UNISON Union head at School of Oriental and African Studies speaks at three day Strike
I cycled past SOAS yesterday morning and realised that lecturers are striking due to changes in their pension terms.
There may have been some mention of this in the mainstream media but but it wasn’t particularly prominent.
The solidarity between students, lecturers and staff was inspiring.
I learned that in 2009 SOAS management co-operated with the Home Office who conducted clandestine dawn raids to trap and deport several of its own cleaners. The incident is referred to in a film called Limpiadores. I will share a link when I find it.
But does being entitled to a Central Bank bank account mean that it is an option or that it is mandatory?
And what happens to normal banks if you can do everything via the central bank?
India still has banks. It claims Aadhaar has helped serve the previously unbanked. But what about a country like UK where most people already have bank accounts?
Will a UK Central Bank Digital Currency mean that our transactions are all more easy to track by the tax authorities, local government, and the police?
Will banks still exist but mainly concentrate on offering loans and investment products?
And what about vaccine passports? And Social Credit like in China?
What role do they play in all this?
George Gammon released this video in August.
He is from the libertarian side of things.
You have been warned.
But I strongly advise watching this for a steer on what the future could hold.
I think he is talking about a Chinese system far more than an Indian one.
Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab defended the former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox on the radio today.
Cox has been earning top dollar working for the Cayman Islands. Advising on them on legal matters that only people like him know about.
Apparently he is providing them with advice against the British State:
Right so *deep breath* it appears Geoffrey Cox spent April, while Brits were still under lockdown rules, in the Caribbean, voting in parliament over Zoom, earning £100,000s representing a tax haven island *against the British state* over corruption claims? https://t.co/1aTW7Hr2Vw
NEW: I've run the numbers on Geoffrey Cox's second job(s)… the QC spent an average of 22 hours A WEEK in the last year on lucrative legal work – on top of his £81k job as an MPhttps://t.co/neuezSBloQ
Few seem to remember that Cox tried to keep his legal advice to the Prime Minister over the Brexit withdrawal agreement completely secret.
Parliament took a different view. There was eventually a vote and a rebellion. He lost the argument. From what I remember it appeared as though he and May had been lying to the country as well as Parliament in order to get their way.
Jeremy Corbyn did very well as opposition leader during this time, though of course not everyone will agree with that. I, for one, wouldn’t have wanted Keir Starmer and Tom Watson either side of me on the Front Bench.
Here’s Brooksy of Private Eye, focusing on the money.
The Cox-less parliament. How Geoffrey’s outside numbers prevented him speaking in House for 18 months. From @PrivateEyeNews three months ago – pic.twitter.com/7mECD2IQFs
And here’s what the US had to say about China’s military capability back in 2019.
The UK just published a Commons Research paper into the Integrated Review.
Here is the Integrated Review itself. Its full title is Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy.
Britain has adopted a fairly schizoid approach to China in recent years. Under Cameron and Osborne Britain got very excited about Chinese investment.
Xi famously went to Davos to argue for the rules based order in direct contrast to Trump.
But bit by bit, despite following international rules and doing business healthily with the West, China finds itself manoeuvred into pariah status.
The mismanagement of the dollar is obviously an issue. There is nothing China can do about that. Then there is the need for resources. And military might. The US appear to be scared of China’s progress and view it as a rival whereas China presumably just regard the US as one of many customers. A genuinely tricky customer for sure, but a customer all the same.
The US needs China but China also needs the US.
And as for us in the UK, we just have to act as though we are as mighty as America even though we have no real say over what America do.
This set up leads to all sorts of contradictions – such as the way Chinese students effectively fund UK Higher Education establishment.
The UK Government is trying to discourage its citizens from going to university – perhaps China is aware of this and simply regards Britain as a place to send its students on a gap year.
Universities do not have the balance sheets to carry loans made to students with ICR repayment terms over decades. A cursory knowledge of finance is enough to tell you that. If tuition fees are over 50% of your income, it doesn't take long for the balance sheet to max out.
Finance is a service, a means to an end. It helps people achieve their goals — whether buying a home, paying for their children’s education, expanding their businesses, or saving for their retirements. To these ends, financial institutions are disciplined by hard numbers: debit and credit, profit and loss, return on investment, value at risk.
He went on
Now people around the world are demanding sustainability in the face of the enormous climate challenge, and 192 governments have turned that somewhat amorphous goal into a specific objective — limiting global temperature increases to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. This mission is also disciplined by numbers. Getting on track for 1.5C requires emissions to fall by 7.6 per cent every year throughout this decisive decade.
disciplined by numbers – remember that – surely Carney isn’t just plucking numbers from thin air?
He wouldn’t do that, would he?
More from Mark:
So where do we stand? Since the UK assumed the presidency of COP26 in partnership with Italy last year, countries’ net zero commitments have risen from covering one-fifth to over four-fifths of global emissions. That’s huge progress but it’s far from enough. Now we need ambitious climate policies by governments, aggressive climate actions by companies, and enormous financing from the mainstream financial system if we are to deliver on the numbers.
Why is he saying that net zero commitments now cover four fifths of global emissions? I see no time scale associated with his numbers. No list of who has and who hasn’t committed. Which sectors have and have not been included. Whether there is any way of verifying anything this serial technocrat is saying. And yet he refers to being disciplined by numbers. Oh dear.
What else do you have to say, Mr Carney?
That’s why our COP private finance strategy has devised 24 major initiatives to build a financial system in which every decision made takes climate change into account. To supercharge these reforms, the UN and the COP26 presidency have created the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero. GFANZ brings together the most ambitious firms in every sector of finance, from every continent.
This is not another well-meaning but vague commitment to sustainability. As much as we might wish, we can’t get to net zero by flipping a green switch. We need to re-wire our entire economies. GFANZ members don’t seek to be judged on style or by black box ESG ratings. They’re disciplined by the hard numbers of the shift to net zero. And they haven’t just committed to net zero financed emissions by 2050 at the latest. They also target their fair share of the 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that is needed by 2030 if we are to keep the world on track for 1.5C. They’re developing detailed reduction plans, and will report all the emissions of their borrowers and investee companies annually. Hard numbers for true sustainability.
Actual reporting sounds ambitious. Who will audit them? Will there be enforcement procedures against companies who fail to comply or whose numbers don’t stack up? I’m not hearing that.
To make all this add up, we must build a financial system entirely focused on net zero. That means defining best-practice, science-based transition plans for companies and financial institutions. It means robust assessments of the portfolios of financial institutions. It means developing approaches to wind down stranded assets — that could reach four-fifths of coal reserves and up to half of proven oil and gas reserves — transparently and responsibly.
So we’ll keep using coal, oil and gas then?
The financial imagination required to deploy green technology isn’t getting much of a mention.
And it means mobilising trillions of dollars of capital to finance decarbonisation in emerging and developing countries — a hitherto unimaginable number but without which real sustainability is not possible. Given the enormous resources of GFANZ, a radical new approach to mobilising private capital investment in emerging market and developing economies can be developed.
Specifically, we need a country platform for each nation to achieve its emissions reductions goals — including the phasing out of coal generation and other fossil fuels — by deploying a blend of public and private finance and technical assistance.
Ok so decarbonisation means investing in alternative technologies, right?
At Glasgow, look for specific proposals and financing commitments consistent with this approach, and remember that if something cannot quickly scale to $100bn a year, it is a soft number that will not change the climate.
Ok so ignore anything that can’t scale to $100bn a year. In what timescale, Mark? This is starting to sound gangster. The COP26 Massacre. Computer says no.
The imperative of a just green transition underscores the reality that finance never acts in isolation. Governments must back their net zero commitments with clear, credible, and concrete policies. Our alliance has set out what we believe are the necessary policies.
That’s the set up over with…
This includes carbon pricing, bans on internal combustion vehicles, national targets to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, and mandatory climate-related financial disclosures. The more these are implemented, the more finance will have the certainty and confidence to invest early, which will smooth the shift to zero carbon, drive growth and jobs upwards and help force emissions downwards.
Boom. You saw it here first.
The Carney Solution – Central Bank Green QE Handouts for Large Corporates.
All of this points to a final hard number: $100tn. This is the minimum amount of external finance needed for the sustainable energy drive over the next three decades if it is to be effective.
NO WONDER THE NUMBER IS SO BIG. MAKE IT BIG AND IMPOSE NO CONDITIONS OR OVERSIGHT.
LOL, SUCKERS.
Next week in Glasgow, look for who is part of the $100tn solution. Does it include your bank, insurer, mutual fund manager, or pension fund? Your money matters. In the months and years ahead, judge all financial institutions not by what they say but by their numbers: the total dollars of transition financing, the amount of polluting, the stranded assets retired, the emissions eliminated and the timelines to get to net zero.
Hard numbers in service of all people and our planet — that’s the real bottom line.
Are you part of the $100 trillion solution?
This is the question Carney wants you to ask. But it is the question he wants you to ask of yourself. You have to take your hat off. That’s deft programming of the Zombie class.
It seems unlikely that £100 trillion is lined up to fight climate change already.
God knows what Carney really means.
By putting no time scale on things he can up the hyperbole and play down the actual performance.
Here’s some more diagrams from the FT. Even they have backtracked on what they let Carney publish.
Who knows how much double accounting is included in Carney’s $100 trillion figure.
Back to the FT:
“The implication of this number is that finance is greening the world,” said one sceptical banker. The reality is that carbon transition will require huge state intervention and investment. The risk for GFANZ is that having overpromised, private finance will now under deliver.
Professor PLO Lumumba on the recolonisation of Africa, speaking in Ethiopia.
Professor Lumumba refers to the 1945 meeting in Manchester and points out that Ethiopia was never successfully colonised.
I’m just starting to listen to this video. Professor Lumumba is eloquent and a joy to listen to. I’m learning a lot already. He is a top lawyer. Not a word wasted. Prepare to be inspired.
I assume there is a warning about the risk of Africa being used further as a site of proxy wars or further colonisation due to the resource curse.
Max and Stacey point out that the ongoing Green Capitalist Revolution is bound to fail if you don’t sort out the money system.
I don’t have access to the kind of cheap energy that you need to mine bitcoin so I don’t have a dog in this race.
Though bitcoin has risen massively in value since 2017 I don’t see it becoming the global reserve currency.
The dollar is clearly being mismanaged as is the Euro so that leaves the Chinese Renmibi / Yuan.
The impression I get is that the Chinese don’t want to run the reserve currency and are not able to have a meaningful conversation with the Americans about how the current international financial architecture should evolve.
Where does that leave us?
It looks like more mismanagement and papering over the cracks for the foreseeable future
(Regular updates to include further research into The Opaque Funding of Brexit, GM Food Lobbying, Deregulation, Think Tanks, Climate Change, Randox Health, Tufton Street, The Tory Party )
Who is Owen Paterson? And what has been up to?
He’s just resigned as an MP from Parliament because of a lobbying scandal.
This has caused disquiet in Parliament because it appeared that he was going to be allowed to get away with it.
Mr Paterson was once a Minister & an extremely influential Brexit campaigner.
His vision for the post-Brexit UK was deregulatory.
One in which foreign companies could easily do business here with few limitations.
That typically means lower food standards. Allowing US cheap meat into the country. This posed a risk, not just for British consumers but possibly also for Europeans.
The UK 2020 Think Tank
In 2014, after being sacked from the Food Ministry by then PM David Cameron, Owen Paterson set up a think tank called UK 2020 to opaquely fund his GM Food deregulation lobbying trips.
He’d previously been Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Links to Independent and Guardian reports appear below.
