Democracy, Decency, Dedication V Degradation, Depravity, Disaster… (518)

…the ONLY question hereafter re the 2024 US election - Harris v Trump - is how did the very obvious choice between a potentially decent future and one of disaster and degradation end up on a knife edge?

Here’s hoping that Trump’s MSG Hitler tribute act brings America to its senses… (517)

As this Halloween approaches I just can’t look.

It’s far too frightening, upsetting, unsettling. I feel a little sick. Am I scared of the dark?

Sort of.

It’s not so much the impending result of the UK Conservative Party leadership contest which will crown either the unelectable, anaemic, dim-witted and anodyne non-entity Jenrick or the unelectable, hateful, bonkers, would pick a fight with her own shadow dim-witted Badenoch. No. It’s the impending Nov 5^th, bonfire-night bash in the US which could still turn into a colossal shit show for democracy despite the bizarre and gargantuan disparities between the candidates.

Those of you who read this (political therapy) blog regularly, know that I am a dedicated letter writer – being as I am – stuck in the old times. No tweeting or smartphone or Fb or any other forms of fast and loose communication pour moi. In fact, if I could afford the postage with the now privatised Post Office, I’d still type the letters on my old faithful clunking Remington TAVEL-RITER-DELUXE and send them by snail mail to editors around the globe.

In my they-printed-my-letters cache are all the decent newspapers in the UK – though I no longer bother with The Independent. Plus, papers in the Caribbean, the US, including The New York Times and more recently The Star in South Africa.

The letter I’m posting below went out last week and was published in Scotland’s The National. As a short-cut to my bemusement, it’s a handy inclusion here.

 

Dear Editor,

Have you ever wondered how come the CEO or Manager of this or that org is so breathtakingly, sometimes dangerously incompetent?

Maybe like me you’ve felt uncomfortable reading reports about the inexplicably more negative outcomes for people from minority ethnic backgrounds within the medical service.

Perhaps you struggle to understand how the world can look at one conflict, Ukraine, and be unquestioningly and rightly appalled at the civilian suffering and look at another, Gaza, and not only seem not to care (thus far – 2% of the child population has been killed)  but continue to supply weapons.

Wonder no more.

Just cast your eye momentarily at the US electoral race between a competent, decent, accomplished, articulate black/Asian woman and an old white male convicted felon, sexual abuser, allegedly incontinent, racist who refused to accept the results of the last election leading to the horrors of Jan 6^th. Really look at how close the election still is.

The Harris v Trump race literally explains all that is inexplicable in the modern world.

So despite Michelle Obama's fantastic closing speech in Michigan  lauded by many as distilling the real absurdities and realities of the American democratic crisis and despite the reassuring summary of long-time political sage and Lincoln Project snr adviser Stuart Stevens still -  I really, really just can’t look…

However, Trump decided to hold a rally reminiscent of Hitler’s 1939 Madison Square Garden event organised by the German American Bund. Hitler – sorry Trump’s invited speaker Tony Hinchcliffe, at this MSG rally did not hold back with a racist jibe++ at Puerto Rico. Problem is, one of the key US swing states – Pennsylvania - has around 300k PR residents. In 2020 Biden won it by just 80k votes and in 2016 Trump by about half that.

So – I’ still can’t look but maybe Trump's Hitler tribute act will  help bring enough folk to their senses.

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And of course do check out some of my Other Stuff

I’m uncomfortable that UK Labour is SO comfortable with the mass deaths, exploitation & abuse of brown people… (516)

As a very ex member of the UK Labour Party (I joined as a student before the Miners' Strike in the 1980s, became a labour councillor and left over the illegal invasion of Iraq++) I am not surprised to learn that No.10 have confirmed that current Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer does not want to ‘get into it’ re slavery at the Commonwealth Summit.

Starmer is not, apparently, going to be open to any discussion about either reparations or apologies.

Is this him trying to out-macho the last fellow? Call-Me-Tony never apologised for the slaughter of civilians in the horrid Iraq adventure and is still coining it around the globe. Also, popping up far too often to give advice no one asked for.

Starmer even has one of Tone’s right hand guys in this government. The little weasel Douglas Alexander who, having been well rewarded and promoted for unfailingly supporting the Iraq horror, showed up in my neck of the woods when Labour’s fortunes turned (or rather the Tory’s dipped) and is now Minister of State for Trade.

Unlike the First Minister of Scotland who was the first in the UK to call for a cease fire (back when it might have made a difference to civilians and hostages) – followed by Irish leader and the Welsh Parliament (without the support of labour), Sir Kier did not call for a ceasefire as opposition leader and has failed to stem the flow of weapons to IDF – Netanyahu’s “most moral army in the world” responsible for the total destruction of Gaza, the deaths of 42,000+ people including 21,000 children; more than 2% of the entire child population.

Most recently Starmer praised King Charles for his sangfroid when an Aboriginal Australian senator protested at Charlie Bags-of-Cash Australian visit . Why should she not protest? Why weren’t more people protesting?

Am I seeing a pattern here?

Is Labour just far too comfortable with the mass deaths/exploitation and abuse of brown people?

Jupiter – why bother? (515)

 Jupiter is about 11x larger than earth. This big gaseous monster lies between Mars and Saturn. It's the 5^th planet from the sun in our solar system. It’s out ‘big daddy’ planet with a gravitational pull that sucks in massive asteroids and space debris that would otherwise obliterate us. And yes – that is not to say it’s always successful. It missed, obviously, the one that got the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But on the whole we cannot complain.

Our very existence – and by that I mean – the inhabitability of planet Earth, is so much of a miracle even considering it could make your brain explode. Like a super-nova.

