiques Road Trip and howls with laughter at Readers’ Digest ‘Life’s Like That’ anecdotes.
Daily Mirror (front page): “HELP ME JEREMY,” says a “despairing Theresa May”. Jeremy will rescue things. “Jezza says he’ll talk”. But wait a moment. Might it be a trap?
Page 5: Jason Beattie, who writes beneath the marvellous title “head of politics”, says Corbyn is “well aware he’s being lined up for a fall”. “To keep his party together his minimum request should be for a customs union and a second referendum,” he advises. Will May agree to Remain? Will her successor rip-up any agreement? Will Brexit detectives Fudgeit and Snubs get to the bottom of things?
Daily Express (front page): “It’s Time For National Unity…Over To You Mr Corbyn.” Mr.. Not just ‘Corbyn’. By page four the language is back to basics. The Express phone poll asks: “Should Corbyn be entrusted with final Brexit deal?” That’s the Brexit-supporting Express asking its readers to spend 50p on a referendum that may carry less weight than, well, the referendum in which 17.4 millions of voted to leave.
Vote now and vote often.
Posted: 3rd, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
Brexit: Theresa May begs EU for an extension so they can give Remain more chance to win the day
Theresa May is to beg the EU for an extension to the latest Brexit deadline. She wants to “break the logjam” in Parliament. The majority of us have no such troubles having voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU. But MPs know better. So there’s lots of dead wood jostling for position in muddy waters by the Thames.
May wants any extension to be “as short as possible”. We were due to leave the EU last week. But the MPs didn’t like that. So we stayed. She now wants us to decide things before 22 May so the UK does not have to take part in European elections. And we need to get a wiggle on because the current extension expires on April 12. If nothing is sorted and the EU doesn’t grant us an extension, we leave without a deal.
“This is a difficult time for everyone. Passions are running high on all sides of the argument,” says May, “but we can and must find the compromises that will deliver what the British people voted for.”
Leave. We voted to leave. Pretty simple.
She continued: “This is a decisive moment in the story of these islands and it requires national unity to deliver the national interest.”
We voted to Leave. But we won’t get what we want. May says she will talk with Jeremy Corby, a leaver who became a Remainer. This week the Labour leader whipped his MPs to vote for the ‘Common Market 2.0’ option of remaining in the EU Customs Union and Single Market.
So much for Brexit.
Posted: 2nd, April 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
Brexit: Tory leadership hopefuls duck indicative votes
How’s this for leadership: of the four Brexit-style options chosen by the Speaker to be voted on later tonight, not one was suggested by any potential Tory leader. Two motions put forward by Tory MPs are up for grabs, but neither are from leadership hopefuls and both amount to a remain vote: avuncular Ken Clark wants “a permanent and comprehensive UK-wide customs union with the EU”; and Nick Boles, the one with the looks of the head of year who cycles to work at an underperforming county prep school, wants the UK to remain part of the EU single market.
Theresa May has agreed to leave No. 10. So you’d think the likes of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson would have seized the moment to propose their Brexit solutions and win the country, the day and the new house. But both of them only run in circles around the park: Gove on hairless, pale legs and clutching a mobile phone like he’s waiting for his wife to ask him if he bought the right sort of cherry tomatoes (clue: he forgot last time); and the priapic Johnson dressed in clothes picked for their ghastliness in the hope that any secretary, maid or lap-dancer within breathing distance and possessed of a muon of fashion nous will order him to get them off.
Nothing too from Amber Ruud or Dominic Raaaaaaab or Sajid Javid or Andrea Leadsom or David Davis or Jeremy Hunt. But special mention must go to John Baron, the Conservative MP who put forward not one but two ideas for indicative votes, both rejected by the Speaker. Can Baron be the next Tory leader? He’s one more rejection away from being every bit as successful as Theresa May. If he campaigns for the Tory leadership vote in a field of one, as May did, the job’s his. How’s that for democracy?
Vote now and vote often. And keep voting until you indicate something MPs approve of and can make happen.
Posted: 1st, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Brexit: Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie predicted it all (video)
Brexit negotiations were written by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie:
Meanwhile… Jacob Rees-Mogg is on Newsnight:
PS: Anyone got any tapes of Alas Smith And Jones so we can know what Tusk and Junker talk about?
