Discuss: Johnson Prorogues Parliament
Boris happily gives up Brexit’s moral leverage
A past-master at seeming to discredit his position through association with his cartoonish buffoonery, Boris has taken it one step further: He’s just shut down Parliament.
Why has he done this? Well, allegedly, to allow him to force Britain to leave the EU – with or without a deal – on October 31st.
Did he need to? Not really. It is the PM’s prerogative to not put things to votes. He’s unlikely to have a vote of no-confidence go against him while Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the opposition. This doesn’t feel necessary at all.
In fact, it’s almost theatrical. A prop. It doesn’t mean what everyone is saying it means. This five-week “suspension” of Parliament includes three weeks that were going to be a break anyway, plus the current Parliament is already the longest in centuries.
Essentially, this is a totally empty gesture that achieves nothing, was tactically pointless and yet is incredibly publicly damaging in terms of optics.
So why did he do it? Because he’s a heel. He delights in being the guy we’re supposed to hate.
Through his “endorsement” the case for Brexit is attacked from within. His ludicrous bus provided the braying People’s Vote parade with their rallying cry, and now he has willfully reversed the conversation re: democracy.
The greatest argument FOR Brexit was a democratic one. Leave won the referendum, therefore had the democratic mandate. Shutting down Parliament allows the media to flip that narrative on its head.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, we find ourselves in a situation where Remain has a claim to be protecting democracy.
Across the House, Corbyn has long-since been manipulated into taking a pro-Remain position, even if he doesn’t call it that.
It has been my position, since the moment the result was announced, that the UK will simply not be allowed to leave the EU. Either we will “leave” under the terms of a “deal” that is so indistinguishable from simply remaining as it makes no difference OR we will be manoeuvred into a situation where it becomes “vital” that we remain for sake of democracy or “national security” or something like that.
The longer Boris acts out his farcical, almost clownish, “pro-Leave” premiership, the more the latter is looking increasingly inevitable.
Questions to answer:
- Will we really leave the EU on Halloween of this year?
- How will proroguing the commons change the conversation on Brexit?
- How many “regardless of how you voted in the referendum, this is about our democracy” articles will there be?
- When will there be a General Election, and does Corbyn stand any chance of winning?
- Was Halloween chosen deliberately to enable “scary Brexit” memes?
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The whole charge of the Clowns present actions and the Brexit debate in general does seem like Pantomime to this observer, a massive ‘bait & switch’ exercise by TPTB to distract us from the crisis of Capitalism and ecological carnage left in Capitalism’s wake.
We have witnessed hysterical claims of Coups from the very folks who desire to disenfranchise 17.4 million Leave voters, the very same folk who cannot accept the authority of the twice elected Leader of the Opposition and the very same idiots who brandish EU flags at Demo’s supposedly in support of democracy, but not democratic outcomes themselves – utter hypocrisy.
As a politics geek, I’m of the opinion our electorate was far more informed in the 70s than it is today, this despite no Internet, only 3 TV channels and a legacy media owned by the same folks as today – in those days we still had large scale manufacturing employing 10s of 1000s on single sites, so workers at least could exchange views – we also had powerful Unions – not today I’m afraid to say.
So, here we are, we have a lamentable Parliament with lamentable MPs, all professional by the way and highly educated – just a shame we lack political giants, and boy did the Tories and Labour have giant’s among their ranks in 1975, at least a dozen of whom could have become competent Prime Ministers.
Can we really say this today with the administrator class that has taken hold of many of the reigns of power?
Having ruminated on this some more I have come to the conclusion that Johnson is copying Trump’s tactics of doing something outrageous to distract the opposition. In this case proroguing Parliament – the hapless Remainiacs will then run around gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair trying to stop it while he gets to do a dirty deal round the back with the EU. It will be presented at the eleventh hour using the inverse of May’s tavtics viz. ‘my deal or no deal’ (versus May’s ‘my deal ro no Brexit’).
In the ensuing panic, a Parliamentary majority will form to vote through Boris’s deal (which I can guarantee will be substantially indistinguishable from May’s deal) and it will finally get voted through.
The opposition will be able to virtue signal that they stopped a no-deal, Boris can claim to have delivered Brexit.
However, he better call a snap election pronto before people figure out that it Brexit in name only and merely gives us all the disadvantages of EU membership with none of what little say is permitted.
As I have said before, the next election will produce a hung Parliament but will clear out a lot of the dog-in-the-manger MPs who have made the last few years (or decades) such penury, there will be another which swiftly follows.
Look at it from Johnson’s point of view. He has to deliver Brexit, or something he can pass off as Brexit, or both he and the Tory Party are toast. Probably permanently. If he agreed to another delay beyond 31 October, the result is the same. The Remainers and Remoaners will never agree to any kind of deal anyway. Even if Brussels offered a deal with free champagne and naked go go dancers thrown in, it would never be good enough. They just want to remain. And they will carry on with their mental gymnastics and using every dirty trick in the book and a few others Bercow hasn’t thought of yet. Johnson understands this hard reality and knows that he has to get down and dirty and do whatever it takes to push this through. Otherwise he will just be another Theresa May Mark II. Playing whatever constitutional and procedural and administrative games may be needed. Deselecting mutinous MPs. Telling the Jocks they can have another independence vote if they want. Facing down a No Confidence vote. Or even losing one and calling a General Election, to be held after we have officially left on 31 October. He might even win – “Vote for me, I’ve delivered Brexit, everybody else is defying the will of the people. We’ve left now. I’ll carry on trying to get a deal with Brussels, but it’s up to them. The British people just want this resolved. If you don’t, you’ll get the great bogeyman Corbyn.” This could be a winning message at the election. The opposition is hopelessly disunited and the Blairite Backstabber PLP is even more terrified of seeing Jezza in No. 10 than the Tories. Jezza is worth his weight in gold to Bojo. I don’t see what else Bojo can… Read more »
A Movie to Watch
[In a deep grainy American accent]
This Autumn, from the makers of Skripalbury, comes… Halloween 2019!
In an age when it was thought democracy was alive and ruled the earth, it is found to be dead.
What people thought was the truth turns out to be an illusion.
For the small Island of Albion and its people, who thought they had freedom and choice, they realise they have no freedom.. no choice.
And that the entitled ones rule!
Ruling Class Film brings you.
A Bullingdon Club production in association with Venture Capital and off-shore guilds of the Knights Templers.
Halloween 2019 – the Ghost of Empire
I have a counter theory to Kit’s piece here. Johnson’s moves are not an ’empty gesture’ ‘for his own delight’, and I don’t think the arguments that Kit puts forward really carry much water. Did he need to [suspend parliament] ? Not really. It is the PM’s prerogative to not put things to votes. He’s unlikely to have a vote of no-confidence go against him while Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the opposition. This doesn’t feel necessary at all. … since the moment the result was announced, that the UK will simply not be allowed to leave the EU. Either we will “leave” under the terms of a “deal” that is so indistinguishable from simply remaining as it makes no difference OR we will be manoeuvred into a situation where it becomes “vital” that we remain for sake of democracy or “national security” or something like that. I don’t think this is true. The commons has voted decisively several times against a No Deal and yet No Deal was/is Johnson’s main policy platform. He very likely would have a VONC against him and that, with the impossibility of pushing a NoDeal through parliament is exactly why he has prorogued and why other measures are in the off-ing to stop normal parliamentary process in the period between now and Oct 31st. No, it is not a coup, and no it is not going against any ‘constitution’. It is though the undemocratic feudal aspect of the British system of governance asserting itself in a way not seen for many many years. Those who argue that every single person who objects to Johnson’s moves are de facto supporting a Remain position and therefore are ‘anti-democratic’ (by wanting to overturn the 2016 referendum) are being extremely disingenuous. Manoeuvring us into No Deal is just… Read more »
THERE WAS NO MANDATE IN LAW. If the referendum had been mandatory, it would have been annulled and Brexit would not have happened as it has. The fact that it was, in effect, an opinion poll is why the Brexit band kept rolling legally and we are where we are now. In 2016 little mention was made of the prospect of no deal, and it was dismissed by Leaver leaders. In March 2017 Article 50 was invoked, which allows leaving the EU either with or without a deal. May had 2 years to come up with a Withdrawal Agreement . This she did but failed 3 times to get it ratified, with the Backstop cited as the main reason. In September/October 2018 the re was talk of a no-deal being more likely. As each vote rejected the WA the talk of no-deal grew louder to the point where it has become the most likely outcome.
One of the elephants in the room is that the backstop would cease with an EU trade deal. This is almost certainly because we would be expected to adhere to elements of the Single Market/Customs Union as the EU cannot show preference to the UK over the other 27 members. This is what those who were objecting to the Backstop were against. Now the talk is beginning to suggest that a trade deal with the EU is to be avoided. If anyone thinks we can rely on a Trade deal with the USA, I think they need to get a grip with reality.
Admin…. “Brexit as theatre is exactly the point of much of our commentary.”
Exactly. Agreed. Diversion and theatre. So, why encourage distraction ? (The attempted undermining is ignored.)
Thank you kindly for that.
p.s. Before you ask, strangely, there was no reply box to be seen. So, apologies for full on comment re. Brexit divisiveness not worth falling out over (which, for me, you appear to be encouraging !!)
Pro-rogue?
That’s what parliament is – they’re all rogues!
re DG….
“Kit – i have never understood what exactly your reasons or motivations for being so anti EU membership are?”
Stream of consciousness ? Provocateur ? Concern troll ? Diverter of attention ? Who knows ?
Are you suggesting Kit is one or all of these? We encourage critique of the content of articles, but context-free and content-free ad hom toward the authors or anyone else is not helpful. Maybe you could explain your intentions more fully.
And please see our comment policy for our (very basic) house rules.
Thank you.
No. Am responding to the question raised by dungroanin. For me, this prompted a full comment, imho, rather than a reply.
A major part of the discourse–perhaps deliberately perhaps not–is erroneously skewed towards the ‘binary’ when in fact (as others have observed) ‘EU or not EU’ is merely a divide and rule ploy by the PTB. viz. surprise surprise to draw public attention away from warmongering and offshore/money/corruption.
Therefore when DG asks for reasons re ‘anti EU’ the question then becomes.. ‘for what reason is Kit anti-EU?’ (if he is at all? …I have no view on whether he is anti or not!! The basis for questions, however, is made out by DG.).
I surmise that DG’s question to Kit was maybe prompted by many commenters’, including myself, irritation re the deliberately PTB diversionary arguments caused by the fabled “brexit”. Divisive arguments are time consuming as well as distracting; and probably not deliberately intended by any of the parties commenting.
The context (you asked) was DG’s question. I believe that this is still unanswered. The second point (ad hom) is not worthy of reply.
Brexit as theatre is exactly the point of much of our commentary. The point about ad hom is very relevant. There was no need to begin a separate thread for this and it’s only self-reffing and distracting.
re. “other irritated commenters”, analysed earlier…..
”
Andy
I’m beginning to think Brexit is a smokescreen and big larks, merely a tool to raise and lower the value of the pound and extract billions for those who know how to manipulate the markets. Johnson’s attempting to yoyo the pound at a greater degree for as long as possible.
ANDREW CLEMENTS
“Brexit is one of two things – an exercise in divide and rule and mindfuckery with long game/short game benefits to exploit ” Probably not short of the mark a psyop to put the proles in their place.
“
Brexit referendum was clear and on top of it the EU parliament elections supplied a clear confirmation with Farage’s party with close to 30% topping all other parties with Lib Dem next at 14% and destroying both Labour and Tories.
That Brexit referendum did not add nor even mention all those hurdles the remainers want to add.
May’s “deal” would have demoted the UK to dependent non-member state still forced to comply with EU regulation. That would fit well to the European Neighborhood policy aiming for an exclusive trade zone and sphere of influence, but a true disaster for the UK. Just look at what happened to the Ukraine.
Britain needs to be out for the sake of the EU’s survival.
1. The EU needs to be a workable unit.
2. The EU will never be a workable unit while Britain is in, because Britain will always claim special rights and conditions.
3. Special rights and conditions anger others but the psychological damage from Class A members and Class B members is the biggest spanner in the works. In German, Britain is a Störfaktor which slows everything down through being obstinate making forward action impossible.
4. If Britain does not leave on 31st October the EU will be history soon and that’s a backward step for which Britain will not want to be known in the history books.
By ‘special conditions’ do you mean the right not to be shafted up the rear end in a monetary union designed to benefit German industry/agriculture and now co-opted by the IMF into just another neoliberal sweatshop?
Levels of religious belief and denial going on here .
As I said to my mates at work in June 2016, ‘they won’t let us go!’
I voted out for the people ‘oop North’ , me living quite comfortably in S.E. U.K.
with a nice job thank you…
We joined the EEC, not a burgeoning bureaucracy EU…Shuttling twixt Strasbourg and Brussels,
ridiculous salaries and perks, money that each country can spend better. It’s our tax money.
Ask a Remainer how they will fix this obscenity? Reform?! ‘My God’, ‘Mein Gott’, ‘Mon Dieu’,
never!
I hate Boris, Tories, but my decision in 2016, was not swayed by arguments and ‘facts’ from either side.
It is patronising to say the plebs can’t think for themselves.
