388. Misogyny is alive & kicking in Britain…

 

...and embodied in Alex Salmond in Scotland.

Domestic violence against women in the UK has gone up in recent years and very dramatically. According to The Centre for Women's Justice there was a 49% rise in calls for help related to domestic abuse last year.

Equally worryingly, misogyny seems to be alive and kicking in the new right wing, authoritarian political landscape.

One only has to look at Alex Salmond’s vengeful, vindictive move and get a whiff of the same oozing misogyny we’ve seen personified in Boris Johnson south of the border. Clearly unable to stand the fact that a young woman has done what he could not, Salmond even teamed up with the Tory attack dog in game-show-host’s clothing, Ruth Davidson, to harangue the Frist Minister during a pandemic. I see no one – even the media and opposition parties – doing anything similar to the truly atrocious Boris Johnson.

I do not think it’s any accident that with the rise of authoritarianism and right wing politics in the UK, violence against women and their denigration in all walks of life has increased. Was it coincidence that at the violence in Derry in 2019, it was young female journalist Lyra McKee who was shot dead? Ditto during the heightened jingoistic and febrile nonsense leading up to the EU referendum in 2016 it was female MP Jo Cox who was slaughtered?

At times of stress – economic, social, political it seems that women get hit hardest – literally.

But then – should we be surprised - in an increasingly aggressive patriarchy where men seem to get away with so much – that violence and abuse of women grows? Of course there are those women near the top of the pile – who seem to have taken on very traditionally male traits and incorporated bullying into their ‘management’ style – I would site Priti Patel – officially a bully and protected by her male leader for doing his dirty work and Ruth Davidson – competing for the title.

And – up here in Scotland – a sight for very sore eyes – Alex Salmond – showing that often it is the men who can be the real bitches.

I listened with grim horror as Nicola Sturgeon faced days and days of grilling over the government’s mishandling of the Salmond inquiry into sexual assault. No one, and especially not me – is saying there should not be an inquiry if things appear to have gone tits up. BUT. When Johnson sycophant Patel was found guilty of breaching the same code Ms Sturgeon was accused and acquitted of breaching – Westminster’s response was – ‘nothing to see here’.

When calls go out as they still are – albeit wearily  – for there to be an inquiry into the thousands of unnecessary deaths caused by the government - Boris Johnson’s - mishandling of the pandemic –we are told – just like the gun lobbyist of America after the latest mass shooting ‘now is not the time’.

Nothing to see here was the response to Cummings’ breaking the rules the Tory government had so belatedly put in place. A pet Eugenicist was taken into the heart of government. Yes, after an outcry he was let go – nothing more was said.

Alex Salmond’s egotistical posturing and horrendous timing, his attention seeking and all-round vileness has been called many things. Most often it is called ‘sour grapes’ as if he is some kid in a playground who didn’t get picked for the team and so aids the other side. Well – it is sour grapes if by sour grapes you mean the shrivelled old testicles of metastasizing misogyny.

I cannot think of any comparable situation in modern politics where a man on the brink of success has been so undermined by his ‘own’ side. Even the Hilary Clinton situation does not quite compare.

In 2016 many US liberals stayed at home when they could have held their noses and voted for the ‘not-perfect’ candidate. One who at least did not think grabbing women’s genitals was ok – who was not a racist liar eventually putting small children in cages. They stayed at home and allowed in a man who fuelled white supremacy and ended his horrific, thankfully single term, with a deadly insurrection. But then – those lolling liberals could stop at home eating their avocados and dreaming of a Utopia where their leader did EVERYTHING right rather than broadly did what was sensible, right and achievable.

Salmond – through the prism of his out of control male ego - presents himself as someone who is on the side of Scotland and yet makes it clear with every breath and action that he is – and possibly always has been – only ever on the side of Alex Salmond.

I’m not psychic (though I’ve been right about many things that those supposedly in the political know have got wrong – including my post concerning why Ed Miliband would never be PM - when all pundits thought it was a shoe-in) but I did not see this coming. It is so far left field it feels unreal.

One thing I do see is the misogyny. Somehow – while it never really went away – like racism and the whole anti-working class rhetoric of the right wing media – misogyny has returned with a vengeance into Brexit Britain. It is working its fists on individual women behind the closed doors of the pandemic and it is working itself out in full view in the political arena.

Here in Scotland it is personified in the vulgar, vile and vengeful Alex Salmond.

