MID WEEK OPEN THREAD…

So President Trump talks about cutting a really good trade deal with the UK ANNNNND….the BBC wants to talk about chlorinated Chickens. Yup, that bad.  So BMW announce a major investment in Mini plant in Oxford and the BBC wheels along an academic hack to tell us that the batteries for said vehicle will be made in Germany! No agenda there folks, no way! Anywhere this is where you detail the BIAS!

No man is an island….but may be a ‘Titanic’

Image result for matthew parris

 

 

Whatever happened to the über wet Matthew Parris?  Brexit seems to have driven him to the brink but he’s back, disinterred like Salvadore Dali and he’s in fighting fettle as he sees Brexit on the ropes, his mind may have gone but like Dali’s famed moustache Parris’ arsehole is in perfect working order pumping out the same old bile that it always did as he sees HMS ‘Transition’ sailing to the rescue in swirling muddied waters aided and abetted by the BBC collaborators.

Maybe he’s been on the weed…there has to be some explanation for his ludicrous, rambling ravings….

Image result for matthew parris

 

Why does the Spectator still employ his services?  Who knows, he’s well past his prime and his bilious outpourings turned very sour, very bitter and twisted as Brexit loomed but he has bounced back as he thinks Blair & Co will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and Brexit will be shelved….the Remain MPs will thwart the whole dastardly project…huzzah!!!

Dear Leavebugs, it’s time to admit your mistake

In a spirit of candid friendship I write this letter to die-hard Leavers, of whom a small — but vigorous — colony survives on these Spectator pages…

Dear Leavebugs, You know I am not of your number, but I understand you. I even feel for you.

As an understanding friend, therefore, though never an ally, I write to warn you that your project is in deep trouble.

I know what you really want. You just want Britain out of any entanglement that spans the English Channel. For you this is as much an emotional longing as a practical calculation — an antipathy whose roots go deep, back to the first and second world wars, to the Napoleonic wars, to England’s fear of the French Revolution; back (though some of you may disown this root) to Protestant England’s detestation of Rome.

Be honest with yourselves. Though you’re ready to assert the material benefits you say could flow from leaving Europe, you know in your heart that such calculations are secondary and speculative. They are not what drive you, but a posteriori arguments for an impulse that came, first, from your heart: an impulse that would survive the demolition of any argument of economic advantage. Admit it. For you this isn’t about money.

Shut your eyes and make a supreme effort to confess your inner motivation. What is your immediate, instinctive, unguarded answer to the question: ‘What if Brexit made us poorer?’ You know, don’t you?

You’d be disappointed, of course, and sorry. Impoverishment isn’t what you expect. But you’d still think it was right to leave. Your reasons are almost spiritual. They relate to our whole identity as a people; our nation’s soul; our place in history. They do not (you believe) sit easily on any spreadsheet of material gains or losses, but are about destiny. Perhaps only secretly you could contemplate the idea of being poorer yet prouder: of exchanging a bit of take-home pay for that greater prize: independence and national self-respect. You find haggling about GDP, chlorinated chicken and Toyota’s tariffs beneath the argument.

We have to remind ourselves there was never a majority, never will be a majority, and was certainly no majority at the European referendum last year, for impoverishing ourselves in pursuit of national self-respect.

Voters have understood we’ll take a hit. Few now believe we’ll be richer. People are coming to fear we would be poorer. You do surely know this is the way the mood is turning. You know, too, how the same mood is growing within the Lords and Commons. You may think this faintheartedness is misplaced, but you cannot think it is temporary.

And you know MPs run with the breeze. Can you still believe the ‘hard’ Brexit you favour, requiring Britain’s departure from the single market and the customs union, will ever get through this parliament, still less a new one under a new government? Your version of Brexit will either break or be broken by government.

Beware, too, Remainers bearing ‘transitional arrangements’ for the single market, customs union, and jurisdiction of the ECJ. Suspect a plot by my lot to procrastinate until you lot slip out of vogue. Deadlines for any ‘transition’ can be put back until kingdom come. Allow us to lure you into these thickets, and you lose.

You speak for millions, but unfortunately not tens of millions.  We who are not about to die, salute you.

Isn’t 17 million in the tens?  And I think there was a majority to leave the EU.  In fact I’m sure of it. Nice to see he admits we can’t trust the MPs as far as we would like to throw them and that the transition period plan is a ploy, a plot to delay Brexit until conditions change in some shape or form so that Parris and Co can move in to sell us out once again to the EU idiocracy.

