Davos and PMQs, 21st January 2025

To adapt the My Fair Lady song, “Why can’t a Yankee be more like a Brit?” It was fun watching Andrew Neil sizzling ever hotter on X as President Trump spoke at Davos - “If the folks at Davos had a spine they’d be walking out en masse now. Leaving him to an empty room.” Neil seems to prefer the English habit of cautious precision, apology and understatement; I once unintentionally misled a Californian when I told him Colman’s mustard was “fairly warm” and watched him impressed as he slathered it on his hot dog.

Richard North takes a different angle: “Most of [Trump’s] speeches are self-aggrandising waffle with multiple factual inaccuracies. You have to listen to the song and not the lyrics.”

North is correct. The WEF, EU and Starmer’s Ingsoc are still playing with their citizen-paralysing legal architecture while China is bulldozing its way around the world. By contrast Trump is combative - who will ever forget his reaction to being nearly killed in Pennsylvania?

When Montgomery first met Churchill in 1940 and Winston overmatched him the General later said he’d thought “we’ve got our man.” Churchill didn’t get everything right either - Alan Brooke did great service in moderating most of the PM’s ideas; but what counted, and what still counts, was the fighting spirit and sense of direction.

But how Trump ruffles feathers! Suddenly Starmer has discovered “values and principles” in relation to Greenland and told the Commons he “will not yield.” To clarify, on Monday he said “any decision about the future status of Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone.”

That prompts us to ask, “which of those two?” For the Danes have not made themselves loved among the Inuit, on whom the Copenhaven government inflicted forced contraception decades ago, apologising only last August.

Naturally some people say, if the people of Greenland must make their own decision about national sovereignty, shouldn’t we also respect the result of the Brexit referendum? (And as Badenoch said, what about the Chagossians?) But don’t expect Starmer to have consistent principles on that, any more than with free speech, trial by jury and liberty generally.

Turning to national defence, where Sir Keir boasts of boosting funding, we struggle to square that with giving the Chinese the go-ahead on building a fortress-like embassy in central London, and yielding (to use his new favourite word) the strategically important Chagos islands to China-aligned Mauritius. On Monday the PM shared custard cream biscuits with Samaritans representatives; perhaps he should offer Cowardy Custard Creams to the FCO and intelligence services?

This week’s PMQs was rowdy. The Speaker issued multiple warnings to his unruly class but shadow Transport Secretary Richard Holden persisted and was ordered out. Holden has been an MP since 2019 so ignorance could not be an excuse; did he want to bunk off for a fag behind the bike sheds?

He’s not the only one to transgress protocol. Starmer once again introduced the session with a party political broadcast and when the Greens’ Dr Chowns asked about agricultural water pollution she was treated to an aggressive interrrogation of Zack Polanski’s policy toward NATO. Speaker Hoyle brought him up short - “We do not ask the Opposition questions” - but after eighteen months in power surely the PM should know how not to be a hooligan.

The first query was a softball about the new Warm Homes plan. Even if the figures are right the £15 billion investment might take over a decade to pay for itself but that doesn’t solve the problem that our energy prices are four times higher than in the US and consequently our industry is withering. Does the unyielding PM have the spine to cancel Net Zero and redeploy Miliband the Mad?

It’s odd how Starmer is willing to pay for palliative measures rather than seek fundamental cures when it comes to energy, immigration and wealth production. Instead his radicalism comes out in cowing and de-democratising the people.

On the other hand Trump is resented for his willingness to use America’s might in order to tackle systemic matters. Would-be statesman Ed Davey said today that the Don is a “crime boss”; Labour’s Steve Witherden called him a thug and bully. One supposes they prefer the bureaucratic gradualism of their European political colleagues, the ones who so dragged their feet when Ethiopia was starving and needed Bob Geldof’s popular support to galvanise them into action.

It’s not just that Trump is an old man in a hurry. Like his predecessors he is under the gun, having only two years (if that) to make his mark before the mid-term elections (all members of Congress and a third of the Senate) that could change the balance of power and hamstring his efforts to restore the Republic and cleanse its institutions of subversive zealots (both Left and Right.) He is a flawed and fallible man but we need to rise above soap opera judgmentalism to consider the great challenges in this newly multi-polar world.

FRIDAY & BURNS NIGHT MUSIC, by JD

This week something different (again!) The music comes from Kenneth McKellar, known as ‘the Scottish tenor’ and because Sunday night will be Burns night I’m sort of combining the two by including a couple of Burns songs.

===============================================

Kenneth McKellar (23 June 1927 – 9 April 2010)

McKellar studied forestry at the University of Aberdeen and after graduating he worked for the Scottish Forestry Commission. He later trained at the Royal College of Music as an opera singer. He did not enjoy his time with the Carl Rosa Opera Company and left them to pursue a career singing traditional Scottish songs and other works.

In 1965, the BBC selected McKellar to represent the UK in the Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg. He sang five titles from which viewers selected “A Man Without Love” as the 1966 entry. According to the author and historian John Kennedy O’Connor’s The Eurovision Song Contest – The Official History, the Scottish tenor – who had changed into a kilt at the last moment – drew gasps from the audience when he appeared on stage.