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387. Silent But Deadly. Another Boris Johnson brain fart…

This time it’s the UK’s armed forces facing the Johnson reverse-Midas-touch.

We live in a developed country WITH infrastructure WITH wealth WITH free education and yet somehow we ended up with this random, rambling posh blob as Prime Minister.

Our latest living nightmare is Johnson’s new big brain fart with regards the UK military. Already much depleted and globally somewhat undermined by an arms industry best known for selling murderous weapons to the Saudi’s so they can bomb the shit out of  what remains of Syria.

Now – we are told – Johnson – whose government could not make a test and trace system work – despite the bill of £37 BILLION (and counting) wants to ditch soldiers for tech. Drones and all the stuff he presumably watched on Netflix while he should have been working to prevent an inexcusable death toll, increasing social division and economic ruin.

America, newly released from the mad grip of the orange blob who Johnson clearly styles himself on politically, has already expressed concern.

To date Johnson’s brain farts include (but are not limited to) -

·       Buying water cannons to use on the dumb arses who elected him Mayor of London.

·       The failed Garden Bridge (cost £53m).

·       A bridge from Scotland to Ireland over WWII mine beds (a brain fart gaining strength and presumably one which will further line the pockets of some Tory pals).

·       Making Gavin Williamson Sec. for Education after he embarrassed the UK as Sec for Defence.

·       Making Priti Patel Home Sec after her corrupt behaviour while Sec for International Development.

·       Making Raab Foreign Sec after he admitted, when Brexit Sec, that he did not understand the importance of the Dover to Calais trade route!!! I could go on about Johnson’s appointments but you get it.

·       Racially insulting Muslim women at a time of international tension and insecurity for many Muslims.

·       Illegally shutting down Parliament (2019).

·       Embarrassingly reciting a colonial poem in Myanmar – an ex-British colony (2017).

·       Letting his gob run inappropriately re N.Zaghari-Ratcliffe when he was Foreign Sec helping the young mother to secure more time in an Iranian jail.

·       Recently he announced his need for more nukes – despite Britain being a signatory of the International Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (see last post).

But this one really is the biggest stinkiest brain fart of all because a. I suspect the total expenditure, once profiteering for mates is taken into account, will make the TT&T failure look like a few coins you found down the back of the sofa and b. Britain’s increasingly settled international profile  as a senile, deluded old shyster of a mess-up will well and truly solidify…

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Nuclear Distraction Attraction!

With this much chaos, Johnson’s distraction had to be gigantic…

It should come as no surprise that Boris Johnson should go full Trump and announce new nukes to distract from his domestic/economic/pandemic wreckages.

The double catastrophes of  the criminally negligent mishandling of the pandemic and engineering the unnecessary extreme harm of a terrible Brexit, require something really big – atomic - and that is exactly what Johnson came up with. Never mind the ruin we are in and the titanic turd which is the current UK administration – look at the shiny new nukes!

 

Nuclear Distraction Attraction

 

The mess is so big

And so deep and so tall

So Bozza dreams up

A nuclear haul

 

Protect slaver statues

Let rapists off lightly

Brexit is bonkers

The trade deals unsightly

 

Poverty – grows

After levelling-up lies

As the rich get bigger slices

Of all of the pies

 

Ditch another wife

For some daughter-age fanny

No time for Cobra meetings

Oops – another dead granny

 

But none of it matters

He’s impervious to shame

Wave a flag, insult Europe

We all know the game

 

If you went to Eton

There is no price to pay

For the misery you leave

In your wake every day

 

Yes its blob shagger Boz

Always up for the action

Never mind his disasters

Here’s some nuclear distraction

386. The Deference Disease that’s destroying Britain.

The Deference Disease is epidemic in the UK. It is also ever present. It was damped down a little after WWI and significantly after WWII but has gone crazy this century. New, less easily recognised but aggressive variants have invaded all organs; the media, politics and wider society.

No, it’s not just the ridiculousness of the royal family – I mean their very existence. It’s not just the different standards so clearly applied to people depending on where we see them in the stultifying social strata. It’s not just the starkly differing life chances that still depend on which school you attended and it’s not just that your chances of living a long healthy life directly follows what class you were born into. It isn’t even the worshipful status afforded to the who-the-hell-even-is-that celebrities who bare their dull souls, shallow personalities and baby bump/new partner/near-death experience/new kitchen/new eye shadow 'news' in magazines No. It’s all of the above x1000.