Owen Paterson faces calls to reveal names of donors to his think-tank which paid for foreign trips https://t.co/UhlVWApuKm
However, less than a year after the mysterious death of his wife, and while he was still under investigation for paid lobbying, Owen Paterson appeared on BBC Breakfast.
This was while many of the UK lockdown rules were in place.
During Covid, Paterson’s client, Randox, due to whom he has attracted so much controversy, started signing deals with the UK Government. Many to do with PCR tests.
By the time the article below was written the UK Government had signed deals with Randox worth £500m.
Tory-linked firm involved in testing failure given new £347m Covid contract https://t.co/zhOI9GT60g
When the following article came out in May 2020, Rose Paterson was still alive.
She’d already had Covid and may have been embarrassed or felt somewhat complicit by the high levels of involvement between her own employer – the Grand National, The Government, & Randox.
Perhaps, when the article came out about her husband and the secretive Randox contracts, Rose Paterson agreed with the Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone – that the whole affair appears completely corrupt.
Lobbying
Just as with David Cameron and Greensill Capital, Owen Paterson definitely met a Health Minister during Covid, but we still don’t know exactly what happened:
According to Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards Kathryn Stone’s report in February 2017 Randox officials met Owen Paterson about the Grand National. It doesn’t state whether his wife was present. The next official entry after the meeting was that his pay was increased.
Sponsorship
Given the level of sleaze surrounding Paterson & Randox, some are asking if they are suitable sponsors of the Grand National.
Is Randox a suitable sponsor for Grand National after Paterson sleaze row? https://t.co/arUCB90KYz
Owen Paterson appeared on BBC television in April 2021. He had set up a trust with his kids to prevent suicide. But a couple of strange things happened during the broadcast.
The reporter says that Paterson hopes to influence government policy. It is implied that this is in relation to suicide prevention. Paterson then blames Tech Giants for suicide, in line with the government’s Online Harms Bill. It was also implied that more needs to be done to prevent people from using the internet freely.
But no mention was made of the investigation into his paid lobbying.
And note the repeated product placing of Paterson’s employer Randox on ad-free BBC.
I am not used to seeing that much of a single company on the BBC. Did Randox organise the tv appearance? Did they pay him? We’ll never know.
“Hoped she was murdered”
In the Daily Mail Paterson is referred to as preferring murder to suicide. Perhaps an just innocuous remark.
Change of Tune : Attack Kathryn Stone
But then Paterson changes his position and blames the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone – for having the temerity to investigate him.
Stench of corruption. As Owen Paterson bids adieu to the “cruel worlds” of politics and paid advocacy, @guyadams looks back at what the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs did for Randox Labs and Lynn’s Country Foods. https://t.co/Oyf4clinvJ
George Eustice is the latest member of the government to decline the opportunity to say Kathryn Stone shouldn't be hounded out of her job as Standards Commissioner, as reports suggest she now requires police protection due to threats to her life. #marr
Sean Rickard says at #FoodBrexit conference that Brexit is “a giant deviation”. UK food system ought to be addressing 1. food trade imbalance 2. need to reach sustainability 3. further raise food standards. Instead the @defra Agriculture Bill says almost nothing about food.
IEA man at #FoodBrexit conference in London says chlorinated chicken, hormone-fed beef and GM are all ok and benign. We see here one direction Food Brexit will be driven, if the neoliberal ideologues have their way.
— Food Forensics and Fraud-FFCI (@Kenn_FFCI) May 1, 2018
Felicity Lawrence
Felicity Lawrence has been covering food for the Guardian since the 2000’s. Without her fearless undercover reporting and brilliant writing, I wonder which of these stories would have seen the light of day.
Of course the Guardian is sponsored by Bill Gates and his desire to push for GM Food is well known.
More links to other people’s research will be placed on this web page in the future.
The regenerative rock and rollers over at Microsoft licensed Start Me Up off the Rolling Stones to help them launch Windows 95.
At which point I would have been likely listening to Mobb Deep
Interesting how Bill Gates went from Computers to seeds. It’s all intellectual property, after all. He is a Monsanto investor and therefore I assume opposed to regenerative agriculture.
Carbon Tax
Will the upcoming COP26 Climate Change event in Glasgow lead to a global carbon tax?
This week the head of the WTO wrote, in the FT, that carbon must be priced.
Leonardo DiCaprio made a similar call at the UN back in 2014.
But who will get to spend the carbon fund?
Bankers must be inventing acronyms, as we speak, in order to grab that fund.
Using words like Green, ESG, Impact Investment, and Sustainability is how they’ll do it.
RAIN
My friends at RAIN are helping reforest the Amazon. Will they get any?
RAIN is celebrating the victory in the Brazilian courts of one of our Indigenous partners, Kretã Kaingang. Here he is holding the letter granting the occupiers’ legal right to the land. Read more: https://t.co/tFMexK9zuN#IndigenousPeoplesDay2021#INDIGENOUS
— RAIN (Regenerative Agroforestry Impact Network) (@RAIN_Reforest) October 11, 2021
You’re expected to message them on Facebook’s WhatsApp or fill out a form. Apparently one of their journalists will get back to you ‘before they publish’.
Why does this feel weird?
Do Guardian journalists not usually talk to people on universal credit?
Do they not trust people on universal credit to comment directly onto the Guardian website ?
I guess someone at the paper has argued for this. And that there has been pushback, for security reasons.
Why are they so nervous about getting testimony from people on the frontline of the war on the poor? All they have to do is open the comments and let people speak their truth.
Why aren’t they asking for more testimony from people from DWP?
Perhaps having an advert for Rolex on page two and three of Monday’s print edition has something to do with it.
The Guardian is clearly a broad church, which leaves little room for principle.
On the attribution & ascription of names, values, causes, & characteristics
From Eponyms & Anonyms, to Pseudonyms, Synonyms, & Antonyms
I may think I think this, or think I think I think that.
And thinking I thought another thing . . . I Taut I Tauw a Putty Tat.
Strictly for the Birds
But surely, that sort of thing could never happen here . . .
When it comes to policing debate in a digital democracy, certain ideas win the early PR war.
Such as that if we are completely transparent about our identities then we are far less likely to become abusive bullies. We’ll end up policing ourselves.
The Social Media Platform Twitter has just come back with data about the racist abuse that appeared after England lost the final of the UEFA European Cup last month.
Lots of politicians, Margaret Hodge in particular, say they believe that racism and other forms of abuse will fall if people are forced to reveal who they are whenever they comment online.
So the question is, which identification model is best for society?
Losing anonymity theoretically discourages bad behaviour – but ironically means fewer people feel truly free to express themselves.
Critical point 👇 that the knee-jerk 'everyone should have to register their #ID' crowd will no doubt continue to ignore.
Just as the so-called Delta variant is more virulent but less harmful, the internet allows our throwaway as well as our heartfelt opinions to be far more easily shared – whether deep or superficial.
But with that has come authoritarianism and the establishment’s fear of the mob.
So we have externally moderated speech.
Just as broadcasters have historically had to follow strict guidelines – so too, now, do any Haris, Sitas or Rams.
From Gate-kept to Bereft >>> From Bereft to Tone Deaf
So what ever happened to Free Speech and Democracy? That great listening activity.
To paraphrase the mighty MK, (not) it was a nice idea (at the time).
Anonymous / Incognito
That Isadora, she could dance
The Greeks liked their masks
Lastman’s Juno discovering Jupiter with Io. The mask depicts deceipt.
But now with pseudonymisation . . .
Further propaganda (2017)
Joe Green / Giuseppe Verdi’s Un giorno di regno King for a Day:
They say Video killed the Radio Star
Speaking of Chicken and Egg, Wittgenstein got quite caught up in the Language Reality continuum.
As did Aristotle and Zeno, but on a more meta, mathy level.
More meta than language / reality? Truthiness?
Ok, fair point.
The Sapir Wharf thing matters.
Mono can be boring. What happened to cognitive diversity?
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis/səˌpɪər ˈwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers’ worldview or cognition, and thus people’s perceptions are relative to their spoken language.
Linguistic relativity has been understood in many different, often contradictory ways throughout its history.[1] The idea is often stated in two forms: the strong hypothesis, now referred to as linguistic determinism, was held by some of the early linguists before World War II,[2] while the weak hypothesis is mostly held by some of the modern linguists.[2]
The strong version, or linguistic determinism, says that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. This version is generally agreed to be false by modern linguists.[3]
The weak version says that linguistic categories and usage only influence thought and decisions.[4] Research on weaker forms has produced positive empirical evidence for a relationship.[3]
The term “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis” is considered a misnomer by linguists for several reasons: Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf never co-authored any works, and never stated their ideas in terms of a hypothesis. The distinction between a weak and a strong version of this hypothesis is also a later invention; Sapir and Whorf never set up such a dichotomy, although often their writings and their views of this relativity principle are phrased in stronger or weaker terms.[5][6]
The principle of linguistic relativity and the relation between language and thought has also received attention in varying academic fields from philosophy to psychology and anthropology, and it has also inspired and colored works of fiction and the invention of constructed languages.
Listing pretentious, pseudo-intellectual quotations from the media. At various times different columnists have been frequent entrants, with varied reactions. In the 1970s, Pamela Vandyke Price, a Sunday Times wine columnist, wrote to the magazine complaining that “every time I describe a wine as anything other than red or white, dry or wet, I wind up in Pseud’s Corner“.[2] Around 1970, editor of the Radio TimesGeoffrey Cannon regularly appeared because of his habit of using “hippie” terminology out of context. Simon Barnes, a sports writer on The Times, has been frequently quoted in the column for many years.
The column now often includes a sub-section called Pseuds Corporate, which prints unnecessarily prolix extracts from corporate press releases and statements.
FT’s Gillian Tett on Engagement, the new form of shareholder governance
I used to look to Gillian Tett’s work to understand the world I lived in. She published articles that resonated with me because she looked at the world differently to other journalists. She’s a trained anthropologist. Once, when I referred to her whilst speaking to a younger FT journo, I was told (ten years ago) that some of her colleagues felt she had “Gone Native”. I don’t think that was a colonial dig at her having mixed race kids. It was because she was perceived as having got too close to the people she was supposed to be reporting on.
I believe Gillian now lives in the US and is very high up in the paper. Maybe one day she’ll become the editor. Who knows?
One thing is sure – her work has become somewhat tame since she started the Moral Money section in which she talks about Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) issues.
I’ve had trouble reading it because I find her far too deferential. And the video above shows that. I appreciate that making explainer videos must involve tough decisions. What do you include? What do you leave out? And most of all in the case of ESG, who do you portray as the baddies when the worst of the worst already pay you to scribble behind their ads?
Equinor (Norwegian state-owned Oil firm formerly known as Statoil) partner with the FT.
Check out this Equinor / FT / EU Green Deal hydrogen video
Debate on mandatory vaccines ended. A 90 minute debate for one of the most profound changes to medical ethics, human rights and workers’ protections in our country. This was the turnout… MPs voting now, result shortly. pic.twitter.com/QWsRVNetCS
After what’s happened tonight I think we’ve reached the stage where we should no longer recognise Parliament as the sovereign law-making body. We need to urgently convene a People’s Parliament to represent the interests of the British people and not the W.E.F. & the Davos set.
— Big Brother Watch (@BigBrotherWatch) July 13, 2021
Full French Vax-cism
“The unvaccinated will bear the brunt of the restrictions rather than everyone…from the beginning of august, the vax pass will be needed for coffee shops, restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, trains, buses etc…”
I believe the outcome would be similar should this approach be taken in Britain, but it is part of the national character to believe it would not. https://t.co/yhsoUMLT0l
When May talked about the ‘nasty party,’ I don’t think any of us could have had even the vaguest idea of quite how indescribably nasty it was about to become.
