The Gathering Storm

+The Met Office forecast for tonight shows a map with what looks like a full, near bursting condom hanging over much of Mighty England. This yellow sac of pure yuk merits a weather warning, as follows: ‘it could lead to difficult driving conditions and some road closures; where flooding or lightning strikes occur, there is a chance of delays and some cancellations to train and bus services; there is a chance that power cuts could occur and other services to some homes and businesses could be lost; there is a small chance that homes and businesses could be flooded, or damaged by lightning strikes, hail or sudden gusts of wind.’ Come on guys, are you just trying to scare us? Haven’t we seen thunderstorms before? Or is this something new, like a consequence of climate change? This latest heatwave may or may not be down to climate change, but it is ominous that each year in this century so far we are witnessing global heating records tumbling. Optimists will see capitalistic opportunities for adaptation—but personally I think we now face a period of runaway climate change and it will easily overwhelm our ‘just in time’ (faster profits) economic model. Food supplies will be the first casualty of this calamity, and as areas which were relied upon to steadily supply crops are decimated by drought, nothing will be brought up to speed fast enough to replace them. I am quite sure that on this subject, outside of GMO circles, there is very little thinking going on about how to cope, about how to be sustainable in new, testing conditions. We’re still worrying about how the food will be shipped through Dover post Brexit, rather then whether it will be shipped at all. Maybe I’m fearmongering, and the powers that be tucking into their pate foie gras at the Carlton Club will laugh up their sleeves at such nonsense. Nevertheless, since the supermarket shelves can be unstocked in a moment’s panic and you may be unfamiliar with living off the land, the best advice has to be: never mind the thunderstorms, get stocked up now. See the condom and taste the future. Toilet paper and baked beans, get ‘em whilst you can. And gin and tonic of course.

+I thoroughly recommend reading W. Stephen Gilbert’s take on the BBC’s Panorama hatchet job on Labour’s so-called anti-semitism ‘crisis.’ Read it here.  
 
+Whilst looking into something else, I came across a website called ‘The Conservative Woman’ which is raising money to combat the ‘left wing’ bias of the BBC. It is probably a matter of some back-slapping in the BBC’s senior ranks that it can be accused of bias by both left and right, which for them will be sufficient proof of their objectivity and naturally allows them to dismiss any charge of bias in any particular programme. Here’s what The Conservative Woman says: ‘Thus, the fact that the modern state of Israel was carved out of a desert scrubland under circumstances of continued persecution counts for nothing. Israel’s economy, currently valued at around $350billion, is larger than those of all its immediate neighbours combined – and that alone is enough to class Israel as ‘oppressor’ rather than ‘oppressed’. Indeed, it is for this very reason that BBC reporting on the Middle Eastern conflict is almost always biased towards the Palestinian version of events. The BBC, as a socialist enterprise, has bought wholesale into the Marxist worldview, enthusiastically embracing initiatives such as quotas for Black and Ethnic Minority programme makers and actors, and endlessly pushing a ‘woke’ agenda on its audience.’ So that explains why the BBC is so pro-Jeremy Corbyn! The Conservative Woman would ordinarily be up in arms about Boris Johnson’s pledge to reverse the abolition of free TV licences for most over-75s, except I imagine that most Conservative Women would be set to lose out. Johnson knows his audience, who are probably unfamiliar with the phrase ‘socialism for the rich.’