+It seems that Johnson is going to defy the law and still go for Brexit on the 31st October with or without a deal. It also seems that his poll ratings have gone up. He sits in No.10 dreaming of how his ‘strong leadership’ model is going to pay off handsomely. He is like an arsonist who sets fires in order to reap the reward when he rings 999 to report the conflagration. It’s very disappointing, if the polls are correct, that so many of my fellow citizens can’t see through this irresponsible gamble.
+At the LibDem conference: watch out Jo, Chuka will be eyeing up your job faster than your comrades can say ‘wacky baccy.’ +Swinson was on the Today programme this morning trying to sound firm and decisive. The former minister for austerity misery even had the effrontery to suggest that the social contract was broken and lots of people were feeling the pinch. I hope there’s some vents in the roof of the Bournemouth conference centre to ensure that the stench can escape. +The Guardian has apparently changed a leader comment which posited that David Cameron had demonstrated his privileged concerns thus: ‘Even his experience of the NHS, which looked after his severely disabled son, has been that of the better functioning and better funded parts of the system. Had he been forced to wrestle with the understaffed and over-managed hospitals of much of England, or had he been trying to get the system to look after a dying parent rather than a dying child, he might have understood a little of the damage that his policies have done.’ (copied from the Spectator website) Why can’t the Guardian stand up for the truth? Apparently they’ve made a humble apology to Cameron. Cameron has yet to apologise for the thousands of people who died as a result of austerity. +Despite being the same age as me (66) Tony Blair looks 10 years older. The cares of office. At least Cameron will not suffer the same fate, he can just be Photoshopped. Again. + Type into Google ‘How much has Brexit cost so far?’ and you get a variety of answers with one thing in common—a bloody lot. The hit on the economy is said to be around £500 million a week. Direct government expenditure also runs into the billions. The government seems reluctant to release all the figures. But this is a bonanza for consultants and others out for a quick buck. They must be very disappointed that Chris ‘Failing’ Grayling left government. He was personally responsible for much of the waste. He should be made to pay some of it back.
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+I feel certain that the first case in his in-tray for our new ‘anti-Semitism tsar,’ Baron Mann of Uphisownarse will be the notorious matter of Jacob Rees Mogg, Leader of the House and all-round dunderhead. Little reported anywhere was his use of the word ‘Illuminati’ when describing the anti-no deal Brexit legislation proposers, prime amongst whom was Oliver Letwin, who is Jewish, ably facilitated by Speaker Bercow who is also Jewish. Why should Mann pick up this file? He could start by reading this article published on the Jewish Voice for Labour website. He might also consider Rees Mogg’s retweeting of the German far right, anti-semitic AfD party’s material last April - see here. Now why is it that I don’t think we will hear a dickybird about any of this from Johnson’s newly ennobled Useful Idiot?
+I’m afraid Corbyn is done for. His stance on Brexit has been praised by none other than Tony Blair in today’s Sunday Mirror. ‘Tony Blair has said that despite his disagreements with Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader had acted “very sensibly and skilfully” in his efforts to block a no-deal Brexit.’ This opens the door to all manner of realignments. The Blairites in the PLP will be confused, even tearful, wondering what to do next. Is this part of a deeper, as yet indecipherable plot, a bold blinder in this interminable game of chess? +Over in Canada, now in general election mode we must wait and see whether the rise of right-wing populism sweeps the Tories into power. Meanwhile much amusement can be had reading Gordon Prentice’s blog. He aims to question all his local wannabe MP candidates, and the first interview has already taken place, leaving Liberal chancer Tony van Bynen looking decidedly foolish. It makes you wonder why anyone would vote for such a dope. But we’ve had to ask that question many times in the past, and there is still no definitive answer. I’ve just been finishing off John Gray’s Heresies, Against Progress and Other Illusions, published in 2004. We still had a Blair government then, we had Bush in the White House and Saddam Hussein was in hiding. It makes for an interesting read to see with the benefit of hindsight how Gray’s prognosis of the international scene actually worked out. The final judgement of history on those days has yet to be delivered—we’re only talking 15 years ago—but Gray is generally on the mark. His piece ‘For Europe’s sake, Britain must stay out,’ written in May 2003 is especially prescient. Staying out then was staying out of the Eurozone, not the E.U. Gray’s argument was that if Britain had less influence in Europe, the E.U. would be a more powerful counter balance to the U.S. We saw the most powerful demonstration of our fraught U.S./E.U. ‘bridge’ act in the run-up to the Iraq war, when most European leaders, led by Jacques Chirac opposed Bush’s war. Blair’s only role was not to gain influence with Bush, but to give W's non-United Nations approved war some smattering of legitimacy.