The potential rebellion was billed as being strong enough to force defeat. In the end Sunak talked many round.
Here are the 24 rebels, including a former PM Theresa May and a clutch of former cabinet ministers incl Jeremy Hunt, Damian Green, Andrew Mitchell Karen Bradley pic.twitter.com/9iEGFZdZIP
Theresa May – I have never voted against a 3 line whip from my party, as PM I suffered at the hands of rebels… we made a promise to the poorest people in the world, the govt has broken that promise… so with deep regret I will vote against the motion today. pic.twitter.com/Oatd97ETrY
UK media unwilling to debate credit creation as so much power depends on propagation of myth
The BOE own 85% of the debts I think so no actually it could be written off tomorrow. The country budget is not the same as the household budget no matter how much they try and make it so
— Antony Alexander 🏴🇮🇪🇧🇻🇩🇪🇪🇺 (@aja1979) July 13, 2021
Central Banks help Governments and Banks borrow at super cheap rates
— Rudy Havenstein, almost the best version of myself (@RudyHavenstein) July 8, 2021
Further distortion re: Government Ethical Vacuum
Like to apologise for tweet highlighting £370k of taxpayers’ money paid to Sir Phillip Rutman to keep his claims of bulling by #PritiPatel quiet. Turns out I underestimated. Taxpayers also met Patel's legal costs. Another £30k of tax payer funds to protect the Home Sec. Why?
Privatisation of children's services means thousands of vulnerable children are routinely moved around the country like freight to live hundreds of miles from everything they have ever known. Here's just one example 1/
Greensill Scandal / Revolving Door / Collusive Corruption
David Cameron was paid over $1 million a year by Greensill Capital, at a rate of $40,000 per day for his part-time advisory role for the failed finance firm @graceblakeleypic.twitter.com/PvOI0Kzgq3
The Health & Care Bill will have a second reading tomorrow. If it becomes law, representatives from private healthcare corporations could be allowed to sit on NHS bodies. Why do you think they’d want to do that? Tell your MP to vote against stealth privatisation & #KeepNHSPublichttps://t.co/hVpf6gBXGz
This tweet has been deleted because it was ‘misunderstood’. This guy Sandford is not a Tory MP, he’s a BBC journalist paid by TV licence money. pic.twitter.com/ZxI4NuPqjo
— Helen the Zen 🏴 💙 🍉 (@helenmallam) July 13, 2021
Due to a large number of people misreading my previous tweet I have removed it
Well paid BBC financial journalist publicly admits that the UK Government is basically unwilling to provide timely accurate information. https://t.co/Xjr3OclaoA
He (Colston-Hayter) also hired a bullish young publicist. Paul Staines had first met Colston-Hayter a few years earlier at a national video game tournament. A libertarian Conservative at university, he went on to work for former Thatcher advisor David Hart. “I was a fanatical, zealot anti-communist,” he told Collin. “I wasn’t really a Tory, I was an anarcho-capitalist.”
Staines found a new calling after he took his first E at one of Colston-Hayter’s Apocalypse Now parties. “It was pure MDMA, and I was so out of it, so in love with everybody,” said Staines who is now better known as the less loved-up political blogger Guido Fawkes.
As Sunrise and other big rave organisations flourished, moral panic ensued, with the Sun infamously claiming that ecstasy-addled ravers bit the heads off pigeons. (“How did they catch the pigeons?” retorted Colston-Hayter during a TV interview.) The police formed the Pay Party Unit, a new squad dedicated to clamping down hard on unlicensed parties. Some members of the government were dismayed that their opponents weren’t pierced-and-dreadlocked outsiders but well-spoken rightwing entrepreneurs who stashed their profits in an offshore tax haven. A baffled Home Office official once screamed at Staines: “You’re a rightwing Tory, why are you doing this?”
The Sunrise duo attempted to preempt a legislative crackdown by launching the Freedom to Party campaign at the 1989 Conservative conference in Blackpool. They presented themselves as innovative free-market mavericks, catering to a booming demand for all-night parties that couldn’t be met under existing licensing laws. “Maggie should be proud of us, we’re a product of enterprise culture,” said Colston-Hayter. However, Staines also liked to compare himself to Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren and 60s Yippie Jerry Rubin, and Colston-Hayter wasn’t averse to stunts. During a late-night talkshow appearance, he handcuffed himself to an unamused Jonathan Ross and threw a glass of water over critic Paul Morley.
Two right wrong’ans
Asad Rizvi & Nathan Coles as Two Right Wrongans
Now the lockdown sceptics are generally also Brexiteers.
At anti-lockdown events there is a noticeable, but far from overwhelming, far right presence.
Mostly identifiable by England flags and shouts of “Freedom”.
The far-right have no choice but to recruit at these events, where there is adequate opportunity for people to explore different versions of history.
It simply wouldn’t be freedom if they weren’t there.
Lift Off
Racists against Lockdowns
Just as dangerous is the idea that only racists are against the lockdown.
Take-up of the vaccine in “ethnic minorities”, my brown self included, has, due to scepticism, been lower than the government would prefer.
I have no trust in the NHS whatsoever. It is an unaccountable organisation.
Where the truth goes to die.
Neglect was high and scrutiny low well before the pandemic.
NHSX
As mentioned previously on this site, Covid is the single greatest driver of digital health adoption in history.
This will lead to far more data sharing but less actual care or attention to patients’s needs.
Genomics / Eugenics
The following article appeared in last Sunday’s news. It looks like the Government are lying about public support for genomics in order to bring in Eugenics.
Whole genome sequencing of all UK newborns ‘would have public support’ https://t.co/d0nR3wHw4r
Here’s Cauty envisaging the execution of former Lib Dem leader and deputy PM, current head of PR for Facebook, Nick Clegg.
I particularly like the Tyburn2 reference next to the CLEGG WANTED sign.
This is the KLF appearance at the Brit Awards in 1992, when they were making rather a lot of money, before they burned a million pounds, but apparently not particularly happy :
KLF biographer John Higgs on the 1994 burning of the million pounds:
The word was apparently coined in French in 1719 to describe speculators in the Mississippi Bubble who earned millions of livres in weeks before the bubble burst.[3][4][5] (The standard French spelling is now millionnaire,[6] though the earliest reference uses a single n.[5]) The word was first used (as millionnaire, double "n") in French in 1719 by Steven Fentiman, and is first recorded in English (millionaire, as a French term) in a letter of Lord Byron of 1816, then in print in Vivian Grey, a novel of 1826 by Benjamin Disraeli.[4] Earlier English writers also mention the French word, including Sir William Mildmay in 1764.[7] The OED's first print citation is Benjamin Disraeli's 1826 novel Vivian Grey,[4] The anglicisationmillionary was used in 1786 by Thomas Jefferson while serving as Minister to France; he wrote: "The poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest Millionary".[8]
The cycle of creation and destruction.
Were the KLF musical crypto-monetarists disguised as dystopian doomsters or, conversely, were they the world’s leading lefties shining a light on the lunacy of fighting inflation by attacking the money supply?
Poundland
And didn’t the Bank of England already destroy billions of pounds for its own reasons?
Hogarthian image of the 1720 “South Sea Bubble” from the mid-19th century, by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery
Speaking of two right wrong’ans at the Tory Conference back in 2011.
Boris was asleep at the wheel when the riots occurred, the phone hacking revelations were taking effect, and the head of the Met was forced to resign for taking bungs off operators within the Murdoch orbit.
Boris hardly even hiding that he is following City of London / MI6 / One World Government orders.
Don’t call it a comeback – more of the same thin prescient gruel . . .
George Osborne has just been appointed Chair of the British Museum.
I see that George Osborne has become the new Chair of the British Museum. I've asked him how he got the job. How do people get these jobs? How did they arrive at him? Did they just ring him up? No one's ever rung me to offer me a job like that. I didn't invent austerity, though.
— Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 (@MichaelRosenYes) June 24, 2021
He was appointed by his ally Minouche Shafik.
Either Minouche, who is herself Director of the London School of Economics, has not heard of the Government inquiry into the Greensill scandal, or she’s au fait but simply doesn’t care.
Around 2018 former PM David Cameron became a lobbyist for recently liquidated shadow banking entity Greensill Capital.
Lex Greensill, the company’s founder, became a billionaire when SoftBank poured money into the company at the beginning of 2019.
However Cameron exploited his position of former PM by using his contacts to gain access to decision makers, funding and juicy government contracts.
All Cameron had to do was put his hand up and admit what he did was wrong.
Instead he’s decided to balls it out.
The public is rightly seething.
But what can we do?
Boardman
Nigel Boardman is a top corporate lawyer, Government adviser, and City safe pair of hands who Boris Johnson picked to run the Boardman Review, which should report to the Prime Minister on the 30th June.
Boardman has already recently carried out two reviews of government Covid procurement.
Which was in itself a political appointment. While he made some recommendations, Boardman somehow cleared the government and Matt Hancock of rampant looting and corruption.
Boardman’s father was a Tory MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Lord, and Chairman of Nat West as well as holding office in the City of London.
The spy who was left out in the cold – a book review.
Michael Goleniewski was a double agent and meta-whistleblower he defected to the United States from the Soviet union in 1961. He handed over the secrets of 1693 double agents who were selling their secrets to the Soviet Union
He went mad because another former Soviet spy, Anatoly Golitsyn, claimed that he himself was the only true defector which meant the CIA neglected Goleniewski.
For some reason the British MI5 archive at Kew has decided that Goleniewski’s files are to remain sealed.
So Goleniewski has been smeared and airbrushed out of history.
Golitsyn’s behaviour reminds me of the way some football players and their agents negotiate with the top football clubs. I remember hearing that John Terry and Lionel Messi had clauses that ensured they would always be the highest paid players at their clubs.
I call this the prima donna negotiation technique.
I would imagine that these contracts are all commercially sensitive and subject to nondisclosure agreements. What is the difference between A nondisclosure agreement and a sensitive document being withheld or redacted for reasons of national security?
Of course some people know their self worth and are able to negotiate even from a weak position and others end up ruined due to their inability to successfully communicate with the authorities. This could be for any number of reasons. But regardless it is best under such circumstances to have friends in high places.
The spy who was left out in the cold – a book review.
Michael Goleniewski was a double agent and meta-whistleblower he defected to the United States from the Soviet union in 1961. He handed over the secrets of 1693 double agents who were selling their secrets to the Soviet Union
He went mad because another former Soviet spy, Anatoly Golitsyn, claimed that he himself was the only true defector which meant the CIA neglected Goleniewski.
For some reason the British MI5 archive at Kew has decided that Goleniewski’s files are to remain sealed.
So Goleniewski has been smeared and airbrushed out of history.
Golitsyn’s behaviour reminds me of the way some football players and their agents negotiate with the top football clubs. I remember hearing that John Terry and Lionel Messi had clauses that ensured they would always be the highest paid players at their clubs.
I call this the prima donna negotiation technique.
I would imagine that these contracts are all commercially sensitive and subject to nondisclosure agreements. What is the difference between A nondisclosure agreement and a sensitive document being withheld or redacted for reasons of national security?
Of course some people know their self worth and are able to negotiate even from a weak position and others end up ruined due to their inability to successfully communicate with the authorities. This could be for any number of reasons. But regardless it is best under such circumstances to have friends in high places.
The FT itself is owned by the Japanese Nikkei group — a vehicle and cheerleader for corporate globalisation.
It may not be polite to say it, but transparency has not always been their strongest point.
That’s not to say the FT don’t do good work. It’s still my go to source of information.
