Here’s another one from the internet democracy organisation.
‘Dear David,
It’s official. Despite being Prime Minister for a grand total of 44 days – 44 days that did huge damage to our economy and left people up and down the country struggling – Liz Truss has submitted an honours list. [1]
And reports suggest it includes a number of her closest friends, supporters and Conservative party donors who could soon be awarded a place in the House of Lords for life. [2]
Rishi Sunak now has to decide whether or not to approve this list of names, so we need to show him just how unpopular this would be with the public. You and over 180,000 of us have signed the petition, now can you go further and take a short survey on how you feel about the thought of Liz Truss getting an honours list? [3] We’ll compile it into a report and send your answers over to Rishi Sunak while he weighs up his decision.
David, if you believe a Prime Minister forced to resign after just a few weeks should not be allowed to reward their friends with jobs for life in the Lords, can you answer a few short questions for us today? Here’s the first one to get you started. Do you think Rishi Sunak should block Liz Truss’s honours list?
I’ve signed it, because Truss’ tenure of 10 Downing Street was short and incompetent, causing massive damage to the economy and threatening people’s livelihoods. She should not be allowed to reward her cronies, who guided and assister her on these disastrous and ruinous policies.
If you do say ‘yes’, the petition then asks if you would be willing to appear on news programmes or talk to the press or post a video to social media expressing your views, as well as asking for your phone number so they can get back to you. I leave this to your discretion.
As I’m sure you all have seen, the big news today is that comedian, actor and broadcaster Paul O’Grady has passed on. The obituaries for him have, naturally, talked about his career and its highlights, starting with his most notorious creation, Lily Savage. Savage, complete with her massive bouffant blonde hairdo, long eyelashes, high heels and razor-sharp tongue, hit our screens in the 1990s. She was a character O’Grady had developed in the gay clubs. I also got the impression that she was based on women he’d known in childhood. But O’Grady didn’t stop there. He also hosted chat shows and one series, in which he went through south-east Asia on a quest to find a particularly glamorous Chinese starlet of the 1930s. Among the series more notable incidents was one in which O’Grady appeared in matching black turban and sarong in Thailand or one of the neighbouring countries. But he also visited the cemetery to the British and imperial soldiers worked to death by the Japanese on the Burma railway. O’Grady naturally became upset, looking at the terribly young age of some of these fine men inscribed on their tombstones. He also got annoyed with the official recommendation not to say to much about the Japanese, ‘Why not? They started it!’ Quite. It was a deeply moving piece of television that showed O’Grady at his best. And from there he went on to present a long-running series on ITV about Battersea Dogs’ Home, For the Love of Dogs. O’Grady was a massive dog-lover, and as they’ve been saying on the TV tributes to him, he had a natural rapport with his canine friends, several of whom he took home. During one episode, repeated today, he met the Queen Consort, Camilla. He’d had problems with his heart, and underwent an operation on it some time ago. I think the news has said that he passed away in his sleep, which is a blessing. He was also appearing in a play. The eulogies have also said that he was a staunch supporter of gay rights.
Savage was a little bit racy, but looking back on it, she seems to me to be very much in the traditional spirit of British drag: outrageous, but driven by character and family friendly, and there was real wit involved. The modern drag shows seems to be more in the style of American drag and much more sexualised.
It’s a sad day for British TV entertainment. As well as being a versatile entertainer, O’Grady came across as a genuinely nice bloke. Commiserations to his friends and family. He will be missed on our screens.
BoJob really is like a ‘B’ movie villain. Just when you think he’s defeated and hopefully gone for good, he turns up again, like a production company grinding out yet another sequel. The internet pro-Democracy organisation Open Britain have sent me this message asking me to sign a petition against him coming back to No. 10. There are many reasons for not wanting this. These include the British taxpayer having to stump up the legal fees for his defence against Partygate, his destabilisation of the Northern Irish protocol and the simple fact that he’s a full-on threat to British democracy. All true!
Boris’ intervention in Northern Irish affairs is particularly worrying at the moment. The Northern Irish protocol contains a treaty allowing the EU to intervene in certain conditions. I’ve no problem with that, as Eire is part of the EU and the protocol concerns the issue of a tariff border between the republic and Ulster. But Johnson and his fellow nut-job Brexiteers have thrown a fearful strop and are promising to rebel over it. Maximilien Robespierre, a left-wing YouTuber, is Irish though he’s been over here a very long time, and so is rightly very concerned about this. He put up a video attacking Johnson and his faction, making the point that Johnson is just doing it to further his political ambitions. He doesn’t really care about it, and knows and cares nothing about Ulster and its great people.
As we’ve seen, the situation in Ulster is still volatile despite the Good Friday peace agreement. There have been riots and murders caused by the tensions over Brexit and the Irish border. This week a high-ranking Ulster policeman was shot. I hope that it was simple gang criminality rather than an act of political terrorism, but the latter is a real possibility.
Johnson is an opportunist. He’s massively incompetent in foreign affairs. Remember, as if you could ever forget, him being told by the British ambassador to Thailand not to recite ‘The Road to Mandalay’ when he was visiting the country’s holiest temple. Then there was his peace mission to Russia to smooth over tensions, which he immediately sabotaged by making an anti-Putin speech at the press conference on his return. We’re fighting a proxy war with the Ukraine against Russia as it is. Zelenskyy was apparently about to make peace before Bozo flew to Kyiv and persuaded him to go on fighting. Now Putin has pulled out of the arms limitations treaty with the Americans and threatened to begin nuclear testing again. We’re only a few minutes away from midnight on the Domesday Clock. I’m afraid the return of this massive, pompous, unfunny clown will push us all the way there. If he doesn’t undo the Good Friday Agreement and send Ulster back to being a sectarian bloodbath first.