Thanks for your thoughtfulness Dave from the se. I live up north and after brexit I’m looking forward to getting back to the days when our inclusive Westminster government invested in uk industry and jobs, by encouraging companies and venture capitalists to place their hard-earned north of Watford, instead of shutting them down when that nasty eu told thatcher to do it and sell off our industry to foreigners eh?
It’ll be great when we finally get a link from Newcastle to Scotland that doesn’t take half a day to get there, or an infrastructure of public transport that’s not over 40 years old and was second hand when we got it. Brilliant that they stop spending 2.5k less per head in the ne than London on transport…. Can’t wait for them to sell off the useless nhs and introduce medical insurance… I always knew it was that evil eu that was doing us down and not the Tory bastards
Your reasons for voting leave are your own. But ‘team leave’ defo isn’t going to deliver the above for you. Why would they? Road to Damascus conversion for Etonians and ex-bankers? I understand your arguments but those leading ‘team leave’ have no idea what you’re on about, they just needed your vote. People will still be sleeping in shop doorways, in fact maybe more will
Is this any worse that Grieve and Bercow conspiring to change a several hundreds of years old parliamentary procedure in order to facilitate remain MPs sabotage of brexit? No, it’s not even in the same ball park of constitutional outrage.
No it isn’t.
They’ve been lying and playing dirty for over 3 years.
Time to play them at their own game.
Bring it on, Remoaners.
Let’s see what you’ve got.
You can always emigrate to your beloved Brussels.
Remoaners.
Really?
We have an “impartial” Speaker driving around with “Bollocks To Brexit” on his car.
It’s not his car, it belongs to his wife
Yep, using our constitution as a reason to defend remaining in an organisation. The organisation that sees our constitution defiled by its Lisbon treaty, a rebadged EU constitution. Double think and double speak, utter hypocrisy.
BORIS JOHNSON – A man who betrays his family, will betray his country.
He will say it was a mistake, or that he ‘miss spoke’, or he forgot to declare income, and he will lie again and again.
But it is the people’s mistake for trusting him.
He joins a select band of betraying brothers –
Judas Iscariot
Marcus Brutus
Benedict Arnold
Marshal Petain
Vidkun Quisling
William Joyce
Wow, you really went far back in history to find a collection of traitors. You seemed to have forgotten Guy Fawkes…
I have to say a large number of commenters here seem to be missing an important point. I suggest this isn’t about the actual business of Remain or Leave. Or at least not very much. Why would the managers of your destiny care too much about that? The same financial systems control the US and the EU and most of the rest of the world. Doesn’t matter much to them which sheep pen we end up in. They own them all. I suggest the Remain/Leave crisis, like most other crises, real or fake, is important to the PTB primarily for how it can be used to shape public opinion and re-position that Overton Window. One major purpose of Remain/Leave seems to be to legitimise as a concept the rejection of democracy’. Just look around. Getting the masses to approve their own disenfranchisement is currently being promoted millimeter by millimeter, hashtag by hashtag, and the Leave/Remain ‘controversy’ is a stalking horse. After all we can’t let democracy be threatened by the wrong kind of voting can we? With all these far-right antisemitic extremist white-supremacist Russians around, maybe we should just accept an ’emergency’ government in the national interest, because there’s too much ‘influence’ for voting to be legitimate any more. And mad as it sounds some people seem to be buying it. They proclaim Brexit wasn’t actually a vote at all, because…well, the reasons are vague. Not because of vote-rigging or anything quantifiable like that, but because of excessive influence’ from certain parties, or because the victors weren’t honest enough with the electorate, who thus were not making an ‘informed’ vote. Because obviously all previous REAL votes involved absolutely no undue ‘influence’, lies or funding. Hashtags #saveourdemocracy spawned from the same forces striving to destroy it. Meanwhile in the wrestling ring… Read more »
Are you the actual Catte Black?
I mostly agree.
I guess that the ‘direct democracy’ of a referendum and the long term consequences of the result arguably does put it into a slightly different category to those of parliamentary votes.
This is the point, Catte. You have expressed what I have been thinking. Increasingly the political world seems indistinguishable from soap operas and TV dramas. Just distractions and narratives for people to gossip about at work and in the pub. Nothing real or actual in them. Meanwhile the work of herding us into serfdom goes on.
On top of the debacle of what is and isn’t democracy. The whole Brexit issue has enabled the continuation of austerity and the seesawing of the pound. Enabling the super rich to get even more super rich. Meanwhile down on ground level the divide and rule is working a treat. In or out, Leave or remain, Hard or soft, Deal or no deal. its the distraction of dreams and false promises. Families and friends have been divided so easily by this. How the people fell for it and allowed it to dominate over all the dreadful things the Tories have been doing, I don’t know.
‘One major purpose of Remain/Leave seems to be to legitimise as a concept the rejection of democracy’.’ – we don’t really live in a democracy for reasons you highlight in your opening salvo, i.e. ‘The same financial systems control the US and the EU and most of the rest of the world. Doesn’t matter much to them which sheep pen we end up in. They own them all.’ While the EU and USA are interlinked I fear the EU slightly less than I fear the USA – and once out of the EU we can certainly give up any pretence that Britain is anything other than a plaything for corporate America. British politicians have already been co-opted. So has our media – this began decades ago escalating dramatically after 2008. 10 years of austerity tells you all you need to know about where the Overton window lies while the final and most important symbol of Britains post-war aspirations (the NHS) is about to be sold off. Cancer patients are expected to work til they drop (rather than being entitled to benefits) and its only a matter of time before pensions are beyond the reach of people under the age of 70, then 75 – after that who knows, maybe even older. So, yes, we can be vigilant or we may squabble over the post-Brexit fall-out – but either way median income families are facing dark times since any threat to the kind of crypto-fascism embodied by the mega-corporations and banks, no matter how benign that threat may be can expect to receive the Corbyn or the Assange treatment. I have many doubts about the EU but a right wing sock-puppet like Johnson being manipulated by sinister neocon forces is the worst of two admittedly problematic options. This is where we… Read more »
This is plausible, but only if you actually believe in our mythological “democracy.”
Absolutist cynicism isn’t helpful.Let’s acknowledge that we currently at least have a consensus that universal suffrage and regular elections are essentials for civilization. It’s an ideal that requires at least lip service from our betters. They have to pretend to adhere to it, and we are at least given a facsimile of choice over who governs us.
It’s clear there are powerful moves afoot to crowbar us away from even this ideal of suffrage. We’re being urged to believe that higher forms of ‘democracy’ don’t need expression through the vote and are even hindered by it.
Once this idea takes collective hold – and it’s creeping that way – we’ll enter a new dark age far worse than the one we’re currently in.
Why is a ‘facsimile of choice’ preferable to widespread agreement that we have no meaningful choice (through ‘democratic means’ at least) ?
I am not confident that there is a consensus that ‘universal sufferage and regular elections are essentials for civilization’. Cuba ?
I think that ‘democracy’ as it’s widely understood is a development of the fossil fuel age. The humongous surplus of wealth.
This though is coming to an end, and power elites need to try and hold onto their positions (using an increasingly authoritarian state). The future will be very unpopular. ‘Democracy’ needs to be wound in.
I think that Brexit is just one manifestation of this – the early stages of shrinkage back into a national polity and ideas that we thought we’d seen the back of. Imagine a political party which offered a realistic vision of the future ;”Vote for us, we will give you austerity, lower living standards, shorter life spans, harder physical work” etc. Who would ‘choose’ them?
If democracy is an illusion then it is one founded on another illusion : that our complex and wealthy society is a product solely of human ingenuity and progress rather than a massive input of basically free energy which is both running out and killing the biosphere.
Democracy is a development of the fossil fuel age?
Ergo end universal suffrage and save the planet?
Nice synthesis of two major media memes of our time. If the corporatocracy can persuade people to buy that one AND the Green New Deal they’ll have that Brave New World of voluntary serfs they clearly want.
Fucks sake, I’m not advocating it. You read an analysis as if a manifesto.
There is though a certain inevitability to the situation once you get your head round the hard science of energy depletion. I don’t read discussion of the social and economic impacts of declining fossil fuels hardly anywhere, so to call it a ‘major media meme’ is misleading.
The GND agenda is being driven by the slow-down in growth in the real economy – a consequence of net energy decline, so I agree with Morningstar that it is essentially about trying to ‘save or extend capitalism’.
We can’t though, ultimately save our civilisation. They always come to an end.
Or, let’s have it the other way :
We create a political movement to extend democracy, redistribute wealth, clean up the pollution, sort out the social problems, stop species extinciton and the rest of it.
The economy is in constant danger of tanking around the world because the monetary system is built on escalating debt and the hard limits to growth have forced us to print money just to stop it all imploding.
Let’s just imagine that we somehow disempower all the financial oligarchs and wipe the debts, formulate a new sane zero growth model for the economy. Pretty far fetched, but let’s imagine.
Now we have 7 going on 8 billion people who are mostly reliant on fossil fuels for their food, water, shelter, clothing, just about everything. There is not another source of energy that can step in. If you think wind and solar, or nuclear you have not read enough about biophysical economics.
Even if you believe that AGW has been hyped out of all proportion for political aims, or even if you think it is not a threat at all, there is still the issue of depletion. All the easy oil has gone. We are getting less back for our efforts. This will go on until someone re-writes physics and finds a way to produce energy from unicorn shit.
Can anyone think of a ‘democratic’ way of dealing with this situation (and no that is NOT a wish for less democracy ) ? What are you going to offer the average punter to get them to support your movement ? Lies ? (-like all the parties in parliament now)
‘we’ll enter a new dark age far worse than the one we’re currently in.’ – we are already there, this was the moral of 9/11. 9/11 proved there is literally nothing, and I mean nothing the public cannot be persuaded to believe once certain buttons are pressed, such as t’evil terrorists threatning ‘our way of life’. The children of 9/11 include a presidential choice between 2 grotesque psychos, in other words no choice at all. A campaign engineered by the MSM which gave a platform for racists to call one of Britains few non-racist MPs a racist. Before that he was labelled a spy, an IRA sympathiser, and a friend of the terrorists. And of course the torture of a journalist by powerful nations (for revealing war crimes) while the media first defamed, sneered, and lied about it, before finally pretending nothing untoward was happening after being called out by the UN rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer. The powers that be realise they cannot take away the vote (for now) but they can at least control the process (through their instruments in the media) to the extent that the choice we face in real terms is no more than different shades of neoliberalism, except for ideologies to the right of it. Socialism is of course dead in the USA and a similar project to denigrate it in the UK is reaching the end-game. BTL on the Guardian, for example any mention of socialism is guanateed to be met with knee-jerk references to; *Corbyn *Venezuela *Stalin *China But never the NHS. Rome burns and one of the more depressing strands of commentary (BTL) on Off-G has been the attack on the only MP in living memory who might offer a slightly less depressing world view. But becuse he cannot successfully oppose… Read more »
A sidebar issue — but how can we already be in a dark age worse than the one we’re in?
Sometimes hyperbole gets away from us – 🙂
A very powerful comment, the tip toe to totalitarianism.
Maybe it would be better if they just took off the mask and actually did away with elections. It would remove the fig leaf of respectability from what we have now.
As one old enough to remember when Saturday afternoon wrestling was allowed on the telly, this is the perfect analogy.
We should strive not to be the little old lady so enraged that she makes her way to the front of the crowd to give one of the beefy wrestlers a good handbagging.
If you find yourself feeling that way, you are watching too closely and are being manipulated.
The big difference is that while we can laugh at, perhaps even feel superior to the little old lady trying to drop-kick Mick McManus we have no such luxury as spectators while (in a supposedly rich country) so many children go hungry, families are swamped by debt, containers are the new homes or when people with severe illnesses waste away because they are denied benefits.
I saw on the internet the other day that austerity apologist Jo Swinson made an expenses claim for tooth floss and eye liner.
I would vote for violent pensioners or Mick McManus before I’d vote for people like that.
I might even prefer exploding European bureaucrats.
https://giphy.com/gifs/mr-gif-uvzvoT4xS9ygw
It is correct that the whole ‘EU making our laws’, ‘Sovereignty’, EU immigrants’ etc issues are all emotional hot-button pushes. And boy hasn’t the whole country been pushed into a nervous breakdown because people do react!
British parliamentry democracy has always been about a control of the ‘democratic’ process – a field in Old Sarum used to have an MP at one time.
Universal Suffrage has always been a hard won endeavour. Which has increasingly become controlled by getting people to stop using their meagre vote on the one hand while getting control of the candidates on the other. So most of the time who ever gets in they still dance to the same piper.
We can’t ever forget that historical progress for rights has always been a story of slaves throwing off the slave owners.
The rest is just how the slave owners try to stop losing their ‘god given’ superiority. Including the left right divide and any number of full spectrum attacks on the slaves psyche. Religion, Drugs, Sex … all the way to entertainment and News.
We must believe in the power of a law equally applied. They twist that or ignore it by controlling judges and the like. We cannot. We can protest and march and riot and continue the age old battle to preserve these gains and advance them relentlessly as our ancestors did.
That is only how things have get better for our future generations.