WikiLeaks
Glad to see that he mentions country by country reporting and WIKILEAKS revelations.
But he’s pushing the self regulation line. Large corporates can dictate terms and conditions that they have to comply with. And they will do this all in their own time.
Infinitesimalisation of Progress
I call this the infinitesimalisation of progress.
Any bureaucrat worth his salt will make delivery last just long enough that any sane person would regret having petitioned for it.
Sisyphus, Prometheus, and Kafka spring to mind. They’re not alone.
If you care about Britain or India then ask yourself why the BBC has not been speaking in great detail about the India trade deal in the same way it discussed the recent failed attempt to set up a JP Morgan European Super League for elite football clubs.
That plan fell apart due to a backlash from football fans.
Infosys
According to today’s Government press release the Prime Minister spoke to the CEO of leading Indian technology firm Infosys just last week.
Q: Why won't BBC report that the CEO of #Infosys, set up by @RishiSunak's billionaire father-in-law, spoke to Boris Johnson about the #IndiaTradeDeal last week?
As if by co-incidence Infosys announce they’re hiring 1,000 staff in the UK.
when Labour was in power the Indian companies were allowed to just import their staff straight from India. Indian companies wont employ anything other than Indian employees unless they're forced to. Tories wont force them, start counting down for the 'graduates' to all be Indian
Murthy does not appear to be the biggest shareholder in Infosys but he had a spat with the previous CEO and had him replaced with the current one – the one who met Johnson
Sunak is known to have worked for his father in law’s family investment firm
Conflict of Interest
Sunak should resign as this is influence peddling
Sunak should already be investigated for his role in the Greensill affair in which he promised ex-PM David Cameron that he would pressure Treasury officials to find money for the firm he lobbied for.
Even more worrying is that in 2009 Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani was also put in charge of the Indian Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) – equivalent to a Cabinet position.
UIDAI later became known as AADHAAR – the world’s biggest biometric ID Card system — state backed surveillance capitalism with special focus on health, employment and social security data.
English football fans formed alliances and even eventually got the Government on their side to destroy the European Super League.
Can citizens form alliances to force a U-Turn on the India trade deal?
The plans the UK and Indian governments and big business have will thoroughly exploit UK and Indian citizens in a race to the bottom in the UK.
The most anyone will work for, however well qualified, will be the minimum wage.
The framework that allows foreign workers to work for minimum wage is known as #Mode4
The government is trying to make it sound as though the India trade deal is great for jobs, technology, the NHS, and for universities.
That in exchange India will allow Britain to return Indians deemed to have overstayed their visas in what is being referred to as a Migration and Mobility pact.
Does the government control how many student visas are issued to each nationality and use this as a bargaining chip for returning unwanted migrants? https://t.co/2bBTsxiDQf
But what is likely is that UK firms and the UK government will treat India as a brilliant source of highly skilled cheap labour that will be allowed to come to the UK temporarily and then leave as soon as the Government kick them out.
So they will effectively have no rights
Skilled migrants still waiting for justice years after Home Office policy ruled unlawful https://t.co/nq6Xae0LrL
The fact that they are highly skilled and can be paid UK minimum wage as part of the World Trade Organisation General Agreement in Trade in Services (GATS) framework means that there will be no incentive for large firms to train and hire locally.
I asked former UK civil servant and trade expert David Henig about the Mode4 aspects of a UK India Trade deal
Fairly standard fare for a PM visit (though that had to be cancelled these would have been the deliverables). If anything this looks like slightly less than the announcements that were expected. There isn't too much confidence around a UK-India trade deal. https://t.co/FM5ZqL2brs
I doubt India's trade agreement resistant bureuacracy would do this, but there must be a temptation to say to the UK "if you want to be ahead of the EU for a trade deal sign here" and give us basically nothing.
He agreed Mode4 is controversial & highly complex, but said it was beyond his knowledge, & (four times) that didn't know anyone who could help pic.twitter.com/nXv4UnwyzJ
A seemingly very nasty account / organisation that I declined deliberately to engage with or provide other contact details for fear of what they would do with them. Correctly, as they were recording the call. Suggest others do likewise. https://t.co/BHKYqGxt4j
Or to put it another way, just because UK visa and mode 4 issues helped scupper the EU’s trade talks with India last time round, doesn’t necessarily mean they will this time.
Although the fundamental issue (India doesn’t actually like doing trade deals) remains.
Exactly. UK has *already* liberalised considerably in ways which will reduce barriers to Indian migrants (reintroduction of post-study work, lower salary threshold, ending of cap). Wrong to claim that migration issues will somehow be a deal-breaker for a UK-India agreement .. https://t.co/9Mg0G9ObHd
Vaccine passports, consumer debt, welfare payments, criminal background checks, health testing, social media accounts, are all connected to the biometric ID card system.
I know this is a highly emotive subject but better to get some debate happening now before the thing goes through.
Back to the Football
Boris may well have initially privately backed the Super League but eventually publicly backed down:
One of the few good things Donald Trump did was that he put an EU – US trade deal on hold. The deal was originally titled the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
There had been an enormous backlash against the TTIP deal that was originally launched in Northern Ireland by Obama and Cameron in 2013, the last time the G8 came to the UK.
It was understood that TTIP posed a threat to the NHS as US health insurance and technology giants wanted treat to billions of UK taxpayer health expenditure as their own private profit stream.
The NHS is already being heavily undermined by all political parties.
But TTIP was talked about in the context of the NHS and certainly contributed to Brexit.
Backlashes have stopped government & big businesses in the past.
Will the same same type of backlash block the India Trade Deal?
For those of you who do not reside here, Britain has been quite busy of late.
Particularly with regard to corruption.
It has just been announced that the Electoral Commission is to “investigate” which Tory donor paid for the recent refurbishment of Number 10 Downing Street – the Prime Minister’s residence.
But with most UK regulators captured, one really oughtn’t hold one’s breath.
Some people are talking about a return to the glorious 1990s when talk of Tory sleaze was a daily affair.
And then PM John Major announced a Back to Basics campaign at the Tory party conference in 1993.
Several Tory MPs had already been caught up sex and corruption scandals at the time.
According to Wikipedia Piers Morgan, who exposed many of the sexual scandals as editor of the News of the World, opined:
Major brought all these exposés on himself, with that ludicrous ‘Back to Basics’ speech at the last Tory conference … It strikes me that probably every Tory MP is up to some sexual shenanigans, but we can hardly get them all fired or there will be nobody left to run the country. Still, needs must. Brown’s shenanigans will shift a few papers, get followed everywhere and ensure the NoW [News of the World] leads the news agenda again. We’re on a roll and it feels fantastic.[8]
Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World is now officially shut following the phone hacking scandal but it was immediately replaced by the Sun on Sunday so, as so often happens in Britain, it’s business as usual.
Thankfully the organisers of the cheekily named Back to Basics nightclub in Leeds took Mr Major’s return to family values as he really intended.
And you’ll also be pleased to hear that the bar is far far higher now.
What was once classified as corrupt is now de rigeur.
So maybe, if one wants to take a walk on the wild side, one ought to cast one’s gaze a little further back . . .
It’s the first painting from Hogarth’s ‘An Election’ series from 1754-55.
Here’s a self portrait by Willie Hogarth of a painter and his pug.
The Painter and his Pug 1745 William Hogarth 1697-1764 Purchased 1824 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N00112
There are more Hogarths at the Soane Museum. I highly recommend a visit, if you can.
Particularly of the Rake’s Progress.
I was taken to see these as a boy and though I barely understood what it all meant, I am ever so grateful for the memory.
What a Carrie On
‘My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go’
Oscar Wilde’s
Speaking of Sir John Soane, the interior designer at Number 10, Lulu Lyttle, seems to be sailing under #SoaneBritain flag.
VIDEO/WATCH: Lulu Lytle, the interior designer behind the Carrie Symonds-overseen £200,000 refurbishment of Boris Johnson's 11 Downing Street flat, explains her eclectic, or should that be execrable, approach to design. #SoaneBritainhttps://t.co/hwfYsybdV6
former cop Lord David Brownlow stepped in during Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds' hour of need and donated £58,000 towards the cost of Lulu Lytle's extravagant refurbishment of their Number 11 flat. https://t.co/M5MD4pdMS8
Firms linked to Lord Brownlow, the Tory donor who secretly funded the refurb of Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds flat, have been handed £120 million of public sector contracts, including one to provide "skilled persons" reports to the FCA. #ToryCorruptionhttps://t.co/sEe39vntCn
These tweets appeared at the same time about the Domestic Abuse Bill
These local MPs including Shipley’s Philip Davies and Keighley’s Robbie Moore voted against the amendment to “monitoring of serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA)”. @_RobbieMoore you are shameless
@nazirafzal@BBCWorldatOne about misogyny, perpetrators, domestic violence and stalking. Thanks for supporting my amendment 73 #DomesticAbuseBill which would legislate for a perpetrators’ strategy within MAPPA+ This is desperately needed to protect women and free them from fear
Third defeat of the night for government on Amendment 73 – Monitoring of serial and serious harm domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements #MAPPAhttps://t.co/QwLNt5DoaZ
You mentioned you cannot refer DA & stalking cases to MAPPA. Can you elaborate Gordo? Here’s the report detailing 30 cases. Sadly I have hundreds more – review after review – nothing has changed https://t.co/WnxPh5kdKQ
— Laura Richards BSc, MSc, MBPsS (@laurarichards99) February 10, 2021
Lords just passed an amendment to reform MAPPA and publish a da & stalking perpetrator strategy within a year!Wow!Many congratulations to @laurarichards99 who has been campaigning tirelessly on MAPPA and to all those organisations who have called for a strategy.All eyes on govt.
Yup. And he is not ‘potentially dangerous’ – he IS dangerous. Yet his behaviour most likely was seen as ‘low level nuisance behaviour’ (only women being targeted after all), word stalking not used but ‘roaming’ & he would not likely be raised at MAPPA or included on ViSOR 1/2
— Laura Richards BSc, MSc, MBPsS (@laurarichards99) February 12, 2021
“The Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions regime targets individuals, not countries.”
#G4S and #Serco billed Ministry of Justice for purportedly applying electronic tags to ex-offenders who were no longer being tagged, who were in prison, or were dead. 8yrs after SFO started investigating, the trial of 2 former Serco execs has collapsed 1/https://t.co/HAT6UnZgzg
Well, well the SFO has fluffed the trial of two former directors of a major government contractor (the operator of Test & Trace, no less) which is also run by a former member of the Bullingham Club. How fortunate. https://t.co/68M720aYmK
Interesting how the UK is sanctioning individuals from Honduras and Guatemala but individuals prosecuted by the Serious Fraud Office cannot be prosecuted as they have not been proved to have done anything wrong and companies like Serco not only escape prosecution, they get £37bn Test and Trace contracts..
British Justice sure knows how to treat foreign criminals and UK white collar suspects.
For more on Magnitsky and Bill Browder watch this:
Meanwhile:
Bill Gates says no to sharing vaccine formulas with global poor to end pandemic https://t.co/ds0927karA
The first Financial Secretary, Thomas Harley MP got the job in summer 1711, I’m sure owing to his astonishing personal merit and hard work, but also possibly not unconnected to the fact that he was the cousin of the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. https://t.co/ZO4AiQOmuL
Global Britain stands up for democracy, good governance & the rule of law.
Today we are taking action to impose asset freezes & travel bans on those involved in serious corruption around the world through our newly announced corruption sanctions regime. https://t.co/rCcVAMbKFT
Giving care workers the pay rise they deserve, investing in local jobs and rebuilding town centres – this is the difference Labour makes in power. #VoteLabour this May. pic.twitter.com/s6Ejx5FLJW
The Carrier Strike Group 2021 is a potent demonstration of the UK’s formidable naval and air power, and the physical embodiment of the UK’s ambitions on the global stage.