Parris deludes himself if he thinks duplicitous MPs and contemptuous, arrogant, sneering Remainers like him will be left in peace if they successfully block and betray Brexit by their scheming.  Careful what you wish for Matthew for as you say yourself  ‘Civil wars are always bitter; wars within ourselves the most bitter of all.’

 

 

 

We’re all gonna die #duetobrexit

 

We are warned today that over-cooked potatoes are dangerous to our health, however what they don’t warn us about are the threats posed to our democracy by the half-baked thoughts of half-witted BBC presenters.

Ignorance is an excuse

 

 

A short while ago it was cancer #duetobrexit now the BBC is back with the lies about chlorine washed chicken from the good ol’ USA….we’re all gonna die and all the farmers will be put out of work….this has long been a favourite BBC sensationalist anti-Brexit fable.

If you want a perfect example of why many people voted for Brexit you just had to listen to the ‘impartial’ professor the BBC dragged in[08:50]  to scaremonger about ‘toxic’ Colonel Sanders and to peddle a pro-EU narrative…a more arrogant, elitist and snobbish Remainer it’d be hard to find…..did you know the real problem is  not the poisonous chicken but the culture war…it’s about the wonderful ‘Europeanisation’ of the UK…don’t your kids just love those exotic foreign pizzas?   So much better than the McDonaldisation of the UK that would surely happen if Trump was allowed to send over the armadas of ‘Liberty-Brexit’ ships packed to the gunnells with burgers, Cocoa-Cola and chicken marinaded in chlorine.

So chickens are washed with chlorine…a very, very dilute chlorine wash…the same chlorine that is in swimming pool water that your kids swim in and swallow in great quantities…the same chlorine that is in so much of our tap water...

Why is chlorine added to tap water?

Throughout history, epidemics of diseases such as cholera, dysentery, typhus, and hepatitis A killed tens of millions of people all over the world. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that scientists like John Snow and Filippo Pacini discovered that these mass-killers were waterborne diseases and measures could start to put an end to the suffering.

A major breakthrough in combating cholera and other waterborne diseases was securing water safety through disinfection. In 1897 the town of Maidstone, England was the first to have entire water supply treated with chlorine.

Nowadays, chlorine is a disinfectant used by the water industry worldwide to maintain hygienic conditions within the public water supply network of pipes. At the very low levels used in drinking water (routinely at 0.5 mg/l or less, whereas WHO sets the maximum guideline at 5mg/l) it is perfectly safe. The WHO further assures that any risks to health from chlorination by-products are extremely small in comparison with the risks associated with inadequate disinfection.

 

Is the EU ban on safety or shutting out competition?

The ban is really just one more form of EU protectionism. EU chicken-producers don’t like US chicken because it retails for around 80 per cent the price of European chicken.

The European Food Safety Agency has passed chlorinated-washed chicken for safe consumption. As well, it might, given that it is quite happy for us to drink water which has been chlorinated in order to kill off microorganisms. At the levels used by US producers, the agency concluded, you would have to eat three whole chickens every day to risk exceeding safe limits. Even among regular consumers of US-produced chicken 99 per cent of the chlorine they ingest comes from drinking water rather than food.

The European food safety regulator EFSA looked at the issue of chlorine treatment and found “chemical substances in poultry are unlikely to pose an immediate or acute health risk for consumers.”

In conclusion, the review did not identify any likely consumer risks that might arise from the use of ASC, chlorine dioxide or aqueous chlorine (including hypochlorite) when used as decontaminant washes of chicken meat. This also includes the view that there was no evidence that the use of these washes lead to the production of substances with the potential to cause cancer, particularly at the levels of use by the poultry industry. Accordingly there was no need to identify existing risk management options.

The BBC once again broadcasting complete lies, misinformation and black propaganda for its paymasters in the EU.

 

 

What’s Missing?

 

An horrific kidnapping, rape and murder….#duetobrexit or some other cause?……

The BBC version:

A man has appeared in court charged with the kidnap, rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman in London.

Mujahid Arshid, 33, is also accused of the kidnap, rape, and attempted murder of a woman in her 20s.

Vincent Tappu, 28, from Acton, west London, is charged with the kidnap of both women. The men appeared at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court.

Celine Dookhran’s body was found at an address in Coombe Lane West, in Kingston Upon Thames, on Wednesday.

The second woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had earlier been treated for stab or slash wounds at a south London hospital.

A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of Ms Dookhran’s death was a neck wound.

Police had started searching for the two women following a concerned call about their safety.

The men were remanded in custody. Mr Arshid, of no fixed address, is scheduled to appear at the Old Bailey on 26 July.

Both defendants will appear at the same court on 21 August.