The Irish jury gave the UK song top marks, one of only two occasions the Irish have done so in Eurovision history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_McKellar_(singer)
https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/hall-of-fame/kenneth-mckellar/

The Midges

Ae Fond Kiss

MY LOVE IS LIKE A RED, RED ROSE - Kenneth McKellar

Flower of Scotland

YE BANKS AND BRAES KENNETH MCKELLAR

Skye Boat Song

Comedy Club: PMQs 14th January 2025

Too much of our political judgment is simply visceral. If Starmer were a teacher the class would begin playing him up out of instinct, sensing him to be “different.” But there is little point in complaining about his personality. A battering-ram does not need character. What counts is who is using him and for what.

Granted, it would be easier for his Party if he were a slicker like Blair. Failing that he has a team who write jokes and insults for him as he trudges through the inconvenience of Prime Minister’s Questions.

Who is on that team? Judging by the material they feed him they are half-educated and louche. Here is Sir Keir on the Tories’ frequent management changes:

“They had more positions in 14 years than the Kama Sutra. No wonder they are knackered; they left the country screwed.”

That is bar-room talk, not Commons decorum. Soon after he turns to sneering at

“…the Ikea shadow Cabinet. The trouble is that nobody wants to buy it, it is mainly constructed of old dead wood, and every time you lose a nut it defects to Reform.”

Yuk, yuk, yuk. How we nearly laughed.

Not as good as the old one about Cecil Parkinson impregnating his mistress: “Why are the Tories like MFI? One screw in the wrong place and the whole cabinet falls apart.” But again, that wasn’t said in the Debating Chamber.

How much further will the PM’s ground crew take it? Will they start inserting jokes alluding to drug-taking, which I assume is as rife in Spadland as in advertising and PR? If they really want to get edgy they can come up with something about colostomy bags (if you know, you know.) It could be a sell-out performance…

… like Chagos, which Trump has finally criticised as “an act of total weakness.” Can the country recover from the structural damage inflicted by this administration?

The evisceration of PMQs continues. Yet again Sir Keir padded-out his introduction with remarks on Iran, deploring brutality to protestors there (but not to those in London) and Labour’s development plans for the North of England. Another time-filler was thanking before answering - Starmer did it eleven times to questioners and once to an NHS hospital.

In the main exchange with Badenoch his gibe about defections to Reform was given further point the next day when Robert Jenrick crossed over - officially he was sacked though one rumour has it he left his draft resignation lying around to bounce Kemi into action. I heard Jenrick’s name muttered as a possible Conservative leader in a side meeting at the Birmingham conference several years ago; perhaps his moment passed when Badenoch’s Parliamentary performances began to strengthen.

Nevertheless his subsequent speech at Reform’s presser confirmed what we see weekly at Westminster: the two main parties have ruined us. If Kemi’s October conference comment is right, that Labour acting on its principles must fail, then the question is why the Conservatives copied them for so long.

A blue reset (rinse?) might be possible, but only if the “broken Britain” failure is frankly addressed and according to Jenrick’s account of a recent shadow Cabinet meeting a few of them

“… had a third view. It is broken but we can’t say so because the Conservative Party broke it.”

If they don’t say so then Labour will, and does it regularly.

Worse still, reform with a lower case “r” may now be unachievable. The several crises that beset us may not be resolved by a little tax-cutting here and a little benefit-pruning there. Drastic action is needed, on a scale that the general public may not feel able to support and that certain elements may oppose vigorously, even violently. Look at Minnesota and at Democrats like Bernie Sanders fanning the flames.

In the meantime we must endure Labour acting on its principles, the first being to maximise its chances of re-election. In this session Badenoch called for the sacking of the West Midlands’ Chief Constable but in the event the easy way was taken instead: his early retirement. Politics is personalised and this scapegoating is useful to distract attention from how the decision to exclude Jewish fans from the Villa match was made, and what that reveals about influencers within the safety committee as well as the organisers of mob intimidation outside the ground itself. No Grunwick grit here and weakness invites more and worse.

The Opposition leader also had fun twitting Starmer with his alleged U-turns, missing what is really going on: not a turning around but a stepping back to jump higher. Inheritance tax on farmers has not been abolished entirely, nor has digital ID or the crushing business rates on the hospitality industry. The ground has been broken.

The Seventies dreamers spoke of “smashing the system” and we are getting to the point of having a smash but possibly no working system after that.

There is a deal of hope riding on Farage’s creation but he has steep hurdles to jump. If he is to be ready by 2029 he has to attract experienced individuals so that he does not take over with ignorant ingenues like Labour did. But can he control them? And can he control himself - is he able to run a Cabinet without firing dissidents? Farage has spent decades as a political heckler; will he be able to stand in the spotlight and deliver? Does he have it in him?

Do we have it in us?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Julio Iglesias, by JD

This week in the videos we are among hot blooded latin ladies and the dulcet tones of Julio Iglesias.

Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva is a Spanish singer and songwriter. Iglesias is recognized as the most commercially successful Spanish singer in the world and one of the top record sellers in music history, having sold more than 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julio-Iglesias

On a personal note, I was aware of Iglesias; difficult to avoid really. His devoted fans call him Agosto Catedrales i.e. one step up from July Churches.

And then I was persuaded, very reluctantly, to see him in concert at The Bernabeu, Real Madrid’s stadium. And I’m glad I went, he was very good. Not that I will ever buy any of his records but he is worth seeing in concert.

Julio Iglesias Canta - Videomatch

Julio Iglesias - La Gota Fría

Willie Nelson, Julio Iglesias - To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before (Official Video)

Julio Iglesias - Agua Dulce, Agua Salá (Video Oficial)

JULIO IGLESIAS- 2001--MAL ACOSTUMBRADO

Julio Iglesias - La Carretera

"The Archers" and the EU

A couple of days ago I watched a TV interview about a British radio serial called “The Archers.” It features a fictional Midlands community and began 75 years ago as an entertainment vehicle to convey useful information on farming matters, as our country needed to modernise agricultural practices.

The BBC interviewee said that the educational role was removed in 1972. OpenAI offered me a number of reasons, mainly that it had achieved its aim.

But then I realised that we were just about to join the EEC aka the Common Market which we did formally on 1st January 1973.

Imagine if farmer Dan Archer had to muse daily on the impact on his business of European legislation, grants etc. Perhaps a coastal fisheries contact could also have been telling him of the disastrous Heath government’s decision to let EU nations - especially the French - catch fish in our waters right up to the shoreline.

So, was the remit of this narrative modified simply to suit the political narrative of that time?

Law vs custom :PMQs 7th January 2026

He’s done it again. Defying the Speaker’s displeasure, Starmer indulged in yet another time-wasting preamble, starting with a crack at Reform:

“I begin by saying that I hope all colleagues had a happy Christmas. It probably feels quite a long time ago now, but not for Reform, of course, because today is the day that they celebrate Christmas in Russia.”

The fool who wrote that for him invites comparisons that are not entirely to our advantage, whether in balance of trade, governmental debt-to-GDP, assertion of national sovereignty or democratic validation of the leader. Pound shop Russophobia isn’t enough to win elections. No wonder Labour is busy disenfranchising 10 million Britons.

Sir Keir ploughed on, first with what Labour has done for the people of Reading, and then about his “coalition of the willing” in support of Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian leader is now unelected, what with a war being on. (PM: hmm…)

At last Starmer delivered the short conventional formula about ministerial meetings and let MPs get a word in edgeways.

After an initial puff from Labour’s Ruth Cadbury inviting the PM to speak about the forthoming leasehold and commonhold reform Bill, Kemi Badenoch was invited to begin the session proper.

She did not disappoint, targeting Starmer’s disregard for long-established protocols. Kemi asked why he had not made a statement to the House that day about his commitment to put British troops in Ukraine.

Chiding Labour ‘chunterers’ the Speaker concurred: “I have also requested an early statement; the House should always be informed first.”

Badenoch said:

“His comments about making a statement in due course are frankly not good enough. It shows a fundamental lack of respect for all of us here, and for the people we represent... Why is today not the earliest opportunity? The truth is that the Prime Minister does not want everybody in this House to be able to ask him questions.”

Ah, “the people we represent”! That opens a can of worms. Who listens to the people? Christmas is coming for uniparty turkeys in May; that is, wherever voting is permitted.

Sir Keir even thinks it is for him to speak for the Opposition:

“She has six questions, and she is not even asking a second question about what we did yesterday. She has the opportunity.”

Sir Lindsay quickly put him right (“That is their job.”)

Funny how a punctilious lawyer is happy to trample custom and tradition underfoot.

Starmer over-reaches in other ways. He is threatening to ban X under the pretext of child protection and not at all because it is a talking-shop for his critics. Why not go further? Iran has shut down the Internet to help maintain its authority. There must be many good central-control ideas flying about at Davos, which (like the UK) Tehran’s Strategic Affairs VP attended last year; certainly the PM feels more comfortable there than here.

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey quoted Geoffrey Robertson KC as saying President Trump’s intervention in Venezuela “is in breach of the United Nations charter.” This is an era in which the legitimacy of government and law - especially international law - are coming into question and this video by barrister Steven Barrett may help clarify our thinking.

We need less jabbing of fingers at rule books and more concentrating on realism and social cohesion; less commanding and more leading, conciliating and persuading. 

FRIDAY MUSIC: Dutch Swing College Band, by JD

The Dutch Swing College Band is a traditional Dixieland band founded on 5 May 1945 by bandleader and clarinettist/saxophonist Peter Schilperoort. Highly successful in their native home of the Netherlands, the band quickly found an international following.

The band provided the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest 1976 presented live from Den Haag.

