Is Cameron a bungler?

From the Independent we hear news of Cameron's latest attempt at EU fear mongering.

The world would be a more dangerous place if Britain voted to leave the European Union, David Cameron has claimed, as he travelled to Germany in a final effort to enlist the backing of Angela Merkel for his renegotiation demands.

In a speech in Hamburg, Mr Cameron said it was “vital to keep Britain in a reformed EU” to face down “dangerous and murderous ideologies” and stand up for democracy and the rule of law.

I'm sure Cameron does not expect to convince any informed person with this. That is not the aim - he is merely trying to sow the seeds of nebulous fear among wavering voters. 

Feeble stuff which raises an obvious question. Why has Cameron apparently bungled the referendum issue by promising EU concessions he must have known he couldn’t deliver? To get anywhere he would have had to make it quite clear that he was in favour of the UK leaving the EU. Otherwise he would always be negotiating with the EU from a position of weakness and he must have known that.

In which case he either bungled his tactics or he chose to negotiate from a position of weakness. Whatever one thinks of Cameron, he is probably too smart to have bungled the tactics of his referendum promise. One has to assume he knew what was on the cards because it isn’t rocket science. So he chose to negotiate from a position of weakness. He did not expect or want significant concessions from the EU because he has adopted the political persona of a sound European.

The whole thing just keeps on looping back to this obvious explanation. Cameron is gambling on winning the referendum for staying in the EU, thereby landing himself a prominent EU job with his political star very much in the ascendant.

Alternatively he may have other career possibilities in mind and is more interested in the global stage. Either way his strategy seems sound. Better to take the referendum risk and brand himself as a shining political success than end up as a tired and ageing PM looking for something else to do.

His game is not even as duplicitous as it sounds if he believes we have no real choice but to stay in the EU. He is merely putting the issue to rest and moving on.

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E-Type

source

From BT and others comes this story of a restored E-Type Jaguar.

A classic British car left to rust on a French farm has been restored to its former glory is now worth £300,000 and will return to the spotlight at next week’s London Classic Car Show.

But this particular example, E-Type fixed head coupe Chassis No. 15, was discovered in a barn in Cernay, east France, in late 2013. It was more chicken coop than racing coupe, rusted, missing many vital components and covered in farmyard muck.

From the photo it had quite a few vital components missing, such as the engine. Apparently that had to be completely recreated according to the Mail.

Lovely car and all that, but if I rummaged around an old barn, found a couple of legs from an Elizabethan table and rebuilt it, folk would not be so impressed. It most certainly wouldn't be worth anywhere near the price of a genuine Elizabethan table. I'd have to sell it as repro. Different people, different outlook I suppose.

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Assange: dirtier tricks than I thought

In the post:

"... there is NO JURY in a rape trial in Sweden and it is a SECRET TRIAL. All of the evidence, all of the witnesses, are heard in secret. No public, no jury, no media. The only public part is the charging and the verdict. There is a judge and two advisers directly appointed by political parties."

And in comments:

"My own concern is that the secret nature of rape trials in Sweden, and the lack of a jury, make it the perfect opportunity for a stitch-up and false conviction. Of which I am sure the CIA are perfectly aware.

"Once you are a “convicted rapist”, the political opposition to extradition to the US on espionage charges will evaporate. Much of the support of the left for Assange has already vanished just by the expedient of getting a CIA asset to cry rape."

See today's piece by Craig Murray here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/02/why-the-assange-allegation-is-a-stitch-up/#comment-577354


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Shifting the poor

"They told me I had to come here." (pic source)

In 1970s Oxford my roommate told me that the local police regularly beat tramps and beggars with rubber torches and motored them out of the city.

Things haven't changed much. A few days ago there was a post on Facebook about a group of Norwich rough sleepers sheltering in a mall who had cold water thrown over them and their sleeping-bags.

But it's getting more systematic.

Someone I talk to in the Local Authority tells me they're seeing a pattern of applications for special needs assessment for children of families who have [been] relocated from London to here in the Midlands, where rents are cheaper. If a special school is indicated, then that's around £25,000 p.a. - per child, and families of SEN children often have more than one.

My contact says a left field idea would be to buy such families a house outright, in well-off Solihull. Overall, it would save us a packet. It's a bit like playing "Find the Lady", palming off the losing Queen of Spades to a fellow player.

There'll be more of this, and we're pretty much financially bust already.


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Assange, imperialism and freedom

The Ecuadorian Embassy siege, that standing reproach to the British Government, may be coming to an end. That's assuming the UK respects international law and opinion more than it wishes to serve the interests of a vindictive ally.

We walked round to the Embassy last September, out of curiosity, to see the cruel theatre of dingy politics at first hand. The next month, the Met police guard was finally withdrawn but it was decided to deny Assange access to medical treatment.

We are governed by shits. Remember Brian Haw.

US-educated Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa knows what he's looking at. At what point did the United States cease to be anti-imperialist?