 

The Mail’s version:

Mujahid Arshid, 33, appeared in court charged with the murder, rape and kidnap of Miss Dookhran. 

He is further charged with the rape, attempted murder and kidnap of the second woman. 

He appeared alongside his co-defendant, Vincent Tappu, 28, who is charged with the kidnap of both women. 

Binita Roscoe, prosecuting, said: ‘The deceased was involved in a relationship with an Arab Muslim and the family members didn’t approve of this relationship because they are Indian Muslims.’  

Two men in balaclavas entered the property on July 19, the prosecutor said. She told the court: ‘Her face and mouth were covered in duct tape. Her hands were tied with cable ties and her feet were tied with rope. 

‘She believes a sock was placed in her mouth. She had heard the deceased who was in the shower screaming.’ 

The surviving victim said a sock was forced into her mouth and the kidnappers used a Taser to subdue both her and Ms Dookhan before they were rolled in dustsheets and bundled into a vehicle, said Ms Roscoe. 

Bearded Arshid wore a grey prison-issue tracksuit, while his co-defendant wore a black suit and white shirt, with short black hair and a beard. 

 

 

 

Girls allowance

 

Oh dear, the BBC has been caught out in a sexist pay scam and it doesn’t like it one bit.  Already a rapid counter move is under way, Operation Muddy Water, intended to downplay, distract and disrupt criticism and unwanted attention.  The BBC really, really wants to talk about the gender pay gap….in other companies….and then to proclaim that well, yes, the BBC was at minor fault, but it is putting that right, and anyway just look at all these other companies…the BBC is so much better than them.  Shamefully Jane Garvey on Woman’s Hour betrayed the Sistas by suggesting that the BBC may be a ‘beacon of good practice’ in comparison to these others as she spoke to someone who was quite clearly not in favour of publishing the pay figures and who thought the move was politically motivated…wonder why the BBC got her on.

Unfortunately there was an expert in gender pay issues on Wake Up To Money early doors who said that such issues were widespread but not as bad as at the BBC…so giving the lie to the rest of the day’s narrative of a BBC in the wrong but that is better than the rest.

The Guilty Men

 

 

Always worth a reminder of what the BBC, Guardian et al do behind our backs as Brexit moves up a gear:

 

George Orwell

The general weakening of the whole British morale that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was the work mostly of the left-wing intelligentsia.

The mentality of the left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who live in a world of ideas and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and have little contact with physical reality. The really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia is their severance from the common culture of the country.

In the general patriotism of the country they form a little island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. …it is their duty to snigger at every English institution.

All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British…if the fascist nations judged we were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible.

It is clear that the special position of intellectuals in society as purely negative creatures came about because society could not use them, they were useless to a productive nation, and they had not got it in them to see that devotion to one’s country implies ‘for better, for worse’.

A modern nation cannot afford to have a separation of intelligence and patriotism, they will have to come together because it is a fact that we are fighting a war, and a very peculiar kind of war that may make this possible.

All left-wing parties in the highly industrialised countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have international aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free, but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue. A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.

Up the People….if they vote for Brexit or Trump

 

 

‘Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don’t cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights .’

 

The BBC’s man of the people

The journalist Paul Mason is dead chuffed by a nice review of his book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, a study of the Occupy movements, by the American historian Paul Le Blanc.

“This challenging ‘must-read’ volume is a journalistic account with a difference, informed as it is by radical and revolutionary social theory (most obviously, through not exclusively, Karl Marx),” writes Le Blanc.

 

Paul Mason has only ever said one thing that has the ring of truth to it…

Dictatorships rely not just on the suppression of news but on the suppression of narratives and truth. More or less everything you need to know to make sense of the world is available as freely downloadable content on the internet: and it’s not pre-digested for you by your teachers, parents, priests, imams.

He might of course have added to the list of information suppressors the BBC….but why would he when having escaped the hierarchical confines of their oppressive, conformist neo-liberal clutches he like the prodigal son returns home to mum and dad for the bread and butter, the handouts, knowing that rebellion is all very well but it doesn’t fill your belly nor pay the pension….as the Guardian finds out as it puts the begging bowl out as Capitalism is put to the sword…

Since you’re here …

… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

 

So Mason is back at the BBC preaching anarchistic rebellion on the State Broadcaster funded by tax-with-menaces…is he fighting the System from within?..Or topping up his pension?….LOL….

Performance Live: Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere

Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is about different kinds of popular protest. Written and performed by Paul Mason, former economics editor of Channel 4 News and BBC’s Newsnight, the play is a personal account of how we got from the optimism of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement to the election of Donald Trump. Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere is directed by David Lan and performed by Paul Mason, Khalid Abdalla, Sirine Saba and Lara Sawalha.