The band continues to tour extensively, mainly in Europe and Scandinavia, and record directed by Bob Kaper, himself a member since 1967, following the former leader, Peter Schilperoort’s death on 17 November 1990. Schilperoort had led the band for more than 45 years, albeit with a five-year sabbatical from 13 September 1955, when he left to pursue an engineering career before returning to lead the band again officially on 1 January 1960.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Swing_College_Band

Dutch Swing College band 1960 At the Jazzband Ball

High Society - live performance by the Dutch Swing College Band

Dutch Swing College Band & Lindy Hop dancers - Doghouse Blues

Dutch Swing College Band - Klazz (by Menno Daams)

Big Butter and Egg Man - Dutch Swing College Band

When You’re Smiling - live performance by the Dutch Swing College Band
The Dutch Swing College Band performing ‘When You’re Smiling’ together with guest artists Leroy Jones (vocals, trumpet) and Adonis Rose (drums) during their Ministry of Jazz concert tour 2022 in The Netherlands.

The decline and fall of PMQs

A keynote of the modern British Left is arrogance.

We see this with PMQs. Blair (so busy) cut their frequency to once a week, though not the total length. Starmer (when present) maintained the length but filled them with his tangential nonsense and scorn for the Opposition.

Sir Keir has gone even further, beginning sessions with some time-wasting preamble. The Speaker was heard to fume “never again!” on 3rd December yet two weeks later the PM inserted a disgusting slur:

“I have a little festive advice to those in Reform: if mysterious men from the east appear bearing gifts, this time report it to the police.”

The reference is of course to Reform’s former leader in Wales Nathan Gill, jailed in November for taking Russian bribes; but as an MEP, not in the yet-to-be created Reform Party and six-plus years ago. However there is no obvious opportunity to riposte to such rubbish when so placed.

Presumably it was scripted for Starmer by some snickering midwit. The average IQ of Labour’s front bench has been a matter of concern for some time but one wonders about the intellectual and moral decline among civil servants who resort to lazy smears as part of the nation’s formal discourse.

Reform’s representation in the House is so small despite its 4.1 million votes in the last General Election that its Party is given very little chance to submit questions or counter sinister insinuations. Nigel Farage retreated to the Visitor’s Gallery last October in protest against the shadow-banning and has done so again now, putting his queries via Times Radio instead.

Labour’s discourtesy manifests itself elsewhere. Previous administrations have broken protocol by releasing information to the press before informing Parliament, but Starmer’s government has already repeated the offence several times. Speaker Hoyle has reprimanded it twice over Budget leaks, and again in relation to last year’s Strategic Defence Review.

The rudeness extends to what one might call courtesy and service issues. On 10th December there were three post-PMQs Points of Order: Rachel Blake (Lab) complained of Chris Philp’s filming interviews in her constituency; her colleague John McDonnell said that a week had gone by and the Secretary of State for Justice had yet to reply to a letter sent on behalf of MPs re the Palestine Action prisoners’ hunger strike; Jeremy Corbyn (Ind) asked Hoyle’s assistance in getting a Minister to make a statement to the House on that issue. The Speaker said he could not control the agenda but hinted at alternative procedural strategies with which McDonnell and Corbyn would be familiar.

One senses a government getting out of hand, impatient of attempts to call it to account. When you simply know you are right and you have an overwhelming majority in the House, why bother answering malcontents, swatting such pesky flies?

Yet Starmer’s sense of entitlement rests on a crumbly foundation - two-thirds of the seats but only one-third of the ballots. To what extent can one pursue a radical agenda with so little support? The PM thinks like a lawyer yet a criminal court could not convict a defendant on the basis of four jurors giving a verdict of guilty against the opinion of the other eight.

And there are matters of such grave import that referenda might be justified - e.g. compulsory ID and the abandonment of Chagos, neither of them covered in the 2024 Manifesto. Not that a manifesto is binding in any case.

We are beginning to wonder to what extent Westminster’s rule is universally accepted as legitimate. The behaviour of the party now in power is in danger of raising that question. Its advisors may have forgotten the lessons learned from the stiff autocracy of the Stuart monarchs.

Venezuelan regime change - foreseen in 2019

Reposted from Broad Oak seven years ago:

Venezuela has suddenly become part of the news agenda, or maybe it is part of the 'fake news' agenda. It is hard to tell these days.

Unlike the majority of pundits and commentators, I have actually been to the country. For about three months in 1992 I was working in Caracas on a pipeline project bringing water to the capital to service the 'barrios' the shanty towns encircling the city. Most, if not all of these 'favelas' were without running water.

It was a long time ago and I have forgotten most of the details of what I was doing on the project but I did garner some vivid impressions of life there so here are a few. I will offer a few thoughts on the current situation later.

I had already worked for this company on another project in Zaragoza in Spain so I knew their ways reasonably well and they wanted me because I can speak Spanish and especially the engineering and technical terminology.

I was lodged in the CCT hotel which is itself incorporated into a very large shopping complex. First thing I noticed was the armed guards at every entrance to the shopping centre and not just one man with a pistol, there were four or five at each entrance and very visibly armed. Among all the shops were bars and restaurants as well as night clubs and through the windows of one I could see and hear some very lively and energetic dancing. Clearly these Venezolanos know how to enjoy themselves!