Here’s the message from Open Britain
‘Hi David,
So, UK taxpayers will be shelling-out anotherfive-figure sumfor Boris Johnson’s Partygate defence, despite the fact that he earned nearly £5,000,000 in the few months since he left office. That’s nuts!
According to reports in the media, Sunak is poised to authorise a third payment to Johnson’s lawyers, bringing the running total to over £250,000, with more to come.
It’s clear that Sunak is not strong enough to stand up to Johnson. And Johnson knows it. That’s why he felt able to undermine Sunak so brazenly with his recent destabilising intervention in the UK/EU negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Despite the chaos of Johnson’s time in Number 10, he still has enormous sway within the Conservative party, and he’s got big plans to make use of it.
As our Tuesday email highlighted, everything points to Johnson plotting a return to Number 10. He’s keeping his media profile high and doing grubby deals to enable him to move to a safe seat before the next election. Ask yourself this: Why would someone who has already held the most powerful position in government, and who now earns nearly £1,000,000 a month making speeches be so keen to stay in the Commons if it was not to have another shot at the top job?
He still believes he’s entitled to run this country, despite being brought down by his own MPs when the lies, incompetence and corruption of his administration got too much, even for them.
The thought of a second Johnson premiership will make most people’s blood curdle. Can YOU imagine what it would be like? It’s doubtful our democracy would survive.
It’s time to send a clear message to Conservative MPs that there must be no return to power for Johnson. They must KEEP HIM OUT of Number 10.
Nearly two-thirds of people who responded to a recent poll said they did not want Johnson back in charge. He had his chance to deliver for the British people, and he blew it, spectacularly.
That was the allegation made today in a video put up by Our Favourite YouTube ‘Historia’. Johnson was in one of the tabloids today giving Britain the benefit of his experience and talent in foreign affairs. I just saw the headline which was something about how Britain should give more aid to Ukraine as if it falls, Putin will be a threat to Europe. I didn’t read any more. It was in something like the Depress or the Scum or some other terrible rag, which isn’t worth reading. But apparently he had more to say. He wanted Ukraine to be admitted to NATO ASAP. Simon Webb over at History Debunked took this idea apart, showing that far from leading to peace or defeat for the Russians, it would instead probably lead to World War III. If NATO did admit Ukraine, then the next Putin attacked we would be required to counterattack by the terms of the treaty. You can see how this would expand into a direct war between NATO and Russia and the possibility that this would go nuclear very quickly. Putin and his aides have been making threats of a nuclear strike against the NATO countries, as well as threatening to invade Sweden if it joined NATO. One of the news articles that came up for me a little while ago on the news feed on my browser argued that Putin wasn’t bluffing when he made these threats. Elsewhere the group of scientists responsible for the Doomsday Clock showing how far away we are from nuclear Armageddon moved its hands forward to 90 seconds to minute. This places us in unprecedented danger, the group says. So what Johnson has said is so colossally stupid that the former Prime Minister should be nowhere near power. But what do you expect from him? This is the edit, you will remember, who started reciting the Road to Mandalay when on an official visit to Thailand’s holiest Buddhist temple. This is the nutter, who went off a diplomat mission to Moscow to soothe tensions with Putin, only to ramp them up even further at a press interview on his return. And there’s more and worse. There was a story going round last year that Zelensky was about to make a peace deal with Putin, only to persuaded otherwise when Johnson turned up to advise him.
Webb suggests that this suicidal belligerence from Johnson may come from the sorry state of affairs He, Rishi Sunak and Zahawi are in. Zahawi’s facing criticism and calls for an inquiry because he’s been dodging paying tax, Sunak got a loan from a Tory donor, who was then rewarded with a place at the Beeb and Johnson is similarly having his collar felt for breaches of ministerial conduct. Webb states that Johnson couldn’t have made these comments without approval from Sunak, and so this sabre-rattling is just to get us to look away from their personal corruption. I can see there being more than something behind this. One of the ways governments try to divert attention from domestic failures is to start a foreign policy conflict.
But there are other aspects to the Ukraine conflict which make it very clear that all is not as it appears. After the fall of communism, the west signed a deal with Gorbachev that NATO would not expand into the former eastern bloc and threaten Russia’s borders. But this is what NATO has done with the accession of Poland and other states. The Maidan Revolution which overthrew the pro-Russian Ukrainian president in favour of one who was pro-western, wasn’t a spontaneously democratic display of popular anger. It was carefully orchestrated by Victoria Nuland and Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, and the National Endowment for Democracy, the organisation that has taken over the CIA’s role in engineering regime change.
But there are dangers for rightists and ethnonationalists in following this line of inquiry. Before you know it, you could end up like the late American Nazi leader, Francis Parker Yockey. Yockey was a White supremacist almost straight out of the skits of the Blues Brothers and The Producers. He used to appear on Public Access Television in New York in the 1970s, seated wearing a blue uniform and motorcycle helmet and flanked by two of his storm troopers ranting his fascist nonsense. Not surprisingly, he was eventually kicked off air following complaints from Jewish viewers. Surprisingly for a raving Nazi, Yockey was a fan of the Soviet Union. He felt it was the great hope for the White race because it was still a dictatorship after the western nations had embraced corrupt democracy. There was a similar tendency over here in Nick Griffin’s BNP. There was a section of its membership and supporters that admired Colonel Gadaffy’s Libya.