Today, the Middle East predictably continues to muddy U.S./E.U. relations. Trump’s abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal; Trump’s unilateral blessing of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; his fraught stand-off with Russia over Syria (with consequences in Turkey). The inconsistency of American foreign policy stands in marked contrast to the hammered out position of Europe, which is developed through what is necessarily a more collegiate approach. Now we are navigating similar waters, with the obvious consequences of Brexit and a Trump White House combining to make us an even less significant player in international politics. A country adrift, waiting to be picked up by the pirates of the Potomac. Perhaps, as Gray suggested in 2003, Europe would be better off without us. Which in my mind reconfirms my view that we would be better off with them. I am willing to bet that future U.K. Prime Ministers (not this one) will be champing at the bit to get back into European modes of thinking. As the saying goes, you won’t know the value of something until you’ve lost it. A trip to York yesterday took my mind off the continuing turmoil that is the everlasting diet of news disseminators and consumers. A visit to Ken Spelman’s bookshop on Micklegate generally comes first. Bookshops of this calibre are havens of tranquillity indeed, although my visit was interrupted by some guy who came in expecting to find his wife there, meanwhile protesting that they had more books at home than the shop itself and that he didn’t need any more. What a wozzack, as we might say colloquially: you can never get enough books. I came away with Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained, which I hope will fill in a few gaps for me. At £6 I’m not minded to worry too much if I’m still left pondering the mystery of consciousness. It may just be a trick of the imagination. At the Oxfam bookshop down the road I bought John Gray’s Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, published in 2004 and comprising some of his articles for the New Statesman. His first article in this collection concludes ‘Believers in progress are seeking from technology what they once looked for in political ideologies, and before that in religion: salvation from themselves.’ That article is dated April 9th, 1999—the eve of the millennium, now a generation ago.
Coincidentally yesterday I received an email from an outfit called ‘Energy for Humanity’ which was headed in strictly layperson’s terms PETITION TO INCLUDE NUCLEAR IN THE EU SUSTAINABLE FINANCE TAXONOMY (caps. in the original). We can live in hope can’t we? Isn’t this exactly what Gray was railing against, not secularism v. religion but secularism as religion? Redemption through technology, a kind of mass indulgence scheme that buys us individuals out of responsibility? Also, and fittingly in this particular case an impossibility given the short timescales on the climate change front and long timescales on delivering new nuclear. At least Energy for Humanity were honest enough to admit that their research was funded by EDF—although, of course, that didn’t influence their editorial control. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of Gray’s book. Yesterday’s heresy may be today’s fake news and tomorrow’s truth, and then we’ll find that what goes round comes round all over again. Meanwhile, some of us will be privileged (or not) to witness how nature deals with these anthropocentric dilemmas. I read an article yesterday in Counterpunch which would never see the light of day anywhere else. It suggests that Libya under Colonel Gaddafi was the most prosperous, educated and genuinely free democracy in Africa. Well, this is not what we’ve been led to believe is it? Didn’t we liberate enslaved Libyans from this despotic regime in 2011? Wasn’t Cameron and Sarkozy cheered to the rafters when they briefly stood on Libyan soil after Gaddafi’s rather brutal demise?