The office was somewhere downtown and a taxi from the hotel basement was the best way to get there. Taxis were all fairly nondescript American 'barges' which usually feel like floating about in a hovercraft. Up in the lift at the office block to the twelfth floor and sitting in the lift lobby was a uniformed guard with a gun and his back to the window. On the 12th floor? What sort of country is this?

As time passed I began to learn that Caracas is a sort of 'inside out' prison with all the good guys living their lives behind bolted and barred doors, and with all the bad guys free to walk the streets. I never felt threatened at any time but I was always aware of my surroundings. Lunch was a cafe/bar across the road and was very good. I especially liked the black beans with arepas, spicy and tasty.

I noticed that it rained every day regular as clockwork in the afternoons. A cloudburst of very heavy rain and it was literally a cloudburst. Something to do with the microclimate generated by the high altitude and the surrounding mountains. (Climate scientists do not like to acknowledge such things because it upsets their computer modelling; see previous post on climate.)

And then one day, during my final week there, our office manager was shot on his way home from work. He was driving home and was waiting at traffic lights when he had a gun pointed in his face through the open window. The robber took his watch and then shot him in the thigh. He then fired two or three bullets into the engine for some reason. I went to visit him in hospital and he was not seriously wounded but he did seem to have been traumatised by the episode and was nowhere near his usual cheery self. The hospital, by the way, was spotlessly clean and had an air of calm about it. I think our NHS could learn a thing or two from Latin America; a few years later I visited a colleague in hospital in Chile after he had a heart attack and it had the same air of unhurried calm and was spotlessly clean.

A couple of days before I left I was told by the senior project manager to go and get a ticket for the BA flight - "You have to be patriotic" or words to that effect.  So I went to the travel agent on the ground floor of the building to book the flight. Only two seats available, one in first class and the other one at the back among the backpackers. No contest, I'll have the first class ticket please! Project manager had gone back to Paris by this point so I didn't say anything and nobody checked in the weeks after. I am worth it anyway, that's my excuse! Later that afternoon there was a power cut in the building. When the power was restored we found out that there had been a bank robbery at the bank next door to the travel agent. The robbers had somehow interrupted the power supply which allowed them to do whatever they did.

I think I have related elsewhere how the company's 'Mr Fixit' took me to the airport and escorted me from kerbside to 1st class lounge in about 10 or 15 minutes just by waving his security pass at everyone! That's the only way to travel!

A few thoughts on the current situation starting with some background information taken from my copy of the South American Handbook, 1992:

* The Spanish landed in Venezuela (little Venice) in 1498, what they found was a poor country sparsely populated with very little in the way of a distinctive culture. It remained a poor country for the next 400 years or so, agrarian, exporting little and importing less.  Oil was discovered in 1914 and everything changed. It became the richest country in Latin America and the known reserves were estimated to last for 40 years. (i.e. until 2032)

* Only about 20% of the land area is devoted to agriculture and three quarters of that is pasture. (In effect, animal husbandry with little in the way of food crops)

* 84% of the population live in urban areas.

* Venezuela is Latin America's fourth largest debtor despite having foreign reserves of approximately US$20 bn accumulated by the mid 1980s from oil wealth.

Carlos Andres Perez was president of Venezuela while I was there in 1992 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Andr%C3%A9s_P%C3%A9rez

Note the importation of 80% of food during his first term and the huge loan from Washington during his second term. If there are food shortages it means the supply chain has been cut and knowing how and why that has happened will be a clue to the reason for the current crisis. All of those loans will come with strings attached and any spending will be monitored by the 'money changers' with very little leeway.

 I watched the TV programme about Chavez last week and both Chavez and CAP seemed to me to be pursuing similar policies, trying to improve the living standards of their people. But they also made the same mistakes; relying solely on oil revenues and not investing in the future for when the oil runs out. The conditions attached to the various loans will probably mean that the social programmes of both Chavez and CAP will be abandoned in favour of 'austerity' as is happening in Europe.

During the last few days (at the end of January) the US policy on Venezuela has become blatantly obvious: regime change. And I look at the history of the continent and I cannot help but see that the US has supported every dictator in Latin America.

Since 1492 the imperial powers of Europe have sought to control the whole continent, both north and south. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British have been playing a perpetual power game in order to exploit the 'Eldorado' of the new world. Now the US has joined the game and their main objective is oil, it is always oil for the US. It is the foundation of their foreign policy. I saw a comment somewhere that it wasn't really about oil because the US has more than enough oil in their own country. A very naive comment indeed; I first worked in the oil industry in the 70s and it was made clear to me that there were indeed massive resources in the US. Hundreds of wells have been drilled and capped and they serve as their reserve. Almost all of the American engineers I encountered would gleefully boast of how they were going to deplete the resources of other countries. After all, the supply is finite. The earth is not manufacturing oil any more. It was a great joke among Americans that when all of the foreign resources had been fully exploited then they would open the taps on their own wells.

