fahrenheit451:157

Just for a few brief hours during last week's commotion prompted by the latest Islamic terrorist outrage, reason and common sense enjoyed fleeting hegemony in the nation's political discourse:-

www.standard.co.uk › News › UK 2 days ago - A former high-ranking Met Police officer has called for extremists to be locked away at internment camps to protect the country. Tarique Ghaffur said taking up to 3,000 extremists off the streets would keep stop attacks and allow detainees to undergo de-radicalisation programmes.

Ghaffur's forthright and incisive analysis was in stark contrast to the otiose PC multiculti verbiage of appeasement uttered by former Met.Pol Kommissar Blair the previous day. Alas Great Britain intrinsically lacks the kind of gutsy, robust and politically savvy, ideologically committed populist political leadership and cadre of political agitators necessary to envisage and enable a thorough going renaissance of this nation's polity in general. Like all the other advanced ,i.e. decaying and increasingly moribund western industrialised democracies, the political class is in effect a carbon copy of the lickspittle disingenuous vapid managerial class-the kind who do group hugs at Asda and are your " Colleagues" and you call them by their first-can't say Christian- names. The sovereign electorate aren't called upon with the uttermost solemnity and existential foreboding to exercise their inviolable judgement regarding distinctive and incompatible ideologies embodied by rival  parties.They're instead called upon to exercise a largely fatuous and ephemeral choice between the latest mass consumerist rival bargain offers from Asda and Aldi. The existential point of any "problem" is to deal with it and solve it. It is not supposed to be something to "manage". Which of course is what regressive,backward looking ideologically vacuous senile democracies do, they attempt  to manage. They inexorably and invariably infantalise and commodify all political activity and all forms of communal interactions of Civil Society.They emasculate History itself. Whatever the World's future is going to be, it sure as hell isn't going to be written up as History by anyone in this grubby little corner of the globe.

fahrenheit451:156

It's Saturday 27 May and the seemingly interminable British #GE2017 campaign trundles on.The last 48 hours have been notable in so far as the corporate MSM and social media spotlights have concentrated on the utterances of one J.Corbyn, putative leader of the opposition Labour Party, who apparently have aspirations of forming the next government of the UK. The PC metropolitan hipster in-house journal ,aka The Guardian published this astonishing item.

Jeremy Corbyn has been on the right side of history for 30 years. That’s real leadership

What does it mean,exactly, to be on the " right side " of history? Which ideological views do you have to have in order to be adjudged as being on that particular side and indeed, who does the judging on whether or not you are on,to use their term, the right side? All these questions of course will not receive an answer let alone any acknowledgement that they had even asked in the first place. It's all a bit Marxist-manque ; all overly deterministic in the manner of a poor and unsophisticated understanding of dialectical and historical materialism.It is an absurdist notion that if an individual or group or party would somehow be able to " correctly " interpret the movement ( or the laws of motion ) of history then they could formulate,campaign for and and at some nebulous future point in time implement the policies of the collective demands of the organised forces of the proletarian vanguard to the benefit of the exploited working masses . It is possible and it has been put into practice before.The experiment was deemed a success,but alas the subjects of that experiment either died horribly or were left severely traumatised. The grotesque insanity of any such claim as to being on the right side of history is so monumentally preposterous that there is no rational philosophical basis on which to even begin to make a reasoned or informed judgement. Labour whether of the Left or Right both equally are, just as the clowns of 1917 were, the direct progeny of 1789.They are the headchoppers.

fahrenheit451:155

Time here in Britain seems to have slowed down since Monday. We were even granted a little welcome respite until Friday 26th from the interminable otiose cant of  party political electioneering. Though of course, PC metropolitan elitist prejudices and dominant multiculturalist ideology all but subsumed the various ceremonies and public expressions of grief and remembrance,held thus far for the victims of the islamic terrorist attack. Former Met.Police Kommissar ,now Lord, Blair aired the ruling elites' view on how best to deal with the islamic terrorist threat. We mustn't go around upsetting their communities by carrying out robust, effective preventative measures such as stop and search and detention without trial or even house arrest.Were our security forces to do so, it would in his corporate view only make matters worse and cause long term damage to the nebulous concept of community relations in mainstream society. Quite.You can see the problem that the 60 or however many years of self-inflicted post-imperialist ruling class guilt has created for us in normal civil society. We simply can't go around upsetting the acolytes of a stone slab in the middle of the desert. Bummer. Time here in Britain seems to have slowed down. The clock needs winding up again.