Sometimes, even if you don’t believe it, it is worth reading an alternative narrative—because there could be some truth in it. I’m not sure that anyone would objectively argue that Libya prior to 2011 was a place they would choose to live, but what about today? The country is by any standard in a far worse state then it was prior to 2011, secret police or not. The Counterpunch article makes claims which are worth reading because they are counterintuitive, but they could all be tested against the historical record. For example, the treatment of women as equals with rights to education, equal pay, etc. That’s not something you would find in an Islamic theocracy. I have doubts about the greater claims of this article, but it is well worth reading. It leads me to remark on something that has always been controversial, namely Tony Blair’s war record. There’s no doubting the folly and mendacious deceptions that paved the way to Iraq, but Blair was widely derided (and wrongly in my view) for meeting Gaddafi in his desert tent. He also met Assad in Syria. In his own messianic way, Blair thought he could somehow rein in their excesses and bring these nasty chaps into some kind of reformist mode. I am sure that Blair’s faith came into this, not just in his own charisma but also through his everyday conversations with God. I wish he had actually succeeded in his mission in those two countries, but perhaps his faith ran ahead of itself. As it is now, the instability of Libya and Syria are two of the greatest threats to European stability, and neither appear to have an endgame in sight (although with Russia’s assistance, things are beginning to look a little clearer in Syria). As I write this news has come in that the warmonger John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor has either been sacked or has resigned. This perhaps is good news. We’ll only know when we find out who his replacement is. I wonder who is really running Trump. He has so far—amazingly—avoided more war than most of his predecessors, including the sainted Obama. One day, we’ll be revising the old canard that any two countries with a MacDonald’s restaurant would never go to war with each other. So I’m hoping and praying that Moscow finally gets its Trump Tower—along with Tripoli, Damascus, Tehran and Pyongyang. It seems I wasn’t far wrong when I blogged on Sunday that I thought the hard-right, rent-a-gob ex-Labour MP John Mann had swapped sides and joined the Conservatives. It turns out that he is taking a peerage in Theresa May’s ‘reward the cronies resignation honours list.’ Mann may not have signed a Tory membership application form on the dotted line, but he hardly needs to. His new role as the government’s freshly minted ’anti-Semitism tsar’ means that he has been given a license to continue his attacks on Labour from the upper house, which is the only reason I can think of why the post has been created and Mann recruited to it.
It leads to the question what exactly are these ‘tsars’ for? Can anyone remember any of them achieving anything? Can anyone remember any of their names? The last of these who’s name I do remember is Alan Milburn, created a social equality tsar (technically the chair of the Tory/LibDem/austerity government’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission) a job which could only be described as a fig leaf in a vain attempt to disguise the impacts of austerity in those very areas. After five years of achieving nothing Milburn resigned in 2017. But by then he had other things on the go as Wikipedia tells us: In 2013 Milburn joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as Chair of PwC's UK Health Industry Oversight Board, whose objective is to drive change in the health sector, and assist PwC in growing its presence in the health market .[24][25] Milburn continued to be Chairman of the European Advisory Board at Bridgepoint Capital, whose activities include financing private health care companies providing services to the NHS ,[26][27] and continued as a member of the Healthcare Advisory Panel at Lloyds Pharmacy .[28][29] Early in 2015, Milburn intervened in the British election campaign to criticise Labour's health plans, which would limit private sector involvement in the NHS. Milburn was criticised for doing so while having a personal financial interest in the private health sector. I've just remembered the name of another 'tsar.' That's Keith Hellawell, former chief Constable of West Yorkshire police, who was made a 'drugs tsar.' A fat lot of good came out of that. At least Keith went on to a job as Chairman of Mike Ashley's Sports Direct, where shareholders found him similarly useful. Now that he's to be a 'Lord' will Mann the socialist discover his inner capitalist? It only merited a brief mention here in the U.K. but it looks like a statement last week by Trump that Hurricane Dorian was heading for Alabama—which of course was untrue—is still making headlines in the States. This is because no meteorologists working for the U.S. government had predicted it would reach Alabama, as was tweeted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Alabama office. Mysteriously, the top officials at the NOAA later disowned the Alabama office tweet. In other words, they were lent on and their scientific credibility was trashed for political reasons. Par for the course.
Reading the stories regularly posted on the Daily Climate news round-up, there is almost every day a story detailing yet another Trump defenestration of regulations, agencies and laws designed to protect the environment, which—and this obviously hasn’t occurred to the White House genius—means also protecting people. He doesn’t even want other people to get on with such an essential task. He’s no supporter of ‘States’ Rights’ when it comes to telling California it shouldn’t legislate to reduce vehicle emissions. Perhaps California should follow in Catalonia’s footsteps. Against this background, are we seriously expected to believe that our big and beautiful trade deal with Washington will leave our environmental standards untouched? The very thought beggars belief, but that is Trump's speciality. Meanwhile, the President claims his father was born in Germany. That’s presumably New York, Germany. Perhaps all this nonsense is a result of him having a low testosterone level. This would explain a lot (I was reading about this largely undetected condition in the Guardian today). My head is spinning. The whirligig that is British politics is revolving at an ever accelerating rate. I had barely woken up this morning when the fickle fingers of fate gave the top another twirl.