With the whole world supporting the US actions except Russia and China who are lining up behind Maduro and the Venezuelan people, this is not going to end well so I leave the last word (28th January) to Ron Paul -
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/january/28/trump-s-venezuela-fiasco/
___________________________________________
Sackerson adds: these stories seem to imply that Venezuela "needs saving from itself"...

World Bank Reports Venezuela Oil Output Falling Since 2000

Venezuela’s collapse: How far will oil production fall? 

Another 42 stars on the US flag?

Grabbing Canada and Greenland - the idea came well before Trump. Plus Mexico! Below is a repost from Broad Oak in 2008:

"Deepcaster" continues to hint at the operations of "The Cartel". His theory is outlined in this post of August 11, 2006. In a nutshell, there's a plot (a) to dissolve the US and make a new entity by combining it with Canada and Mexico, and (b) ruin the dollar in order to replace it with the "Amero", presumably to recommence the thieving by inflation. So it's like what some think the EU project is about.

Except I don't think the EU or its North American equivalent are driven by sinister motives; just venal ones. Concentrating wealth and power makes very juicy opportunities, provided you can simplify the command structure. All that consulting the common people and getting their agreement is so tedious.

America grows. She acquired 29 states in the nineteenth century and five in the twentieth. Where next? Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories; Mexico has 31 states and one federal district; Greenland is owned by Denmark but has been granted home rule. But Canadians, Mexicans and Greenlanders may have their own views about assimilation.

Democracy is inconvenient, by design. I think the thirteen stripes on "Old Glory" remain there, not just as a historical quirk, but to remind the Federal Government that it's very important to say "please" and "thank you". Even in the first go at making the nation, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey chose to delay the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, until certain issues had been resolved to their satisfaction.

Here's to the awkward squad.

The Grand Union Flag of 1775, flown by John Paul Jones

Billi the Cat

Our neighbour across the fence acquired a kitten. As soon as it got out the back door it shot up a tall conifer at the end of the garden.

Coaxing was no use. Nor was borrowing a ladder and trying to reach for Pussy who only climbed higher. Finally the owner called a tree surgeon who roped himself up and seized the escapee. Some days later we heard the lady say “If you go up that tree again Mummy’s going to be very cross with you.”

One day a little black-and-white cat came snooping by our French window. It was very hesitant and twitchy so we thought it was a tom but had the good manners not to inspect him too closely. We named him Billy.

He was happy to accept food. Boy, that hasn’t changed, except he’s stepped it up to four packets of meat a day plus several handsful of crunchies.

Eventually we worked out he was female and since we live in an increasingly Asian neighbourhood we modified her name to Billi which means cat in Hindi and Urdu (the male equivalent is “billa.”)

She tends to “eat and run” like a teenager but as she ate more we began to wonder who her real owner was. She has had several collars so someone must have thought she was theirs. Maybe they moved away.

We bought an outdoor cat cabin and lined it with newspaper and a towel. We positioned it here and there in the garden - by the shed, in the plastic greenhouse, on the wooden bench to get it off the cold ground - but as far as we know she never used it though one or two other local cats may have done.

Instead she has established a roost - the roof of a tall garden tool cupboard just outside the living room. At dawn we draw back the bedroom curtain and look down to see her there and wish her good morning. Open the kitchen door and in she shoots.

Her usual route for coming down was to trot along the fence to a raised bed and leap onto the earth and from there to the ground. But when summer came and the plants rose up she didn’t fancy jumping into them and instead nervously launched herself direct from the fence. So rather than have her sprain an ankle we bought one of those folding ramps to help elderly dogs into cars, and set it up halfway. She soon got the idea of the chute.

As winter approached and we began to plan holidays the question of ownership raised its head again. These days when Billi left the garden it would be to our right so I made an is-this-your-cat flyer and posted copies to the houses along the road there but no-one responded.

We repositioned the cabin to by the tool cupboard and success! It became Billi’s night shelter against cold weather; and increasingly during the day also.

Until wandering cats took to pissing on the outside of her bedroom. Miserable gits! That put her off and it was back to rooftop sentry duty for Billi.

For the last several weeks she has decided to stay indoors with us but not on the couch as she used to. No, it’s the bathroom for her and she sleeps on the laundry basket; we can hear the thumps as she scratches herself next to the airing cupboard.

Now she has taken to curling up in the bathtub. Why, we don’t know; it must be colder than by the radiator.

And so here we are at the beck and call of a fat feline. Take a few steps downstairs and she will rush past you to the dinner plate in the kitchen; and up again. If we soften and let her stay overnight she will wait till we visit the toilet at 2 a.m. and demand to be let out.

How did we get into this? How do we get out of this?

FRIDAY MUSIC: Gerry Cinnamon, by JD

Gerard Crosbie, professionally known as Gerry Cinnamon, is a Scottish singer-songwriter and acoustic guitarist. In 2020 his second album, The Bonny, reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and became the third biggest selling UK album released that year. He sings using Glaswegian dialect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry_Cinnamon

https://www.gerrycinnamonmusic.com/

Diamonds in the Mud

Gerry Cinnamon - Canter

Gerry Cinnamon Discoland

Gerry Cinnamon - Sometimes (Official Video)

Belter

Gerry Cinnamon – The Bonny (Official Lyric Video)

No to a degree, yes to skills

The days of the higher education scam are numbered.