A very British coup 1988.
https://movieninja.to/movie/a-very-british-coup-wxgnlmjy/watch#yk9zm0x581yg0x59
Thanks frank enjoyed this a lot – never seen it before, missed it first time round. Great cast, the actors seem to enjoying themselves – something, which in my experience indicates a quality production. This is the best thing I have seen Keith Allen do. Cheers
Also frank, thanks for pointing out the Dorset Eye, some powerful articles – especially in the international section. Particularly like the “I see you…. ” column – just read the epstein piece. Phew ! Blistering. Thanks.
“The greatest argument FOR Brexit was a democratic one. Leave won the referendum, therefore had the democratic mandate.” No Kit they didn’t win fairly – it was a stitch up and there is evidence as well as Cummings own admission – which he is not compelled to make at a select committee. Just as FB are not compelled to cooperate with what data, how many people , which areas and what adverts were used. – so NOT A DEMOCRATIC MANDATE just a CHEAT. “the UK will simply not be allowed to leave the EU. ” No Kit we are allowed to leave, A50 is the legal instrument for doing so. For many years we were stopped from joining by DeGaulles vetos – why did we gatecrash in? You never consider that. I have posted a lot of the history on the previous thread which is ignored by the brexit posters – but it is a surprise that you do to. WE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WE WERE GIVING UP BY JOINING in 1971. “Corbyn has long-since been manipulated into taking a pro-Remain position, even if he doesn’t call it that.” Holy molly Kit – are you really calling him a liar? Are you ignoring their manifesto commitment? Are you completely ignoring the Labour iniatives that promise that a deal not based in Theresa’s red lines be offered alongside a remain option or even a option of a no deal in a confirmatory vote? A few other points We were told when the ref was happening and thereafter that we would retain plenty of the good stuff while ending the ‘freedom of movement ‘ because the EU immigration was the reason why most voted to leave. We would keep the good stuff like enviromental regulations and working protections and a level playing… Read more »
Came down here to write a reply to this bonkers article, only to find you had already written it for me! Thanks.
“WE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WE WERE GIVING UP BY JOINING in 1971.” Did we now?
Go see the document > Fco-30-1048 < to learn what we didn't know. You will see the same manipulations, mediatique, financial, and political; by the same cabal of the same political leaning as today. Truth is, we have been shafted; TPTSB are not letting go of power any time soon, and remain or leave we can expect deep sh*t from either the corporate EU, the Corporate UK or the Corporate US of A. Ps, UK is not a 'democracy', it is a "constitutional monarchy"and many of its constitutional LAWS have their origins in pre-Roman eras.
“It does appear that if this country should go into the Common Market and sign the Treaty of Rome, it means that we will have taken a step which is irreversible. The sovereignty of these islands will thenceforward be limited. It will not be ours alone but will be shared with others.” (10 May 1971, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, gave judgement in the case of Blackburn v Attorney General) ——– That is proof of what was known 50 years ago. As for FO/HO knowledge and reports here is a brexit site from a few years ago. http://doortofreedom.uk/a-big-lie ‘the claim made by the Heath government in their White Paper of July 1971, that British entry into the Community would not involve any loss of essential national sovereignty, was a big lie.’ On the 11th June 1970, following a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the EEC two days before, the President of the Council Pierre Harmel issued an invitation to the United Kingdom to begin negotiations on the 30th June for our entry into the EEC. Despite a General Election on the 18th June, and the replacement of Wilson’s Labour Government was replaced by Heath’s Conservative Government, the negotiations began as scheduled on the 30th. At the same meeting on the 8/9th June, the Council of Ministers approved the conclusions of Pierre Werner’s ‘Interim Report on the Establishment by Stages of Economic and Monetary Union’.2 The commissioning of the report had followed a decision taken at the Summit Conference at The Hague on 1/2nd December 1969 that ‘a plan in stages should be worked out during 1970 with a view to the creation of an economic and monetary union The resolution was adopted officially by the Council and the Representatives of the Member States on 22 March… Read more »
Q. When is a democratic mandate not a democratic mandate?
A. When you don’t agree with the outcome.
It was apparently “stolen” by dodgy money, although Remain outspent Leave by more than 2-1. Or it was manipulated by the evil Putin, who was taking time off from rigging the US/ French/ German/ Italian/ Macedonian/ Hungarian elections. Or all the Leavers were “lying”, if you don’t accept their arguments. And of course the people who voted Leave were old, uneducated, bigoted and racist. So they don’t count. And anyway Farage wants to kill all the gays and flog off the NHS to a US hedge fund. And the Leave vote can be ignored if Brussels refuse to negotiate a sensible trade arrangement.
Britain was dragged into the EEC in 1973 on the whim of paedo Heath. It remained in in 1975 because of Project Fear Mark 1 and because Remain outspent Leave by more than 100-1.
At that time it may have made some kind of sense, half a dozen western European countries, not 28, including soon Albania, Macedonia, maybe even Turkey and North African countries. Cameron promised to “pave the way between Ankara and Brussels.” Then who knows, maybe Ukraine and Georgia. And now we have a federal superstate with its own army, unelected leaders, centrally controlled budgets and taxation and God knows what else. With its economy and banking system on the verge of collapse.
This is our last chance to escape from this monstrosity before it implodes. We’d better not blow it because of the fantasies of the Remoaners.
It’s very possible that Heath was blackmailed into rushing through our membership of the EEC without the referendum that such a change in our sovereignty required. The fact that Wilson’s subsequent government rushed through a referendum ‘after the event’ showed that something was legally amiss.
“Britain was dragged into the EEC in 1973 on the whim of paedo Heath.”
Have you completely ignored the previous dozen years when the establishment was trying to barge into the nascent EU?
Also kindly explain who exactly forced Heath? Name that villain.
Did I miss where you explained what a ‘stitch up’ is in constitutional terms and how we quantify that as a rationale for disregarding the legitimacy of a popular vote?
You’ll agree that probably needs to be nailed down to avoid the obvious risks involved in this mode of thinking?
Sorry Catte i didn’t realise that was aimed at me – i just found it.
So – No I can’t answer your question as put. I must say i can’t exactly parse it –
Constitutional terms ? I am not a expert but i am led to believe we don’t have a written one never mind a traditional one.
I guess courts and judges are the ones we rely on to rule on a case by case basis.
Stitch up? – do you refer to how the deepstate / Crown / aristos / the ancient City drove us into the EU for their own ends? And are intent on reversing out without any encumbrances on their ability to lie, cheat and hide the wealth of their age old endeavours?
A legitimate popular vote shouldn’t be afraid of having itself confirmed. Just as bobo shouldn’t be able to claim a mandate that he hasn’t confirmed.
How else can we nail anything down except by going back to the people. The alternative is the loss of even that paltry democracy and a imposed government rubber stamped by the monarch – exactly like thailand.
And after that, you’ll presumably want to check the referendum referendum, and have a referendum referendum referendum. At what point do you accept the result? Do you make a rule that it’s just this referendum/democratic vote that gets a second vote, but not future ones, or some future ones will too, or ALL future votes? OR do you leave it a grey area and sort it out later? Who would lead the negotiation of this ethical minefield, one of the people currently negotiating Brexit? Could they guarantee a better overall outcome than we have currently?
Where would the buck stop with future democratic results?
The answer is, you don’t know. If you move these goal posts, you have no idea to what ends this precedent will be exploited in future.
I accepted the first result and expected that we would end with some kind of Norway type deal or something but took away the 4 freedoms as promised by the brexiteers.
What they didn’t promise was a no-deal and WTO rules.
If people vote for a no-deal of course i’ll accept it.
Why you worried when you are certain that is what 17 million people want?
What you’re saying essentially is “what are you, chicken!?”. Such goading just avoids the question of why a second vote is a good idea. Speculating on public opinion or quoting polls is entirely irrelevant, considering predictions were so inaccurate leading up to the result (either by error or consciously manipulated) Many people were talking about leaving the EU one way or another, a no deal really isn’t much of a surprise to me. I think the last thing that many people wanted was a castrated Norway-style deal. Why is that preferable? Maybe you heard what you wanted to hear? Again, not really an argument for another vote. Why doesn’t anyone think this no-deal scenario reflects at all badly on the EU? They are negotiating pretty bloood-thirstily for themselves and clearly don’t give a crap about how the UK public are affected. Yet they are defended and idealised. Why?? It has all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. The situation probably sucks balls, however I think we’ll all survive and I don’t think we’ll suffer a hundredth as much as other nations suffer at our hands. I also think it’s a massive distraction and ultimately it will make little difference what the result is. You see the EU as a nurturing benign place. I view its increasingly authoritarian globalist idealism, the itinerant labourer underclass it encourages, its support for fascist Ukraine and its love of enforcing austerity as deeply evil. From an ethical standpoint, I believe the earth will benefit from a disempowered UK, with the more far-reaching benefit that leaving the EU will shake up the tired status quo. Greater democratic autonomy may help us to create a more self-governing, less globalist society one day (probably in many, many years). It will at the least provide one less diversion and… Read more »
Not just chicken – but chicken little.
Nowhere in your spin do you mention that it is the globalised racketeering and tax evasion which has operated out of the City for centuries that is the only beneficiary of a hard brexit.
I never claimed the EU is perfect.
But i do like its progress towards a level playing field.
Fuck the City just like they have the world.
‘Look at you… silly Chicken Little, getting spooked by a few nazis. The EU’s allowed to support a few nazis, Chicken Little, it’s not perfect. It’s not perfect, you know! Euromaidan was fine. A bit of fascist proxy-warring because Ukraine decided not to sign an EU agreement…. its just something to ignore. It’s not perfect, just like its attitude of pro-austerity isn’t perfect (which so many ‘Remainers’ openly criticise in the UK… so I guess austerity won’t be going anywhere anytime soon) but it’s not perfect, Chicken Little, its not perfect!! And if we leave, all our medications will evaporate overnight, they will! Poof, gone, and your family will die! And our NHS will implode (because apparently the EU gave us our NHS, or is it just that we’re happy to have it propped up by exploiting a migrant, borderless EU workforce of second-class citizens, while we sit back, Wall-E style, and virtue signal on facebook?). If we leave the EU Trump will basically run our country (although he currently determines every meaningful decision we make already)!! We need to break our democracy, Chicken Little! Break it so we can let people-who-know-best make our decisions from now on! You grab Lucy Goosey, let’s take to the streets to demand our democracy back from Bojo, so we can demand they undo this democratic decision (while detecting zero irony in the procedure whatsoever). Come on!!!’ I personally know which side if this ‘debate’ sounds more like Chicken Little, and, in case I failed to make this clear, I think it’s you! (Was that just tit-for-tat name calling, or did you honestly think I sound like Chicken Little? Have you read the story!?) Ultimately, the choice for us was always the frying pan or the fire, it makes little difference exactly which sphere… Read more »
Ok lets focus on euromaidan first.
Why do you not mention the Atlantists from the state department under you know who sending their official Nuland in who said ‘fuck the EU’ and put the nazis in place? There is plenty of evidence to show that euromaidan was a US op.
Funny that Trump has just pulled $250 billion for the Ukraine. He realises that they should stop digging that hole – many obviously don’t.
I’m not arguing with any of that, it doesn’t in fact contradict anything I’ve said. It was clearly a US-inspired coup/move against Russia. And the EU were actively/obediently involved with it all,, supporting the new super-fascist government, as they Nazi-saluted on their merry way.
And people genuinely argue that the EU protects us from Nationalism… The only reason such people aren’t staggering hypocrites is that they don’t know, because the press doesn’t report it. It doesn’t absolve them from being blinkered however. Nor are people absolved from being blinkered now, by following the lead of the self-same corrupt press as they push the ‘remain’/’dismantle-the-democratic-process’ agenda.
OK it seems as if I am in the crossfire here.
So to both you and admin give me an answer to the ‘fuck the eu’ & their ‘both in it together’ dichotomy.
Of course there are US backed interests within Europe but that does not explain ‘ fuck the eu’ does it?
You’re completely correct. ‘Fuck the EU’ completely negates the fact the EU & US have spent the last ten years or more pursuing virtually identical monetary and geopolitical goals, albeit for slightly divergent interest groups. This conversation has become silly.
Maybe silly maybe real. I will not respond any further. Peace.
The only ‘fuck the eu’ sentiment I subscribe to is the gentle and, probably undignified, descent of UK global influence that might follow Brexit. We have a small-man complex recently, and we’ve been trying to swing in the big arena with offerings such as the Skrypal charade. Less of that, more of a backwater, ex-empire in its dotage who most people ignore, doing our own thing without drawing too much attention, that would suit me fine. US influence/control, which will inevitably increase if we do leave (which I’m still skeptical will actually happen), might be slightly diluted across the Atlantic, giving us slightly more wiggle room. The UK population, ever so slightly more autonomous, may start to develop an appetite for it, and develop into a more democratically self-governing nation. Maybe Scotland will get its independence, and Ireland too, harmoniously.
Fuck the status quo, I say. Change, even for the worse, is preferable to the noxious atmosphere of stagnant corruption and pernicious, pervasive, institutionalised, cowardly evil we pump out.
Perhaps if Corbyn had come along post-Brexit he might have stood more of a chance. The liberal-fascist, Blairite, pro-EU political class, who were ultimately his undoing, could well have had less sway.
Of course the US was involved in the Maidan coup. But so was the EU.