But, if I were Jupiter – I’d be seriously thinking (with my gassy, stripy brain) – why bother.

From endless warring to the horrors that humans can mete out to each other, the Spanish inquisition (lowest estimate for deaths 30,000) to the witch trials (scholars reckon that those murdered for witchcraft is between 40 – 60,000). And remember this at a time when the earth was not made up of 7bn souls, so those numbers represent a huge percentage of what was then the world's population.

World wars – x2; estimates range from 55m – 80m dead.

In short, humans are pretty good at killing other humans.

But in the 21^st century we are excelling.

Netanyahu has racked up 43,000 deaths in Gaza in just one year with his “most moral army in the world”.

But this is dwarfed by what we now manage from pollution alone.

In 2021, UNICEF estimated 8.1 million annual deaths globally from air pollution.

One of my very early posts on this blog (I link it here) was called Armageddon will not be televised.

What I said then is true today x 1000

So – for this week, instead of the usual general invitation to check out my other stuff I shall simply link you to Zero One Zero Two - we are all dead...

‘Stalingrad’ – coming to a country near you… (514)

Here is a film that deserves some modern day attention. No, I’m not turning film critic and I’m not going to do that thing where you suggest your current hobby horse ‘should be taught in schools’. Kids are far far too busy working out how to get their next vape session in.

The Film is ‘Stalingrad’ - the original 1993 German-made anti-war film, is rightly referred to by NME as ‘A Masterpiece’. It stands out as one to watch not because of the brutal war scenes but because of the scenes of casual human brutality that starkly portray how very quickly callousness becomes a dull, monotonous, dreary, unavoidable, wasteful reality and routine.

Unlike a lot of British war films there is no sentimentality and there is no bravado either unlike the Hollywood counterparts. In fact sentimentality is shown to be wildly misplaced and naive in the attempts at romantic letter-writing by one of the main characters, by the casual placement of women and children among the battle scenes in others and the juxtaposition of utter bland stupidity and horror when it comes to death and human carnage.

For those who have not experienced war up close – thankfully most of us in this country  - or for those without an imagination or those who prefer the intellect-wiping stupidity of intravenous reality TV – this is the film that could pinpoint the actual grimness of a Gaza or Ukraine or Syria.

Ignore the platitudes of Starmer and before him Sunak about Israel’s ‘right to defend’. And ignore that little voice inside that tells you Ukraine – etc. - is nothing to do with you because it's ‘over there’.

Wars spread. Putin may have been held by the constant sacrifice of the Ukrainian people but if Netanyahu is allowed to continue to escalate the bloodbath in Middle East and manoeuvre the US to engage in more than the proxy war it usually enjoys, the pressure will be off Putin.

And in this global world, even if not caught up in the actual butchery, we can never escape the effects of extreme disruption to the production and distribution of food and oil for example – ya know – that stuff we can’t live without. Especially when the countries that make things and those that mega-consume are now so far apart.

‘Stalingrad’ coming to a country near you…

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I’m linking you here to one of the earliest posts in this 12 yr long political therapy session – post no. 12 -  Armageddon Will Not Be Televised

Because what I said then is at least 23% truer today… 

Gargantuan Gambling Gremlins chew through society while we look the other way. (513)

A recent study by Gambling Aware revealed that gambling ads at sports events had trebled in just one year.

Anyone – like me – who has turned to commercial and or local radio to avoid the slush of BBC nonsense will not be at all surprise.

These stations rely not on the free government hand-out to the stale old stultified, out of date, out of touch, unreliable, sycophantic, London-centric BBC but ad revenue. In my experience it’s rare to get through an commercial break without something relate to gambling being pushed in that hysterically happy snappy ad voice.

There is the obvious stuff – bingo websites etc. but then there is the subtler stuff like the post-code lotteries – charity lotteries and you’re chance to win anything from a 5 star holiday to a brand new car to cash.

I’ve never hear it announced how many people enter or how tiny is your percentage chance of winning. I do remember when the National Lottery was introduced during the Thatcher years it was condemned as a. a tax on the poor and b. as a replacement for proper funding. And it did not start well as one of the first uses was to buy documents from Churchill’s descendants ‘for the nation’ when many people believed they belonged to the nation in the first place.

Since then the lottery has become a staple and extended to scratch cards and any number of have-a-go chance grifts. Go to any outlet the night before a big draw and you cannot fail to see the hunched figures bent over their purchases frantically (miserably) scraping away or checking figures. Often these are bought in many multiples not just one. And on a weekly basis.

But this is nothing compared to the huge increase in online gambling often very poorly regulated despite the hurried ‘be gamble aware’ statement crammed onto the end of glitzy, slick, expensively produced ads.

Personal debt in the UK reached nearly £2billion at the end of June 2023 and debt per household was running at 96.3% of average earnings (The Money Charity). And a now three-year-old report from the CAB put personal gambling debt at an average of £10k per household but of course Citizens Advice only has access to those seeking help and or acknowledging there is a problem.

There is a deep fault line running through society on this issue.

And we may question the effects of advertising but Science Direct has studied this and discovered – no surprise – gambling advertising IS effective against one very key demographic –young adults and teenagers. The same demographic that spend most time online.

Anecdotally, as I am not a car owner and spend a lot of time on public transport, I can attest to the casual gambling that happens daily and it seems such a regular and integrated pass-time that I find the figures quoted above surprisingly LOW.

I recall listening to one young man on the train with pals claiming he enjoyed gambling because he was sensible – limiting himself to £40. Now he did not say if this was per day or per week. But let’s go with the week. That is the price of a pair of kid’s shoes (or an entire school uniform if you buy sweat-shop products) EVERY seven days and I was not at all convinced by his statement as people almost always underestimate these things whether its drink or food or drugs.