Posted: 1st, April 2019 | In: Key Posts, Politicians, TV & Radio | Comment
Brexit protest: five arrests outside, 184 ‘lying’ MPs escape inside
The newspapers mostly ignore yesterday’s Brexit rally outside Parliament. Thousands of Leave supporters gathered at Westminster on the day the UK was scheduled by law to leave the EU. But laws are made to be mangled in Parliament. Hours earlier 184 MPs had voted in favour of revoking Article 50. So we got very little.
Only three newspapers lead with the crowds. The i (team: Remain) presents a picture of confrontation. There were five arrests for allegedly being: drunk and disorderly; wanted in connection with an offence in Hertfordshire; assaulting a police officer; assault (x2). “Brexit march,” says the Standard’s (Remain) headline, “five arrests as Leave supporters clash with police in Westminster.” Is five a lot? How many constitutes a rebellion? It’s enough for the paper’s main story on the protest. If you fear Leave voters and seek to portray them as the products of a Tommy Robinson dry toss, then five typifies the 17.4 million of us who to voted to leave in a free and fair vote approved by all MPs, the 184 anti-democrats included.
In a liberal democracy, a free and open society needs tense debate and verbal conflict to survive. Suppression is wrong and foolish. Rational argument and public opinion are lifeblood. The vote is all most of us have to express out views. Reject the vote and give the intolerant a foothold.
So those five arrests to breaching the limits of society’s tolerance. How do five arrests compare to the number of suspects pinched at the pro-Remain march staged last October? The Guardian told us at the very end of an article headlined “Huge crowd turns out in London to demand a ‘people’s vote’ on Brexit”: “A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said they were not aware of any disorder nor were there any significant arrests.” Number? Dunno. But in July 2018, police arrested six anti-Trump protesters at a protest. Six might be significant.
The Express (Leave) sees the people behaving peacefully.
The Telegraph (Leave) evokes the spirit of Churchill.
Last week, MPs rejected 8 alternative solutions for Brexit. They then rejected Theresa May’s deal for the third time. No arrests have been made. But we can agree on one: the country is split not because the EU inspires and destroys, rather because it’s so utterly mediocre, nebulous and dull. How bothered are you Britishers about staying in the EU: 50-50. Meh.
Posted: 30th, March 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
EU ends speeding, driverless cars for everyone – car insurance is dead
The EU plans to introduce technology to limit the speed of vehicles sold in Europe from 2022. “Every year, 25,000 people lose their lives on our roads,” says EU Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska. “The vast majority of these accidents are caused by human error. With the new advanced safety features that will become mandatory, we can have the same kind of impact as when safety belts were first introduced.” UK charity Brake says speed is a contributory factor in about a quarter of all fatal crashes. There were 26,610 people killed or seriously injured on British roads in the year ending June 2018.
No word yet on whether limiters will be fitted to police cars and other emergency vehicles. But the Daily Express cites the move as evidence that EU chiefs are “STILL meddling in British affairs”. The Mirror hails it as “the end of speeding”.
The other way to end speeding is to end speed limits, like on sections of Germany’s autobahns. Recent proposed speed limit enforcements over there were slammed as going “against all common sense” by Minister of Transportation Andrews Scheuer. The EU versus Germany – discuss.
The upshot of this legislation is to hasten moves towards driverless trucks, vans and cars. When people are not in control of their vehicles, we can do away with driver insurance. As Adrian Wooldridge noted:
When people are no longer in control of their cars they will not need driver insurance—so goodbye to motor insurers and brokers. Traffic accidents now cause about 2m hospital visits a year in America alone, so autonomous vehicles will mean much less work for emergency rooms and orthopaedic wards. Roads will need fewer signs, signals, guard rails and other features designed for the human driver; their makers will lose business too. When commuters can work, rest or play while the car steers itself, longer commutes will become more bearable, the suburbs will spread even farther and house prices in the sticks will rise. When self-driving cars can ferry children to and from school, more mothers may be freed to re-enter the workforce. The popularity of the country pub, which has been undermined by strict drink-driving laws, may be revived. And so on.
Why buy a car when you can take out a subscription to one? But will your vehicle be able to pass the Turing Test – you want to hear your taxi driver’s opinions on Brexit, don’t you? Or is humanity obsolete?
“People are lashing out justifiably,” said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.” He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs — workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike.