In fact the EU kicked the whole thing off with its demands for either/or decisions from Ukraine. And the EU flag and EU officials were stage centre of the psyop. Up to and including nurturing Nazis.
It’s doing the same thing again right now in Serbia. Look forward to a color revolution there soon, in concert with the US State Dept. The EU and US almost always speak with one voice in matters of regime change and international debt slavery.
The idea of some binary between the EU and US is pure propaganda. At most they represent different interest groups inside the same financial and military mobster class.
Corbyn has always been and is now so far as we know anti-EU. You seem like a true ideologue over this, making the most sweeping claims and not even pausing to prove any of them before making more.
Elementor,
LIAR.
Corbyn voted against UK joining EC in 1975. He is well know as a longterm Euroskeptic.
Don’t call other commenters liars without at least citing a reason, and especially don’t do it when you yourself are being economical with the truth.
Many people voted against being drummed into the EC in the 70’s. after 50 years people are allowed to be pragmatic and change their mind?
Corbyn became MP in 83, so he wasn’t even in Parliament at that vote!
Wilson stayed NEUTRAL. He allowed his cabinet a free vote.
Corbyn CAMPAIGNED vigorously for REMAIN in 2016 – why didn’t he stay neutral?
That is the LIE – that he wanted LEAVE and didn’t even remain neutral! He clearly stated he didn’t think the EU was perfect but that does not mean he felt the same as in the early 70’s.
So:
“Corbyn has always been and is now so far as we know anti-EU.”
Is a mendacious and unproved statement- it is oft repeated.
I have posted proof of his campaigning and that the Blairite Johnson who was in charge of the Labour Remain campaign kept JC away from the msm as they tried to dislodge him with the chickencoup planned months previously.
We are not in parliament and i am allowed to call a lie a lie. I have not seen a response from the original poster about their statement and with respect your claim that he is well known for being a eurosceptic is not proof that his position in the referendum was the opposite to that. Is it?
I’m happy to post the proof of Corbyns campaigning in the referendum if anyone still doesn’t believe he was for REMAIN in 2016 not nearly half a century ago!
It has been an interesting thread.
What is your source for Corbyn campaigning for Remain in 2016?
Here’s a source:
Corbyn’s speech 9in full) April 2016 –
https://labourlist.org/2016/04/europe-needs-to-change-but-i-am-voting-to-stay-corbyns-full-speech-on-the-eu/
Corbyn and brexit Article by a professor in the Guardian that disproved Corbyns ‘failure’ to campaign effectively in the referendum within weeks https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/04/evidence-blame-jeremy-corbyn-brexit-remain-labour-conservative Mainly its what and who the media chose to cover -“The most frequently reported Labour politician was Jeremy Corbyn (7th). Only ten Labour politicians made the top thirty. They account for 15% of the total number of appearances in the top thirty.” https://blog.lboro.ac.uk/crcc/eu-referendum/uk-news-coverage-2016-eu-referendum-report-5-6-may-22-june-2016/ Worth looking at the whole set of academic studies there. Here’s an article looking at the whole woeful ‘Remain’ campaign referencing the above analysis https://www.redpepper.org.uk/brexit-clearly-not-jeremy-corbyns-fault/ Here is an academic take on Labour and brexit – no blame on Corbyn, but plenty on the Blairites http://www.referendumanalysis.eu/eu-referendum-analysis-2016/section-6-parties/the-immigration-debate-labour-versus-leave-in-the-battle-to-win-public-trust/ That is one of a load of articles by many academics on Brexit as an overall and unbiased take http://www.referendumanalysis.eu/ On the overall media bias and strategy on the current labour leadership a quick overview https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/jeremy-corbyn-media-coup-bbc-labour Here is Deputy Leader Watson lining up the post brexit Coup too https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/10/tom-watson-the-canny-peacemaker-combatting-conspiracy-theorists Corbyn was only allowed one TV debate https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/02/eu-referendum-tv-debates-when-where-watch-them And here is what he said in that debate – the clear position of being in better then out. Nuanced and sensible – of course it got ignored because of Warsi’s change of heart and Jo Cox murder https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2016/jun/20/eu-referendum-live-warsi-leave-parliament-recalled-jo-cox The nearest the Guardian got to the facts of the brexit campaign before the referendum – as they started to panic, but they were still lining up the coup against Corbyn on the 24th June regardless of the result https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/10/people-are-still-confused-on-brexit-and-the-campaign-isnt-helping And finally a bit of coverage of Corbyn campaigning in Scotland for remain, while the rebel PLP still sniping at him, note the coverage given to brexiters https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/11/corbyn-urges-voters-in-scotland-to-show-solidarity-with-people-across-eu And the ‘smoking gun’ that Corbyn was not in charge of the Labour IN campaign and kept away from high profile mainstream media from the… Read more »
I have replied. It is awaiting moderation. I assume it is because of multiple links. Let’s see.
You do love ramming your nonsense down peoples’ throats, don’t you? Not surprising that George Galloway spurned your “help”.
Tony what are you on about? When did i mention GG?
You are just fabricating now. Must be getting overwrought.
I demand a retraction and apology or i will register a complaint!
“WE KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WE WERE GIVING UP BY JOINING in 1971.” ….. Please stop. My sides are hurting.
You are short of memory or very selective in omitting the EU parliament results so clearly confirming the Brexit mandate:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-48403131
No JPH et al, the EU elections did NOT confirm the referendum mandate –
a. Because it was not a referendum based on individual votes.
b. The total votes cast for The Fart Age party was a massive , less than
FIVE MILLION TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND.
What happened to the other 12 MILLION???
lol – like they say you can’t fool all of the people ALL of the time.
The EU Referendum!
Just to think that millions did not have a vote, had their futures decided by such well educated, politically apt characters. End off the EU indeed, who wants to even argue with such tabloidal mindset?
Obviously only Superior Beings like yourself should be allowed to vote and take any important decisions.
It’s not unreasonable to express concern when a binary choice, set up by libertarians, riding the crest of an anti-immigration wave, taps into the base instincts of a misinformed electorate who were conned by slogans such as ‘taking back control’. We hear time and time again why people don’t like the EU (and there are plenty of good reasons not to like it) but what we never hear is what benefits leaving will confer on median income families, or why a bad deal, or more likely no-deal is in the national interest. For a start it is ludicrous to suggest Britain will somehow become more ‘democratic’ – it won’t, that ship sailed 40 years ago. Lets take it as read that Corbyn won’t win, especially given the influence of the MSM and pro-Israel lobby in the Labour party so that leaves the alternatives: Johnson, Swinson, Farage, or the Tingers ie pro-corporation lackeys indifferent to the many externalities of austerity. It’s texactly he same non-choice US voters had between Trump and Hillary: that’s like offereing someone the choice between terminal cancer or the plague. So if changing one corrupt system for another is the best you can hope for it strikes me as odd that anyone should regard this as a particularly good thing, especially since all the economic projections suggest most people will be worse off (apart from a small minority who will probably benefit from the ensuing chaos) – maybe once the public have to pay for health care, or find pensions out of reach until they are 75 the penny will finally drop that they are little more than income streams for corporations who control virtually every aspect of public life. If leaving the EU can’t address this primary injustice, and it won’t, then all that is left… Read more »
I know women who have voted for someone because “he’s got a nice smile”, or “nice eyes.”
Should they be deprived of their vote?
It amazes me that people can be so fanatically convinced of the nebulous merits of this loathsome organisation. They are impervious to any argument, like the groupies of some weird cult.
No tangible pros associated with Brexit then – so surely you can understand why not everyone agrees sacrificing things like universal health care because some voters feel they have no obligation to themselves or anyone else to understand what they are voting for, or how the consequences of a scheme hatched by Nigel and other right-wing ultras impacts on everyone else?
The mood in the country has festered ever since, not least because the vote was close and more importantly few of the profound divisions caused by it have come close to being healed.
The situation is not helped in my opinion when the pro-Brexit lobby much like yourself cannot seem to offer any measurable benefits – given billions have already been spent over the last few years surely by now the buds of a bright new future should be springing up as we edge ever closer to freeing our great nation from the yoke of our European overlords?
It may sound churlish questioning Boris – but shutting down parliament for the longest period in living memory during a pivotal period in negotiations does not bode well for the exciting new form of democracy we have all been promised.
And when half the cabinet are on record as saying ‘no-deal’ would be economic suicide then fall silent when Boris proposes just that it was bound to end in a petition with over 1,000,000 signatures against proroguing parliament not to mention spontaneous protests across many cities – of course all of that pales into insignificance when anti-immigration sentiments are harnessed as a political weapon then handed over to voters who are given a binary choice without attaching any of the further options such as leaving with a deal,or no-deal, or keeping the backstop, or abandoning it.
The UK had universal healthcare when it entered the EU, and the EU has in recent times sat back and allowed the NHS to be all but totally privatised.
What is your reason for believing the EU would save the NHS?
Membership of the EU does guarantee the future of the NHS but leaving guarantees its demise, IMO.
Britain has few bargaining chips left given industry has been run down and assets once publicly owned have already been sold off (see James Meek, Private Island: why Britain now belongs to someone else – link below)
In other words there is not much left to batgain with so in order to gain any sort of traction when making new trades deals (post-EU) the £130 billion NHS budget is bound to be offered up as a sweetner.
This trigger will lead to full blown privatisation then health bills can be added to a tranche of other debts including unpaid tuition fees, or personal loans acquired to pay off unpaid credit card bills.
If the EU guarantees the future of the NHS, how come it’s been all but destroyed while we are in the EU? What did the EU do to stop the selloffs? Nothing is the answer.
Why then do you think it the EU will protect the NHS in the future when it did nothing to protect it in the past?
the EU will protect the NHS in the future when it did nothing to protect it in the past?
Maybe it did maybe it didn’t…but as we know the tories have always wanted to privatise it..in fact they already started a la Branson etc. However they know they can’t come flat out and do it wholesale without an excuse…brexit gives them that excuse
You talk as if privatization of the NHS was an accident! It was anything but. It was a Thatcherite and is now a neoliberal project and it’s right on course. It will be fully privatised in the next ten years, whether the UK is in or out of the EU.
Your idea of the UK government being forced against their will to privatize the NHS just to make ends meet is the kind of alternative reality politics we get in the MSM
Because the excuse will be used that as we need a trade deal ..and brexit means we don’t have one with the eu ..we’ll need to use the nhs as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the USA..trump even let the cat out of the bag, the dopey git, …but was very quickly shushed
The NHS was created before the EU existed.
It has been subjected to salami slicing privatisation for years.
This has got zilch to do with the EU.
There was a margin of 4%, or 7% in England. 53.5-46.5.
Long term we’re losing the Jocks and the Paddies anyway.
I don’t know of any politician who ever said, “Oh no, I only won by 52, 53%, with a margin of 4-7%, that’s obviously not enough, I can’t possibly accept I’ve won on that basis.”
They scrape in on 30% and think it’s the 2nd coming of Christ.
Benefits?
Not paying £50 million a day in tribute to this loathsome organisation, to add to the £500 billion, £500,000,000,000, we already have.
Not having to pay for corrupt, failed, clapped out and discredited politicians like Mandelson and Kinnock and their cronies swanning around Brussels claiming to be great statesmen.
To escape the clutches of this corrupt, arrogant, anti democratic, globalist, neoliberal, protectionist racket once and for all.
Genuine free(er) trade rather than this rigged system.
Greater control of the country. Not having to accept hundreds of thousands of rapefugees and gimmegrants at the dictate of Brussels whenever Mama Merkel decides to invite them all in.
Not having to accept every bizarre perverted legal ruling that is handed down.
There are many others.
There is no such thing as ‘free trade’ – just an array of different tariffs (the strength of which are contingent on bargaining power).
Greater control is another illusion – citizens will mean even less to US corporatocracy (or the City of London) than they do to EU bureaucrats.
And even if money is saved (by leaving) it certainly won’t benefit the likes of me and you – it will just be siphoned off to JRM enterprises, or some other predatory capitalist.
Sometimes I want to believe Britain can stand alone but then I look at the likes of Patel, Johnson, Raab, Rudd, McVey, IDS, Gav’ Williamson, or the smirking Nigel Farage (in other words how far to the right Britain has moved) then I think – fuck that.
Oh dear…..the relentless remainer meme: thick-as-fuck racists conned by dark forces. Let’s at least give them credit, folks, they’re learning how to dress up their inane insults in posh clothes.
If there’s a reasonable Brexit deal and if Corbyn won a GE
( big ‘Ifs’) his declared policies for industrial revival and re-nationalisation of essential services would be possible, to the considerable benefit of millions of ordinary people. No PM could do that if the UK remains in the EU, because its neoliberal rules don’t allow it.
So, what’s the solution? Only Ubermenschen get to vote? or maybe we can reinstate a property qualification?
Jesus preserve us from ‘progressives’, they’re like Victorian missionaries among the natives.
MARK, after being confused for three years and not having a voice, listening was a painful laugh. I cant help it if nobody cares much about their Goverent an unfair disproportional voting system or the lies they are told, but its not democracy and I will not have politically inept oiks vote for my future. Not now or after this minority Brexshit. If that offends you and you have to make up some crap, pity on you.
Several commenters have asked those expressing this sentiment how they would impose this voting qualification. So far none have answered. Maybe you’d like to try? How would ‘oiks’ be excluded from the democratic process?