Years ago under the Gordon Brown administration there was talk of limiting gambling outlets that always seemed to huddle and multiply in poor areas. A phenomenon that tells a tale in itself.  But little has changed in that respect and it has become almost immaterial anyhow with the exponential grown of online gambling; it’s a battle that has been lost.

Like a lot of shit that flowed out of the sewer of the Thatcher administration last century – privatisation – de-regulation – we are paying the social price this century - and how.

But I see no push back. For some reason – despite the documented negative effects on social well-being, family life, economic well-being, mental health etc. – there is little to no resistance against the behemoth that is the insatiable GARGANTUAN GAMBLING GREMLIN chewing its way unchecked through society.

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As always thanks for reading and do check out My BOOKS

King Bags-of-Cash & Queen Fag Ash – need an extra £45million? (512)

My main reaction when I read that the ‘Sovereign Grant’ is to rise by £45m this year from £86.3m to £132m was – huh – they’re still there…

And remember the sovereign grant is just the tax payer money they get given – pocket money so to speak - on top of a whole lot of everything else. The royals are rich from land ownership and inherited wealth and they cost the tax payer money in so many other ways not least policing for when they are out and about in their dressing-up clothes shaking hands with the great unwashed.

The King’s coronation cost (as UK papers estimate) between £50 - £100 million. Why there is not an exact figure is anyone’s guess – maybe its considered poor taste to calculate to the odd £50 million when dealing with anything Royal.

Despite all this, Charlie boy was reported to have accepted 3m euros in cash in shopping bags from a Qatari politician (2022). Clarence House trotted out the balm that the money was ‘immediately passed to one of Charlie’s charities’ – and that was that was sufficient explanation as the UK press was concerned - so that’s ok then. Nothing grungy at all about that. And yes – Charlie has a talking house as opposed to a talking horse.

There is absolutely nothing about this that makes any sense. And by this I’m talking about THE MONARCHY in what is supposedly a modern Western democracy.

And after a decade and a half of Tory austerity where a disgraceful number of children are now living in poverty and there is a scrap over whether pensioners should keep their winter fuel allowance. UK pensioners receive between £200 and £300 for the whole year  while others with titles are getting £333 per day in the House of Lords for doing fuck all. So clearly, in the UK, it’s something to do with wearing ermine that entitles you to free money!

Fag Ash Lil – who currently holds the title of queen consort – despite all we hear about tradition and continuity when the sycophants are drivelling on about royalty – was the ‘third person’ in the Diana / Charles marriage and has since been credited with some of the most abusive treatment of Meghan Markle who was hounded out of the UK by the racist royals and a gleeful press.

And yes – any royalist reading this will possibly trot out the tired old argument about what ‘they’ do for Britain – the income from tourism etc but no one ever puts a figure on that or weighs it against the cost and the stupidity of it all. No one points out that many countries without a Charlie and a Camilla – get far more tourism than we do.

So my question is not so much why the increase in free money to some of the richest folk in the world – my question is WHY still a monarchy at all??? 

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As always - do check out My OTHER STUFF

Starmer’s social cruelty. Surprised? You shouldn’t be… (511)

Sighs of relief reached gale-warning levels when the Tories were ousted in July. However, that storm front fast lost its identity as the new reality was battered home by the son of a tool maker (did you know?). No one who understands politics or the sheer social carnage of Conservative maladministration this past decade and a half can have been expecting instant Nirvana. However, what we got, it seems, was a posturing PM who wanted to show he could be tough.

Not sure that’s what the electorate that bothered to turn-out, voted for.

It’s to do with expectation. Somewhere at the back of our minds we still think of Labour as more ‘caring’ than the Tories – despite the dead-eyed stare and forced smile (grimace) of Wes Streeting. Despite the treatment of Diane Abbot (and I’m no fan) by the party she served for decades. Despite the enthusiastic, unnecessary welcoming into the folds of Tory right-wing loon Natalie Elphicke earlier this year. Yes – that Elphicke. Not only extreme right wing but took over her husband’s seat when he was accused of sexual assault. Her defence of him being (and I paraphrase) these women chased him because he’s so gorgeous. – Do look up Charlie Elphicke.

So the clear lack of empathy evident in initial decision making in the early days, the bits folk will remember – have shaken people. An equivalent would be the shockwave that reverberates through society when we learn of a woman involved in extreme physical cruelty to a child. We all know it’s a possibility but deep down it’s something we still on the whole associate with men. Statistically that is a correct supposition.

There were expectations that Starmer’s administration would be more compassionate than a Tory government and Starmer could have made decisions that supported that expectation. He did not.

So – choosing to keep the two-child benefit cap brought us up short – and it was a choice. Scrapping the winter fuel payments to the elderly stuck in our collective craw.

Add that to Labour’s trotting along in the US tail-wind regarding the soft touch on Israel’s ‘Trump’ - Netanyahu for nearly a year now – despite the other 3 nations of the union calling for an immediate ceasefire back when it might have made a difference - and we are already wondering what is going on.

I would argue strongly Starmer’s Labour is acting entirely true to form.

Blair’s New Labour chose to stick to Thatcher’s fiscal programme for two years. It was the Blair administration that introduced tuition fees – crushing generations under debt. It was New Labour that introduced the private sector into NHS and Education infrastructure and of course – it was Blair who served up the tragedy of Iraq, the nightmare that followed and which reverberates today.

But step back further into the mists of time. During the pre-Thatcher Labour years 1974 – 79, £750million worth of shares in BP were sold off, there were extreme public spending cuts and the sell-off of council house stock was sanctioned by the Labour government albeit it the sell-offs happened in Tory-controlled councils.