Webb has posted videos suggesting that Britain needs a dictator for White Britain to survive and that we should be giving medals to particularly prolific women like the Nazis did. But the Soviet Union also gave out ‘Heroic Mother’ medals and there was a similar scheme by Mussolini as part of his ‘Battle for Births’. Putin is also a dictator, who is also keen on promoting national pride among his people, and he has succeeded in raising the Russian birth rate, which had been declining below replacement levels.
Putin’s a thug and a monster, but if you want to see where such ideas about nationalist dictators lead, they lead to people like him. If not worse.
It’s sad but true that many people have been taken in by Boris Johnson’s image as an affable buffoon. Whatever he does, no matter how inept or offensive, like reciting ‘The Road to Mandalay’ in Thailand’s holiest temple, coming back from talks in Moscow to ratchet up tensions with Russia rather than decrease them, the massive cronyism and corruption, the continuing destruction of the NHS, the tens of thousands whose deaths from Covid could have been prevented, there seem to be any number of people ready to ignore all those because of Johnson’s jovial persona. He’s a buffoon, yes, he’s bumbling, but he’s well intentioned and has the nation’s interests at heart. Yes, he went to Eton, but somehow, like that other scion of money and privilege Nigel Farage, he has managed to convince too many ordinary people that he’s somehow one of them. The American radical magazine Counterpunch once quoted a porter in one of the northern English fish markets as saying that Johnson was working class like him. The reality is, of course, far different. Johnson’s an aristo, and as Jeeves once said to Spode in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster all those years ago, he and the working classes are barely on nodding terms. Like his hair, which is normally neatly combed but which he deliberately messes for effect, all the bonhomie and the image of being a man of the people is a carefully crafted pose. Johnson is genuinely inept, but what is false is the image he projects of having any kind of regard for working people and their concerns.
Mike has put up a very revealing piece originally put up by Damian Furniss, about the real face behind the carefully constructed mask. And, as the Ferengi used to scream about anything they didn’t like on Star Trek, it’s ‘Ugly. Verreeee ugleeee.’ Mr Furniss had the misfortune to encounter Boris while having a pint in the bar while awaiting an interview to get into Oxford. The future Prime Minister then amused himself and his similar rich and snobby friends by sneering at Furniss, mocking everything from his speech impediment to his far humbler social background. Mike’s put up this quote from Furniss about Johnson’s nasty performance.
“Three years older than me, and half way through the second class degree in Classics he coasted through with the diligence he later applied to journalism and red box briefings, you’d have expected him to play the ambassador role, welcoming an aspiring member of his college.
“Instead, his piss-taking was brutal. In the course of the pint I felt obliged to finish he mocked my speech impediment, my accent, my school, my dress sense, my haircut, my background, my father’s work as farm worker and garage proprietor, and my prospects in the scholarship interview I was there for. His only motive was to amuse his posh boy mates.
“In short, he demonstrated all of the character flaws that make him unfit to be our Prime Minister. Nothing I see today suggests he has changed. He’s not Falstaff, he’s Faust. If you are an ordinary working person and think he has your interests at heart, think again.”
I can’t say I’m surprised by any of this. I’ve heard stories myself about how he was a vile bully at Eton, though that’s hardly anything extraordinary given the vicious bullying culture that’s run rampant there and in the other public schools. And for all his aristocratic background, it also shows a monumental lack of good breeding. At some of Bristol’s grammar schools, for example, the pupils were taught that they were to show the same respect to the gardener and the ancillary staff that they would to the teachers. It’s bad form for someone from such a privileged background to sneer at those further down the social hierarchy. But clearly, Boris and his noxious chums regard such morals as for grammar school oiks rather than such lofty personages as themselves.
Unfortunately, I doubt Mr Furniss’ piece will make much of a dent in the impressions of those who continue to be taken in by Johnson. Some of this is, no doubt, because they want to be deceived. They want to believe that somehow Johnson represents the working people of this country, in the same way that there were people more than willing to believe Tweezer when she said that she and her cabinet weren’t members of the ‘elite’, when every single one of them was a millionaire. It’s the other side of the Tories’ equally carefully constructed image of the left and especially the ‘woke’. Membership of the elite isn’t just a matter of wealth and social class, but also of values. The elite, as described ad nauseam by the Tories over here and the Republicans in America, are rich leftists who attack decent, working people with their assaults on national pride and aggressive attacks on racism, misogyny, homophobia and anything else they consider bigoted. Highly privileged individuals, who don’t share the concerns and values of ordinary working people. Unlike them, of course.
But this is all just right-wing rhetoric and propaganda. Johnson, Tweezer and the rest of the Tories are the real elite. They’re millionaires from extremely privileged backgrounds, unlike very many of the Labour party, and particularly the Labour left. There are many MPs from that side of the party, who do come from a real working class background, and whose socialism reflects their genuine concern with improving conditions for ordinary working people. This is despite the attempts by Blair and Starmer to turn Labour once again into a middle class party pursuing Conservative policies and voters.
Johnson and the Tories have nothing in common with the working class, for whom they have nothing but contempt. But they’re very good at manipulating their public image, and so have succeeded in persuading many working people that somehow they represent them.
But every so often the mask slips to reveal the seething mass of class hatred, greed and snobbery beneath.
The much maligned MP Diane Abbott has written a piece for Labour Outlook discussing the effectiveness of the vaccines and the continuing death toll from Covid 19. While the vaccines are a great success, they are not going to end this disease on their own. Other measures are needed. Schools are important vector for the disease, which is why Abbott supports the teachers against the government in maintaining that the schools lockdown should not be lifted too soon.
Abbott writes
Only a safe reopening is in all our interests. Support the teachers, head teachers & school workers against the Tories – Diane Abbott MP Exclusive
“The government is currently refusing to budge. But we know this is a government which can be forced to U-turn.”