Perhaps they’d just exclude all non Guardian readers.
We are going round in circles – its not about qualifying the right of anyyone to vote rather recognising how and why the motives for the referendum were suspect (bascially a right-wing pissing contest), laden with anti-immigration undertones, while options were formulated in such a way as to avoid the all too apparent complications of what those choices might lead to: in other words the ballot was both flawed and politically motivated.
To quote the boffins: ‘The question assumes a binary choice — Remain or Leave the EU — while voting theory warns that allowing only two options can easily be a misleading representation of the real choice. When the true situation is more complex, and especially if it is one that arouses strong passions, then reducing the question to a binary one might suggest a political motivation. As a result of the present process, we actually don’t know how people would have voted when they had been offered the true options.’
In the case of Brexit, the hidden complexity concerned:
— Leave, and adopt an EFTA or WTO framework?
— Leave, while the UK remains intact or while it splits up?
— Remain, in what manner?
If interested here is the report and the ballot paper
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/05/17/the-brexit-referendum-question-was-flawed-in-its-design/
With respect that reads like a lot of Guardianista bunk aimed at hiding the bare fact of delegitimizing democracy.
Binary choices delegitimize a ballot? Since the f**k when?
And my favorite – ‘the ballot was politically motivated’!??
LOL!!!! Man, THAT must have been a first.
Every argument you adduce is an argument against every vote ever taken and every vote that ever could be taken.
Let’s only have votes of multiple choices where every choice is carefully nuanced and totally free of political motivation!
Un frickin real.
One of the school boy jokes that used to go round (before PC) was;
“If you had a queer on your back would leave him there or would you toss him off”
Can you see why a binary choice does not always allow a full range of possible answers?
BTW, apologies if that sounds too Guardianista for you.
The reason the referendum was held in the first place was because the political establishment was unable to resolve the issue by itself – not just the Tories.
The EU never enjoyed much popularity and was barely tolerated at best. Actual experience of EU membership reinforced this strongly. The issue couldn’t be ignored any longer. 4 million voted for Farage. It was hoped that the referendum would finally settle the issue one way or the other.
It didn’t – because the losing side never accepted the result and worked tirelessly to delegitimise it and sabotage it. It could have done – I think if it had gone the other way, most Leavers would have reluctantly accepted the result.
I think if it had gone the other way, most Leavers would have reluctantly accepted the result.
…and yet they’ve not stopped whinging about it since 1975?
The EEC was accepted, or maybe grudgingly tolerated for many years, until it morphed into the EU monstrosity of 28 countries, many of them basically third world failed states, with its abortion of a monopoly money currency. If it had remained a slightly enlarged EEC, the issue would not have arisen at all.
It was us the UK that encouraged a full EU membership for the ex-soviet states – to further disrupt the steady development of the ever closer union.
It is absurd to say the EC changed into the EU and we didn’t know that was the plan all along and we had not only joined but promised to help it happen.
I could produce similar individuals voting to remain because if we don’t, the Germans will invade Poland tomorrow. Or Putin will murder us all in our beds. Or we’ll never be able to go abroad on holiday again. Or my mobile phone will never work again.
Initially I wasn’t exactly sure how to vote. But what decided it for me was some personal experience. I used to do some work with a lot of council officials, people like housing officers and environmental health. And I met the Returning Officer. I asked him out of interest who the Common Market MP, or MEP was. He didn’t have a clue, no idea. I asked two reporters I knew from the local paper. They’d never heard of him/her either. I asked a local Labour councillor I knew. “Ain’t got a clue, mate.” Whoever it was, he could jump up and bite you and you wouldn’t know who he was.
And we’re supposed to just accept that……..and pay £50 million a day for the privilege?
Do you know who your Common Market MP is?
Would one person in ten thousand???
This is worse than the pre 1832 rotten boroughs.
You are sort of correct to be sarcastic about the gravy train which was mocked in the 80’s and the mafia olive oil scams. Don’t forget the wine lakes and butter mountains. And also don’t forget how the establishment hard brexiteers have been filling their boots on the various land scams – inclunding the aristos and their hired hands like Dacre.
But along with these weeds there are the increasing greater cross border standards applied to ALL of the members – which allows for a continent wide implementation- and a leveller playing field.
The weeds can be culled.
As for the MEP’s their powers compared to the other executive bodies aren’t equal. They work in blocks rather then individual representatives. Much could also be streamlined and no doubt will by agreement.
The EU is no more capable of reforming itself than the old USSR.
The EU has been moving to aver closer union were sinc we Joined with it it. Wots the sitprise. Quitters?
The old USSR did ‘reform’ into european states. Oh I see.
You’re so right about everything aren’t you? like the other week having a go at me over workers rights and holidays. this morning on radio four we have a report from the resolution foundation claiming 1 in 20 employees receive no holidays, and you’re spouting nonsense about how bad the EU countries are, I think you need to wake up
No one noticed that this is clearly a spoof?
Oh frank i have been posting facts only.
This is not my bailiwick – whether or not a community decides to leave the EU is really up to them, but my concern is that when I read what those from the community are saying it seems like all the really vehement leavers & remainers have forced a situation where only one of two options is permissible and insufficient thought is given who/how/where as long at it is ASAP. Easily the saddest part of this entire business is observing that otherwise intelligent decent englanders have been so overwhelmed by the incessant noise rising to hysteria from all sides, that they too believe that it is the meat not the motion; which is to say they have become so entrenched in the binary decision is it POV, that they too have decided that “LEAVE fer gawds sake! or “REMAIN goddammit!” is far more important than the means of staying or going – much less the quality of the humans leading during that act. Obviously the types leading the government at the time brexit is/is not enacted, are important variables – as important as the choice itself. Not only will the government be deciding what will change if england leaves the EU, they will also have to decide who comprises the target cohort, those who the government is trying to help via the way the decision is implemented. Here, there and everywhere on the net I stumble across self professed lefties or humanists who have allowed themselves to become convinced that a brexit no matter what is a acceptable call. Even when enacted by a government led by a scumbag famous for his total lack of interest in the welfare of those fellow country-persons who are neither aristos nor billionaires, some believe it is preferable to the possibility of remaining thanks… Read more »
Ruth Davidson quits, pleads belly.
Typical spineless Tory.
I’m beginning to think Brexit is a smokescreen and big larks, merely a tool to raise and lower the value of the pound and extract billions for those who know how to manipulate the markets. Johnson’s attempting to yoyo the pound at a greater degree for as long as possible.
Were they all making plans with Nigel…. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-06-25/brexit-big-short-how-pollsters-helped-hedge-funds-beat-the-crash?fbclid=IwAR1XrfewGQDT6FCPMI_75TYvrwmzUrZ5-6yVLT8S1r187nFYVjCYm_VIJ1g
Thanks for the link. While I was reading it, I kept thinking about Soros and the way he shorted the BoE back in 2002 (and sure as hell, he gets a mention near to the end) I then thought back to where I read about part of the EU more integration process, was that the UK would be broken up into regions/districts and unelected Mayors installed (Parliament of Mayors) to run each region. What with Sturgeon yelling for another Scottish Ref and the hoo haa in Ireland ? Is this going to play out?
Is it all just part of the even longer game. Is the whole thing a ruse to get the more competitive countries into the 2 tier Europe, to de-value the currency in order to bring about growth, where it has stagnated? Whilst simultaneously, the robber barons are manipulating economies and making huge profits off the deceit?
I don’t know, the mind boggles at it all!
Brexit is one of two things – an exercise in divide and rule and mindfuckery with long game/short game benefits to exploit, such as those quoted ie market manipulation for those in the know; or Brexit is a mechanism by which the USA and Israel will divvy up the UK’s future to their liking, purely for the benefit of our controllers, with UK establishment figures getting their piece of the pie as the corporate gangbang rolls through town. The City Of London will be a major player in this process, working in their own interest. It’s the big club doing what it does, screwing populations for its own benefit. It’s one or the other. Any control which is taken back will quickly be seized and directed in whatever direction they want, with zero regard for the local population. Either that or they have no intention of leaving.
We need to ask the border people what they are being told, what changes are being implemented, is there any real action at the borders? That may be a clueas to their real intentions. No action at the border, no intention of leaving. Action and changes being seen, well maybe they are serious. We still don;t know for sure. We cannot believe a word they say, but they may well be telling the truth when they say they are gonna crash out on Halloween.
Western governments are controlled by hidden hands, and what they are really up to we never really know, but what we can say with great certainty is that the hidden powers work consistently against the interests of the common man and screwing with us is like a fun game for them.
We are Ted, the establishment is Mary
“Brexit is one of two things – an exercise in divide and rule and mindfuckery with long game/short game benefits to exploit ” Probably not short of the mark a psyop to put the proles in their place
The EU leadership has an open door policy toward Soros.
Oh, is the Brexit thingy still A THING?
Now if only I could think of some other things that were more of an issue………..
He has to be the worst prime minister since Theresa May. Boris Johnson is not dead yet, he probably has a long time to live and when he’s out of power, as he inevitably will be some day, he no doubt will be vilified by the press (because bad publicity sells newspapers) and the public at large; his actions today will be compared with the excesses of Mrs Thatcher and Mr Blair. The very people who are now backing him will turn on him in due course in the same manner that Mr Cameron is widely seen now, considered a weak prime minister and the architect of this nation’s troubles today. Both Mrs May’s and Mr Cameron’s Tory premierships will pale into insignificance when viewed against the actions of Mr Johnson and the monarch organisation will not come out of this affair smelling of roses either; indeed it could be a fillip to Republicanism, Scotland seceding from the United Kingdom and the reunification of the island of Ireland. I can visualise this nation being in for a very long period of discontent and even civil unrest, not that Mr Johnson will lose more than thirty seconds getting off to sleep at nights worrying about it all.
Every now and again that much maligned (on here) publication…The Guardian…does manage to carry a worthwhile story. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/29/the-air-conditioning-trap-how-cold-air-is-heating-the-world
Johnson and his shenanigans pales into insignificance when you understand the unalterable destructive force of capitalism and globalisation
”Across the House, Corbyn has long-since been manipulated into taking a pro-Remain position, even if he doesn’t call it that.”
Yep, true to form – another would be centre-left reformer has sold the pass even before an election. Pro-remain, Pro-Zionist tolerating the IHRA Labour Friends of Israel, Pro-Nato, Pro-Trident. Who needs the Tories when you have this pro-establishment nonentity and his Blairite gaggle ready to appease the establishment.
I just can’t make it out why any sensible, progressive minded, rational people will let themselves be conned yet again.
‘Who needs the Tories when you have this pro-establishment nonentity’ – doesn’t really matter if you need them or not, you are getting them.
Patel.
Rees Mogg.
Raab.
Truss.
McVey.
Fox and his perpetually sweaty upper lip.
Hell, they’ll probably even find a position for Nigel and the Brexit party.
A new dawn is breaking – Britains overworked and underpaid workforce will finally fulfil their potential in the zero-hours job market.
Things like migrants, scroungers and socialised health care will be consigned to the past.
Isn’t this what we have all been working for?
Yep, it’s all about “getting are cuntry back”
Off topic I know, but I found this.
Margaret Hodge: When I was fighting fascism… Jeremy Corbyn helped me more, I think, than any other MP.
https://dorseteye.com/margaret-hodge-when-i-was-fighting-fascism-jeremy-corbyn-helped-me-more-i-think-than-any-other-mp/
The Brexit referendum has been morphed into the biggest trick or treat gimmick of this century in the UK, in a tight race with runner up the CO2 scare. October 31 evening is not going to be an All Saints night and weird costumes are in demand to hide various puppeteers.
A lot of Christian saints were also not what history made us believe – Mother Theresa (May)comes to mind.
On the other hand in the UK this EU referendum is not yet ignored as was done with those held in France & Holland in 2005 and Ireland in 2008 before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_related_to_the_European_Union#European_Constitution,_2005
Cut’n’Paste from SyrianPerspective:
“Ahmed Kaballo
@AhmedKaballo
Boris Johnson unlike Nicolas Maduro has never been elected to lead any country & as he was bout to be removed by ELECTED MPs, he ran to an unelected monarch & begged her to suspend parliament.
Yet according to MSM Venezuela is a ‘dictatorship’ & the U.K is a healthy democracy”
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, we find ourselves in a situation where Remain has a claim to be protecting democracy.” Good point. That there’s no democracy there is another issue I suppose.
“allegedly”? Boris wants the Brexit that the voters, and, more importantly, Conservative voters, asked for. His career and his Party’s fortunes depend on his ability to deliver. Have I missed something?
Exactly. What is his alternative in this case? It looks to me like a hard Brexit or none at all. We know that Merkel has no room for flexibility there.
Not if he’s blocked by law and/or public and politicians. As long as he is seen to have done everything in his power (and I think suspending parliament is about as much as anyone can expect the limits of that power to reach) then he will still.be seen as a hero and get to remain in the EU. As is obviously what he or his ilk really wants. The EU is rich and powerful and bozo benefits from staying in while telling the world he wants out.
I can’t believe all is as it seems. For instance, what does “prorogue” even mean? From what I can see they’re all a bunch of well established rogues anyway. So of course they’re all prorogue. They’ve been prorogued for years.
Yes – probably with a fudged up May deal.