What I’m saying is – Labour has ‘form’ and I’m not just referring to the last Labour government.

Anyone surprised by Starmer’s Labour needs to dust off some mental cobwebs.

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Do check out My OTHER STUFF

Blair & a Convenient Untruth – (510)

 I re-start this blog with the nasty surprise I got a few days ago because political Nosferatu Tony Blair has reared up again, possibly revived by sucking at the arteries of Labour’s resurrected political body and with the aid of his media thralls.

As those achieving power seem to come and go faster and have (with some not particularly honourable exceptions) come in younger, our tired political circus is having to juggle departed but undead politicians – post-party/ post-mortum (!) politicians so to speak – ever faster.

There are none more shudder-inducing than the cadaverous old war criminal Tony Blair who is still – against all decency and sense of moral fairness – platformed by straight-faced journos who clearly have selective and collective amnesia. Or, journalism school teaches them that if the mass murderer is a. one of their own b. a millionaire c. mates with Rupert Murdoch d. so personally delusional that he himself does not believe that being responsible for the illegal (ref; Chilcot Report) and entirely unnecessary deaths of untold, uncounted tens of thousands of innocent civilians matters, then he’s in the clear.

Tony Nosferatu has conveniently forgotten what we all learnt in political history 1.01 - that destabilised and ruined countries spew out fleeing desperate people by the thousand. Fear of that mass movement of the distressed, dispossessed and dislocated, feeds reactionary fascistic narratives as it has throughout history.

OR maybe – in the same way that the right-leaning media serve up Alex Salmond at any available opportunity – in a way they would not have done when he was actually leader of the SNP – ie in order to create discomfort for the current leader of that party – maybe the legacy media see Blair in this handy role for Starmer’s Labour. Nb. Starmer needs no help peeing into the tent. He’s doing fine on his own…

You have to hand it to them. Reminding the public that this scrawny old shit,  was the Labour leader who took us into the absolute disastrous invasion of Iraq while Starmer (40+k Palestinians deaths and counting – plus hostages and the spread of the conflict – still doesn’t seem to have a clear line on Gaza genocide, unlike the other 3 nations of the x4-naiton union) – is a real dooozie in terms of juxtaposition. Just what is it with Labour and feeling so entirely comfortable with the mass slaughter of brown people?

Or does Blair really just think it’s all about him plus his correct instinct that the legacy media do not care as long as they’ve got a rich white bloke to share his opinions.

His latest ‘I got it all right about Brexit cos I’m Tony’ tone – would be laughable if it weren’t so mad. Listen to anyone with two brain cells to rub together who wasn’t David Cameron and more interested in trying to keep his party together than doing what was right for Britain – and literally anyone could (and did) predict the horrors of Britain’s tortuous European exit.

Tell us something we don’t know Tone, like where you buried your conscience.

I’d rather read Lizz Truss’s appalling book cover to cover three times while sharing a taxi with the fascist frog-faced Farage and watching a video of Michael Gove cocaine dancing to the sound of  Jabob Rees-Mogg warbling about Brexit benefits in one ear and Boris Johnson  burbling about fatherhood and Peppa Pig than hear Tony Blair on any topic at all. Ever.

Call me squeamish - I just cannot stand war criminals.

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Thanks for reading as always. Some of you been sharing my political therapy with me for a dozen years now, thanks.

And please do also check out My BOOKS

Mend My Heart - a love song to Scotland (with the help of 'alien code'...)

 Though I'm not blogging again until after the summer, I said I'd post about any creative stuff.

This was a huge surprise as I'm not a musician. How it came about and the involvement of 'alien code' is explained in the blurb that accompanies the piece on bandcamp

Do check it out here - Mend My Heart

Terminal Carelessness. (509)

In the context of one of the most erratic, contextually crazy general elections I can recall, charting the fall and fall of rationality, there are couple of glaring things-that-should-concern-us.

The media, chasing ratings and hysterical headlines have pretty much ignored smaller parties including those with a legitimate reason to be represented – Greens, Liberals and the parties representing the 3D (devolved) nations – Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

On the other hand one party – the private company of one Nigel Farage – has featured endlessly. Farage himself, 7x failed UK parliamentary candidate – has been able to rely on media attention at every turn in what I’ve referred to in letters to the press and on this blog as a devil’s pact of rabid rantings for ratings.

This imbalance is matched only by the way the two main parties, represented by Sunak and Starmer have ignored the biggest issues affecting life both here in Britain and far beyond; Brexit, the Climate crisis and the war in Gaza. On the latter, both parties have demonstrated catastrophic moral, political and statecraft failure. Not to mention the way Ukraine fails to make headlines despite it being the literal front line for the battle for European democracy plus countless other areas of the world where Western interference or historic abuse has destabilised or wrecked local economies and eco systems.

But once this Thursday is done (and for me – one of the most interesting aspects will be the turn out) expect the limited attention the public give to the thing that affects every aspect of every part of all of their lives to fade from half-hearted to zero.

The army of folks who have proudly boasted to camera that they won’t vote and ‘they [politicians] are all the same’ and any number of other excuses for not taking the only chance they have to actually influence their own future, will go back to caring about which thin woman is wearing what minuscule bikini - because of course they are not all the same! And which celebrity is making babies with which other person you’d never previously heard of and which remake of which re-made, re-hashed super hero movie is being churned out to a background of cheap CGI. (Am I sounding jaded yet?)

There is a terminal carelessness in countries that are – for now – not forced to care. Countries where the ever-present distraction  and brain-death balm of consumerism, combined with infantilism of adult gaming and gambling plus a permanent sense of an entitlement to be entertained, pushes ‘care’ away from the big issues to the small.