The recent conclusion of the all-party Public Accounts Committee is that Johnson’s test-and-trace programme – was a complete failure by any measure related to affecting the outcome of the pandemic. It cost £37 billion and was run by life peer Dido Harding, someone with no relevant expertise/experience but married to a Tory. So, x37 what Theresa May paid the DUP to keep her in power and enough – if spent wisely – to have lifted many families in the UK out of poverty. Flushed.

But negative public reaction is barely registerable.

Is it because the figure is so huge, the waste so vast? Maybe. I would argue that a similar outcome delivered by a Labour or SNP administration would have been torn to shreds by an enraged public led by a howling press and media. Why do Brits – and especially the English, accept things from those at the top of the social pile that they would not from those lower down? It has to be the Deference Disease. Partly – they are just expected to behave like that and let’s face it – much of life these days is about managing expectations.

Early on in the pandemic Dominic Cummings famously and in pantomime villain fashion broke the belated lockdown rules set by his own boss – oh and – briefly had a young eugenicist embedded in government. ‘Nothing to see here’ was Johnson’s response. Cummings – albeit gone now – did not have to resign over his infamous dash to Durham. On the other hand – when it was discovered that Nicola Sturgeon was found to be standing at a funeral without a face mask (had she been sitting this would not have been a breach of rules) the press were all over it. So it seems a couple hundred miles is equivalent to 3 feet if one is within the Tory inner circle and the other is without.

Not only has Boris Johnson gotten away with being a racist, misogynistic liar - he was elected PM after these things were publically known about him. He has behaved corruptly – buying water cannon to use on the credulous Londoners who elected him mayor. More recently, when the mad idea of a bridge from Scotland to Ireland re-surfaced (presumably the millions of pounds in feasibility will to Tory mates a la the PPE contracts) I scanned the press for reference to his previous bridge scandal – The Garden Bridge – and came up empty handed.

The sad case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is in the news again but my scanning of the main papers failed to find critical editorial comment to the fact that the length and depth of her misery can – in part – be laid at the door of the current incumbent of no.10. Boris Johnson did one of his infamous ‘gaffs’ (that is what you call it when a privileged bloke fucks up someone else’s life) when he was foreign secretary  in 2017 – (no I’m, not talking about singing colonial ditties in an ex-British colony or racially insulting Barack Obama) claiming, wrongly, that NZ-R was ‘teaching journalism’. This statement was used in court against her and he was forced to apologise – though that did her no good. None of that was a barrier to his moving on up to the highest political office in the UK with significant support from areas previously decimated economically and socially by a predecessor of his Margaret Thatcher. I mean I know Corbyn was unelectable but jeez...

How does this work? (That is not a rhetorical question; if you know tell me…)

Yes – I know that whenever the peasants get restless – the toffs just start screeching and scare-mongering about foreigners and – here’s a flag to wave – and oh look – here’s someone wearing dressing up clothes and a crown – how marvellous.  But dear god – that might have worked in 1381 – WHY IS IT STILL?

While this Deference Disease is damaging us from within – preventing the real talent from rising and ensuring that we are governed by the half-baked (Raab), the witless (Williamson) and the gormless (Gove) the talentless bullies (Patel) etc etc etc– that is not the worst of it.

When we look ‘up’ and see incompetence and politically and socially incestuous behaviour choking our progress in the world it is a depressing sight. However, we are missing the fact that – for a while now – the rest of the world has not been looking up to Britain. It’s been staring down - in disbelief.

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385. Who wanted to monitor the skin tone of Meghan’s baby? Easy. Check out the pig-ignorant privileged harpies and dimwit toffs smirking at the black minister at her wedding…

 Some are smirking and sniggering at inappropriate moments and some are ‘bemused’ by a black minister who actually seems to believe in God and doesn’t see church as just an opportunity to raid the dressing up box...

you tube

Before the H&M - Oprah interview – we knew - because everything wrong with the royal family is also wrong with most of the upper reaches of the deadly dull, deluded English establishment, including this Tory government.

Lack of self-awareness

Enormous sense of entitlement

Unearned wealth

The extreme ignorance of extremely privilege

Scathing attitudes to ‘ordinary’ people

Dim

Lacking humanity

Inbred

Racist

Shield their own/those who do their bidding (Prince Andrew/Cummings/Patel)

Belittle others

Ridiculous sense of entitlement

Unaware of their own witlessness

Callous

Out of touch

Ludicrous sense of entitlement

Personality devoid

Exist above the rules

Mad sense of entitlement

Delusional

Surround themselves with sycophants, deepening their disconnect

Expect the state to pay for their extravagant personal lifestyles

Did I mention insane sense of entitlement…?