It will jeep the illiberal Remainiacs squawking about the wrong thing for many weeks while Boris gets away with all sorts of deviousness.
Hundreds – starting today and droning on for several years.
Possinly in early November, more likely in the spring. Corbyn will not win, nor will Boris.
A conspiracy theory too far, though the hacks in the MSM will really go to town with their cheap, idiotic metaphors.
I think it was Frankie Boyle who said (when May failed miserably to get parliament on-side) “we have nothing to negotiate with, we have no leverage. It’s a bit like your septic tank has exploded and you’re covered in head to toe with shit. You’re phoning up the plumber and saying ‘I’m prepared to offer you a deal’.”
I felt an even greater sense of dread when Johnson took over – he’s the epitome of everything wrong with British politicians (fascile, disingenuous, self-centered, etc) yet here he is suspending parliament so as to up the ante on no-deal (presumably to curry favour the ERG and the Monday Club).
Given the deep structural deficiencies of European parliament one would have thought it would not be that difficult even for an entitled charlatan like him to provide a viable alternative – or if he can’t then maybe his carefully assembled cabinet of extremists can (Patel, Rudd, Raab, JRM & Co).
But so far nothing – at this late stage I think this can only mean one of two things;
Johnson likes surptises, or, there isn’t a plan beyond creating chaos then hoping people are too busy turning against each other to notice Britain has slipped deeper into the austerity mire.
He is there to deliver the No-Deal that was their only plan.
The whole affair is a bit of a farce isn’t it. People were offered a simple yes or no option with no regard to the reality of either. The vote was surely manipulated by Cambridge Analytica or worse and was followed by three years of earnest robotic will of the people sound bytes. All the while two and now three inept leaders have willfully forsaken everything except a religious love of austerity that not only continues to ruin the lives of millions but offers the latest buffoon a platform to save the country from the harm the very government is about to impose yet again.
Can’t believe that no one has pinned this yet:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bjghJ6Dy6Do
or this….. .
so as for – “Discuss: Johnson Prorogues Parliament” ……as it says – “all anxieties tranquilized – all boredom amused.”
Yup they are making us all mad as hell.. but still ain’t buying their bullshit excuses for a Pathocracy.
Good one BB. From where I see it, it has all the ingredients of a classic Fawlty Towers episode where Basil tries to explain British Parliamentary Democracy to the Germans.
Or just about any episode of Yes Minister. Where Jim Hacker turns out to be Sir Humphrey Appleby’s errant fool. Boris’ Sir Humphrey is Sir Mark Sedwill: Cabinet Secretary; National Security Advisor and Head of the Home Civil Service.
Who’s running the country? Not Boris. He is Sedwill’s ‘talking head’ (of State) and Cabinet Secretary. We live under the neoliberal government of occupation …occupied by a ‘foreign’ power of the City of London Corporation. Blame Blair: I do. He performed the administrative coup and increased the size and power of the City. Remember: he was ‘Tony Crony’ Falconer’s ‘mini-me’ …and the City’s biiitch. So is our delightful Bullingdon Boy.
Well BB i seem to be in complete agreement with you!
If anyone wants to actually implement the referendum result, they have to be prepared to get down and dirty and forget about abstract concepts like “moral leverage.”
This doesn’t count for much in the world we live in.
“Moral leverage” never did the Palestinians or the Yemenis much good.
Just promise me nothing will endanger our right to work until we are 75?
Its bad enough when those with a terminal diseases pretend they can’t do an honest days work in the glorious new fifedom.
Why limit yourself?
When they dug up Richard III from his Leicester car park, he was declared fully fit for work.
Johnson is probably showing off to Trump. Or Telegraph readers.
An utter toerag of a man. And quite likely not playing with a full deck either.
Post truth politics is politics of the psyop – or manipulative deceits. Framing the narrative so as to set a false choice. An emotional charge is a power source like a battery. Denial sets up frustration, resentment, victim-rage – and then cultivate a representative selection for Office. This pattern runs a world of lies. Frame democracy as populism and set it against globalism while smearing by association with a xenophobia incited by the directing of mass migrations as a weapon – spewed by Media as first pouring across the landscape, towards us – floods of people! ‘Pity the migrant-adopt a migrant and simultaneously migrant terrorists, rapists etc. No mention of the significant factors behind such desperate migrations. Brexit debate – wasn’t a debate. It was staged, managed and framed the narrative. The underbelly and background to the EU and its roots were barely touched on. It was a debacle. US – (I hesitate to accord it sovereign will but for the sake of being able to say something), the US is reconfiguring the EU. Whether UK is defanged of its anachronistic and degenerate populism and held in EU or straight into the waiting arms of US and IS ‘trade deal’ probably doesn’t matter as both are intended to be undone of regulatory protections against biotech. Boris has already announced his intention to clear away restrictive regulations to give free rein to such great economic opportunities to feed the world a level of dependency that will redefine slavery. Factory pharmed humans are in process. BUT – all of that is looking in the frame of being powerless. Deceits are baits to recognise as such and leave hanging – un used and given disregard in terms of their frame. But as an education they are rich, because they are showing our trigger… Read more »
“Post truth politics is politics of the psyop”
Oh stop it with the endless “psyop” crap. Yes, there is a relatively new phenomenon of techno-assisted “psyops”, but there are a lot more 17th century (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) and onward “propaganda” exercises, 15th century and onward Machiavellian “manipulations” and millennia old, plain old “skullduggery” and “deception” efforts abounding. Or are you psyopically setting yourself up for the role of “Resident Meaninglessly Co-opted New Names for Old Things” Editor?
And what does “post truth” mean? “I’ve read his post and there’s not a word of truth in it”?
…shortly thereafter in 2015.
Your personal irritations are not my intention Robbobbobin, but I welcome conversation on these points. In the frame of deceiving, a ruse may be considered a powerful weapon, but in the frame of truth, or true witness, it operates as an evasion of true relation and account in seeking sustainability for untruth – or narrative asserted over a dead truth nailed to a post. ‘Post truth’ is indeed a classic Orwellian doublespeak – and as I get its ‘signature’ sense, is the assertion that the ideas and ideals of emotional or rational belief have failed – to a post ideological and hence technocratic era – in which systems management replaces the process of living, relating, growing trust and establishing values – etc – to a narrative control that enacts a systemic suppression and elimination of instabilities – to the system equated with its narrative inputs. Psychological operations or psyops are the millitary and agency name in the US for war by deceit – which is seamlessly in revolving door relation with trillion dollar corporate PR. Propaganda is the weaponisation and marketisation of thought and language for the purpose of the subjection of any obstruction to the purposed goals of its makers. Garbage in; garbage out. If you are engage IN such deceits as if to WIN such a war – then you are right to be irritated by the direction and intent of my posts because I seek to join in uncovering the nature of the means by which we are deceived by ourselves first and by others as an inevitable consequence. While there are various strands of globalist dreams operating with considerable persistence over generations in bringing them to fruit I also see a world of increasing instability as a broad spectrum subjection to deceits running in place and… Read more »
“Your personal irritations are not my intention…”
No personal irritation. I assumed my response was obviously only about nomenclature. Apparently not. I have no particular problem with the rest of your post (or posts including your response). The’re bit too AOL to get much engagement from me, but that carries no degree of associated personal irritation.
Perhaps you forgot after your expressing of “Oh stop it with the endless “psyop” crap.” This is what you wrote above. What does it express BUT personal irritation? I hit on the ‘psyop’ theme as part of encouraging the development of wits against being baited and suckered to their framing – which to my wit means emotionally triggered reaction. The ‘political circus’ is working the diversion from what is actually going on – and what is not allowed into the mainstreamed ‘debate/debacle’/debasement. Names change but the nature of deceit is the same. Sharing perspectives on the territory of the human condition – or human conditioning. I take it back to to the development of ingenuity of mind for survival within the frame of division and power struggle – and in psychic-emotional terms a development of the fragmentation of the psyche undermined and overwhelmed. That we seek to undermine or take power from others – is an extension of a pattern within our own mind. Everyone on OG knows that social-political deceits are employed – even if not aware of their own – but always presented as THEM – under generalisations or specific examples – as if guilt, invalidation and attack of denial is the remedy. Johnson is hardly an insider, but has his own narrative justifications – as does everyone in the moment of their actions. Surely ‘post truth’ to the attempt to manage and manipulate outcomes instead of suffering obstructions in the form of transparency and accountability to a lack of support (or outrage), is the sacrifice of real relationship for the lure of power and privilege set against greater fears. he is a ‘frontman’ and indeed a stuntman for the task given him – which is not a ‘no deal brexit, but a direct delivery unto Trumps’ handlers… Read more »
While Rbbbbbn is correct about how old propaganda is, Brian’s observations are more important in their essence than unhelpfully pedantic criticism thereof.
There is a very strong and perhaps pervasive tendency to be corralled into permanent victimhood and powerlessness via all manner of distractions, with ‘politics’ so fused with entertainment as to be virtually indistinguishable from theatre. The way out of this poisoned honey-trap, as it has always been, is to notice and learn from the rich information about our own trigger points and emotional immaturity and thus about where we have personal work to do. The revolution is love – love being a dynamic state of maturity –, as it has always been, but today the unprecedented technological opportunity to share this simple but complex truth affords many different voices an outlet. Diversity of voices is a vast improvement over narrow priestly control and distortion of this message.
It’s thus a matter of style. But not over substance, rather as diverse delivery vehicles for that substance.
I forgot to add: The work is up to us, not to some perfectly complete and accurate description and subsequent prescription. First and foremost, this is about free will. The more space we have to interpret – up to a point of course – the better. If we wait that perfect exposition before we start working on ourselves, we’ll wait forever and get nowhere.
While I never seek support, I always appreciate companionship in purpose. What we share, we strengthen and only love – in all its qualities – can truly be shared. The integrating and transforming of our minds (and our perceived world perspective and opportunity) is the natural or spontaneous result of allowing space, as freedom for the nature of life to communicate as one. Before a thought of separating definition was, life is. But running on old definitions can generate a world of powerful reinforcements to those definitions – such as to be under a spell (of our own making – albeit unconsciously inherited or acquired), or trapped in our own Model. I feel that opening more facets of resonant reflection simplifies and clarifies, but letting a mind wander (or lead us) into any and every diversion obfuscates. We know this – and so we use it to let ourselves into a greater honesty of uncovering, or to delay and defer in every kind of diversion. I see that there is an individual freedom of our own timing – and yet within a collective or relational whole. No one can make another see what they are not the willingness or vibratory match of – nor does the attempt serve us – excepting we learn this well. The parody of life being enacted on the political stage of the world can serve like Shakespeare – as a tragi-comic reflection from which to grow in self-knowledge. Beneath the mask of life in mimicry is the felt need of such as power of protection for fear that is confused with every and every shadow of confusion arising from having used the mask for true as if to take power to enact personal gratification over others in secret. I recall the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono practice or… Read more »
Makes a lot of sense as a theory, although Boris could well lose a vote of no confidence at the moment (May’s result in Jan was 325 to 306). This would scupper the plan of forcing a crisis point and presenting ‘Remain’ as the only reasonable option out. Paul Mason’s attempt to whip up the crowd with inciteful language fits – as he is a complete fraud/ useful idiot who could well play into crisis creation for NATO/EU objectives.
There is though Macron saying today that Europe should move toward Russia. Is this not significant?
Brexit could be the leading edge of a major re-alignment, with Europe breaking from the US leaving the (bridge of) UK to go fully transatlantic. A lot of preparations seem to be going this way, as if it will acutally go through.
(I’ll believe it when I see it.)
Atzmon wrote back in May an article referring to “a translation of a Ynet article which reported that Israel had located itself as post-Brexit Britain’s gateway to the world: “Once out of the EU, Britain will have to sign separate trade agreements with each state, and Israel will be the first”.
[https://gilad.online/writings/2019/5/26/brexit-is-all-about-making-israel-greater]
Your view of this is probably dependent upon your view of Israel’s current and future role in the world. They seem to be clearly on the ascendent to me, with ADL / Youtube purges and all.
All sides are mired in utter hypocrisy in my opinion. There is no meaningful democracy in Westminster or Brussels. There is no way to vote out Neoliberalism through a referendum. It would take a major revolt. It’s part of something much bigger.
Interesting Israel angle: but $7bn a year? This whole thing is much bigger than that. I previously shared my suspicions that Cameron’s real motives can be found in the “Best of Both World’s” paper. Here’s what I think the deep agenda is: globalisation and a ‘flat earth’ for trans-national capital. I have read (from Peter Koenig) that the China trade deal is ready to be signed: post Brexit. And the US trade deal is (already?) on ‘fast-track’. And the Israeli deal is ready to go. But if we think just about countries: we miss the bigger picture. BRICS were chosen by Goldman Sachs for region: not emerging economy potential. Each is already integrated into Regional, Preferential, and Free trade agreement (RTAs; PTAs; FTAs; such as Mercosur; EAEU; ASEAN; AIFTA; SAARC; etc). Within BRICS: Russia and China have integrated Eurasia in the ‘supercontinent’ – linking the EAEU; ASEAN; AIFTA; SCO; BRI; and CPEC (China Pakistan Economic Corridor) into the ‘world island’ of free trade. So, an FTA with China actually integrates a neo-global South-South free trade zone with the North. Which integrates with the Americas (US, Canada, Mexico, etc) and the EU. Bye bye nation states: hello ‘free trade flat earthism’ for capital transfer and FDI. The ‘Spiders Web’ will be almost complete: with the City of London sitting in the middle – controlling the finances through access to the Eurobond market. Brexit is a distraction via procedural delay and administrative coup. Corbyn is being smeared because he cannot be trusted to go through with the deal. Though they have got him pretty tame by now. What just happened in Argentina is elucidating to those who are still foolish enough to think a Corbyn government will change the world. Argentina voted for the centre left candidate – Fernandez – in the… Read more »
BigB, at last that makes sense of two odd things I noticed about the Brexit campaign:
1. The Telegraph was heavily in favour.
2. Banker’s son Camoron joined Bank of China.
Seems to fit your story: “There was an Englishman, an Israeli, a Chinaman and a Yank all together on an island called Brexit, just offshore of the great big Flat Earth for Free Trade….”