In 2018 the vile Melania Trump wore a jacket with the logo

’I really don’t care – do you?’

It’s a question we should all honestly ask.

Maybe we should consider the old nursery rhyme about caring

Don’t care was made to care

Don’t care was hung

Don’t care was put in a pot

And boiled til he was done...

The point being that by the time enough people care it may very well be far too late…

And on that note I’ll put this blog into summer hibernation in terms of posts. I will pop out to put up info about any new creative stuff I have out.

Other than that, see you in September.

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As always for lighter reading do check out My BOOKS

Why the meek will not inherit the earth… (508)

Worn out as everyone else is by this grim, tawdry, sleazy election, I’ve little to say that has not been said and so resort to printing here two recent letters – one, the first, was published in a newspaper in New York and the second was published in The Herald here in Scotland.

1. Dear Editor,

I see, read, hear a lot from the US liberal left / centre left and mainstream Democrats about how deluded Republicans are in their homage to Trump.

May I respectfully suggest, from here in Scotland, it’s ‘the sensible people’ who seem deluded.

If Republicans cared about Trump being a low-life, mad, racist, misogynistic con man yada yada yada – he would not have got elected in 2016.

Here in the UK one of Trump’s many admirers Nigel Farage – tagged as a racist at his expensive private school by his teachers – continues to wield influence far outside anything he has earned. His main claim to fame – apart from his 7x failure to get elected to Parliament, is as one of the main midwives of Brexit.

Farage is perma-present in all press. As with Trump, the media have played the dangerous Rantings 4 Ratings game and we’ve all suffered.

Polls are suggesting a handful of wins for the party Farage just assumed leadership of – Reform UK. And there is a chance he’ll finally win a seat in Parliament and possibly take over the Conservative Party.

Do his potential voters know he is a racist? Yes. Do they know he is a Trump/Putin stooge? Yes. Do they know his ‘I’m one of you’ shtick is total fabrication? Yes. Will that make any difference? NO.

The meek will not inherit the earth because they are too in the habit of championing their oppressors…

 

2. Dear Editor,

BIZARRELY, in this 2024 general election, both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are frantically ignoring Brexit (apart from as a stick to beat each other with), Gaza and the current climate cataclysm.
It’s equivalent to a traditional cooked breakfast without bacon/sausage or eggs or beans.
It’s basically - toast...

 

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As always, for lighter reading do check out My BOOKS

Global Weather Report 18th June 2024. The storm is still coming… (507)

In the light of the way Western leaders appear to have turned their faces to the wall (or their backsides to their people) and particularly here in the UK where the three main crises (national – Brexit. International – failure over Gaza. Global – Climate catastrophe)  are being ignored in the coming General Election by the two main parties, I'm drawn to a very early post on this blog,

no. 12 - ‘Armageddon will not be televised.’

Posted in October 2012 when this blog was relatively new, style and content have morphed with my mood but that post more than any, underlines to me the whole sense of having fiddled while Rome burns...

So click HERE for a quick archive read.

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For fiction reading on the same subject try -

Zero One Zero Two (UK)

Zero One Zero Two (US)

Clacton don’t be catastrophically clueless - please! (506)

 Put to one side that the man whose only significant contribution to UK politics has been the utter disaster of Brexit is still happy to show his frog features to the multiple media outlets more than happy to elevate and fete him – Farage’s 8^th attempt to slime his way into Parliament is no joke.

Oh – and I hope that if he gets in this time – as the media are doing their autopsies – they give thought to the endless hours of unearned media attention they’ve gifted him over the last decade in a quid pro quo of rantings for ratings…

Put aside that he is a blatant racist whose sole aim is self-promotion.

Put aside that he was tagged as a racist while still at his expensive private school.

He is the ultimate turd that won’t flush.

And – yes – while I have been sceptical for a while now about the ‘ordinary folk’ the media find for their on-street interviews, you have to say the mood music aint great.

One suspects that ‘researchers’ are often sent scouting for the stupidest, most reactionary, incoherent lunatics to pose as ordinary folk.

But one woman – in an interview shortly after Farage announced that he was going to be the candidate for Clacton after pushing aside the nominal leader – Mr 1975 himself – Richard Tice – while praising Farage, looped Tommy Robinson (violent white supremacist) into the same sentence. Could there be a bigger tell as to the mind-set of the people who find Farage acceptable.

I’m way past asking the obvious question about how the rich get the poor and down trodden to constantly vote against their best interests with the very tired, grubby old trick of playing the race card but they do. They’ve been doing it not for decades but centuries. They’ve also been getting away with the whole ‘I’m one of you’schtick. I wonder how many of the folk in Clacton are millionaires or have set up companies to make money from elections and are funded by billionaires?

So yes – these elections seem to be as hideous as we expect these things to be these days.

Nery a day goes by without another bribe to electors from the two main parties that both we and the people spouting know aint gonna happen.

Nery a day passes without more evidence of pandering to the mob.

Selective amnesia is also handy and many, like Farage, are actively relying on a public that seem entirely willing to comply.

Surely two of the biggest absences from this current carry-on are any mention of Brexit or any mention of the biggest threat to our very existence – climate change.

Though we do carry on regardless – the one thing that would make this half bearable would be knowing that the good folk of Clacton were not going to show themselves to be catastrophically clueless by falling for Farage.

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And no – another reminder – I am not on ANY social media (for those who’ve enquired) I mean - come on - I don't even have a smartphone...  This is just political therapy.

For lighter reading do check out my books HERE. Other than that it’s just good old fashioned letters to the press which you’ll find randomly in quite a few papers here and abroad. If I could use a quill pen and parchment I’d be up for that though I’m very much enjoying my Remington typewriter. May have to get splints for my fingers but it’s very like the one I learnt to type on in 1979.