My thunderer in today's @thetimes looks at how journalists' details are being flagged to a secretive unit in the Cabinet Office that screens #FOI requests, putting a key democratic safeguard, the impartiality of the freedom of information system, at risk.https://t.co/l7SpNdTdwi
Local government in the UK can be undemocratic, but across the country (and world!) residents are becoming increasingly engaged with democratic processes & returning power to the people.
The Conservative Lord Jo Johnson, brother of the PM, and husband of Guardian “Windrush” Journalist Amelia Gentleman, has been voting in favour of the Government’s Domestic Abuse Bill and against a #StalkingRegister.
The bill will make it more likely that immigrant female victims of domestic abuse will get deported if they report violent crime to the police.
Technically Johnson, who is new to the Lords, is free to vote with his conscience.
But the mystery hinges upon, if he’s ever had one?
The Women’s Minister Victoria Atkins has been pushing this stuff through in the Commons.
There appears to have been a U-Turn on stalking over the weekend.
WOW: Minister Atkins stating that stalking & stopping perpetrators are priorities for Government. Well, the best way to keep victims safe is to hold violent men to account. This after she voted down Amendment 42, the register & perp strategy which includes stalkers @ZDronfieldhttps://t.co/mn15aXek35
— Laura Richards BSc, MSc, MBPsS (@laurarichards99) April 22, 2021
But this has not come easy – and the Government simply cannot be relied upon to do the right thing at any stage of the way.
Here’s a selection of tweets from two weeks ago.
I will update these links later today, possibly adding further video.
Although they are likely to be always extremely busy, I admire the work of https://twitter.com/againstrape , if you need someone to talk to about experiencing any of these types of issues, they are the best I know.
Ahead of the Domestic Abuse Bill's return to the Commons and with domestic abuse cases currently at an all time high, we're calling on the Government to scrap means testing for legal aid in domestic abuse cases.
The govt have ‘strongly rebuked’ Rob Roberts over his behaviour this week, and May reinstated the Whip to Elphicke and Griffiths to vote on her leadership challenge in 2018. I’m not surprised at them not backing women’s safety when some of their own MPs aren’t safe to be around
A lot of families who have been abused by the #familycourts are well passed faith… this is a benumbing response by the Home Office to the consistent failings of judges who are putting lives at risk and regularly perpetuating myths of domestic abuse and consent in open court.
#DABill exchange on the concerns/debates on judicial training on domestic abuse:
Victoria Atkins: " …I have faith, [the debates] will be watched and listened to very very carefully by the president of the #familycourt.”@jessphillips: “ …so faith is well and good… “ 👇🏻 pic.twitter.com/5Q3rf9dMJU
Misogyny in action, this list is needed to keep women safer?U-turn on register for serial domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators will leave ‘gaping hole’, government warned https://t.co/yhsSQxWxFj
He’s since been appointed a member of the House of Lords.
The PM had promised via a series of personal text messages to Sir Jim that he would “fix it” that Dyson pay zero UK tax in exchange for Dyson inventing some Covid ventilators.
“I’m married to a Conservative MP (Jo Johnson) who at the time was a minister in Theresa May’s government. As a news reporter, I have to be politically independent; I let him get on with his job and he doesn’t interfere in mine. Life is busy and complicated and mostly we’re focused on the pressing day-to-day issues around children. Clearly there are huge areas of disagreement but we try to step around anything too contentious for the sake of family harmony. But the fact did not go unnoticed. One Sunday morning he had to go on television to defend Amber Rudd, returning home at lunchtime to look after the children so I could talk on the radio about how the government had got things badly wrong. I can see why it looks weird from the outside; that weekend it felt very weird. I only had one brief exchange with his brother Boris, who was then Foreign Secretary, about the issue, at a noisy family birthday party later in the year, when he said: ‘You really fucked the Commonwealth summit.’ During a live interview with Jamaican radio, which the Guardian had organised to see if anyone who had[…]”
Excerpt From: Amelia Gentleman. “The Windrush Betrayal.”
Amelia Gentleman was emailed the following this morning:
There once was a time that Boris Johnson was in favour of amnesties re: immigration and asylum seekers.
Do you know why Jo Johnson is voting for domestic violence victims to be deported?
Here’s an excerpt from the debate:
The purpose of our original Amendment 40 was to protect victims of domestic abuse whose migration status is uncertain. About half of these victims are too afraid to report the crimes committed against them. Their perpetrators threaten that the victim will be detained or deported if they report the abuse. Irrespective of what their immigration status is, it is a very useful threat for perpetrators to use. The victims have good reason to be afraid because, at present, if the victim reports a crime of domestic abuse to the police, there is every reason the police may pass that information along to the immigration authorities. This is at a moment of crisis for the victim, when they have quite likely been made homeless, they may have been thrown out of their home and are completely vulnerable. The idea that the immigration authorities begin to look for them at that point is utterly inappropriate.
To make clear what we were trying to achieve: our amendment was intended to prevent information about the victim, or any witnesses, being passed from the police to the immigration services. I understand the reasons for the Commons’ rejection of the amendment. They argue that the Government have committed to the review that the Minister has referred to about the processing of migrant victims’ personal data for the purposes of immigration control and that the amendment would pre-empt the outcome of that review. I totally understand that.
Here are the texts between Boris Johnson and businessman Sir James Dyson from March 2020. Mr Johnson says he will ‘fix’ the tax system for Dyson’s employees… pic.twitter.com/cgsR0xRSeU
Two weeks after these texts, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, told a group of MPs that the tax status of people who came to the UK to provide specific help during the pandemic would not be affected.
It’s all very similar to what happened with Cameron. But at least he was an ex-PM.
Boris and Jo are still in politics. Sajid Javid is also an MP and at JP Morgan – more from them shortly.
Nepotism
A former journalist and Government Minister, Boris gave his little brother the title Lord Johnson of Marylebone, in October 2020.
Nepotism anyone?
Collusive Corruption
Here is Lord Johnson’s declaration of interests.
In April 2020 the head of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments Lord Pickles wrote to Jo Johnson to allow him to work for Dyson’s Institute for Engineering and Technology:
Lord Johnson has been asked the following questions:
BBC Shenanigans
Jim’ll Fix It . . . For Little Jo!
The BBC say they have exclusive access to text messages between mega tax avoider Sir James Dyson and Boris Johnson about reducing tax
But did BBC presenter Dan Johnson have to emphasise the idea that lobbying is heavily scrutinized in this country?
Did he have to so heavily emphasise the Sir in Sir James Dyson?
And did political correspondent Adam Fleming have to to make it look as though Sir James Dyson is a national hero – when he left the country after brexit in order to avoid tax – thus defunding the NHS
And as for getting JP Morgan’s Tony Blair to justify Johnson’s direct texts to Dyson — wasn’t David Cameron available?
Diane Abbott was not holding back today 🔥
Presenter: "Tony Blair doesn't seem to think it was wrong."
If BBC believe there is so much scrutiny of lobbying in this country then why didn’t they mention that James Dyson gave Boris Johnson’s brother Lord Jo Johnson a paid role as a non-executive director of Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology?
Amazing that Blair can downplay the Cameron Greensill affair by defending Johnson’s texts with Dyson.
Tony Blair’s employer JP Morgan had an awful lot to do with the big story in UK media right now — The European Super League — but more on that elsewhere.
On the subject of Nepotism, look at this photo.
That is Charlotte Hogg in the middle. She is the daughter of Sarah Hogg also known as Viscount Hailsham. A big hitter is Sarah Hogg.
Charlotte was Chief Operating Officer of the Band of England and tipped to become the Governor. She had to resign when it was revealed that her brother was a Director of Barclays which she hadn’t previously disclosed.
The article appears to suggest she believes she should never have told the truth about her brother at the Treasury Select Committee in the first place.
That’s right. She lost her job and now she thinks it is because she was too honest.
And therefore advocates dishonesty in public life.
We wrote this just before Charlotte’s resignation.
In this story we hear about how some of that £37 bn is used for outsourced consultants to answer questions for the government on the subject of . . . outsourced consultants. #GravyTrain
And there’s more
In this video we see Matt Hancock – the Health Secretary.
Odd that Hancock’s mum and sister run a company with their husbands that shreds data for the NHS. And that they gifted Matt Hancock the Health Secretary a 15% stake. Ethical boundaries are explored every day with this goverment. All hands in the till.
Hancock met Lex Greensill with David Cameron as did Dido Harding – to discuss “Supply Chain Finance”.
Cameron was acting as a lobbyist for a shadow bank — Greensill Capital.
Did #Greensill plan to be an NHS-fuelled payday lender?
By indirectly trading large amounts of blue chip public sector liquidity
Greensill was registered in Germany and therefore not regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
Back to Dido
I love the way – on Thursday – no mention was made of the fact that John Penrose is Dido Harding’s husband and therefore a close friend of David Cameron.
He is supposed to be anti-corruption champion but his wife was appointed to dish out billions much of which was siphoned off with no thought of helping the sick.
The BBC gaslighting is stupendous. The deference from Victoria Derbyshire beneath contempt. Zero research. Zero corruption.:
Penrose makes a couple of good points. But they are dwarfed by the lies, corruption and nepotism. We are world champions at that, aren’t we? The never ending in-breeding experiment. Will the last person to leave please turn off the light?
Owen Paterson
Owen Paterson is next level psychopathy.
Curious how Topwood is the name of the horse in the brochure. It won the 2019 Grand National. It is coincidentally also the name of Matt Hancock’s sister’s horse and the family data shredder company.
And Carol on the strange link between some horse racing insiders and NHS Covid contracs.
A casual browse through Dido Harding’s tweets & oh look. Here she is pointing out the links between her, her husband, the health secretary who appointed her to Test&Trace & the CEO of Serco who got £10bn Test&Trace contract. The connection? No, not health. It’s horse racing pic.twitter.com/IkzXFPeCl2
For those who can handle it – this is a parody video of Greensill Capital – made by . . . Greensill Capital. More to come later
Another victory for red wall voters as it's revealed that Boris Johnson told James Dyson, Britain's richest man, that he would "fix" his tax concerns by text https://t.co/799wmlsiBb
MI5 warns of spies using LinkedIn to trick staff into spilling secrets – at least 10,000 UK nationals approached by ‘malicious profiles’ in the last 5 years. Being undertaken on an ‘industrial scale’ warns MI5 head. https://t.co/2vqFrTbaTP
Here’s some real stuff to worry about. Sources in the deepfake detection game told me yesterday that the technology is now sophisticated enough to face swap and audio swap in real time onto zoom calls and such. Not in the commercial realm yet but definitely within reach of states
Researchers with phrenological delusions ask machines to find statistical correlates of personalities or emotions, and machines dutifully provides them. It's high-stakes, machine-human collaborative apophenia, detecting patterns where none exist.https://t.co/2b0IkQrI62
2/
— Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr Red Team Blues (@doctorow) January 15, 2021
Boris Johnson hosts the latest COVID-19 press conference from Downing Street…. and talks about football, as if it were a Party Political Broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party.
Today in shitty machine learning startups, this company claims to predict IQ, personality, and violent tendencies by applying deep learning to facial features and bone structure.