Vex: Cast your memory back: Camoron did more than that. Where was China’s first sovereign RMB bond sale? And who were early members of the AIIB? London: under Camoron. Not just Camoron, and idiot savant Osborne. The brains of the bunch was Jim O’neill: their Commercial Secretary to the Treasury. Who ‘invented’ BRIC (before the ‘S’ was added)? Lord Jim. Who seeded the emerging markets he favoured with north of $800bn when he was with Goldman Sachs? Lord Jim. Coincidence? I’m just warming up. Who thought Treason May’s stalling was ignoring regional development and other critical parts of the UK economy while Brexit was dragging on? Lord Jim. Who went as far as saying Corbyn’s Labour were far ahead on the six key points of the economy? Going as far as taking out an FT spread to say so on the eve of the Labour conference? Lord Jim. (JC gave him a shout out in his speech as a thanks). So a stalling Brexit and regional underdevelopment were key issues for Lord Jim. What was Bojos initial agenda and where did he go in week one? Guaranteed Brexit by Halloween and billions for the regions: distributed in person. Who promised a “visionary and exciting” new Northern Powehouse? Lord Jim? No, Bojo. Who ‘invented’ the old Northern Powerhouse when he was with Camoron’s government? And who resigned not long after Treason May got in? And who is Chair of Chatham House? Who, unless I am very much mistaken, is part- or all – of the puppeteer team operating BoBo the Clown? No institution – not least the City – is univocal. There are competing visions and factions. Lord Jim’s faction favour the emerging market economies of the East – particularly China …where he – when he was with GS – invested… Read more »
A lot of interesting information.
I can but think of the currency element and Mark Carney’s recent statements speculating about a global digital currency soon replacing the dollar – administered through subsidiary digicurrencies created by a network of central banks. That would surely fit the ‘flat earth’ nationless capitalist model you outline. It fits Carol Quigley’s predictions.
Now where might be the forefront of such developments ?
Also, I wonder how the default in Argentina might be connected to the billionaires buying up Patagonia (with its fresh water and fossil fuels). Which billionaires ?
I cannot say, for remembering the many comments of mine that recently have been deleted here.
Do you read Colin McKay?
There is a recognition emerging within academia that the seventeenth century which set the course of the liberal democracies -which now are coming to an end, was intellectually dominated by writers who drew heavily upon the Old Testament writings as a model for their vision. Kind of the point I was trying to make the other day.
Here is Mariev Jones (an academic in the field of political history) 8mins:
Crank: The Grauniad did not mention the actual term Carnage used: Synthetic Hegemonic Currency (SHC). Which sounds an awful lot like a crypto-SDR? I’ve been trying to warn the ‘de-dollarisation’ believers that the successor to the dollar reserve is a death knell for humanism and socialism. And the environment. To little avail. The dollar is fucked: not because of any concern about humanism or Trump’s weaponisation of trade: but because it is a limit to world trade. Particularly derivative trade. This limitation is causing the offshore shadow banking and derivative trade to stall: threatening a global collapse of many times the magnitude of the GFC. Carnage is full of shit: but you know that. The global “savings glut” was Bernanke’s best shot at explaning the GFC. It’s bullshit. The BIS deconstructed it in Working Paper 291. The real reason for the GFC was a dollar shortage: a liquidity imbalance of $2-$6.5 tn. In other words: they don’t know exactly. Because the money was not in the US or in the national accounts of the emerging markets (the ‘savings glut’): it was offshore. https://www.bis.org/publ/work291.pdf If you know about the offshore Eurobond markets: a dollar comes in and gets lent on again – virtually, with no collateral or reserve ratio limitation – doubling the amount of dollars in circulation. Or trebling (if it is lent on again). No one knows. It is completely unregulated and opaque. Until there is a massive shortfall, slowdown, or crisis. Then there are not enough physical dollars to settle accounts. Hence the GFC (nothing to do with mortgages or savings). The GFC was bad. The next one will be multiple times worse. What multiple no one knows. But all the QE stimulation gave rise to a shadow bank and derivative bubble north of $350 – underpinned by… Read more »
You should write a book BigB.
It all seems rather close.
Gold going North.
I like Chris Martenson’s daily look at how the ‘hidden hands’ are bouncing the Wall Street equity markets. It is Soviet era behaviour.
I think your thoughts have confirmed for me that Brexit is going to be about much more than ‘Britain’s relationship with the EU’.
That was $350tn: not $350!
I don’t know Colin McKay. I presume you don’t mean the skateboarder!
The end of the so-called ‘third political theory’ – Classic Liberal Democracy (3PT) – and the emergence of a fourth …is a massive topic for another day. Drop a link to McKay and I will have a look.
BigB
Colin McKay has put together a monetary proposal, all be it in early stages, which is based on personal credit. [http://deror.org/en/index.html]
He tweets from @DerrorCurrency, and writes a blog called ‘Psalmistice’ which is a mix of esoterica and monetary theory.
(Motorbikes his thing rather than skateboards it seems)
BigB,
I am on pre-mod here now, and my last comment has not appeated (yet).
Here are two links:
Mark Carney and the global digital currency proposal (perhaps centred in Isreael?):
https://web.archive.org/web/20190823200010/https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/23/mark-carney-dollar-dominant-replaced-digital-currency
Billionaires buying up Patagonia:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/dark-secret-behind-british-billionaire-joe-lewis-parallel-state-in-argentina-patagonia/256068/
You aren’t on pre-mod. The software just sometimes picks on some people. I’ve rescued everything you posted I think
Thank you.
FYI All my posts have appeared with ‘comment awaiting moderation’ in red below them, then disappeared (now recovered).
I’ll look into it
No, you’re obviously wrong, B.
Everything you say makes so much sense that it must be wrong.
In fact it’s on the list of banned things you’re not allowed to say by the Board of Deputies.
BB,
Your theory ignores the poorest masses -the raising up of whom is the prime concern of ‘new’ eurasian cooperation.
Just because the old anglo imperialists gave name to their desires (BRICS) doesn’t make it real.
The BIS has competition. The old Imperialism is done that is why they are pivoting to the monetisation of nature and war and invasion under the guise of XR and GND bs.
That is why brexit is a global imperialists project.
DG I think that you have totally misunderstood Eurasianism. And also what VVP means when he said “Liberalism is dead”. He did not mean ‘neoliberalism’: as I have seen you misinterpret him as saying. He meant “Classic Liberalism”. To understand the significant difference: you have to understand Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory …which you seem to have glossed over, even when an article was published by OffG on the very subject. VVP – and Xi – do not reject neoliberalism. Even the Saker has admitted VVP is a neoliberal. Even if it is perhaps by default. Russia wa neoliberalised by the Harvard Boys in the Yeltsin era. All Russian Federation polity institutions are neoliberal. PCR and Michael Hudson call neoliberalism ‘America’s Fifth Column’ that will undermine the RF before any propaganda does. https://southfront.org/paul-craig-roberts-americas-fifth-column-will-destroy-russia/ China’s economy is hard to categorise. Clearly, the mainland is not wholly neoliberal – but the Pearl River Delta and other littoral economic export zones are. The CP retains a certain amount of control – especially over the currency, the yuan/RMB. It is called a ‘capitalist command’ economy or ‘neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics’ (by David Harvey). What neither VVP or Xi rejects is globalisation. “China wants globalisation” has been stated loud and clear by Xi (speaking right after VVP at SPIEF earlier this year). In the article for the Financial Times: VVP speaks about globalisation plenty …before making the misinterpreted claim.. This changes the whole emphasis of what many thought he was saying: leading to misinterpreted sensationalist headlines. VVP did not reject neoliberalism. Many, many people did not get his true meaning as a subtle reference to Duginism. Which, even if I disregard the implicit and sinister neo-Nazi overtones (they really are there if you study Dugin), it is a definitive commitment to globalisation. Globalisation with sovereigntist pretensions:… Read more »
That is about as correct a assessment as anyone has posted.
The most ‘right wing’ and Israel friendly cabinet as ever assembled.
The SCO and the EU are tying up nicely – nordstream2 is close to going live.
As soon as the Atlantists adventurism in Ukraine is beaten down then the EU/Russia bugbear iver Crimea too will be settled.
With the immense resources of Russua and an Atlantic to Pacific, Artic to Indian Ocean trading block will ensure peace stability and raising of the poorest once and for all under their protection.
Meanwhile the angloimperialists will keep plundering as many if the remaining natural resources while keeping their bankers satiated and billions in poverty under their regime until it falls in like a rotten house with a lead roof.
Johnson is part and parcel of the Establishment. What he’s doing is to make sure he’s being seen to support No Deal and the Brexiteers are on his side and therefore will vote Conservative in a snap election before 31 October.. So if necessary he can backtrack on his Brexit support without damaging the Tory party. The second reason is to pretend to the EU he means business and intimidate them into making a better deal.
Ah, well, can you turn the DUP, that is the key question of our times.
The British government binned the Good Friday agreement the minute Teresa entered into negotiations with the DUP – and this is a point that is never made – in that under the Good Friday agreement the UK government guaranteed to act with neutrality between the two communities.
Now the question is how artful or creative Corbyn can be in order to break the Tory/DUP coalition. If he does so, he is home and dry.
Tory MPs will fall in line and vote for their current leader ‘right or wrong’ – tories love power more than anything else. I’m sure the LibDems will abstain or vote for Boris too out of deference to the jolly old time they had in the coalition. The DUP will take the opportunity to extract yet more money from the public purse.
The no confidence vote will fail.
You got this one wrong, Kit. The people who voted Brexit have little regard for Parliament, because it is Parliament that insists a no-deal Brexit is worse than no Brexit. And they have no regard at all for the media, who tried to fear-monger and libel the public into voting Remain. The winning move for the PM is to appear to be as at-odds as possible with what seems to be completely corrupted institutions. And I suggest the winning move of independent commentators is to snicker at the hypocritical screeching of said institutions. Nothing can happen to them that they did not bring upon themselves.
‘The people who voted Brexit have little regard for Parliament’ – there’s some truth in that even if some of them still support the Brexit party.
As a matter of interest is pound shop Enoch and his party representative of the sort of sovereigntry that makes leaving the EU worthwhile?
Since this is all lowest drawer ham theater the answers can only be satirical – in spite of the real life consequences playing around with the collective mind always has.
1) The only way to tell is a crystal ball.
2) “Fuck you!” “No, fuck you!” “No, fuck YOU!” “No, fuck you more!” “No, double fuck you!!” …
3) Let me look into my calendar. Nope, nothing yet. Who is Corbyn?
4) No. The main point is to ask the people: “Trick, or treason?”
It is my personal view that the answer to 4) can only be a degenerating conversation to the effect of hooligans beating the shit out of each other when neither team is supposed to lose.
The man has guts, isn’t afraid to take risks, could turn out to be one of the greats this country has bred.
So far, he’s doing what the 17.4mn people voted for in June 2016. Anyone doesn’t like it, tough titty, in a democracy, it’s the majority that carries it.
His first test will be to deliver a genuine deal that sets us free, or exit without one but also cutting the umbilical cord to the glaringly undemocratic set-up run by failed politicians from the member states on behalf of Germany, the one member that has the money to fund the project, and a vested interest in its success.
His second and equally important test (if not more) will be to convert, neutralise or demolish the tops of every pyramid of power i.e. the unions, the CBI, the BoE, the MSM including the ghastly BBC, and others, the cabal of people who were, still are deadly opposed to our leaving and regaining sovereignty, the one commodity no national tribe should ever lose, certainly not voluntarily.
Well said.
‘His first test will be to deliver a genuine deal’ – what does this mean? The tories have failed to secure a withdrawl deal so now Johnson is playing a high risk game (threatening no-deal) knowing that if it all goes tits up (the most likely secenario) he like other venture capitalists will be able to feast on the post-Brexit chaos. Johnson doesn’t have to destroy the unions this has been a decades long tory project over several decades that has seen union membership reduce from around 70& of workers in the 70’s to closer to 20% today – needless to say as the influence of unions has declined wages have remained fairly static for mean income families during this time. Run away wealth inequality has been a feature of austerity, and for austerity read class war. Johnson will not reverse this trend so greater sovereignty becomes moot if you are hungry, jobless or homeless – trends, which in case you hadn’t noticed are all on the increase. The UN rapporteur on poverty found “14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials. The widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a 7% rise in child poverty between 2015 and 2022, and various sources predict child poverty rates of as high as 40%. For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain is not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster, all rolled into one.” https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23881&LangID=E Once out of the EU what will be the greatest tangible benefit for those on the bottom third of the income distribution curve theoretical sovereignty aside because it certainly won’t be… Read more »
Harry, brilliantly said. The truth always hurts people like Baron doesn’t it?