And – yes – I know – there’s me referring to Tice as Mr 1975! What a hypocrite.

From "The United States of Amnesia" to The United Spindom... (505)

 

Note to Kier Starmer...

Regarding Labour’s Kier Starmer upping the anti on Sunak’s ‘dangerous world’ pitch with his own statement on the “new age of insecurity”.

The current ‘age of insecurity’ with global terror, mass un-managed panic migration around the world and Middle East destabilisation began when Labour’s Blair and US Republican Bush illegally invaded Iraq.

The rest is climate devastation, a subject making very little sound in either his own or Sunak’s who has the biggest willy UK general election posturing…

It was Gore Vidal who coined the phrase ‘United States of Amnesia’. Here in Britain where all is spout today and re-set tomorrow, do we now live in The United Spindom?

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British Conservative Government – a 14 year UK virus? (504)

What does a virus do? 

A virus makes you weak, disorientated, listless, disconnected; often they hang around much longer than expected and leave you feeling not quite the same as before even when you are finally clear. Such an illness can cause a sufferer to lose their senses.

Viruses creep around the body making things not work, just as the Tories have crept around the body politic, weakening systems, confusing others, making others malfunction.

Viruses raise the body’s temperature just as the jingoism and racism of an increasingly right-wing Tory party has done, befuddling brain function sometimes harming essential organs, heart and brain, creating long lasting damage.

The Tories have mucked up essential social organs such as the NHS and schools.

Plus, a long virulent ailment can leave you vulnerable to other maladies. Having a Tory administration this last decade and a half has left the UK vulnerable to all sorts of social sicknesses; hatred, fear, cruelty towards the poor and vulnerable. Viruses can cause painful inflammation in some areas – just as child poverty has become inflamed. Ditto foodbank usage and homelessness.

Poor decision making can occur as a result of reduced brain activity – David Cameron. In extreme cases – spasms or odd jerky movements may be induced – Theresa May. High temperatures associated with some viruses prompt delusions, babbling and incoherence – or what we might term a bad case of Lizz Truss. Perverse mental meanderings and unpleasant swellings – Boris Johnson. Ultimately the illness may lead to ongoing whining, tetchiness and self-pity – Sunak.

Some viruses cause nausea and vomiting – and to be base – this lot certainly make me feel sick regularly.

Now the virus is seeping out of the body – many spores leaving in the hope of avoiding Portillo-itis.

Quite simply, you’d have to conclude that, outside of covid, the Tory party is one of the most debilitating collective viruses the UK has had.

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When Nelson Mandela spoke to me, I was sure the world was going to get better…(503)

In a very early post on this blog I wrote an account of Meeting Nelson Mandela

 

More recently I was scanning a piece in The Guardian about the whole collapse of hope and momentum in S Africa since Mandela died. A little disingenuous one might conclude considering the collapse of hope and absence of positive momentum here in the UK and the rowing back of social and political gains and collapse of social infrastructure since the Thatcher years – and all without the challenges faced by that troubled country…

 

One strong recollection of the day was the euphoria over his release and how ecstatic I was when I met him in Glasgow and how convinced I was that this was a sign that anything could change for the better.

 

I'm not someone who idolises people. I never had posters of popstars on my walls as a teen even but I was star struck that day and as brimming with hope as everyone else. I felt an echo of it when Obama was elected - and now it all seems to have turned to ash.

 

I don't get it.

 

It’s like the table was spread with a very appetising buffet - someone finally took the covers off but we let a handful of yobs in, they stole anything good, trashed everything else and left decent folk with scraps and wreckage...

‘Most Dangerous’… (502)

…is what rubbish Rishi tells us the next few years in the UK will be.

Like everything else he burbles out these days – no one can really get a handle on this.

What is most likely is that desperation at his own inadequacies and a potential Tory wipe-out at the election we are all literally gagging for – has turned to mad diversion tactics with a whole heap of incendiary fear mongering to pepper it all.

How should one respond?

I mean other than completely losing your mind and running down the street naked screaming at the diseased pigeons…

How about this

Dear Rishi,

If you are poor or a migrant or mentally ill or on an NHS waiting list or living in a house with RAAC concrete or going to a school with RAAC concrete or if you are elderly relying on home care or if you are working mad hours to pay your massively increased mortgage or if you are stupid enough to go swimming in the coastal waters around England or a river or if you are under threat of deportation to Rwanda for the sake of a right-wing headline or if you are a child living in damp, insecure housing or in the centre of one of our increasingly polluted inner cities or sleeping on the streets or cycling on pot-holed roads or waiting for an ambulance or struggling with the anxiety of life lived in perma-debt OR if you’re a child in Gaza being bombed with UK supplied armaments – a decade and a half of Tory mismanagement have already made life pretty bloody dangerous - you out of touch twonk.

Alternatively…

You could just go full child and (as I lived in Newcastle for many years) try this little ditty…

You can have a Rishi

On a little dishi

You’ll get a squishy Rishi

When the votes come in…

Dear Gaza, for what it’s worth – 3 out of 4 countries in the UK union care… (501)

As the world burns – only the cold, hard horror of Gaza can chill us to the bone.

It is popular in the right-wing press and for bought-and-paid for politicians to sneer at climate change in a way that helps the world ignore that once again – it is the poorest who suffer –at least at first.

Somehow – the world also seems to be able to ignore militaristic man-made horrors – Gaza, Ukraine (yes – the Western Media even seems to have tired of a conflict where White people are dying). Yemen barely features.

Right now Vietnam and Thailand are seeing their hottest ever temperatures. Delhi is burning. Meanwhile the hideous miscalculation of America and its long-term ‘special friend’ Britain - both still arming Israel as a further descent into madness - has paved the way for the imminent onslaught of Rafah.