fahrenheit451:154

Today is not a good day here in Great Britain.We have suffered yet another Islamic terrorist outrage.Yet more innocent civilian lives have been lost. And there are bound to be another thousand and one blog posts along discouragingly similar lines that have yet to be written at some point in the not too distant future. The usual PC, multiculti #PrayFor #StandTogether hashtags have been enlisted to the cause of appeasement and acceptance. The usual vacuous,sanctimonious platitudes and calls for tolerance and good neighbourliness are out in force. Our enemies are digging our graves for us and our political Class,our metropolitan elites and their commentariat are lining up to ( do what they always do at times like these ),piss on the graves of our own fallen.Because that's the way Western Christian civilisation is supposed to react. Any expression other than a group hug with the adherents of the desert sands death cult is in effect treated and recorded as a " hate crime ". Pathetic. Perhaps the stupid neocons and dimwit Trump might've considered expending 59 missiles against ISIS/DAESH and AlQaeda instead of those who are fighting them. And so it goes...It's not been a terribly good day here in appeasement,Petainist Britain.

fahrenheit451:153

The difficulty the rest of us have with a proverbial " elephant in the room " - that is the thing that never gets mentioned for fear of causing embarrassment - is that the elephant,or rather elephants, need to be dealt with.  The neocon / liberal interventionist double headed hydra of US foreign policy is a deranged stampeding herd of elephants. Arising from the US/NATO engineered imbroglio of a series of interlocking overseas military,quasi-imperialist adventures involving Yugoslavia,Afghanistan,Iraq and Libya; Syria is just the latest quagmire that is threatening to suck everyone and everything else into its fathomless depths.  The once generally acknowledged norms of global realpolitik diplomacy have long since become obsolescent, which leaves very little scope for efforts short of all out war to manage areas of irreconcilable differences. In spite of everything,the Assad government remains the sole  sovereign legitimate representative of the Syrian peoples and state at the U.N. The various and diverse forces from Russia,Iran ,Hezbollah and Iraqi militias on its territory have been invited there as allies in the conflict against the enemies of Syria. All other foreign states and covert military advisers and operations units of foreign armed forces such as Turkey,the US,UK France and lesser NATO satrapies and Israel are breaking International Law and are acting illegally.It is they who jointly or separately are arming,financing,training,advising as well as giving tactical and strategic military battlefield logistical  and combat support to at different times in different geographic locations on the territory of Syria - ISIS,Al Qaeda and other non state terrorist insurgent combatant groups.

The United States' military issued this statement a few hours ago 

@CJTFOIR: pro-Syria government forces near At Tanf hit for "advancing well inside an established de-confliction zone"; Russia tried helping

fahrenheit451:152

For quite some time now,the intellectual capacity of the individual UK citizen to express their political preferences via the ballot box, has been called into question. Last year's EU Referendum campaign became characterised by the increasingly strident and intolerant discourse of the Remain campaign,that in effect labelled all those that voted Leave as amongst other epithets ,variously- ignorant/uneducated/racist/xenophobic/reactionary /little englanders/stupid/elderly/working class. Nearly a year on from the triumph of #brexit, and the very bodies,parties,prominent individuals and commentariat who engineered and drove that particular vehicle of vituperative mass slander and defamation are still about their nefarious business. It is therefore somewhat,but not altogether disquieting when the twisted Inquisitorial logic of the failed Remoaner campaign is employed within the context of this General Election campaign.

McCluskey said working class voters who say they are going to vote Tory for the first time are doing so “because their mind is being turned by the constant attack of the media on Jeremy Corbyn and the image that they’ve pinned on Jeremy.”

It is eminently fair and reasonable to assert that, a working class voter who might vote Tory will be doing so because they are exercising, of their own free will and volition, their inalienable democratic rights to express their own individual political preferences-for which no prior explanation needs to be given to anyone else as to why they voted the way they did. The likes of McCluskey assert that such a working class voter would only vote Tory because, as I am Len knows, it is because their mind is being turned by the media. This virtuous and far-sighted leader of the heroic proletarian vanguard doesn't digress and try to apply a similar analysis as to why a middle class or upper class voter might vote Tory or Labour or whatever. Their minds presumably are of an altogether different nature from those of the archetypal working class voter who needs to explain their motives to McCluskey's Stasi. Len knows all and cares fuck all about democracy.

Len - " I am Len " McCluskey was recently re-elected as UNITE union General Secretary on a membership ballot turn out of 12% .Wherein a three way contest he garnered less than half the votes cast; e.g the active consent equal to around 5% of the union's total membership.

fahrenheit451:151

I'm writing this blog post on May 16, that's 23 days shy of General Election Day here in the UK. And that is an awful lot of Mainstream Media ( MSM ) filler. The contrived controversies over minor variations in otiose and largely ephemeral policy differences between the respective contending major parties will, as is usual pass for what is and has been for generations now, political discourse. A phony significance is accorded to the ritualistic mummery of their manifesto launches. As if no-one could've possibly intuitively guessed at just what pretentious and unattainable gob-shitery would emerge from the various ideological orifices or how badly it would all just smell. I take a certain comfort from imagining just how much more febrile the atmosphere must have been like here in England during the Reformation or the Civil War. We could sure use some of that visceral,no holds barred genuinely contentious battle of ideas and clash of ideologies right now. Perhaps we have to make do with the lingering temper tantrums and threats to eject the few remaining toys from the Remoaner prams of the #brexit debate. Boring.