 

But what is really deeply unsettling about all this is that a large section of the British public (and especially the English) are fine with it. They think that because the tiny minority at the top have always been there, have always had everything and have always treated everyone else like shit while creaming off life’s luxuries – it’s acceptable.

There is an intellectual black (no pun intended) hole here the size of Sagittarius A…

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384. Will Sunak’s budget tip us into ‘The Running Man’ dystopia, concluding 4 decades of almost unbroken Tory &/or Private Schoolboy rule in Britain?

Have we sold hard won post-WWII freedoms and rights for game shows? Britain is starting to look like the dystopia of Stephen King’s novel The Running Man.

Rishi Sunak, chancellor in Boris Johnson’s administration of also-rans, will give his second budget speech tomorrow, on the heels of the catastrophically poorly handled pandemic and the self-inflicted, newly opened wounds of Brexit.  His family wealth puts him in the same empathy category as The Queen – with her vaccine exhortations for folk not to be “selfish” while her family extracts big handouts every year from an over-stretched public purse.

The reality of what awaits us when we step blinking out of covid confinement hit me like a truck when I heard some Conservative cretin on the Tory Broadcasting Company midday news last week. He claimed its not all doom and gloom for the UK economy because look at all the people now employed by the likes of Deliveroo. I’m sure your average graduate with £50k of debt doesn't dream of cycling through traffic with the choice of an early death from car fumes or road accident.

Covid lockdown has exacerbated and accelerated a societal shift where we rarely meet the people taking our money so they care less and less about us. In – blog 147 More Less Contact is making us Horrible, I wrote about the many and ugly dehumanising aspects of our increasingly contactless and rampantly capitalist society.

I’ve also noted how people are happily going about making themselves unemployed. Bank cashiers have been haranguing me to go online for many years. Now, most of the branches near to me are closed or closing. Many supermarkets have increasingly human-free tills as their profits soar. All this means increased unemployment.

Cracking open another old chestnut, it was never sustainable to have so much of the economy based increasingly on nail bars, cheap city breaks and coffee shops. Brexit has brought that home more clearly than the challenges of the pandemic.  Countries that no longer make, grow, manufacture real things that humans need, will struggle desperately in the future. This is part of the new normal that is being unveiled as Sunak tries to tempt us back onto highstreets which were first dealt the death blow in the 1990s with the growth of out of town shopping monstrosities.

I have no doubt that for many months/years, those who brought us Brexit will stuff as much of the tsunami of economic ruin and social discord as they can into the box marked ‘covid’ but it did not start with the pandemic.  The broken Little Britain of the neo-colonialist isolationists who conned us into Brexit while lying/distracting us with nonsense has simply been fast forwarded.

In the past 12 months we’ve learnt so many new terms – ‘excess mortality’ ‘furlough’; rediscovered old terms like ‘profiteering’ but cannot face up to dangerously relevant terms – conned/ cheated/ defrauded.

I struggle – as any regular readers of this blog will know – with the placidity of the majority of those at the shitty end of all this. I often wonder if folk really are as anaesthetised and diverted by the moronic hysterical yet incongruously dull slop that passes for 24hr TV. This occurred to me again as I re-read The Running Man a dystopian novella from 1982 by Stephen King – one of his most famous ‘Bachman’ novels. In it, the population is brainwashed by a TV model we would recognise – extreme reality TV. It is shown on something called Free Vee.

“…every Development apartment had one [Free Vee] – it was the law - but it was still legal to turn them off. The Compulsory Benefit Bill of 2021 had failed [to make watching compulsory]…”

I love the ‘it was still legal to turn them off’ because I often get the impression many people don’t realise that.

As the story continues we learn that the moronic but murderous game shows, watched by millions, are not just a distraction from grey miserable lives of the majority, served up by an extremely wealthy elite – but a cover for the real reality that the air they breathe is poisoning them.

Are we as easily played as the fictional masses of Stephen King’s dystopia?

Have we given up hard-one freedoms, rights and working conditions – even our humanity for gameshow/reality TV escapism?

Well, we have a clown running government; with his craven cabinet of cretins dishing out expensive, important jobs to unqualified pals and lucrative contracts to mates while thousands died and our leader with the game show host persona is currently quite popular…

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187 – British boarding schools breed posh sociopaths

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