“There’s a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart,” Mr. Rushkoff said. “Just think about the humans inside these vehicles, who are essentially training the artificial intelligence that will replace them.”
You’re hermetically sealed inside a box and you’ve given Google the keys. They don’t just know where you’ve been on the web – they know every physical move you’ve made, too. The freedom of the open road is a thing of the past. So, dude, where’s my flying car..?
Posted: 27th, March 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians, Technology | Comment
Uri Gellar : he can’t save Michael Jackson but he can stop Brexit
Renowned spoon bender Uri Geller says he can stop Brexit with the power of this mind – just as he’s stopped Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister.
Geller’s powers are mighty but, alas, he has been unable to prevent his old mucker Michael Jackson from being dug up and beaten with sticks:
Jean-Claude Junker dines with the long spoon.
Posted: 23rd, March 2019 | In: Celebrities, Politicians, Strange But True | Comment
After Christchurch: Don’t worry Jacinda the killer’s name will soon be forgotten
When fans of West Ham United taunt Spurs’ ‘Yid Army’ with the chant ‘He’s coming for you, he’s coming for you, we won’t say his name, but he’s coming for you’ we know they mean Hitler. At first glance that ‘he’ could refer to any number of anti-Semites, but the song often comes with a hissing sound supposed to evoke the sound of Nazi gas ovens. It’s Hitler. Move on.
And we know the name of another racist mass murderer, the man who slaughtered Muslims as they prayed in Christchurch, New Zealand. But should we say it? The country’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern told her parliament: “He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless.”
Right now the killer’s name will be familiar to more people than those of his victims. And that is both understandable and lamentable. But knowing one victim’s story can help us understand the pain of the many. Six million Jews were murdered in World War 2. That huge number of stolen lives is too vast to comprehend. But thanks to Anne Frank’s diary, we get to focus on one human life snuffed out, and we connect. We can empathise and walk in her shoes.
Fifty people were murdered at Christchurch. Mucad Ibrahim was three. What can you say about a three-year-old out with his loving family? He was “energetic, playful and liked to smile and laugh a lot” says his brother. Can you stand it?
Omar Faruk “usually worked on Fridays and always felt sorry he can’t attend the Friday prayers,” says his wife Sanjida Zaman Neha. “But last Friday he called her to say was let off work early because it was raining.”
“I want him back. I would rather that I went than him,” says Junaid Kara’s bother Ismail. “I’m the naughty twin, he’s the better one and that’s how it is. That’s all I want to say about my brother.” It’s the facts that sting. The little things make it human. It’s hard to bear. The horror becomes real through the ordinary details, painfully so.
Their killer wanted to end lives and through murder achieve fame. He live-streamed the massacre and posted his manifesto online. He craved the oxygen on publicity. He wanted his heinous crime to stand for something bigger. It doesn’t. It represents nothing but his depravity. Analysing his words for meaning invests in them a power they lack. Watching people murdered says more about you than him. And it says nothing good.
So should we say his name? Does saying it make the horror more real and more likely to reoccur? Is censorship born from fear of triggering copycat crimes – handing other inadequate bastards a ready-packaged reason to plug the moral vacuum in their lives – or respect for the dead and bereaved?
Arden shouldn’t worry. Try this: can you name any of the 19 hijackers who murdered 2,977 people in 9/11? How about the 4 bombers who murdered 56 people on 7/7? What about the man who murdered 22 people killed at the Manchester Arena? Not all names stick for long do they? The Christchurch killer’s name won’t either. You’ll remember the event but nearly all of us will forget the killer.
Posted: 21st, March 2019 | In: Key Posts, News, Politicians | Comment
Donald Trump: John McCain still hasn’t thanked me for his funeral
US President Donald Trump ‘has attacked the late Senator John McCain, complaining that he “didn’t get a thank you” for his state funeral.” So says the BBC. McCain never talked when he was in the Hanoi Hilton and he sure as hell ain’t gonna start now that he’s dead.
“We sent him on the way, but I wasn’t a fan of John McCain,” said Trump, reading the room on a visit to an Ohio tank factory. “I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don’t care about this, I didn’t get a thank you. That’s OK.”
Comment from McCain came there none.
Posted: 21st, March 2019 | In: News, Politicians | Comment