Diane Abbott MP.
Diane Abbott MP
Life in Britain, including political life is once more dominated by the spread of the Covid-19 virus and the government’s failures to halt it.
On February 22nd the government published a ‘roadmap’ out of the lockdown we have all had to endure. This lockdown, our third, is actually longer than many countries’ sole lockdown. The countries that have successfully suppressed the virus include Australia, China, New Zealand, Thailand and Viet Nam all achieved that by having a both a much stricter, shorter regime and by having an effective system of testing, tracing and properly supported isolation. The government still does not have any of those in place.
So, the roadmap is itself seriously, potentially fatally flawed. Just as the government was outlining its plans there were two other important pieces of news. The first was that the average of new daily cases is over 11,000 and the average for new deaths is almost 500 per day. There is a possibility that new cases will be as high coming out of this lockdown as they were at the peak of the first wave in April, 5,000 a day or more.
The second news item was that the minutes of the most recent SAGE meeting were publicised. SAGE emphasised that it had “previously advised that the opening and closing of schools is likely to have an impact on transmission and R, and that policymakers need to consider the balance of risks and harms. The opening of primary and secondary schools is likely to increase effective R by a factor of 1.1 to 1.5 (10% to 50%) (medium confidence)”.
There are two risks from a premature relaxation of lockdown led by reopening of the schools. The first is that, exactly as SAGE says, transmission and infection rates will go into reverse, having fallen from late January after lockdown was imposed. The second risk is that, in the absence of a suppression strategy, the virus will freely circulate and then mutate once more into even more deadly strains. Again, this is a risk identified with current policy by SAGE itself. The government has clearly ignored this advice.
SAGE also emphasises the global nature of this pandemic, which is important for the whole world, including this country. “Aside from the significant human and social costs around the world, ongoing transmission in other countries would continue to pose a threat to UK health even if the epidemic were under control in this country and a high proportion of the population were vaccinated”.
Yet the epidemic here is clearly not under control, and only a minority of the population has received even a single jab. Public Health England (PHE) has assessed the efficacy of single jabs and the recommended double-dose. PHE found that protection from a single jab rose after a number of weeks to just under 60%. But the protection after just a few days for a second jab was around 96%. These are great outcomes.
Yet contrary to government ministers, there is no suggestion in the minutes that vaccines are or can be a magic bullet. Two-fifths of all those receiving a single jab have no protection from the virus. But they are all encouraged to believe and to act as if they have full protection. Once again the Government is not being straight with the public and is taking another gamble with public health.
The crunch point ahead is the government plan to reopen all the schools in a ‘big bang’ on March 8th. This flies in the face of its own expert advice, the policy of the administrations in the rest of the country, and our own bitter experience about the spread of the virus after schools reopened last September.
I would urge everyone to read and support the joint statement from nine unions in response to the government’s plans. They describe those plans as reckless, and argue instead for a phased return to schools, with rotas, ‘blended learning’ and a number of simple but effective safety measures.
The government is currently refusing to budge. But we know this is a government which can be forced to U-turn. Unions showed that over the Chancellor’s plans to cut furlough pay to two-thirds of wages, and both Marcus Rashford and Jo Whiley can testify to it over free school meals and vaccines for the learning disabled respectively.
The key issue now is the unity of all those demanding a different course of action from the government in applying the maximum amount of pressure on this issue. Those who work in schools care about themselves, their own loved ones and the pupils we entrust to them. But in opposing a reckless reopening of schools now they are acting in all our interests. They deserve our full support.
…………
I realise that Abbott is hugely controversial and much reviled. About half of the abusive messages received by women MPs are actually directed at her. And the Tories have been trying to make her out to be stupid ever since she made a mistake about budget estimates a few years ago. Senior Tories have also made similar mistakes, but this is ignored and they are lauded as if they are mighty intellectuals. As this piece shows, Abbott is anything but stupid and she is exactly right to back the teachers. Contrary to what the Tories are shouting about teachers being lazy, they are not. Our mother was a primary school teacher for very many years, and I know exactly how hard they work. Most teachers I’m sure would love to be back in class, in front of blackboard, actually teaching. But they are also vulnerable to Covid-19 themselves and aware of the role contact in schools can play in its transmission. Children may not suffer particularly from it themselves, but they are able to spread it to adults, some of whom may be extremely vulnerable.
Abbott is right to urge for a cautious, phased reopening of schools and support our front line teaching staff. It’s what Starmer should have done from the start, but didn’t because he was too intent on chasing Tory votes.
It seems Riley and her lawyers aren’t the only people this week determined to show themselves in a bad light. Her friend and mucker, Tracy Anne Oberman, also caused another storm on Twitter this week in which she accused an ordinary member of the public of anti-Semitism, which resulted in a dogpile by her fans and supporters and her victim forced off the social network.
The woman, ‘Caroline’, had offended Oberman’s delicate sensibilities by posting that she’d been enjoying Russel T. Davies’ drama about the 1980s AIDS crisis right up until the moment Oberman appeared. This soured her experience, and she was trying to forget Oberman.
Oberman decided that the reason Caroline didn’t like her was simple: anti-Semitism. She therefore went on the offensive – and I have to say, I find her very offensive – and rhetorically asked the poor woman if she wasn’t the type of bigot Davies was talking about in his drama. She also hashtagged a number of organisations, including the Community Security Trust, a Zionist paramilitary vigilante police organisation, Labour Against Anti-Semitism, one of the organisations in the Labour party behind the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunt, and the Labour party. Because Caroline’s picture also showed, apparently, a Labour party membership card. Stephen Pollard, the appallingly right-wing editor of the Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper with a proud history behind it, also jumped in to defend Oberman. And more people joined the dogpile.