Kirsty Wark introduced the programme by saying that Art holds up a mirror to the world…in this case we get a mirror as cracked as Paul Mason’s ideas which are the usual childish revolutionary ones of everyone must have prizes in essence.  The basic point of the play is that the people must rise up, take power and live in a society without a hierarchy…no-one is in charge…we all make the decisions but no-one decides.  That’ll work.

What we get is drama and sensation over content and substance, ‘art’ instead of truth, performance and presentation over genuine understanding.  It was a mess masquerading as a narrative, the showy, dramatic flourishes actually distracting from the story and of course is highly stylised and censored…only one line of opinion was allowed…hmmm…so hierarchical.

What was the opinon?  Capitalism is dead, neo-liberalism is dead, hierachy is dead, the People must not rely on government to help them…they must save themselves.

Even his pro-Corbyn side-kick Seumas Milne acknowledges the flaw in thinking like Mason’s.…’A Financial Times-Harris poll conducted across the advanced capitalist world this month found large majorities believe the financial crisis has been caused by “abuses of capitalism”, rather than the “failure of capitalism itself”‘

The people don’t want to govern themselves directly hands-on, they don’t want to run things personally, they want government to do that for them but to do it in a way that represents their wishes….hence we get Brexit which Mason actually supports in theory whilst at the same time hating Trump.

Mason on Brexit…

The leftwing case for Brexit is strategic and clear. The EU is not – and cannot become – a democracy. Instead, it provides the most hospitable ecosystem in the developed world for rentier monopoly corporations, tax-dodging elites and organised crime. It has an executive so powerful it could crush the leftwing government of Greece; a legislature so weak that it cannot effectively determine laws or control its own civil service. A judiciary that, in the Laval and Viking judgments, subordinated workers’ right to strike to an employer’s right do business freely.

Its central bank is committed, by treaty, to favour deflation and stagnation over growth. State aid to stricken industries is prohibited. The austerity we deride in Britain as a political choice is, in fact, written into the EU treaty as a non-negotiable obligation. So are the economic principles of the Thatcher era. A Corbyn-led Labour government would have to implement its manifesto in defiance of EU law.  And the situation is getting worse. 

[But] In Britain I can replace the government, whereas in the EU, I cannot.

That’s the principled leftwing case for Brexit.

Now here’s the practical reason to ignore it. In two words: Boris Johnson. The conservative right could have conducted the leave campaign on the issues of democracy, rule of law and UK sovereignty, leaving the economics to the outcome of a subsequent election. Instead, Johnson and the Tory right are seeking a mandate via the referendum for a return to full-blown Thatcherism: less employment regulation, lower wages, fewer constraints on business. If Britain votes Brexit, then Johnson and Gove stand ready to seize control of the Tory party and turn Britain into a neoliberal fantasy island.

 

And of course hierarchies are so yesterday that’s why Mason’s play was randomly put together using comment and performance from anyone who wanted to contribute…or was it?

Production Company The Young Vic
Production Company Totally Theatre Productions
Author Paul Mason
Director Tim Van Someren
Director David Lan
Series Producer Battersea Arts Centre
Series Producer Andrew Fettis
Executive Producer Emma Cahusac
Executive Producer Martin Dance
Producer Ben Cooper
Producer Gavin Kalin
Production Manager Kate Sinden
Editor Perry Bellisario

 

Canary Canards

 

Where is the BBC’s fake news rapid rebuttal service?

The BBC’s new favourite radical, Corbyn supporting online rag [which according to the BBC is set to counter the right-wing Red Top attack dogs…like the Mirror?], The Canary, has been pumping out fake news…..

Jeremy Hunt should be ashamed of this despicable attack on NHS staff

Jeremy Hunt should be ashamed of this despicable attack on NHS staff

On Friday 14 July, a court handed down a judgement summing up the state of our NHS. It ruled that NHS staff owed a private company £39,000. All because of austerity, and because Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt holds NHS workers in such contempt that he refuses to listen to their pleas for help.

Outrageous treatment

French private parking firm Indigo brought the case against the NHS workers, saying more than 70 staff at the University Hospital of Wales (UHW) had unpaid parking tickets. Cardiff and Vale University Health Board made the arrangements with Indigo in April 2016 which made parking fines legally enforceable.

Trouble is Labour are in charge of the Welsh NHS as Hunt points out…

 

 

The Canary was forced to update its nonsense…

This article was updated ……at 5:53pm to elaborate on the Welsh government’s role in the second paragraph.