Germany’s Green party opened up a seven-point lead over Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc with five months to go before a national election https://t.co/Zm4F3Srvvy via @bpolitics
Two people dead, nobody in the driver seat. 6,000 lb experiments in half-baked, camera-only autonomy, capable of doing 0-60 in under 3 seconds, just roaming the streets. I love living in a SciFi dystopia. https://t.co/FTZkOWYfNG
Let's start with the easy stuff: @Lebeaucarnews got a basic fact wrong, his own outlet (@CNBC) has reported that NHTSA has opened at least 28 investigations into Tesla crashes and 24 of those are STILL OPEN TODAY. https://t.co/LN5s3ZmsdZhttps://t.co/VWOvxF1405
In Phil's defense, there has been one NHTSA investigation into Autopilot that exonerated Tesla. Following Josh Brown's death, NHTSA produced a report saying Autopilot not only wasn't at fault, but actually reduced crashes by 40%.
Internationally, France and the United States will be hoping that their counter-terrorism efforts are not now pushed off course. France said it had lost “brave friend” and Chad “a great soldier”https://t.co/Bhzj4u31ek
Though there is some talk of a potential “third candidate” who might “split the vote” – no names are mentioned.
Another pundit opines the North East will vote Tory forever.
A less biased platform might have at least mentioned the independents.
#HartlepoolByElection
Last week’s #PoliticsLive did a whole section on upcoming elections in Teeside and did not mention Hartlepool once.
But Hartlepool is actually in the Teeside Combined Authority.
On May 6th Hartlepudlians will vote for their local councillors, Teeside Mayor, Police and Crime Commissioner, as well as their local MP.
But for some reason they didn’t merit a mention – let alone a visit.
In this next report on the same day every single election in the country is mentioned – except the #HartlepoolByElection for a seat in Westminster.
Because the two major parties’ candidates are so awful and gaffe-prone that it is better to keep them off the telly?
A day at the races
The May 6th Hartlepool byelection isn’t a two horse race.
That’s just what the national media would have you believe
As Hartlepool is the only Labour seat that didn’t go Tory in the 2019 General Election the mainstream media are framing this by-election as a test of Keir Starmer’s leadership
They also say the Tories need the seat to complete the Blue Wall and take full control of Westminster and the North East.
But the Hartlepool by-election is about more than just the Labour and Conservative parties.
It is actually a vote on representative democracy.
Your local MP is traditionally supposed to be someone you can approach that has the ear of the party in Westminster.
Someone you can raise issues with that can get things done at the national level.
But now it is completely the other way around.
The party parachutes in candidates that know nothing about the area and vote in lockstep with the party leadership.
The last thing the two main parties want is for voters to elect a pro-local business anti-sleaze independent who was born and brought up in Hartlepool.
Former Mail journalist turned businesswoman is latest candidate for Hartlepool MP https://t.co/qfRo37nhA8
She has worked with or represented many of Hartlepool’s businesses, community groups, the council, and football club.
In Samantha Lee’s experience, nobody is speaking up for Hartlepool or working hard to attract businesses and investment to the town.
When asked to explain why she is running and why this is of any interest to anyone outside Hartlepool Samantha Lee replied:
“Personally, I think Westminster is sullied by politicians, if I’m honest.
I think if we had 650 people, representatives from the towns and cities and areas that they’re from, all sitting down together putting your case forward for why you need funding, sharing best practice, then this country and this world would run a whole lot better. But at the minute we just have political squabble. Point scoring. It seems to be that we have to nail our flag to one particular mast and that mast or that party seems to need to have all the answers to everything when they don’t, and it’s clear that they never have.
I want to be able to take all of the best things for my town, regardless of who they came from. I’m more than happy to take somebody else’s ideas on if they’re good ideas. We don’t find that in politics. If somebody else has an idea the opposition party just shouts it down and that makes no sense. If it’s good for the town it’s good for the town. It doesn’t matter who came up with the idea. All I want to see is my town, like many others in the country, just getting the best chance and the best opportunity and not being some kind of political point scoring football that gets kicked about when it’s useful and gets used for various political means.
We’re a good town. We have so much going for us. We just keep being told that we not. we just keep getting knocked down.
It’s not because we’re not good, it’s because the people shouting for us they’re not doing it very loudly. Or are being quietened by party whips.
If we all stand as independents, if everybody across the country stands as independents gets behind a strong business or community leader then we’re really going to genuinely have what’s best for each of our towns.
At the moment when you look at politics it’s an embarrassment.
When you see them screaming at each other across the chamber and all like yo-ho-ho and what have you, it’s just not the real world.
There’s 65 million of us and 650 of them making decisions for us. And none of them have lived in the real world as far as I can see.
So I just want that to change.
And I think now more and more people are just fed up of politics me included.
And so if we just all step forward and stop squabbling and just say “right this is what my town needs this is what we would be good for this is what we specialize in these these are our skill sets these are our assets” and we all go down and share best practice and make our shout for the money that’s needed then we, like I said, the time and the country would work much more efficiently, faster, and better for the people.“
Samantha Lee – Independent Candidate Hartlepool
From my conversation with Samantha I believe she will vote with the conscience of the Hartlepool community in contrast to Labour and Conservative candidates who always vote in the interest of their globalist corporate paymasters.
Hartlepool and the North East have a history of not always sticking to the script.
In 2002 when Peter Mandelson was MP Hartlepool voted in Stuart Drummond as Mayor.
He was an independent and had initially decided to run as a joke having been Hartlepool Football Club’s club mascot – H’Angus the Monkey.
To the annoyance of the local Labour party Drummond was re-elected twice as an independent and twice reached the final of World Mayor of the year.
The council eventually arranged for the position of mayor to be abolished following a November referendum with a 13% turnout.
Are Hartlepool still being punished for the crimes of H’Angus ?
John Prescott pushed a North East Regional Assembly referendum in 2004 which was met with a resounding No Vote.
Then there was Brexit in which 70% of Hartlepudlians voted to leave.
The best thing for the country would be if Samantha Lee is voted in as an independent on May 6th as she wants to bring investment, skills and jobs to Hartlepool.
MANDY
Mandy, as he is affectionately known, was once also called the Prince of Darkness.
He got grief for being one of several gay members of the Blair cabinet.
Former Tory politician and newspaper columnist Matthew Parris outed Mandelson (on Newsnight I believe) in 1998.
Those who don’t learn the lessons of the past are bound to repeat them.
Lessons Learned?
In 2018 Real Media interviewed Professor David Whyte on the similarities between the Grenfell disaster and the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster in 1988.
The Government has announced plans for lots of extra spending on Defence.
But if the approach to public projects is to deskill and lay off experienced electricians there is a high risk that the country’s military infrastructure may also not work.
Firms involve include Balfour Beatty, NG Bailey & EdF – the French state-owned nuclear power firm.
The Chinese Government has a 2/3 stake.
To understand the geo-strategic context of the Hinkley project, watch >>>> Banksters <<<<
On the surface it is about too big to fail HSBC’s drug money laundering.
But in the final third Hinkley Point features as the biggest Chinese western public infrastructure project.
Enjoy.
Balfour Beatty do a lot of construction up and down the country and are quoted on the UK Stock Market.
As solidarity spreads they could be at risk of a divestment campaign.
A leading authority on trade union pension funds divestment strategies is Law Professor David Webber of Boston University.
David is the author of the Rise of the Working Class Shareholder
Will UK and foreign pension funds engage with / divest from Balfour Beatty to get them to protect the public – not just short term profits?
Deliveroo’s stock market launch was a massive failure yesterday because many investment funds feared future litigation for underpaying staff.
I’m no scientist. But I think science is important. The open discussion of science is crucial in a free society. A matter of life and death. The society which does not permit open discussion of science is closed.
We are edging toward totalitarianism. Last week we saw that audit firms are answering Ministers’ questions in Parliament. Questions that relate to the enormous fees being paid to those very same audit firms.
When I told this to a friend, a critical thinker, he could see nothing wrong. Democracy is no longer relevant to people’s lives. I believe that few really believe politicians make a positive difference.
The system is corrupt.
Check out the images on my Facebook:
Zero awkwardness about the helicopter and ‘climate change’ slogan in the same shotThe military carrying out medical work – since when?
If we put things into our bodies or the environment that, we don’t understand or, for whatever reason, are not compatible, we could all suffer irreversible consequences.
President Trump is shown a vaccine model during a tour of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Md., on March 3.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Informing Biological Design by Integration of Systems and Synthetic Biology
Because of our dear Mother, the fair Past, On whom twin Hope and Memory safely lean, And from whose fostering wisdom none shall wean Their love and faith, while love and faith shall last: Mother of happy homes and Empire vast, Of hamlets meek, and many a proud demesne, Blue spires of cottage smoke ‘mong woodlands green, And comely altars where no stone is cast. And shall we barter these for gaping Throne, Dismantled towers, mean plots without a tree, A herd of hinds too equal to be free, Greedy of other’s, jealous of their own, And, where sweet Order now breathes cadenced tone, Envy, and hate, and all uncharity? Banish the fear! ‘Twere infamy to yield To folly what to force had been denied, Or in the Senate quail before the tide We should have stemmed and routed in the field. What though no more we brandish sword and shield, Reason’s keen blade is ready at our side, And manly brains, in wisdom panoplied, Can foil the shafts that treacherous sophists wield. The spirit of our fathers is not quelled. With weapons valid even as those they bore, Domain, Throne, Altar, still may be upheld, So we disdain, as they disdained of yore, The foreign froth that foams against our shore, Only by its white cliffs to be repelled! Therefore, chime sweet and safely, village bells, And, rustic chancels, woo to reverent prayer, And, wise and simple, to the porch repair Round which Death, slumbering, dreamlike heaves and swells. Let hound and horn in wintry woods and dells Make jocund music though the boughs be bare, And whistling yokel guide his gleaming share Hard by the homes where gentle lordship dwells. Therefore sit high enthroned on every hill, Authority! and loved in every vale; Nor, old Tradition, falter in the tale Of lowly valour led by lofty will: And, though the throats of envy rage and rail, Be fair proud England proud fair England still!
When he made the controversial 1974 Edgbaston speech containing the quote above, Sir Keith Joseph was expected to represent the right wing of the Tories in the fight to replace the then Tory leader Edward Heath.
Joseph then withdrew from the contest against Heath after apologising for the speech and endorsed Thatcher. She had been eager to run but had backed Joseph.
He now became a major advisor. Thatcher later referred to Joseph as her closest political friend, and they both moved sharply to the right. His overnight conversion to free-market, small-government policies “had the force of a religious conversion”.[15] In 1975, he said:
It was only in April 1974 that I was converted to Conservatism. (I had thought I was a Conservative but I now see that I was not really one at all.)[16]
This remark expressed Joseph’s sense of failure during multiple Conservative governments that had automatically followed the post-war consensus of a welfare state with strong labour unions. Their policies to stabilise the economy retained government control on industries and creating an intricate system to control wages and dividends. In the eyes of Thatcher and Joseph, that pragmatic approach was contrary to the true “Conservative” ideology. As he had done a great deal to promote Thatcher, when she won the leadership in 1975, she determined to put him in a position that would facilitate a profound influence on Conservative Party policy.
(End of Wikipedia Excerpt)
Joseph’s father was Lord Mayor of London in 1942 and owned the huge construction firm Bovis, now known as LendLease.
Osama Bin Laden’s father ran a big construction firm.
As Adam Curtis once pointed out, what is the difference between Al Qaeda and the Neo-Cons? Some say Curtis is an establishment contrarian.
I’ve benefited from watching Adam Curtis’s docs so it would be naughty to not share one.