fahrenheit451:150

When the fire alarm goes off and you know that there isn't a fire it sets your expectations for the next time.And then the fire alarm goes off and there still isn't a fire. It's a faulty alarm system that no one responsible for its maintenance can be arsed to look at and try and correct whatever is wrong with it.And the fire alarm goes off..It's exasperating.  Chuka Umunna, whom some of the corporate MSM Commentariat reckon is a putative future leader of the Labour party is the faulty fire alarm. When the rest of the people of Great Britain woke up to the EU Referendum verdict on June 24 2016, 200+ Labour MPs with Umunna to the fore weren't best pleased. He and his fellow seditionist EU shills had recklessly wagered all their pathetic little Westminster political careers on the British people choosing to remain eternally servile to the EU and they had lost that wager. Nearly one year on and the Remain Campaign aka Remoaners are still in the midst of their mean little temper tantrum.This is infantile foot stomping on an epic scale.  BBC Radio 4's morning flagship news program this Saturday 13 May had Umunna sound his shrill fire alarm yet again. Umunna and 15 other truly metropolitan elitist seditionist EU shills seeking election as Labour MPs in 16 Greater London constituencies have openly castigated their own party leadership's agreed election manifesto stance on the #brexit negotiations!! Clearly repudiating every single statement they'd previously made as to their acceptance of the British People's verdict on leaving the EU is going some even for cynical  24/7 mendacious hypocrites such as Umunna & His Gang.

Should such matters have needed any further clarification,then matters have indeed been clarified. Stop Labour save #brexit.

Not that 200+ EU seditionist shills masquerading as #Labour MPs are anything new under the sun.

Book of Isaiah Ch.59 v.3-4

3...your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

4None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

AMEN.

fahrenheit451:149

Now that Right and Left - those moribund descriptors of late 18th.century French revolutionary politics- are no longer relevant or applicable, it is invariably those who were once identified with the " Right " that are increasingly Right on economic questions and by far the most cogent and interesting. As opposed to the what was the " Left " who maintain ( and shout very loudly about) that increased labour market competition actually leads to an increase in the general level of wages especially in the massive unskilled sector of the economy! Furthermore the Left as was, insist that continued and expanded unrestricted labour market competition will by itself lead to an increase in national GDP and therefore an increase in state revenues that can be spent on building more schools,hospitals and houses to accommodate the ever increasing numbers who provide the competition in the labour market.The used to be the Left don't actually resort to the use of empirical proof to substantiate this, other than by their default position of ignoring any such data. it takes the Right to dispel myths and expose lies these days.

Matthew Taylor, Chair of the government's Social Integration Commission and the former policy chief to Tony Blair,  in his tenth annual lecture as the chief executive of the RSA, the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, said “Bad work impacts directly on workers but also on the rest of us through greater pressure on our welfare and healthcare systems.”

Stressful, dead-end jobs are making some Britons so sick they end up on disability benefits, according to the man reviewing the world of work for the government. the quality of work in Britain had worsened “in certain respects”, with some workers treated like “cogs in a machine”. He said this was bad for economic productivity and piled pressure on the health and welfare systems. “Stressful work with low levels of flexibility and autonomy is a critical factor leading to hundreds of thousands of workers dropping out of employment every year into disability,”

And there you have it. The #EU neoliberal otiose cant of freedom of movement that has driven millions of economic parasites into the UK national labour market, fuelled agency zero hours contracts and has lowered wages and virtually annihilated the Uk's already parlous social infrastructure in Housing, Schools and Health provision across the board. National GDP is still below the pre-crash level of 2007 despite many more workers albeit in the largely unproductive low skilled box-filling sector of the service economy. The idiots on what was the Left insist that it's racist scapegoating of immigrants to point any of these facts out. They claim,erroneously, that what is needed is greater state investment in social infrastructure to accommodate all the additional demands placed upon it by the calamitous unregulated competition in the labour marklet.  In other words for those who need dots joining up for them , The Labour & Trades Union movement as a whole support neoliberal free market capitalism. Presumably just like Lenin did. #brexit #EndFreedomofMovement