Others, however, realised what was going on, thought better of their involvement, backed out and made their apologies. Daniel Mays, who had previously posted in support of the actor, deleted his tweet. Janey Godley also backed down, tweeting ‘Am horrified she’s being piled on, it seems unnecessary – I apologise‘. Another poster, Dileep Rao, who had posted that people like Caroline should be dragged through the street, also recanted, tweeting “I was wrong to write this. I apologize. Without reservation. It was absurdly out of proportion … It was just dumb”.
It needs to be noted, because from this it appears that some people are incapable of doing so themselves, that Caroline had made no mention of Jews whatsoever. There is zero anti-Semitism in her tweet. She just says she can’t stand Tracy-Anne Oberman. The idea that Caroline was somehow doing so out of anti-Semitism is simply Oberman’s own construction. In fact there are many reasons somebody might dislike a particular celebrity that have nothing whatsoever to do with their race or religion. In the case of Oberman and Riley, one reason might be the way they freely make false accusations of anti-Semitism towards anyone on the left. As when one of the two called the Durham miners’ band at their annual gala the other year ‘Nazis’ because they were trade unionists, who ended their gala, as they’d always done, by playing Hava Nagila.
Oberman has form when it comes to playing the victim. A few years ago she claimed in another twitter spat that she was particularly vulnerable because she was ‘a jobbing actress’. Hah! I know jobbing thesps, and that is one thing that Oberman is not. Genuine jobbing actors work damned hard just to get a part in an advert or as an extra on a TV comedy or drama. Oberman is extremely fortunate in that it seems that she is never short of work. Not only has she turned up on It’s A Sin, but it wasn’t that long ago that her fizzog appeared as Pike’s mother in the remake of the three lost Dad’s Army episodes. She’s a member of the metropolitan smart set. My guess is that, despite the job being extremely precarious, it’s been a long time since Oberman had to be seriously worried about getting work.
She isn’t a victim. She’s the victimiser. And she is able to get away with the dogpile and bullying because Mrs Justice Collins Rice has ruled in Mike’s case that Rachel Riley was not responsible for her fans’ and supporters’ behaviour when they went into a similar dogpile against a schoolgirl Riley and Oberman had accused of anti-Semitism, because she supported Jeremy Corbyn. Mike has appealed against that ruling, and points out in his piece about this squalid incident that the ruling undermines the right to freedom of expression, and contradicts the intention of the Online Harms Act, which is due to come in making such dogpiles a criminal offence.
Oberman’s own willingness to throw around gratuitous accusations of anti-Semitism could also seem a mite hypocritical, considering there’s a hint of racism around two of her own tweets. One of these was a reply to a tweet by Liz Hurley expressing her delight at Ping Pong talking. Oberman responded by asking if Ping Pong was the Thai help. No, it was her parrot. And joking about east Asians having names like it has had serious consequences for others in the political sphere. Remember the local UKIP activist who managed to torpedo her political career in a Beeb documentary by referring to another Kipper of east Asian heritage as a ‘Ting Tong’.
The second is a tasteless reply she made to David Quantick. He’d tweeted that ‘we are all pretend Muslims now. Except the real Muslims’. To this Oberman gave the classy response ‘I’ll take your clitoris off for that comment.’ Female Genital Mutilation is a very serious issue, and while Oberman obviously felt it was a suitable subject for a joke, I know other women who very much don’t. It seems to me that, if a man had made this comment to a woman, even as a jest, she’d still be entirely justified in considering it misogynistic. As it is, in my opinion, it’s islamophobic. The practise isn’t confined to Islam, but is found in a number of cultures across the world and I was told by my lecturer when I took Islam as part of my minor in Religious Studies over thirty years ago that female circumcision was something that had entered Islam from pre-Islamic cultures as the religion had expanded.
Mike is appealing against the profoundly mistaken ruling of Mrs Justice Collins, and welcomes all donations to crowdfunding campaign to defend himself. Believe me, he really appreciates all the support people have given him.
As for Oberman, it seems to me that she is just a rich, privileged bully. And the fact that people, who initially joined in the dogpile against Caroline then withdrew, deleted their tweets and apologised, shows that some people at least are starting to share that opinion. She should be careful. If she carries on like this, she’ll start losing even more supporters.
Who knows – they might also join the ranks of people, who can’t stand this ‘jobbing actress’ on the box.
The big news today is that the charlatan passing himself off as prime minister has personally come down with Covid-19. He showed mild symptoms of the virus, including a temperature, was tested for it, and the results were positive. He is therefore self-isolating in some corner of No. 10. Nevertheless, he was still keen to show that he was, in the words of one BBC news presenter this morning, ‘Tiggerish’. He was not incapacitated, and would carry on the business of government through teleconferencing and other methods. And if he does become too ill to govern, then the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, will take over. Lord preserve us!
Boris, as the Prime Minister, was in an especially exposed position because his duties mean that he has to meet many different people every day. Just like Prince Charles has, who has also contracted the disease. Fortunately, Boris has come down with it several weeks after he met her Maj, so she doesn’t have it. But it’s partly BoJob’s own fault that he’s got it. Mike today put up an article reporting and commenting on the fact that Boris was warned not to shake hands. But he carried on regardless, even boasting that he was. He would be all right, you see: all you needed to do was wash your hands, that was the important thing. Er, no. That’s why the health authorities have been telling everyone to stand 2 metres away from each other. Hand washing’s important, but on its own it won’t stop anyone getting the virus. As BoJob has just found out.