A recent survey by Microsoft identified 40 knowledge-based jobs at risk of replacement by Artificial Intelligence. So much for borrowing many thousands to go to “uni.”

Instead young people should consider skilled manual work and personal services. This will be the age of the toolbelt-wearing “husky” and the massage therapist.

Just imagine being able to earn money straight out of school, debt-free, and to start a family in your twenties!

All that remains is to make housing affordable somehow.

Here are some jobs that are thought likely to survive, some better paid than others:

Bridge and lock tenders

Car glass installers/repairers

Cement masons and concrete finishers

Dishwashers

Dredge operators

Embalmers

Eye health technician

Firefighter supervisors

Floor sanders and finishers

Foundry mold and coremakers

Gas compressor/pumping station operator

Hazardous materials removal workers

Highway maintenance workers

Industrial truck and tractor operators

Logging equipment operators

Machine feeders and offbearers

Maids/cleaners

Massage therapists

Medical equipment preparers

Motorboat operators

Nursing assistants

Oil and Gas labourer

Oral and facial surgeons

Orderlies

Packaging and filling machine operators

Painter/Plasterer assistants

Paving/surfacing/tamping

Phlebotomists

Pile driver operators

Plant and system operators

Production worker assistants

Prosthodontists

Railway laying and maintenance

Roofer assistants

Roofers

Ship engineers

Surgical assistants

Tire builders

Tire repairers/changers

Water treatment plant operator

Comedy for NYE, by JD

Rikki Fulton (1924 - 2004)

Robert Kerr “Rikki” Fulton was a Scottish comedian and actor best remembered for writing and performing in the long-running BBC Scotland sketch show Scotch and Wry. He was also known for his appearances as one half of the double act, Francie and Josie, alongside Jack Milroy. He became a regular on STV’s Hogmanay programmes usually portraying the world weary clergyman I. M. Jolly. A selection of his more famous characters is offered here to add to your own new year celebrations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rikki_Fulton
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5dg7641tJvRZRvck104Gpd3/rikki-fulton

Last Call - Rev IM Jolly - Hogmanay 1998 - Rikki Fulton

Rikki Fulton Plays A Drunk Weatherman

Rikki Fulton - ‘’Supercop’‘ With Mark McManus

Rikki Fulton: British Rail

When Jehovah witnesses visit your home

New Year’s Day

And a happy New Year to one and all! (Bliadhna Mhath Ùr, for fellow Caledonians!)

Christmas music part 3 plus a story, by JD

 Paul McCartney - Pipes Of Peace

McCartney’s video depicts the famous unofficial ‘truce’ between British and German troops on Christmas day 1914 when they met in no man’s land between the trenches. They exchanged cigarettes etc and even had an impromptu kick about when a football appeared from who knows where.

This video below was produced by The Imperial War Museum and is their record of what really happened in the trenches in 1914. There are many other videos on YouTube about the events of that day some of which include interviews with the ‘veterans’ who were there at the time, both British and German survivors. Worth seeking out and watching.

This below is a short extract from an essay by the late Iain Carstairs which he posted on his blog at Christmas in 2012. There is a link at the end of this piece and it is worth reading the whole thing:

A previously-unseen letter which describes the legendary football match of the Christmas Day truce during the First World War has been discovered.

The letter was sent by staff sergeant Clement Barker four days after Christmas 1914, when the British and German troops famously emerged from their trenches in peace.
Sgt Barker, from Ipswich, Suffolk, describes how the truce began after a German messenger walked across no man’s land on Christmas Eve to broker the temporary ceasefire.

British soldiers then went out and recovered 69 dead comrades and buried them.

Sgt Barker then wrote to his brother Montague -

“…a messenger come over from the German lines and said that if they did not fire Xmas day, they (the Germans) wouldn’t so in the morning (Xmas day).

“A German looked over the trench – no shots – our men did the same, and then a few of our men went out and brought the dead in (69) and buried them and the next thing happened a football kicked out of our Trenches and Germans and English played football.

“Night came and still no shots. Boxing day the same, and has remained so up to now… We have conversed with the Germans and they all seem to be very much fed up and heaps of them are deserting. Some have given themselves up as prisoners, so things are looking quite rosy.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20161114183012/https://iaincarstairs.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/a-very-happy-christmas/

Don’t know why but I felt that in the current political climate, the armchair warriors need a reminder that any conflict ends ingloriously, win or lose.

Once more I wish you a very happy Christmas.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Christmas 2025 (2)

Drive The Cold Winter Away - Traditional:

“Drive the Cold Winter Away” is an old traditional winter tune that has been used for both secular winter celebrations and for Christmas celebrations, with a large number of verses and variations. Versions of it are also know by the titles “In Praise of Christmas” and “All Hail To the Days”. Some versions of it appear to go back to at least about the year 1625, and the melody was originally based on the even older tune of “When Phoebus Did Rest”. Published versions of it dating back to at least the 17th Century can be found in the archives of both the Pepys Collection and the Roxburghe Collection. The lyrics appear to have evolved somewhat over the years, but many of the lyrics are sometimes attributed to Tom Durfey (1653-1723), or to “Anonymous” by others.