fahrenheit451:148

The trouble with obituaries is that if you write them too early you end up looking a right prat should the putative deceased not actually then go ahead and pop their clogs.  That said, in the wake of May 4/5th's various English and Welsh local county council and Scottish  city and district elections, it is as certain as certain can be that Labour's death notice isn't in any danger of being even a tad premature. They're dead and gone and good bloody riddance. Of course it ought to have happened to the Conservatives as well, but they still possess and know how to make use of,  a certain machiavellian  political street cunning, at least enough to get by on as opposed to Labour. Alas the Party of Labour ; of over rated cheap suited zealots and crypto fascists masquerading as liberals, who were seriously way past being fit for any purpose other than being tossed into an unmarked grave and having the gravediggers relieve themselves over it after they've filled the waste of space back in again. And that is getting terribly close to peak Schadenfreude and June 8 is still a way off. But, heck even the dumb and dumber SNP and LibDems proclaimed heroic,epoch busting victories on days where they both actually made nett losses on council seats! Labour on the other hand experienced a full on sensuround premonition, a sort of anti-epiphany of  their public crucifixion on June 8 ; their PC multiculturalist atheist sack of putrifying 19th century ideological garbage devoured by time,space and history. Amen.

fahrenheit451:147

The historically moribund European Union  can be viewed as a sleazy,corrupt,kleptocratic hellhole of outright fraud and embezzlement. Amid all the venal hubristic posturing surrounding #Brexit ,once all the vacuous platitudes have been aired and philosophical points have been examined it all comes back down to money.Who pays what to whom and for what and how long for. The current article from the euro observer is particularly instructive on this matter :-

Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.

FOCUS

Hungary and Poland risk losing €1bn in Norway aid row

• 

  Girl visiting the Museum on Wheels, a mobile educational exhibition presenting the history and culture of Polish Jews. The exhibition travelled around Poland as part of an EEA grants funded project. (Photo: EEA and Norway grants)

By ALEKSANDRA ERIKSSON

OSLO, 3. MAY, 09:20

Efforts by Hungary and Poland to control funds directed to NGOs are blocking negotiations over the renewal of a €1 billion Norwegian scheme to support civil society.
The Central European governments want to take funds from organisations supporting women, gay people and the homeless, among others.

Norway has refused to give in to such demands, meaning that negotiations are stuck.
"The situation is very unclear. In the worst case, the whole support scheme could be blocked," said Vera Mora from the NGO Okotars, which administered the last Norway grant scheme in Hungary.
Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, in exchange for their access to the EU single market, fund initiatives aimed at reducing social and economic disparities in poorer EU member states.
Norway is by far the biggest donor of the so-called EEA funds, doling out some 96 percent of the money.
Poland is the largest beneficiary, followed by Romania and Hungary.
Under the next scheme, which runs until 2021, Poland stands to receive €809 million, Hungary €215 million.

The funds cover some shortfalls in healthcare budgets and help companies to adopt green technologies. They pay for the upkeep of cultural heritage sites and fund research projects.
Roughly 10 percent of the cash is dedicated to independent support of civic society, a mandatory part of programme.
In Poland, the Law and Justice (PiS) government has formally announced that it would like the money to be channelled through a government body - although they have yet to establish the body.

And frankly my dear that is quite outrageous! especially given that a strand of contentious opinion on #Brexit recommends that the UK go the EEA route to maintaining Single market access once we have actually exited the EU !! As a rule of thumb, the further east and south you go across the continent of europe the greater the incidence of systemic corruption within EU member states. The scale of it beggars rational belief.It makes the Danegeld tribute paid by 10th.Century  English Kings to keep the foreign invaders quiet seem like spare pocket change. Brexit needs to be done asap, no further negotiations whatsoever, no compromise transitional EEA membership.

fahrenheit451:146

To-day is May 3rd. The British Electorate goes to the polls on June 8th. The cretinous, the stupid and the woefully incompetent are all set to continue engaging in a hugely meaningless spat and exchange of vacuous platitudes for quite some time yet. Everyone else is lying, twisting the facts and in the pockets of whatever socio-economic group the others are currently expressing distrust over. Meanwhile in the real world, the Sovereign Electorate, has I believe, not forgiven the vituperative slander and defamation heaped upon them by the various parties,politicians,experts and commentators in the wake of the #Brexit victory in the EU Referendum 2016.  And irrespective of the many pressing issues and concerns confronting the UK today, the Parties one way or another are investing their #GE2017 campaigns heavily in a de-facto restaging of last June's plebiscite. Labour posing as #LabourIn for example, wagered everything on a Remain outcome last June and lost badly handing all immediate political benefit and control over the #brexit process to, albeit largely clueless, Tory control. An exquisitely excruciating existential dilemma now confronts the party of Blair & Kinnock. 70% of the electorate in Labour held parliamentary constituencies favoured Leave whilst roughly the same percentage of Labour voters favoured Remain. Perhaps the Leave voters aren't the stupid,illiterate,racist,xenophobic little englander bigots and malcontents all 200+ #LabourIn MPs said that they were after all?  For my part, Schadenfreude is so worth looking forward to with eager anticipation on the morning of June 9th. I can barely contain myself.