But this shows very clearly how seriously Boris and the Tories, or at least his circle, took the virus: not very. Mike quotes the New York Times, which comments on the woeful leadership our comedy prime minister has shown in this crisis. He’s been cheerful when he should have been grave, and presented a muddled message when clarity was needed. It’s a poor performance from someone who was selected because of their communication skills.
I think part of the problem comes from Boris’ own attitude to his briefs. George Galloway remarked during an interview that he’s know Boris for 20 years, and he doesn’t read the information given him. It’s why his performance as Foreign Secretary was such an embarrassing disaster. He went to Moscow to soothe relations with Putin, only to make matters worse with remarks about the Russian autocrat when he returned. And then there was that embarrassing episode when he visited Thailand, and the British ambassador had to ask him to be quiet when he was being shown round the country’s holiest temple. He started to recite Kipling’s ‘Road to Mandalay’, and couldn’t understand why that may not have been appropriate.
But there’s more than an element of willful ignorance in his attitude. Medical experts have said that he should have imposed the lockdown seven weeks ago. Boris didn’t, because he accepted Cummings’ bonkers, malign idea that all that was needed was herd immunity. The disease should be allowed to spread through the general population. No lockdown should be imposed, as that would damage the economy. This took priority over people’s health, and if some old people died it was just too bad. This policy is nonsense, the kind of Bad Science Ben Goldacre attacked in his book of that title. But even after Boris took the decision to close some businesses, pubs, clubs and other social gatherings were allowed to continue. Many Tories said that they were still going out for their pint, despite the government advising them – but not actually forbidding them – not to. Those still heading down the boozer included Boris’ own father, Stanley. The pubs and other establishments were only shut down, apparently, because Macron told Boris that if he didn’t, he’d close the French border. And that would seriously harm the economy.
And this lunatic attitude is still fervently embraced by some parts of the Tory establishment. This afternoon the Sage of Crewe put up a piece about another bonkers article in the increasingly desperate and bizarre Torygraph by a hack called Sherelle Jacobs. Jacobs has decided that Cummings was entirely correct, and BoJob has been panicked into adopting the present strategy by Imperial College research. She claims that there is ‘no consensus’ on how to handle the virus, but, as Zelo Street points out, she cites no sources for that view. And she also rants about how the strategy is also due to ‘liberal managerialism’ and ‘global elites’. She’s spouting dangerous nonsense, but she was supported in her delusion by Toby Young. Young declared that Boris was spooked by ICL’s modelling, but we don’t know how reliable that is, and that it’s beginning to look as if ICL exaggerated the risks of not adopting hard suppression measures. Which is more nonsense for which Tobes provides absolutely no data to back it up.
I’ve said in several previous blogs, as have many others, like Buddyhell and Vox Political, that Boris’ attitude is rooted in the Tories’ own eugenicist views. They regard the poor and disabled as ‘useless eaters’, who should be allowed to die so that the fit and the able, and most of all, the rich, should be allowed to prosper. Boris was content to tell the nation that many of their loved ones would die before the time, but wasn’t going to do anything about it, because their lives simply weren’t important. He and the others in his circle were fit and, as the rich and privileged, biologically superior according to their Social Darwinist views. Only the biologically inferior would catch it, whose lives don’t count and are an encumbrance to the right of the rich to do what they want and pay as little tax as possible. Now Boris has shown how irresponsible and stupid that attitude is by coming down with it himself. Positive thinking and a clean pair of mitts are important, but they won’t save you on your alone.
But the Torygraph’s refusal to accept that a lockdown is necessary is part of the Tories’ wider refusal to believe experts. The Heil and other right wing papers have published claptrap telling the world that global warming is a myth. Michael Gove famously declared a few years ago that people were tired of listening to experts. And I believe I recall that when one of the Tories – I think it was Iain Duncan Smith – was actually confronted with evidence showing his policies wouldn’t work, he had nothing to say except that he believed it.
Well, the Tories prefer belief and pernicious pseudoscience over reality. As a result, Boris has now got the disease and thousands more people are in danger of dying from it.
Mike this morning has posted a piece about a Facebook argument he got into when he dared challenge Rebecca Long-Bailey’s commitment to tackling ‘transphobia’ in the Labour Party. As Mike’s article makes it very clear, he is in no way transphobic, and has trans friends. However, like many of us he has reservations about people making the decision to change their danger, when they may not need or be suited for it. Mike recounts how he has a friend, who had been considering transitioning. Mike supported them in their decision, but he also supports their decision that they didn’t want to go through with it. He is also afraid that the party’s policy of championing Trans rights would become another witch hunt, with those who oppose them smeared and expelled as transphobes regardless of whether they actually were.
Long-Bailey’s decision to attack transphobia was reported in Thursday’s I in an article by Richard Vaughan. This said that she had
sparked a row yesterday after urging members to sign up to a campaign that pledges to “fight” women’s groups deemed to be “transphobic”.
The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights also called for the expulsion of party members who hold “bigoted, transphobic views”, which it maintains includes Women’s Place UK and the LGB Alliance, which campaign for women-only spaces.
The move triggered fury among women Labour members who threatened to quit the party in protest, accusing the campaign of being a “misogynistic abuse” of women.
The report goes on to say that
The Labour Campaign for Trans Rights drew up a list of 12 pledges, the first of which demanded that the “transliberation must be an objective of the Labour Party” and called for changes to the Gender Recognition Act to “improve transgender rights.”
The group was backed by Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a supporter of Ms Long-Bailey for leader, who claimed yesterday that “sex is not binary – one or the other”. Women’s Place UK criticised the campaign group and denied that it was “transphobic”.
