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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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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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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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)