No moral person can seriously claim that Netanyahu is anything other than insane if he thinks this will a. bring remaining hostages safely home b. lead to real future security for Israel.

At this point, it’s anyone’s guess what his actions are intended to achieve.

The death toll mounts. The suffering deepens. The destruction is almost total.

A few blogs ago, I posted that The Ghosts of Gaza would be waiting for UK politicians come the general election. In the local elections last week in England there was evidence that The Gaza effect is there. This is small beer in terms of global considerations except that it shows that the politicians are, again, out of step with the people. At least that is how it appears.

As The UK Conservative Party implodes in government – all their talk is how to stay in power and nothing at all to do with what is good for the people of Britain never mind anywhere else in the world. However, The Labour Party under Keir Starmer has followed the Tory line on Gaza – they in turn have followed the terrible missteps of Biden on this issue.

Looking at the UK and US you could be forgiven for thinking there is nothing more important for the world to focus on than (US) a rapist conman prospective Republican candidate – falling asleep and farting in court or (UK) the lunatic remnants of The Conservative Party showing the public just how much money they can waste with their cruel, unworkable Rwanda migrant deportation policy.

But know this – the UK is made of FOUR nations. Only England has failed to call for a cease fire in Gaza. The 3D governments – devolved administrations of Scotland, Ireland, Wales – have all called for an immediate end to the suffering.

Here in Scotland the (now –ex) First Minister called for a ceasefire last year. Once Stormont was up and running in Ireland – their First Minister used her inaugural speech to call for a cease fire in Gaza. And even in Wales where Labour is the largest party – The Parliament, without Labour’s support, managed to win a vote overall on the subject of calling for a cease fire. So – of the four nations of the union THREE have supported an immediate ceasefire.

It’s a small thing. A very small thing. But for what it’s worth

We care in Scotland

They care in Ireland

They care in Wales

Gaza and those in Israel who genuinely care about the future of the region - please know this… 

The only thing killing humans faster than Putin / Assad / Netanyahu - is the climate crisis...

 ...as we can see from the unprecedented broiling going on right now in Thailand and Vietnam++

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or

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Zero One Zero Two

Gaza; the pitiful Western aid drip alongside weaponry to kill those same people is the most nauseating, immoral juxtaposition of modern times. (500)

Early on in the collective punishment of Gaza, I referred to IDF tactics as tantamount to a grouse shoot. Palestinians have nowhere to run. The world knows this. Equally, we could talk about ‘fish in a barrel’… Any way you put it, the killing is beyond barbaric.

Add to that the West’s attempt to assuage its guilt with a trickle of aid while a. selling arms to Israel and b. refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire and anyone with an ounce of humanity is feeling queasy.

Would-have-been-in-jail-by-now if not for the invasion - Netanyahu -cares nothing either for the remaining Israeli hostages. In the shoot anything that moves – or doesn’t – or is surrendering approach, IDF actually gunned down, in cold blood, three who were clearly unarmed and pleading in Hebrew. There is nothing about his destructive madness that makes sense in the short, medium or long term.

However, for those who want to swallow Netanyahu’s line that a huge proportion of the 34k dead people of Gaza are Hamas (which gives this tiny population proportionately the largest fighting force that ever existed – a fiction way beyond Blair and Bush’s fictional Iraq WMDs) let us then simply ponder the 13k+ dead children.

For Western politicians to be crowing about an infinitesimally small amount of aid while not just tolerating the slaughter but abetting it is perhaps the most sordid, dishonest, nauseating humanitarian outrage and immoral juxtaposition of the modern era.

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“We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future”… (499)

F. W. Maitland (English Law Historian -1850 – 1906)

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So – more quoting this week. Maybe there just no longer seems much point in writing out what is obvious when it has been so very obvious for so very long.

At the weekend I got into a poignant discussion with my young cousins’ Ukrainian girlfriend. A sparklingly intelligent young woman, making the most of her displacement and trying to live a normal life while worry clearly accompanies all her thoughts and actions concerning her internally displaced family back in Ukraine.

OF the many interesting things she said, there was a central point that many would do well to remember in relation to the hysteria over migrants and in particular the government’s mad obsession and ludicrous incompetence (not to mention criminal waste of money) over the laughably insane Rwanda scheme. In fact it is a point that we’d do well to keep front and centre of any discussion relating to migrants or refugees, debate now derailed by the rabid right wing. That point is that she would not be here if it were not for the situation in Ukraine.

Do we really need to be reminded that people do not just up- sticks and risk their lives or leave their homes and families without good cause? It seems we do.

The reason I tie in this family snippet with the quote above is many fold but most urgently this –

Maitland was writing not just pre-WWII but pre WWI. In fact his seminal works were written in the C19th and yet the point he is making (and this is very broad brush) is that there may be and possibly is always a point in time when we have the option to change humanity’s direction of travel. History is what has happened but history is happening all the time. At some point in the not too distant future – will historians point to this current mess and the chaos in the UK and US – and say – ah yes – at moments up to and during 2024 when opportunities arose to halt the descent into the hell of all-out global war – no one seized those opportunities? No one attempted to divert the cataclysm.

I’ve already alluded to the Tory Party’s addiction to Russian oligarch money and – when he was PM - Boris Johnson sneering at the military advisors who warned him of an imminent invasion by Russia. While no one would impute Chamberlain with Johnson’s venality back in September 1938 – it’s hard not to think of the challenges surrounding Hitler’s claims over The Sudetenland and his land grab in Czechoslovakia and not draw comparisons with recent activities in Crimea and now the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

At what point could Hitler have been stopped? At what point Putin?