In a statement, it said, “We call on the Labour Party to demonstrate its opposition to this misogynistic abuse of women. Defend us or expel us’.
Long-Bailey was also criticised by Shadow Cabinet MPs, who felt that this was an issue that was only important to the metropolitan elites, and detracted from the party’s true aim of winning back its traditional heartlands in the north and midlands.
Now let’s start off by making a fundamental point here:
I am not attacking transpeople as a whole. I am only attacking the radical transgender movement.
These people are very dangerous, and there are many transmen and -women who also oppose them. For an example, please see the ‘Rose of Dawn’ channel on YouTube. The Labour party should stand for equality and inclusion, which means fighting prejudice against race, creed or sexuality. But the radical transgender activists go much further than this and are extremely dangerous because of it. At the moment, as I understand it, to be properly considered transgender a person must have a medical diagnosis that they do indeed feel that they are trapped in the wrong body. The radicals wish to change that, so that it includes people, who simply self-identify as a different gender, or wish to change their gender, rather than those who medically qualify as transgender. Transpeople like Rose of Dawn are against this, partly because they feel that it undermines the immense efforts people like herself have made to transition and properly fit in as members of the opposite sex.
And the transition can cause major health problems. Aside from the radical surgery to the genitals, the body remains biochemically the same. This means that the hormones given to transpeople as part of their transition will affect them as if they were still members of the gender they were born into. It can cause problems like heart disease. Also, many people making the transition later come to regret it, wishing they had remained the gender of their birth or that they could change back. Some, tragically, commit suicide.
And radical transgender activism becomes extremely dangerous when it is foisted on children, and kids with only hazy notions of what gender is, or being a boy or girl means, are asked to question their sexual identity.
The radical transactivists also seem to have a vicious hatred of natural biological, cis-women. I understand that they abuse and sneer at ordinary women with terms like ‘cervix-havers’ and ‘menstruators’. From this it seems to me very much that the accusations of misogyny are correct.
And the fears for the safety of women and girls if female-only spaces are opened up to transpeople are not unfounded. Over the other side of the Pond, right-wing media and internet commentators have extensively discussed the bizarre and extremely threatening behaviour of Jessica Yaniv. Yaniv is a transwoman, who still retains her male genitals. From what I have seen about her, she is extremely aggressive, litigious and bullying. She has threatened her opponents, including journalists, with tasers. These weapons are forbidden to civilians under Canadian law. She became notorious a few years ago when she approached a series of beauty salons, asking them to wax her private parts. They refused, as she was biologically male. She then sued them, or threatened to sue them, as transphobic. Several closed as a result, but one fought back and successfully defended themselves. She has also attempted to bully the medical profession. If I remember correctly, she approached a gynaecologist about some issue with her male genitals. They refused to treat her, because they’re gynaecologists, and so only deal with female biology. This did not satisfy Yaniv, who insisted that she was female despite her biology, and so demanded that the gynaecologist treat her. I think more threats of litigation followed. Yaniv also has a weird fascination with menstruation, publishing frequent posts about how she is having a period, even though this is impossible with her male biology. But what makes her really dangerous is that she has posted very inappropriate messages to underage girls on social media. There’s a recording out of there of an obviously excited Yaniv drooling to an early teenage girl about how she wants to see her breasts. It’s extremely creepy and disturbing.
I realise that Yaniv is an extreme case, and hopefully an isolated one. But given her behaviour, especially to underage girls, you can understand why some women’s groups do not want people like her entering women’s spaces, especially those reserved for vulnerable women, like women’s refuges.
Unfortunately so far the only people tackling and criticising the transgender extremists are the right. People like Sargon of Gasbag, sorry, Akkad, Carl Benjamin, the man who broke UKIP. Benjamin holds some genuinely vile views on women and race, but on this issue, he is actually right. In the video below he talks to the anti-trans activist, Posy Parker. Parker started out on the left as a feminist, but no longer considers herself such, although she clearly is a women’s rights activist, because she was pushed out due to her refusal to buckle under to the gender radicals. She has therefore ended up in the Tories.
In the video, she and Sargon talk about the above subjects, including gay friends, who were considering transitioning before they talked them out of it, and the friends realised that they weren’t transgender, just very effeminate. The also discuss in detail what the operations involve, which some delicate viewers may find difficult viewing. Parker, like Sargon, is extremely controversial and has been banned by various media sites because of complaints of transphobia. One of these bans was incurred because she criticised a leading children’s trans-activist, who had taken her son to Thailand to have a sex-change operation for his 16th birthday. Instead of politely referring to the operation as a transition, Parker called it castration, and she and Sargon are agreed that pushing children towards gender realignment surgery is barbarous. Please use your own judgement viewing this material, as not everything Parker says may be correct.
However, I believe that in general, science and reason are behind Parker, Rose of Dawn and the other critics of the gender radicals. All I’ve heard from the other side of the argument, is outrage and demands that they should be treated the same as cis-people because of their personal experience.
In the normal run of things, I have absolutely no objection to that.
But I do have problems with the trans extremists and their dangerous demands for radical inclusion and expansion of who is considered transgender without regard for the mental and physical harm they may cause.
Here’s another video in which the right-wing American activist, Benjamin A. Boyce, talks to endocrinologist William Malone about the real physical complications of hormone treatment and the immorality of the treatment of transgender children, which in America currently leads to them transitioning when they become adults when there may be no need.
And here’s Rose of Dawn on the difference between transsexuals like herself, and the gender radicals which she opposes.
I definitely do not share these people’s Conservative political views. But in this issue I believe them to be fundamentally correct, both scientifically and morally, and Rebecca Long-Bailey and the radical trans-activists in Labour profoundly and dangerously wrong.