Alfred Sherman went from being an East London Jewish Communist polyglot to ardent Thatcherite but the final entry on his wikipedia is as follows:
“The power and prestige of America is in the hands of people who will not resist the temptation to invent new missions, lay down new embargoes, throw new bombs, and fabricate new courts. For the time being, they control the United Nations, the World Bank, most of the world’s high-tech weapons, and the vast majority of the satellites that watch us from every quadrant of the skies. This is the opportunity they sense, and we must ask what ambitions they will declare next. … Instead of rediscovering the virtues of traditionally defined, enlightened self-interest in the aftermath of its hands down cold war victory, America’s foreign policy elites are more intoxicated than ever by their own concoction of benevolent global hegemony and indispensable power.[16]
Alfred Sherman
As one of the author’s of Yes Minister advised in a book about writing plays – When writing a miser, remember to stress his generosity.
Why England Lose
Simon Kuper is a great writer. But for some reason I don’t find him as interesting as I once did.
I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.
This piece refers to that umbrella and the role of Michael Foot
Neville Chamberlain’s umbrella was ubiquitous during the Munich Crisis and in its aftermath, as material object, as commodity, and as political emblem that came to represent the temperament and character of the ‘Man of Peace’ who had brought relief to the world by striking a ‘gentleman’s peace’ with Hitler on 30 September 1938. This culminated in the damning portrayal of the Prime Minister as the ‘Umbrella Man’ in ‘Cato’s’ Guilty Men (1940). Throwing the spotlight on the material object of the umbrella can illuminate the popular dimension of these highly charged diplomatic events, and offer some insight into how foreign policy was lived across the social spectrum and across borders. We can chart dramatic fluctuations in both mediated and visceral public opinion in the changing symbolic uses of the umbrella, by politicians, by journalists, by cartoonists, and by consumers themselves. The study of appeasement has been stuck in certain methodological ruts, and has not hitherto taken the cultural turn, nor paid much attention to popular responses to the prelude to the People’s War. By blowing the dust off Chamberlain’s old umbrella, this article suggests an alternative perspective on the politics and culture of appeasement, evoking the sights, sounds, textures, feelings and tastes of a crisis that was played out at the level of diplomacy but also very much as a ‘People’s Crisis’.
Oh the irony that Lefty Foot had called for War with Germany all along and the ex-Communist Thatcherite Alfred Sherman ended up calling out the US empire.
For some reason, “comments have not been enabled for this article”
Bailey was asked about lessons learned from the London Capital & Finance scandal.
The scandal itself is barely mentioned in the article.
Instead it focuses on the following carefully selected comments from Bailey in reply to the committee’s questions.
“The online world is not subject to the same legal duties as the more traditional media,” Bailey, a former head of the Financial Conduct Authority, said in a letter to the House of Commons Treasury select committee, published on Friday.
“There is consequently no adequate shared responsibility with online service providers and consumers are at much greater risk.”
Bailey said in the letter the problem “could be tackled” through the online harms bill, currently progressing through parliament, which puts an onus on online companies to keep their users safe.
However, this does not currently include harm from financial investment fraud. But Bailey added there was “strong resistance” in other parts of the “official sector” to extending this legislation to financial services and this was “a serious problem”.
Even though the original Select Committee letter mentions Maxwellisation and the other serious differences between Bailey and the former Court of Appeal judge Dame Elizabeth Gloster none make it into the article.
I wonder why.
The small business owners who have been defrauded by banks like Nat West via Interest Rate Hedging Products will be particularly unimpressed with Bailey’s fake sincerity about using the Online Harms Bill to protect online fraud victims.
It is interesting to see the word ‘woke’ used when referring to the City. As if to imply that the City actually has gone woke.
It hasn’t.
The word woke tends to be used by middle aged white racists who reject political correctness.
But by no means are all the self identifying haters of woke-ness racists.
And in no way is religious devotion to political correctness is a good thing.
But the meaning of the word is morphing.
And it has become a stick with which to beat lefties and promote conservatism.
Which is funny because it is older lefties who now vote right wing.
Is that because they are wealthier now?
Are they now scared of the younger demographic – the one that voted for Jeremy Corbyn?
It is easy to call people out on their white privilege.
A (brown) friend recently had it happen to him online by a (white) girl who he knew but clearly hadn’t considered the optics.
But why blame so-called wokeness for this?
If people who are otherwise intelligent suddenly start saying that they feel they can’t speak their minds then we have a problem. But maybe we have more than one problem.
If you say something then people may say things back. If you say something stupid then it is likely. But there is nothing wrong in saying something stupid. If we were all 100% logical beings and completely right about everything all the time then there really would be no need for an internet.
And then there is the instance where you think you are saying something intelligent and people don’t like it.
If you’re lucky you’re ignored, if not then there will be an orchestrated pile-on.
Telling you that you should get in the bin.
Fair enough. This is the shape of discourse today.
I have been told that the internet is actually set up for conflict.
Maybe our minds are too.
Aristotelian, boolean, binary, all or nothing thinking.
A lack of imagination leading to conflict conflict conflict.
But what about ‘maybe’?
Once you live in maybe land then you take longer to get things done, but you don’t always need to kill everyone.
They might be your friends.
The Times article about wokeness doesn’t refer to skin colour once.
The term woke is used to signify “virtue signalling”.
The article itself is a form of reverse engineering.
Someone in the newsroom has said that the City may be going soft, that it’s going woke. And reality has to be bent to fit the headline / ideology.
All very Soviet Union.
This is the same woke City that benefited from the slave trade and to this day has never apologised or shown any moral compass.
Yes they do charity, but does that justify fraud?
The event that sparked the ‘woke’ piece is City investors choosing not to invest in Deliveroo.
Deliveroo Riders are paid very little, often below the minimum wage, and are often not born in England.
Country of origin was not mentioned as a factor in the Woke article.
The investors are shunning Deliveroo because they fear potential law suits for underpaying workers.
That is not to say they are on the side of the riders.
They just don’t want to be on the wrong side of the law.
Particularly if they have to pay compensation.
So all this talk of wokeness in the City is misplaced.
The other shareholder rebellions demanding more environmentally friendly behaviour aren’t woke either.
Dave King ran the group. Very informative it was. They taught me about synthetic biology, fracking, biofuel, & cyborg technology.
I often see things in the news that I first heard about from the Luddites.
Some GM Agenda Setting in today’s Times:
GM Food & the 2017 General Election
Helena Paul granted me this interview when I was at Real Media in 2017.
Soviet Psychiatry
I’m currently reading about how in the Soviet Union, psychiatry was used to deal with dissidents.
Unparalleled parallels with Soviet communication and the current UK experience.
The Amazon review made specific reference to the English Court of Protection and how it uses the same techniques. People disappear. As does their property. Very little paper trail. Not funny.
I feel the engineering of consent is pretty direct in UK now.
I just saw a clip from Eastenders which was pretty bullying in its advocation of mandatory vaccines for all.
It features in the vid below. The writer / narrator has a good grip of the issues. Will be following this channel in the future. Nice to get a fuller picture of the European as well as UK angle.
I could go on, but I shall spare you.
But not to worry, I shall be back.
Cloaked, as ever, as the moaning minnie tone of moral rectitude.
In case you haven’t noticed, some themes be recurring.
Like the Apple. Turing was put on the £50 this week.
“The government employs contractors in the same vein that private businesses do and responsibility for answering parliamentary questions, freedom of information requests and media enquiries rests firmly with a team of civil service communications professionals within the Department of Health and Social Care. Every single response is subject to the highest levels of scrutiny to ensure they are both factual and detailed.”
UK Government
Media Malfeasance
It goes without saying that this is a mega scandal.
But corporate logic and values dictate that no profit hungry media outlet should cover it.
That is why you do not see this story mentioned on the BBC, Guardian or the Times.
I am surprised that Huff Post has covered it. Good for them.
Media Malfeasance
When the papers choose not to cover a story like this, despite claiming to champion investigative journalism, you have to ask why.
Is there a silent agreement to not make life difficult for the government?
To apologise on its behalf in the name of the greater good, and possible promotion.
Or is it mere co-incidence that no national newspaper or tv programme is touching this?
Punch and Judy
People often say that Parliament is a Punch and Judy show.
I have suspected people were reading from scripts in the past and, on occasion, that the opposition script was being written by the same person that wrote the Government’s.
We are not yet at the stage where that is the official story, but we’re getting there.
Learning Lessons
The Government likes to answer questions with the “we’re learning lessons” deflection.
Deloitte and Serco, who have the main Trace and Test contract, have form:
“It is an unprecedented and controversial step. But ministers should press ahead”
– The TImes
Over the course of eight paragraphs today’s Times argues that the jab should be mandatory for all care workers.
It goes a little something like this (italics being The Times) :
The Times view on mandatory Covid vaccination for health and care workers: Taking Care
It is an unprecedented and controversial step. But ministers should press ahead
(It is instructive to see the engineering of consent unfold in real time.The first paragraph lays out some stats and establishes a need.)
“Britain’s vaccination programme has succeeded in protecting the vast majority of those most vulnerable to Covid-19. These include principally the elderly and those afflicted with serious underlying conditions. That is a formidable achievement, and one that will prevent many thousands of deaths and hospitalisations. Yet despite the progress of the vaccine campaign, at least a quarter of the country’s 1.5 million care workers have not yet had the jab. Only about a quarter of care homes in London and barely half in the rest of England have staff and residents vaccinated in sufficient numbers to be judged safe.”
Readers are invited to mind the gap, and, on purely aesthetic grounds, expected to want to close it.
Protocol demands it. That sort of thing.
Even though, strictly speaking, the thing in question (mandatory vaccination) goes against protocol.
It is no wonder that Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has said that the law could be changed to make vaccination compulsory for care workers. No responsible minister could tolerate a state of affairs in which those in close contact and caring for the vulnerable actually endanger them. Much will be made of questions of ethics should Mr Hancock press ahead with the plan. Already trade unions representing care workers have said that mandatory vaccinations would amount to coercion. Instead they urge education and support for the hesitant or unwilling. Others argue that compulsory vaccination is largely without precedent in this country.
“It is no wonder that” – the “it is self evident” argument. Is it self evident? Really? Self evident that the law could be changed to take choice away from care workers. Having already taken choice away from every care home resident.
“No responsible Minister could tolerate a state of affairs bla bla bla” We are being asked to forget the lies we have been sold about the vaccine being of any effectiveness in stopping the spread of infection. If residents have been vaccinated then either the vaccine works or it doesn’t.
Hancock is just forcing more vaccines on a captive market.
“Much will be made of ethics..”
The Times attempts to undermine the ethics argument simply by saying it will be used by the unions (the ones that represent care workers).
But they don’t provide any valid reasons why care worker representatives should be ignored.
The Times goes on to say that the pandemic is without precedent so it is ok to also make vaccination switch from voluntary to compulsory – without precedent.
That :
In the context of a public health crisis, demanding inoculation against Covid is a minor incursion on personal liberty relative to restrictions that have been demanded by government and made without complaint by most Britons over the past year.
The US soldiers drafted to fight in Vietnam were a brilliant set of customers for the then heroin market.
And now having lost those customers, and with far fewer options when it comes to selling opium in China, the lovely chaps over at Wall Street and the City of London need to identify captive markets.
The British have always been known for selling weapons to both sides.
This time it’s vaccines to patients and caregivers.
Were there more money in the music and other divisions of the entertainment industry we might not have gone down this road.
Gangsters need easy money.
The US Management firm McKinsey and their multibillionaire opiate dealing client Purdue Pharma have had to enter agreements with various US states to pay hundreds of millions of dollars and never sell opiates again.
McKinsey has shaped NHS policy for decades.
This is from 2011. McKinsey have structured UK health in a way that is derived from their insights into US health.