A Child is Born (Official Music Video) | Celtic Worship

Beautiful Star of Bethlehem

O Come, Emmanuel - Lindsey Stirling & Kuha’o Case

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Canon (Official Music Video) [HD]

Lindsey Stirling - Celtic Carol

The Caretaker: PMQs 10th December 2025

People feel there is something wrong about Sir Keir. Quentin Letts says he is boring but to an extraordinary degree. Does the energy drain hint at an emptiness in the PM’s psyche? Someone who dealt with Starmer in his family law days told me “Nothing happened around him. He was good at critiquing others but had no ideas of his own.”

His 1986 Czech workcamp visa shows a man in his mid-twenties, one who should be past teenage angst yet has a curiously intense yet blank gaze. Is this the look of a seeker, someone who needs an ideology; the face of a potential fanatic, ripe for seduction? The French socialist who recruited him at Oxford at about this time said how surprisingly easy it was:

“There is something strange about Keir in general… Normally when you recruit someone… it takes a while. You need to go through lots of stuff. I have no recollection of doing this with him, so that’s kind of strange.”

Kemi Badenoch hopes to see Sir Keir out of Number Ten, but should worry about who would take over. Do the Tories want to face someone who is more effective?

Reportedly Blair is planning a “major intervention” into Labour’s leadership but that is to do with presentation not content. Starmer’s political direction is a continuation of the Blair-Brown mission to destroy conservatism and Middle England permanently. He served the Party’s purpose in defenestrating Corbyn and suckering outsiders into thinking New Labour is more moderate; but Sir Keir himself is too obviously far Left, and charmless to boot. Kemi should help keep him in place until next May’s elections at least.

That’s assuming we’re all still here then. For in his preamble in this week’s session the PM paid tribute to a member of the Parachute Regiment who has been killed in Ukraine, so confirming that we have boots on the ground opposing Russia. Sir Keir stressed that the soldier was away from the front lines and merely observing. Who are we to doubt his word? Yet the US involvement in Vietnam also began with “military advisers” and unlike Hanoi Moscow has nuclear weapons and a stated willingness to use them.

The first two questions did the Labour PR work formerly done in Starmer’s preambles before the Speaker blew up about it last week. Sarah Olney (Lib Dem) asked for clarity on “leave to remain” for a couple of her constituents, which allowed the PM to say (twice) that Britain was “compassionate” to refugees. Labour’s Rachael Maskell raised last week’s issue of lifting children out of poverty; Starmer was glad to respond positively and to criticise Badenoch’s view that maternity pay is “excessive.” There, that raised a couple of emoji flags against the Nasty Party.

The Leader of the Opposition had fun teasing Sir Keir with queries about targets he hadn’t met and with calling him a caretaker PM. As we have said, she should fear premature success. Starmer replied with his usual broad-spectrum counterattacks and yet again used Liz Truss’ name as a sort of Patronus Charm to ward off the evil Tories.

The Lib Dem leader worried about President Trump’s new national security strategy and its “far-right tropes” of “civilizational erasure”; Sir Ed’s Patronus Charm was to wave Vladimir Putin at us, for that wicked Slav has welcomed the strategy. The PM told Davey:

“What I see is a strong Europe united behind Ukraine and united behind our long-standing values of freedom and democracy, and I will always stand up for those values and freedoms.”

To adapt Claud Cockburn, disbelieve nothing until it is officially confirmed.

What a shame that Soviet communism collapsed; it had been such a convenient bogeyman for generations and in its absence we feel no need to defend personal freedom and the nation state. Instead the heads of the Army and MI6 ramp up scare talk of war and that will justify further Government assaults on civil liberties; if the “superflu” woo-woo doesn’t do the job first.

Davey concluded with his familiar call for a customs union with the EU, which would wreck the advantageous trade arrangements we have been able to make as a result of Brexit. Plaid Cymru’s Liz Saville Roberts seconded him and was again reminded of the negotiating edge given us by Leaving.

Not that Starmer’s heart isn’t in the “right place” as the decision to re-join the EU’s Erasmus scheme shows (how many foreign student visas will that validate?) He and Brussels are like a re-run of “My Wife Next Door.”

It will get worse before it gets better. Our only hope is that we retain enough of our identity and love of country to rebuild afterwards, as the Poles rebuilt Warsaw’s Old Town.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Christmas 2025 (1), by JD

Christmas Must Be Tonight | The Band | OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO

Boney M. - Mary’s Boy Child - Oh My Lord (1978)

Irish Pub Christmas Song – The Bells of Ballyclare

Helene Fischer | Adeste Fideles (Live aus der Hofburg Wien)

Good King Wenceslas Loreena McKennitt

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear (Harp Twins) - Nordic Winter Lullaby