+Still half asleep I heard that the hard right, rent-a-gob Labour MP John Mann had announced he was leaving parliament at the next election. I thought I heard he was crossing the floor to join the Conservatives, but perhaps I was still dreaming. The self-appointed scourge of Jeremy Corbyn will be most remembered for his ‘co-incidental’ confrontation with Ken Livingstone on the staircase in Millbank over anti-Semitism. Mann’s flow of abuse only paused briefly when he looked back to ensure that he was being filmed. +The Change UK (CUK) Party is living up to its name as yet another of its founding renegades departs for the LibDems. Former Labour MP Angela Smith (who?) will also be remembered for very little, but her comments at the launch of CUK that some people were of a ‘funny tinge’ surely set the scene for a party of an inconsequential political tinge. Who’s left in it apart from Anna Soubry? I can’t remember, and I suspect no-one else can either. +Amber Rudd was at the top of the news this morning. She’s resigning from the Cabinet and it seems the Conservative Party too. A woman of principle! +All this palaver makes one wonder about where things are headed in the UK. Some people are fortunate enough to be able to claim, e.g. Irish citizenship and so keep their E.U. citizenship. My dual U.K./Canadian citizenship could provide a passport to a new land. But how different are things over there? Gordon Prentice has sent me a link to his first film, which reveals the extent of cuts being imposed in Ontario by the loudmouthed redneck Conservative Ontario premier Bob Ford. After post-Fordism comes Af-Fordism, as in ‘we can’t afford this, we can’t afford that.’ Canada has its austerity ideologues too. With their own federal general election now in swing, no-one seems to know for sure who will win—not least after Justin Trudeau’s recent performance—but it looks like the Conservatives have the edge. Escape routes are being cut off! Gordon’s video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euP5KoxPn0c&feature=youtu.be When I go to pick up my copy of the sane and stable Guardian each morning, my visit to the newsagent affords me the opportunity to gaze upon the headlines in the Hate Mail, the Torygraph, the Bum and the Daily Excrete. I am now convinced that when the Queen dies (when, not if, although some constitutional experts might dispute that) these rags will find some reason to blame Jeremy Corbyn for her demise. Their current level of pained hysteria knows no bounds. I guess some of us might find a little satisfaction in that - their almost inchoate rage perfectly exposes their impotence. Just as the abominable Johnson’s mask of false bonhomie is slipping, the rightwing press is showing us yet again how venal the true nature of our ‘free’ press is. This ‘free press,’ owned by Rothermere, the Barclay brothers, Rupert Murdoch et al are captives to a narrative which is quite possibly about to be pitched into total redundancy. Surely it cannot be the case that these rags address anybody who does not already share their views? Perhaps their only role is to cajole their readers into remaining loyal to their embittered fate.
The prostrate pose of Jacob Rees-Smug during yesterday’s Commons debate on Brexit has brought widespread disapproval. If body language had a verbal role to play in the recorded proceedings of the Commons, then Rees-Smug would have merited some rebuke from members for his unparliamentary behaviour. But I say well done Jacob! Without uttering a word, you have encapsulated your government’s contempt for the whole shower of proles who think they, having being elected MPs, believe that entitles them to a say. I am pleased to hear that another contemptuous one, the Rasputin doppelganger Dominic Cummings is also coming in for some criticism, since it seems likely he convinced Johnson that a hardline against Tory rebels was a wise idea. This is backfiring badly. I suspect Cummings’ days are numbered, and he will follow in the footsteps of Trump’s Rasputin, Steve Bannon into the fetid jungle of discarded die-hards. But who knows? Trump takes himself very seriously, whereas Johnson thinks the whole business is a great jape. Just as Rees-Smug has little or no self-consciousness, Johnson, having lied on so many occasions, cannot recognise now why so many people distrust him. That is, with the exception of people whose only sentient response to Brexit is to say ‘it’s doin’ me ‘ead in get it over with.’ Are we to believe that this is the great appeal which will finally break the deadlock? I suspect Johnson thinks it’s his trump card—no pun intended.
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