Are we at another Sudetenland crisis? Have we past it already?

At the moment – all the West are doing, while more Ukrainians die, is preventing Ukraine from losing outright. Putin is not being stopped and voices are growing concerning how to placate him. 

Really!

I would regard myself as a pacifist – broadly – but even I know that if someone is smacking you around the head with a baseball bat, you don’t stop and wonder if you tied a ribbon around the bat and offered them a cream cake – they’d stop and go away.

And if we do let this situation slide – we need to be clear – any conflagration in the 21st century would make WWI and WWII look like a drunken brawl after a bad wedding – just look at the horrors of Gaza. Yes The Somme is a stain on humanity in terms of trusting young soldiers’ lives lost – but then what is 13,000 dead Palestinian children? Think of the image in the early days of Putin’s madness – of the pregnant young Ukrainian woman with the smashed hip being stretchered away from a bomb site screaming to be allowed to die.

So let us draw on that 19th century wisdom and apply it to the humanitarian apocalypse we may be stumbling into – today – tomorrow or next week because surely – we don’t want to make that type of history again. 

We’ve walked this dark road so often… (498)

In last week’s post, in a cursory glance at how the lunatics have taken over the asylum, I asked – ‘who are these people’ and responded to my own question – not only do we know - we knew.

Well – there is nothing like talking yourself in times of madness.

But as a brief side-note to that – one might ask how did these monsters seize power; from Trump to Netanyahu and from Vladimir Putin to Geert Wilders and, while he’s never won an election (you’d not think it from the amount of prime time the UK press has lavished on him) Britain’s Farage, who now poisons the UK body politic like a mega-virus.

Well – the response to ‘how?’ is almost as depressing as the response to ‘who?’ It’s depressing because we know exactly how these things occur, we’ve been here so many times before and have done nothing to effectively prevent a re-occurrence.

To short-circuit this post I’ll simply quote from Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason – which discusses – among other things – the madness of the invasion of Iraq and the poisoning of American politics by the lunatic, racist right.

“Throughout history, our innate fear of others-who-are-different-from-us has combined all too frequently…to unleash the most horrific violence and oppression…Moreover, this deadly form of exclusivist group passion can be virtually invulnerable to reason. So it is especially useful to demagogues who learn how to fan it and exploit it to gain and consolidate power.”

                                                        Al Gore

                                                        The Assault on Reason

                                                        (chpt 2) 

‘WHO are these people’... (497)

…is a rhetorical question we like to ask.

More and more we ask it in all seriousness.

When, for example, peering at the peers in the House of Lords and seeing a dodgy Tory-appointed Russian donor or a certain Ms Mone who profiteered to the tune of many millions via dubious PPE contracts during covid, we are incredulous – who are these people?

But in more up-front politics the question becomes absurd in the extreme because the true response to ‘who are these people’ is that we know exactly who they are and more importantly – many have been elected by the people after the facts were public.

Let’s start with the obvious one. Donald Trump – the 77 year old convicted rapist and ex-president. Prior to his being elected it was known that he was a multiple failed businessman/conman with an appalling attitude to women and minorities. Once elected, the baseness of his intellect, his gross venality, infantilism and general unfitness to walk the streets let alone hold high office were thrust very definitely in our faces. He is now the GOP candidate for this year’s Presidential race. And, shame on the Democrats by the way, for not choosing a stronger candidate.

Here in the UK we have of course seen the premiership of one Boris Johnson; a man who never missed an opportunity to be unfaithful or dishonest. A man who surfed the sewers of both misogyny and racism and somehow came out smelling – if not of roses – at least something clearly acceptable to the British public.

Up here in Scotland we have dear old Alex Salmond and his Alba party – think the UKIP of Scotland. Despite some of the appalling things this new organisation has done – Alba candidates are treated like normal people when it comes to press reporting. Some, I’m sure will get elected at the coming local and national elections.

Alba was a party that openly welcomed a candidate knowing he was an anti-vaxxer and had racist views against travellers and appalling views regarding homeless people. Alex Arthur used dehumanising language referring to homeless people as “pigs” (The Herald 30^th March 2021) similar debasing language used by Trump was widely and internationally condemned.

Then there is Salmond’s cosiness with Putin’s pennies.

Salmond was publically deplored by all parties when he refused to give up his RT programme even after the Salisbury poisonings and was only separated from his doynaya korova (cash cow) after pressure following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The programme Salmond hosted along with Ms Tasmina any-party-that-will-have-me Ahmed-Sheikh was shunned by politicians of all hues.

The idea that Alba is a party interested in Scotland’s future is so mad it cannot be ignored. Alba is not a ‘wing’ of the Indy movement. An Alba Scotland would alienate anyone who cares about fairness, decency, international credibility, minorities, loyalty and public standards. ALBA is simply the Alex Loves Being Alex party and is nothing to do with what is good for the rest of us.

Netanyahu – who, to my mind – is driven in his ongoing, Western-sanctioned slaughter of Palestinians by one thing – to stay out of prison which is where he seemed to be headed last autumn. America knew who/what he was before they let him loose in Gaza.

We knew who Putin was before he invaded Ukraine. To anyone who thinks Putin could not have been stopped I say there used to be a you tube clip of Boris Johnson (then PM) sneering at his own defence advisors when they told him there was imminent danger of Putin invading Ukraine. Johnson is now re-cast as the erstwhile hero of that mess – mainly due to his own PR exertions – which tells us as much about the failure of the media as about the hideousness of the man.  

But then – that brings us right back to the start of this post – and the close ties of Russian Oligarchs to the Tory Party.

Who are these people? We know exactly who they are – and we let them in…