A genuine deal is one that is negotiated between complete equals, when hard Brexit is done (and not undone by a deal with evil fine print).
Complete equals – are you referring to Austerityville having equal standing with Trump China, or (post-Brexit) the EU when formulating new deals?
Yes, feel the equality as the NHS is handed over to US corporations.
Here is Truss and Bolton staring lovingly into each others beady eyes – I wonder what they were gossiping about?
https://twitter.com/AmbJohnBolton/status/1159588913973026816
On the plus side I suppose KSA are always looking for dodgy business partner to prop up their position in the Middle East.
Those are details and they’re important. Alexander Mercouris (who calls the writers at the Guardian “leftwing,” so maybe I should listen less to him) makes the point that a clean break with Europe will allow the UK to negotiate with whoever they want and however they want and I think the point is good. That Boris Johnson is no good is beside the point. What if this was someone else, say a genuine socialist (nothing like Corbyn) who was honoring the referendum?
What is a genuine deal?
What sets us free?
What in the name of living Jesus are you talking about man?
Baron what an utter load of old BS. What part of No Deal do you not understand? Secondly name 6 things in which the EU has allegedly invaded this country with that has a detrimental or negative impact on your life. Thirdly, he is a charlatan, a buffoon, arrogant, pathological liar prone to domestic violence and corrupt. How is he going to become one of the greats might I ask? Fourthly, remember that 16m people voted to Remain that’s a 52/48% split. Hardly a comprehensive mandate to claim that it is the Will of the People is it? It was also only an advisory Referendum and is not legally binding. Also, it only had two questions, Leave or Remain not choices under each of those Headings. Lastly, and more concerning, in terms of neutralising or demolishing the tops of every pyramid of power as set out by you. I think you are advocating for a Fascist, Totalitarian Government (which we are already on the lower rungs of the ladder of). Just exactly what sovereignty have we lost? The EU is the larges Trading Bloc in the World governed by an agreed set of Regulations and Statutes in terms of agriculture, fisheries, shipping etc. Can you state categorically and unequivocally exactly what loss of sovereignty has occurred? I guess you will be more than happy to be taken over and managed by the USA and for millions of jobs to be lost in this country to the USA under a shambolic one-sided trade deal Bojo is currently negotiating. Believe you me, the USA will dominate the UK in every aspect of its life. The EU has never done that. Why do you think Trump, the megalomaniac Dictator is salivating at the thought of a No Deal Brexit? You are clearly happy… Read more »
He acted, whereas May didn’t. True enough. But it’s more the case that May acted in accordance with her agenda, which was to kill Brexit. And who likes Boris? Even those who have no issues with his decisiveness (to breathe while drowning) don’t like the guy.
He is NOT doing what those people voted for in June 2016.
He is a clown, and nobody with a brain voted for a clown.
Nor will he convert, neutralize or demolish any significant Establishment institutions, because the Establishment is his home.
He’s not doing what 17.4 million people vote for, we were told qwe were going to leave with a deal , NOBODY voted to leave with no deal, NOBODY.
This is a fantasy that was invented by sore loser Remoaners post 23/6/16.
The people voted to Leave.
The losers never accepted the result and worked tirelessly to delegitimise it and sabotage it from the moment it was announced.
We had all the emotive language of “crashing out”, “falling off a cliff”, and much similar garbage endlessly peddled by the MSM, with new fantasy creations like “Soft Brexit” and “Hard Brexit.”
Nobody was offering the Brussels bureaucracy a veto on the referendum. They weren’t saying, “We’re going to leave, provided Brussels agrees to a deal that absolutely everybody, including the most rabid Brussels Groupies, accept, otherwise we’re just happy to forget about it.
As for proroguing Parliament, just how much respect does this institution deserve? Who does it actually represent, if anybody? What can you say about its supposedly impartial Speaker who happily drives around in a car with a “Bollocks to Brexit” sticker?
Whether you like Johnson or not (and I don’t) if he hadn’t bottled it back in 2016 and become PM instead of May, we would not have had the farce of the past 3 years. We would have been out long ago.
I’m all for this. Go back to tried and tested traditional methods. Direct rule by H.M. from Balmoral. The Duke of Edinburgh in charge of diplomacy and foreign relations. Prince Charles in charge of environmental issues. Prince Andrew in charge of women’s issues. Prince Edward in charge of gay affairs. Princess Anne in charge of animal rights. Sounds good, man. The Belgian Parliament and the Ulster Parliament were both suspended for a couple of years and nobody really noticed the difference. Old Bojo should just go the whole hog and do a 2 year suspension instead of a paltry few weeks. Will we leave the EU on Halloween? Yes, Bojo doesn’t have the wriggle room to welsh on his commitment. If he does, both he and the Tories are finished. The Remoaners and Bercow will hyperventilate about it endlessly without achieving very much. They have been sidelined. There will probably be a Gina Miller style court case that goes nowhere. How will it change the Brexit conversation? There will be much frothing at the mouth about dictatorship from the Remoaners, generating more heat than light. They have tried every dirty trick in the book to frustrate Brexit over the past 3 years. They are owed nothing. People have had enough of the contrived delays and just want out. Bojo will just brazen it out. He can’t do anything else. When will there be a General Election? Probably November. Take Britain out then present everyone with a fait accompli. All the Leavers and everybody who just wants the issue resolved will go along with it. The Remoaners will throw the same tantrums whatever happens. But they will look increasingly irrelevant. Will Corbyn win? No. He’s been too badly damaged by the Blairite backstabbers and the anti Semitism smears from the Board… Read more »
correction andrew minister for young people
Reluctantly agree with your assessment of Corbyn’s chances in a GE. The neoliberal/ziocon
vipers in the PLP (aided and abetted by the BBC, Guardian, BOD and all the rest) have effectively sabotaged his social-democratic project which could have restored a measure of social justice to austerity-battered ordinary Brits.
Jezza’s big mistake was to keep on compromising with his enemies and smearers in the hope they’d back off. They didn’t. Blackmailers never do.
The whole thing’s a tragedy which has brought grief to multitudes of well-wishers world-wide.
Also, condering the frothing hysteria the media have gone into re: Corbyn just as a potential candidate, can you imagine what they would do if there WAS an election? Even more daunting: imagine the media reaction if Corbyn won! It would be a kind of media Horoshima!
Sorry – I meant “conSIdering”.
Exactly right. Expect the smears to go into overdrive over the next couple of months. The Mail will probably give over its first 14 pages to anti Corbyn smears again.
“Shock! Horror!! Gasp!!!”
“Jezza uses non organic fertilizer on his allotment.”
“Jezza suspected of cannibalism and witchcraft.”
“The Kremlin Connection: Jezza once travelled on a bus with the milkman who delivers to the Russian Embassy.”
The only good thing to come out of all this is that I think there is now a whole lot more people who can see through all the different political parties as nothing more than a bunch of self serving buffoons and will hopefully not be swayed by empty rhetoric and false promises at future elections.
You have to look on the bright side.
It’s well worth it for the comic value alone.
Michael 55 can’t agree with you there. Jeremy Corbyn is the only Party Leader who has a strategy to prevent a catastrophic No Deal. He cares about this Country and is doing everything as the Leader of the Opposition to prevent it happening – it’s his job and he’s doing it brilliantly. Bojo? the most embarrassing thing that has happened to this country in Parliamentary history.
Looking at the news now – protests already under way.
Crowds don’t seem to support Johnson – not all of them seem convinced the new democracy will deliver the wonderful future John Redwood is promising.
Oh, and I consider Hallowe’en to have been chosen in order to add a fart to the raspberry which the Establishment has now been blowing in our direction for some time.
“I consider Hallowe’en to have been chosen in order to add a fart to the raspberry…’
Do you know. like know who set the end date of the extension – May or Juncker? Tusk? A whole bunch of EU leaders? And was it even chosen as the month end or was it calculated by some numbet of days or weeks from the previous date? And it’s a Thursday. If it had turned out to be a Friday would they have put it back a day to allow the bureaucrats time to process the initial official workload before the weekend?
If you don’t know, what are you doing with your “consideration” except spraying some Boss on your boss and inviting other football primitives to have a sniff? You want to be cateful with that sort of thing, it drives some of them mad. No fun having a bitten boss. Rabies next stop.
Oh relax.
A bitten boss isn’t so serious.
Because of the whole Breixt thing, I might not be able to do what I want to do (a middle-class, tweeenager).
Snort……Brenda’s got a five-hundred-and-fifty quid Dyson heater.
Christopher Hitchins, with whom I often disagree on philosophical matters, said in one of his older lectures that we cannot do without the word, “evil”, today, however politically incorrect it might be to apply it to our current “representatives” in government.
As long as one stays away from questions of religion and faith, which he ridicules in a facile way by taking their most superficial aspects, I find him to be a refreshing tonic when it comes to blunt common sense.
Many of us have tried all the available dipomatic words for incompetence, greed, immorality, selfishness, arrogance, cruelty, etc. etc. to the point where we recognize that when all of these qualities are present in a single individual, we are probably dealing with evil.
Okay. Evil it is.
Shouldn’t one be speaking of Christopher Hitchins in the past tense?
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
He’s alive in the video lectures I am talking about, and my disagreement with him is with the things he says while I am watching them in the present. Let’s not get lost in definitions of what the past or the present really are.
My point is that I don’t like him much as he appears in those videos, but his bluntness is backed up by a very lively and educated intelligence, and that does stimulate productive thought.
Hitchins, dead as he is, has a media personality in the present, like it or not.
But I certainly agree with you to the extent that I won’t miss him.
I’m more worried about what this will do to Dun Groaning, he’s liable to blow a gasket.
I’m happy that the mask is off.
I’m happier that the age old top-bottom war will be addressed and we will go back to the postwar democratic socialist covenant.
Then we threw out the bulldog Churchill and created the NHS, Free education and affordable housing.
This time we get to bin the poundshop Winnie!
I’ve posted on the article above and am tasking Kit.
Enjoy.
A hereditary and unaccountable Head of State grants a hereditary and unelected Head of Government an imaginary proroguing of Parliament. Avuncular opposition leader froths effusively as this does not allow him to shit on democracy with a post-democratic “Final Say: Final Stay” vote.
British democracy descends past farce and parody to inhabit a new low of complete inconsequential unreality. And still no mention of EU Defence Union …which was the deal and only the deal all along.
Traitors one and all.
‘The greatest argument FOR Brexit was a democratic one.’ – in theory perhaps but the biggest factor influencing the leave vote was antipathy toward immigrants, particularly amongst older voters.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/four-ways-anti-immigration-vote-won-referendum-brexit
Now we have Johnson surrounded by right wing fruit cakes ratcheting up the misery on those fucked over by a decade of austerity.
There are many legitimate arguments against remaining in the EU but anyone who thinks Britain is entering a glorious new age of democracy, post-Brexit is seriously deluded.
That’s how bad it is – the alternative, at least for now is even worse than being tied to a shitty institution like the EU.
How the hell did that happen?
Harry Stotle: “the alternative, at least for now is even worse than being tied to a shitty institution like the EU. How the hell did that happen?”
I believe it happened through ROI — the cumulative Return On Investments which Great Britain never made. (cf, Tim Jenkins post on lost ROI from not installing optic cable). I bore everyone with my oft repeated story of a PostGraduate course on Strategic Technology in the late 50s, which opened with the fact that Great Britain was investing less in Technology than Turkey. (And in the 70s it was Iran who were investing in Technology). But to compensate, said the Professor, we have a lot more old equipment than Turkey. Or Iran. Or Russia today. Brexit / Exit / Shmexit what’s the difference? It’s all Admin, just stamping new visas for our voyage on a ship which has not been properly bolted together nor given proper maintenance.
“The years which the Locust hath eaten”.
It’s more than that.
I would certainly recommend ‘Private Island – why Britain now belongs to someone else’
A sorry tale told by James Meek of how just about anything worth having has been sold off to private investors, in other words a huge transfer of once publicly owned assets into the private domain, described this way on the book blurb;
“In a little over a generation the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James Meek shows how Britain’s common wealth became private, and the impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing to spiralling energy bills. Meek explores the human stories behind the incremental privatization of the nation over the last three decades. He shows how, as our national assets are sold, ordinary citizens are handed over to private tax-gatherers, and the greatest burden of taxes shifts to the poorest. In the end, it is not only public enterprises that have become private property, but we ourselves.
Urgent, powerfully written and deeply moving, this is a passionate anatomy of the state of the nation: of what we have lost and what losing it cost us – the rent we must pay to exist on this private island.”
https://www.versobooks.com/books/1731-private-island
Given Meek’s bleak assessment I don’t see how either being in or out of the EU can alter the fundamental landscape of where neoliberal policies have taken us.
Britain’s fractured and divided island (epistomised by the Brexit debate of course) is probably here to stay.