Of course there is little chance of getting rid of them in the UK. But the yanks do appear to have done something about the Sackler billionaires that run Purdue with McKinsey. Perhaps there is hope. I really don’t know.
As you can possibly tell from my general tone, I am no longer even angry about this. I accept it. Not that humans are all by nature venal under all circumstances.
But yes, it happens, it happens a lot. And if you’re any good it then it’s hard to stop.
Meth is you are a really determined worker and will sacrifice your body to get the task done.
Opium is telling us there’s a radically changing socio-economic outlook while entering the 20th century.
Opiates are God’s way of telling us to push ourselves to the edge of death and enjoy the extreme euphoria but don’t kill ourselves by crossing that line.
Intellectually speaking Roger wears more hats than Mr Benn. That’s not to say he doesn’t mean what he says or know what he means. But the connections he draws betweens different arguments made in supposedly different fields are cogent, illuminating and memorable.
Coal, Gas, & Wind compete to be part of the UK Energy Mixthe edge of my hand
fanning the flames / chop it down with
UK Government in Coal U-Turn
Last night Robert Jenrick, the communities secretary, U-Turned and blocked the application for the deep coalmine near Whitehaven in Cumbria.
Fracking was recently blocked in the UK, despite the government frequently overruling local councils to permit it, and now this coal mine is no longer going ahead.
So why did the Government pour so many resources into talking up fracking, and why did it allow so much time to pass before blocking the coal mine?
It’s a triumph of propaganda that the government can mishandle so many policies and still retain such a strong lead over the opposition.
It’s a Gas Gas Gas
Government steps up carbon intense gas power stations investments via Drax.
Drax has won subsidies worth £230 million for three new gas plants. Last month Drax scrapped plans to build a 3.6-gigawatt project in Yorkshire. The proposed plants emit significantly more carbon than the turbines that Drax had planned to build at Selby, but fire up quicker. pic.twitter.com/C9vTlAhGP5
“Confidentiality has been agreed on the purchase price,” RWE said.
Energy 52
Purple Haze
Voodoo Child(Breaks Remix)
What an interesting set of circumstances to find ourselves in.
Britain is hosting the UN COP 26 Climate Summit in November. This means telling developing countries not burn to CO2 – while Britain almost opens up a deep coalmine.
The CO2 coming out of the Drax power stations is also very high. So how can UK be taken seriously when it preaches zero carbon?
The language is often about Zero Covid and Zero carbon. Both are unachievable. But the attack on civil liberties continues.
As these contradictions unfold in real time, it becomes obvious that none of the government’s promises mean anything.
The boys and girls over at the State Department / Bloomberg must think the public believe anything.
Their latest offering suggests the UK / US axis wants to place sanctions on Russia.
This is due to chemical weapons usage and mistreatment of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny.
Secretary State Blinken took to Twitter yesterday.
Three years ago today, Russia poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a chemical weapon on British soil. We reaffirm our commitment to justice for all victims of Russia's repeated use of chemical weapons, including Aleksey Navalny. Russia's actions have consequences.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) March 4, 2021
And how many Muslims has Tommy Robinson shot? Exactly!
Navalny’s infamous “Muslim migrants are cockroaches” video with English subtitles. At the end, Navalny shoots person representing Muslim migrants from North Caucasus. [Small correction: opener is “Alexei Navalny Certified Nationalist” not “specialist”] https://t.co/XERk5qBMtn
Joe Biden and Lloyd Austin called of an airstrike as there were children thereRishi Sunak presented an austerity budget that favoured the very wealthy and hammered the poorThe Pope is in Iraq. Claiming that he is visiting Baghdad as a pilgrim. More fraud from Rishi. In plain sight.
The Times has just published a story about the personal life of an academic who was held hostage in Iran for three years.
I see no news value in it whatsoever.
What possesses them to publish a story that simply is not in the British public interest?
The Times is owned by Rupert Murdoch and presumably has a journalist in Australia coming up with this guff.
The former hostage is related to Julian Assange
Might she have done something to upset the Australian Government?
Have they paid her ransome and now become irate about her perceived lack of gratitude?
Media freedom is heavily protected in the UK. But that freedom is abused. The papers often omit or downplay extremely important stories. They deflect, distort and ultimately follow their own agenda.
Obviously they should be free to report what they like, but a double standard is apparent.
On social media people are no longer free to say what they like.
People can be deplatformed for the slightest reason – sometimes because of a complaint or because of an automated bot that has no sense of irony or context.
If nothing is done about the double standard then mainstream media will become more and more fascist and independent voices will have no way of being heard.
A row is brewing over the Government’s apparent preference to appoint the notorious right wing newspaper editor Paul Dacre as Head of Broadcast Regulator Ofcom, with powers to police Independent & Social Media, and special exemptions for newspapers.
The attack on independent voices & media platforms is in full effect.
This section of the current Online Harms Bill exempts MSM from regulation on grounds of media freedom. But it leaves individuals and independent media vulnerable to attack. This amounts to gangland retribution from tax avoiding newspaper owning billionaires like Saudi-backed Evgeny Lebedev, Sun and Times owning Rupert Murdoch, and Mail owner Lord Rothermere.
The Landscape
Lots of new right wing parties have emerged in the last few years and now we have lots more right wing media coming – backed by Murdoch, Andrew Neil and Tory apparatchik Robbie Gibb.
Deplatforming
Facebook announced last week that it is depoliticising its content and promoting small business instead.
Facebook will pay mainstream media outlets to distribute their propaganda.
This would make Facebook more like a shop – or a social credit rating agency – akin to Ali Baba in China.
Tim Davie, the new Director General of the BBC, was once Deputy Leader of the Tory contingent of Hammersmith and Fulham Council.
Richard Sharp, the new BBC chairman, is ex-Goldman Sachs where he managed the Chancellor Rishi Sunak, has given £400k to the Tories, and sits on the board of several hard right conservative think-thanks.
Professor Brian Cathcart
Today it settled a case brought by Prince Harry in which the Mail on Sunday falsely accused him of turning his back on responsibilities to the Marines. This could have been avoided if they had simply put the allegations to the Prince, but they didn't. 2/8https://t.co/4ZJlVFtzBH
Earlier, Associated had lost a court case and paid £83,000 damages to a Sussex man for breach of confidence and misuse of private information by MailOnline. 4/8https://t.co/GHoDszSIu9
This catalogue of wrongdoing over just 10 weeks is probably not complete. Now, no one could suggest that the editor-in-chief was personally responsible for each of them, but Dacre, as boss, surely has to take some of the responsibility. It does not augur well for Ofcom. 8/8
I used to attend Daily Mail conference under Paul Dacre. I can imagine Paul's (justified) outrage if a Labour Mp had said someone was the right candidate "because he's Labour." If the appointment had been trailed in the left wing press, Paul would have spontaneously combusted.
There is a view that Auntie is safe from the Sheriff of Silicon Valley
The outrage over Paul Dacre's mooted appointment as Ofcom chair is based on one key misapprehension: top of the regulator's to-do list is not the BBC, it's Big Tech
Much of the media isn’t very free. Three billionaires, including Paul Dacre’s employer, own much of the printed press that helps set the news agenda for broadcasters. And the government has undue influence over the BBC through implied threats in the Charter renewal process and appointments to top positions. The BBC’s new chair, appointed by Boris Johnson, is a banker, Rishi Sunak’s former boss and a donor to the Conservative Party.
In short, the interests of the rich and the powerful shape the terms of what we read, hear and watch. Dacre’s proposed appointment to run OFCOM, the UK’s communication regulator, makes clear that our media works for the few, not for the many.
We need a campaign to not just block these appalling appointments, but democratise the media and set journalists free, so they can pursue fact-based, truth seeking reporting that challenges, not reinforces power.
James Schneider, former Labour Party Director of Strategic Communications
Cockney Hunt
This one’s from June 2017
Given Dacre is rearing his ugly head again, time to revisit Andrew O'Hagan's excellent @LRB piece. https://t.co/wHLvUTVwkj
“Julian Assange is no hero. I should know — I lived with him and his awful gang.”
– James Ball
Right wing investigative reporter James Ball has attacked Julian Assange once again. This time in the Sunday Times. But is there anything new in his article?
The vindictive former WikiLeaks intern uses the emotive word ‘awful’ to refer to Assange’s gang. But Ball was himself part of that gang. Either his commitment to WikiLeaks was authentic – or he was an opportunist bad faith actor.
Judging by his subsequent career moves and undignified pronouncements, I strongly suspect the latter.
Blairite Ball says that if Assange is not extradited to the US and if he manages to be subsequently freed from jail that he should not be allowed to run WikiLeaks again. Because “as a journalist, Assange is reckless, incompetent and immoral”.
He then runs through a list of vague and unproven smears without going into his own role at WikiLeaks or the nature of his obsession with Assange.
The fact that James Ball, a ‘journalist’ who no longer even works for a newspaper, is recommending, on the record, the wholesale censorship of the man who gave him his biggest break says more about Ball than it does about Assange.
In the following Guardian piece Ball misleads his audience by claiming it unlikely Assange would face prosecution in the US.
The only barrier to Julian Assange leaving Ecuador’s embassy is pride | James Ball https://t.co/DUfx0Yefp8
Sponsored journalists like Ball serve higher powers and cannot be trusted to act against their own financial interests in favour of the truth or of their readers.
I find it hard to distinguish between Ball’s agenda and that of Isabel Oakeshott, Darren Grimes, Raheem Kassam, Mahyar Tousi, Andrew Neil, Fraser Nelson, Rod Liddle, the Guido Fawkes mob and many others.
In this article Ball admits to having taken money from the Integrity Initiative, a government and NATO funded propaganda unit designed to shape opinion in a direction hostile towards Russia and favourable towards increased militarism.
Exposé: Britain has created a large-scale information secret service in Europe, US & Canada, from political, military, academic & journalistic communities with the think tank in London at the head of it. https://t.co/xqvDyWoxeV@MaxBlumenthal@BenjaminNorton
The Integrity Initiative was supposedly against Russian interference in UK politics but it amplified anti-Corbyn tweets.
Ball blames Murdoch-owned Fox news for amplifying Russian propaganda but has had no problem attacking Assange in the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times.
Murdoch was in the room in 2017 when Michael Gove ‘interviewed’ then President-elect Donald Trump and Murdoch’s News International hired Assange’s lawyer Jen Robinson to work on the Johnny Depp Amber Heard libel case which has meant that she hasn’t seen Assange for over a year.
It’s no secret that money talks but, in today’s anti-Assange hit piece, James Ball keeps very quiet about exactly what attracts him to the billionaire oligarch Mr Rupert Murdoch.
I’ve heard the author of this story Nicholas Hellen is not the nicest of chaps.
Why doesn't @thesundaytimes show the same interest in modern day British victims of pharmaceutical malpractice such as of #Sanofi's #SodiumValproate which has caused birth defects up & down the country & yet no-one has received compensation. #immdshttps://t.co/LflmJe0pHs
And maybe this story is being released for The Sunday Times to remind its readers of its biggest ever investigation.
But given its lack of interest in Valproate, I conclude that the lobbyists have learned and modern day ‘Thalidomide scandals’ are now more easily suppressed / managed.
We all know the press is able to play down the significance of one scandal and play up the significance of another.
Which leaves so much room for distortion and inconsistency.
I believe we are ruled by a power structure that fears truth and goes to enormous lengths to hide it.
The resulting erosion of trust leads to withdrawal & extremism – which only benefits the entities with the most to gain & hide.
If you want to understand more about what Brexit means with regard to consumer protection then watch this video from 2017 featuring Emma Friedmann who campaigns on pharmaceutical regulation.