Etonian traitor - not the first from that school - David Cameron is all out to fudge the EU referendum, muddling it up with regional elections so that the distracted people finally vote for the end of national freedom and democratic control.

If it goes his way, I wouldn't rule out taking Ecuadorian citizenship, to get away from this drunkard's-dream.

UPDATE (14:09)

Phil Hammond kept a straight face as he communicated HMG's slap to the UN's HR ruling - but there was an air of embarrassment, I thought. And here comes the reaction:

"Refusal of UN Panel Statement Allows Rejection of Any UN Ruling- Snowden":
http://sputniknews.com/europe/20160205/1034284346/uk-sweden-assange-snowden.html

Okay, let's see HMG adopt the same cavalier approach to all EU regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions,  past, present and future.

UPDATE (14:49)

Glad to see a proper journalist weighing in, too:

http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2016-02-05/no-fair-hearing-for-assange-at-the-guardian/

UPDATE (6 Feb 16 07:29)

... and ex-FCO dissident Craig Murray (hat-tip to "JD"):

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/02/assange-a-fundamental-vindication/

- whose discussion of the case against Assange was removed from Google searches* but can be found here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/09/why-i-am-convinced-that-anna-ardin-is-a-liar/

UPDATE (6 Feb 16 10:00)

The Australian Foreign Minister has met Assange to discuss ways forward:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecuador-sweden-assange-australia-idUKKCN0VE2M9

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Batmanghelidjh: the demonic narrative of the media

As Black Country football-radio legend Tony Butler once said of the Press, "They hunt in packs." Interviewed some time ago, ex-Private Eye's Richard Ingrams reflected that he used to relish going after public figures but now he would read an exposé and think, "Poor old So-and-So's for it this time."

This time, it was the fat lady in a funny dress. And there was Lynn Alleway, doing a Louis Theroux "friendship" number on her. Look at how her old acquaintance from ten (yes, ten!) years ago had let the kids down!

"Camila continued to be the person Annie relied on for absolutely everything. She's vulnerable, and my worry is, what's going to happen to her now? In the world outside, the tabloids were unearthing more damaging stories. Some seemed to be nonsense... others I couldn't ignore..." (49 mins on)

Oh, how the presenter cares! Oh, my! Oh, I!

For of course, this was a story, and a story has to be shaped.

"Camila, what is going on? I... I'm feeling uncomfortable. [...] Could you not have found another house, without a swimming pool?"

There it was, a rented thing the size of a BBC producer's bathtub. Any smaller and the panto princess could scarcely have got in. (Not, by the way, that it was for her: it was a Kids Company facility.)

"Camila has always had her own moral code. She considers herself primarily accountable to the children. But for me personally, everything had changed." (53:53 on.)

Oh, the sadness as the scales fall from a loving pal's eyes!

Mismanagement... But as Camila said, they had always wanted cash reserves.

"But I also, Lynn, don't want to be twisted into a narrative that isn't the real narrative," said the founder.

Yet the programme-maker must speak out, her poor heart is so wrung: "What's so upsetting... is thet... all of this stuff... is just overshadowed now."

Yes, Camila, you may not want your life and your work twisted into a narrative, but that's what you're going to bloody get.

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See the full self-referential investigation here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06zw47r/camilas-kids-company-the-inside-story


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Bad government

"History has taught me, that RULERS are much the same in all ages & under all forms of government: they are as bad as they dare to be," said the poet Coleridge in a letter to his brother George (c. 10 March 1798).

The immediate reference was to France - but after the Revolution and the killing of Louis XVI. Would no government at all, be better?

Libertarians - Coleridge's "Philosophers & Friends of Freedom" - like to think so; to imagine that but for the oppressive State we would all get along much better. Not until we are better people, says the Dreamer, quoting Cowper's "The Task":

"He that takes
Deep in his soft credulity the stamp
Design'd by loud Declaimers on the part
Of Liberty, themselves the slaves of Lust,
Incurs derision for his easy faith
And lack of Knowledge..."

Burma, 1942: Rangoon has fallen to the Japanese, and Indians are fleeing westward. In Arakan, the British forces have made a rapid withdrawal:

"Chaos and civil war spread throughout Arakan. First, the local inhabitants fell on the wretched Indian refugees, who were still in thousands trying to escape by the coastal route. This exodus was followed by a bitter internecine struggle for land and power between the Arakanese and the Maughs, two sections of the population. The Maughs got the worst of it and many were driven across the Naf River to take shelter in territory still held by us, there to make yet another refugee problem. Faction fights among the victorious Arakanese then became the order of the day, until the Japanese, pushing up to Buthidaung, restored some sort of uneasy peace."

- Field Marshal Viscount Slim, "Defeat Into Victory", Pan Books edition (1999), p.147. This short paragraph could be turned into a novel of avoidable human suffering.

When even Hirohito's sadistic racists were an improvement on anarchy, when can the removal of a tyrant be justified?

Iraq, Libya and Syria? But not North Korea?


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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.