the Guardian
If Socrates was against writing – what would he have made of Amazon?
God Save our Unforgettable Mall
the Guardian
the Guardian
No Drought – Trump Shorts Marijuana but Vets Already Blaze
Jamaica is only allowed to legally grow Marijuana now that it is already well established in US law. US firms have been granted licence to grow and experiment in Jamaica.
Vulture Capitalists, Potash Mining, GM, Fertilisers, Brexit & UK Food
For some reason Food and Brexit doesn’t get discussed in the news but as many of us will wind up eating food from fertilisers I think it’s worth a mention.
What is potash? Learn more in our blog, Prospects → https://t.co/8tDPWyfycT pic.twitter.com/YvuWVlSrFZ
— BHP (@bhp) July 17, 2017
When Vulture Capitalists start talking about ousting fatcat CEOs because they are overspending on entering fertiliser markets that looks like a sign that food prices are going up in the not too distant future.
What else can be gleaned from this?
I am much more interested in this than I normally would be thanks to the work of Public Interest Researcher Helena Paul who has commented on the link between Agri-Business and War.
Real Media interviewed Helena for Real Media earlier this summer:
Explosives & Explosions : The Haber Process
Roughly forty minutes into this great podcast, Tim Harford talks about the significance of the Haber Process.
www.stitcher.com The Haber Process revolutionised the world of explosives in World War One before being used in many of the world’s fertilisers — fueling the population explosion.
Tech-Firms & Universal Basic Income
The dark side of basic income. Parasites need hosts.
Wall Street Man Scaramucci takes over as Trump’s Communication Secretary
Is this a truce between President and Press?
Writing the Wrong’un
Just as Ian Fraser says that his book Shredded about the Royal Bank of Scotland is not just about RBS but really a prism through which to interpret lapses in UK financial regulation, nor is Donald Trump’s presidency really just about Trump the man or even the office he finds himself in but how a taboo-ridden self-censoring litigous society responds to rising inequality, increasingly obvious and endemic collusive corruption and the most obnoxious merger of government and corporate interests in living memory. Most establishment figures are so compromised that they cannot say or do anything about this. We most certainly do live in the age of the compromise.
As George Clinton of Funkadelic might have said, Free yourself from the shackles of integrity and the rest will surely follow. Feel free from the need to be free.
When will London’s Social Cleansing reach Peak Cleanse?
Plaque to honor the original Alms Houses on which the Hermitage Street development is built
I wonder if the new development on Hermitage Street in Paddington, Westminster, where this picture was taken has any affordable or social housing.
And has the ongoing social cleansing of London reached Peak-Cleanse?
The Dutch had a policy in Indonesia called Transmigrasi in which they sent the Javanese all over the country in an attempt to rebalance the population.
The link between people and place is sensitive.
Conservative Party grandee Norman Tebbit famously urged Brits to leave parts of the U.K. that were in economic decline by telling them to get on their bikes.
At the same time he said that the test of how British you are is which cricket team you support – your adopted country or the colony from whence you hail.
I looked around the back of this building for poor doors and can’t say I found any.
But I don’t actually know what they would look like.
I’m guessing they will be avoiding the flashing Apartheid sign above the door.
The plaque itself stands for something entirely different. So how much joined up thinking on this has gone on here?
Many organizations policies are entirely at odds with each other. Why shouldn’t this also be the case here. Strip away the veneer and all is revealed.
As Westminster Council have repeatedly been quite happy to geographically displace its residents I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if poor doors are alive and kicking somewhere in the borough.
The recently appointed chair of the Grenfell Inquiry ruled in favour of Westminster deporting/displacing a resident to Milton Keynes. She was of African origin so in this case the social cleansing would have had an ethnic dimension.
The case was overturned at the Supreme Court but it’s hard to say it doesn’t give an idea of how the judge’s mind operates.
Cressida Dick, head of the Met and a reputed to be a Common Purpose graduate, had been made the country’s top policewoman despite presiding over the ‘bungled’ killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005.
Some lawyers in Twitter have been saying that it is unfair to read anything into the displacement case.
But they would wouldn’t they?
Typical for lawyers to defend their own. I wonder what they say about the obvious whitewash when behind closed doors.
Lendlease in Haringey
Telegraph business section covering the Heygate and Haringey controversy today.
Real Media were at last Monday’s protest and will be releasing further interviews and a join the dots on the taboo topic of geographical displacement this week.
Gove claims to embrace Anti-Austerity Politics & “Green Brexit” in Desperate Bid to Charm Voters
Michael Gove, Minister for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, twice referred to a five year parliament as he started to backtrack on the Government’s austerity programme during this morning’s Andrew Marr politics show.
At no point did Andrew Marr pull the Gove up on his error.
This could have just been a double oversight on both of their parts – not that unlikely given the sheer incompetence emanating from the Tory party and the BBC right now.
But it could all just be more intrigue and subterfuge from a politician who, by U.K. standards is a well accepted as being as dishonest, self-serving and Machiavellian as they come.
Few politicians enjoy the degree of political protection that has been afforded to Michael Gove. The risk free environment in which he operates has convinced him – quite fairly – that he can actually do no wrong.
The man is a close friend of Rupert Murdoch’s and just as his fellow Brexiteer Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel writes for the Mail on Sunday, Gove’s own wife Sarah Vine is a columnist for The Daily Mail.
Gove himself returned to the Murdoch Times during his recent sabbatical when he managed to deliver the ‘Exclusive’ interview of Donald Trump from Trump’s palace in New York with his own boss and fixer Rupert Murdoch in attendance.
With Gove’s ex-Cabinet colleague former Chancellor George Osborne already editing London’s only high circulation freesheet, you’d be forgiven for contemplating whether the sudden acceleration of the pace of the revolving door be a signal of what anti-corruption expert David Whyte calls a “high degree of tolerance of collusive corruption in this country.”
Any honest journalist, unlike Marr, would have flagged as, in and of itself, the massive risk to UK Public Health that Gove really represents.
Some other interesting things about his interview.
Gove used the term 5 year parliament twice but was never picked up on this.
Gove’s appearance is supposed to reflect Tory backtracking on Austerity.
Damian Green implied there will be a U-Turn on University fees.
But Gove defended fees by saying it isn’t fair that those who don’t g to uni fund those who do. He didn’t go so far as to say that those who have been funding people to go universities deserve a rebate so it is a wonder whether he means anything he says.
The 1% public sector pay cap may go. There was the £1bn to Northern Ireland. Abortions. Same Sex marriage.
Gove was asked how he fel, as an individual, about austerity, to which he replied that he is not an individual – that he is a member of the government. He also told Marr that that Marr himself said that he has had to learn to keep his own views to himself. So here we had two men – both public figures – admitting to have no personal investment in their own words.
This reminded me of the scene at the beginning of Michael Lewis Liars Poker in which he said that banking was really all about people who didn’t know what they were buying buying from people who didn’t know what they were selling.