This should not be a party political issue. The safety of the vulnerable, and particularly women and children, should be a concern for all of us, whether politically left or right. And those on the Left have as much, if not better reasons for rejecting the claims and ideological propaganda of the gender radicals as those on the political right.
Boris Johnson and his supporters preparing for government.
Mike put up a post yesterday reporting some of the recorded view of Boris Johnson on the leaders of various EU countries. In this case, they were Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emanuel Macron and the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar. And as you would expect, they aren’t flattering.
Johnson apparently has raised and pondered the question whether Merkel was a member of the Stasi. Well, she does come from the former East Germany. However, I think she’s a Lutheran Christian, in which case the answer is, no, almost certainly not. Christians and other people of faith in the former Soviet bloc were harshly persecuted. It wasn’t illegal to hold services, but if you actually taught the doctrines of your religion in the former Soviet Union, you would be arrested. If you held a religious service in your home, not only would the secret police arrest you and everyone else there, but they’d also demolish your house if you were lucky enough to have a private residence. Some determined Protestants in the former DDR used to worship in the Anglican Church attached to the British embassy. See one of the chapters in the book, Why I am an Anglican, which contains testimony from a number of leading public figures, including Ian Hislop. Though I don’t blame you if his inclusion puts you off. Given the immense suspicion Merkel would have been under if she had been a practising Christian, I doubt very much she was a member of the Stasi.
But this is just a simple nationalistic jibe at her just ’cause she’s German and he doesn’t like her. She comes from the from East Germany, and so, to Boris, that means that she has to me some kind of totalitarian monster. However, as she’s a member of the Christian Democrats, the German equivalent of the Conservatives, he can hardly accuse her of being Commie. Still, I suppose we should be glad that he didn’t fall back on the old sneers and jokes that as she’s German, she must be a Nazi. I really wouldn’t put it past some of the Eurosceptics in the Tory party and peeps in UKIP and the Brexit party to make jokes about the German leaders all being Nazis, all while goose stepping about party headquarters with their fingers under their lips and their hands up in the air in a mock Nazi salute, guffawing and making comments like ‘Don’t mention the war!’ after that episode of Fawlty Towers.
Going on to the French president, BoJo called him a ‘jumped-up Napoleon’. Which surprised me, as I didn’t think Macron was a general in the French army or that he wanted to invade the rest of Europe. He’s a determined supporter of the EU, and as the Eurosceptic brigade are convinced the EU is descended from the plans of Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler to create a united Europe, all under their leadership, of course, it’s probably inevitable that Boris would compare him to the French emperor. Especially as the EU was mooting plans for a common European army. I thought on the other hand, that rather than being a megalomaniac military dictator, Macron was simply a bog-standard Neoliberal desperately trying to promote its policies of unfettered free enterprise and austerity, even though it was wrecking his country’s economy and society.
Johnson also seems to have found Varadkar’s surname difficult to get his head around, leading to another nationalist sneer. He’s reported to have asked why the Taoiseach wasn’t called Murphy like the rest of his countrymen. We’re heading dangerously close to the really offensive racist stereotypes here. He didn’t say it, but it’s close to referring to the Irish as ‘Pads’ and ‘Micks’. The reason why Varadkar has this as his surname is because his antecedents were Indian. It’s a reflection of the growing multiculturalism of modern Irish society. Which Johnson obviously can’t quite get his head around. But perhaps we should be grateful he only made a xenophobic sneer about the Irish, and didn’t say something really racist about Varadkar himself because of his Indian heritage.
The article Mike cites for this states that Johnson is planning a European tour, including Paris, Berlin and Dublin, if he wins the Tory leadership. The snippet Mike includes on his blog says that Johnson might have a few bumps ahead of him. The other EU leaders don’t trust him because of his long history of lying and frequent comparisons of the EU to Nazi Germany. And they don’t like his British exceptionalism, which is demonstrated in the above sneering remarks.
Absolutely not. But then, what can you expect from the man, who, when he was head of the Foreign Office, described the French as ‘turds’? Actually, I’m surprised Johnson, who tries so hard to project an image of himself as someone from the Tory past, didn’t use the 17th-19th century racist term for them, Nic Crapaud, from the French word for ‘frog’, crapaud. I can’t speak French, but I think the word’s pronounced ‘crapo’, which is how I feel about him and all the other Tory candidates.
Johnson was a disaster at the Foreign Office, who seemed determined to make tensions with the Russians even worse than actually soothe them. And in Thailand he opened his mouth and started reciting Kipling’s ‘Road to Mandalay’ in the country’s holiest Buddhist temple. What’s worse, he really didn’t know how that could possibly be offensive to his hosts. He had to be told it was inappropriate by the ambassador.
If Boris gets in, he’s likely to alienate Britain even further from the other European nations as well as other countries around the world. And we’re going to need them as trading partners after we leave the EU. And it’s especially dangerous regarding Northern Ireland. There have already been terrorist outrages in the Six Counties because of the collapse of the power-sharing agreement at Stormont and uncertainty over the border with Eire. The very last thing the people of Ulster and the rest of Britain need is Boris fanning the flames of Nationalist resentment over there even further with racist stereotypes and sneers.
Ah, but I forgot! He’s not bothered about them, because he’s a big fan of Trump. As is Nigel Farage. They believe Trump will give us a good trade deal. But that must include the NHS – Trump has said that nothing must be off the table.
And despite the hollow assurance by the Tories that they’re not going to give it to him, this is precisely what Johnson, Farage and the rest of the Tories and Brexit party want to do.
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