Guido's Chinese Whispers

I have combined and edited two recent posts to make one that I am submitting to The Conservative Woman. Here is what I have said:

“News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising,” as Randolph Hearst said. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/77244-news-is-something-somebody-doesn-t-want-printed-all-else-is Over the last few years, growing numbers of us have become sceptical about the mainstream media, feeling that our perceptions are being managed by selection and suppression of facts, and spin.

So we season our understanding with a variety of alternative sources, many online. One such is Paul Staines, aka “Guido Fawkes,” who gives us a stream of Westminster gossip and up-to-date news. Some of us appreciate his support for Brexit, all the more valued since the Daily Mail did a savage handbrake turn when Geordie Greig took over the editorship.

But a couple of Guido’s recent posts have got me worried. I’m hoping it’s just owing to the pressure of constant publication, rather than consciously adopting the Government’s line on Johnson’s “deal.”

****************

On 18^th October, he bannered a piece with “Snap Poll: Public Want The Deal Passing” https://order-order.com/2019/10/18/snap-poll-public-want-deal-passing/ , subtitling it “Two thirds of Leave voters say Parliament should vote to accept the new Brexit deal.”

His source was a YouGov poll whose headline is very similar  https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/10/18/two-thirds-leave-voters-say-parliament-should-acce , but whose detail is troubling. Yes, 67% of Leave voters say they want Brexit done; but YouGov’s third table shows they feel they don’t really know enough. 31% think it is a good deal, 11% think it is bad, and 58% are neutral or undecided. This is a complex issue, one where facts do matter and as Thoreau said https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/25/opinion/l-one-man-s-majority-654087.html , “Any man more right than his neighbours constitutes a majority of one.” The general public is even more conflicted: 17% say the deal is good, 23% say bad – and since the 2016 Referendum involved everyone, not just Leavers, perhaps that should have been the headline. In Guido’s case, his headline and the subheading are at odds – the public is not the same as its Leaver element.

Does this matter? Yes, it does. You can influence people by telling them that most of their fellows think a certain way – isn’t that one of the reasons to own a newspaper? Or to infiltrate the BBC?

******************

Cut to 21^st October: Guido tells us “Brexit Party Supporters Back The Deal” https://order-order.com/2019/10/21/brexit-party-supporters-back-deal/ and crows "Despite Nigel’s continuing opposition for opposition’s sake, it seems his usually loyal followers are abandoning him in favour of Boris’s new deal. Last man in the bunker…”

The facts? Out of 1,025 polled among the general public by Survation https://t.co/kiRyQXmIJA , a total of 15 (fifteen) Brexiteers “strongly approved” Boris’ deal. (Click on the link to see the whole thing – Guido’s stats are drawn from Sheet 3, Table 60.)

I am a little concerned that the survey was conducted on behalf of the Daily Mail – I’m sure that Survation will have done a professional job, but I wonder what the brief was; it covers a lot of ground, rather too much in my opinion.

Table 60 analyses responses to Question 26, which reads, "From what you have seen or heard about the government's Brexit deal, to what extent do you support or oppose the deal?"

Already we wonder what the respondents know – what are their sources of information, and how has it been presented? “Garbage in, garbage out,” as the techies say.

Moreover, the replies in this table are merely a subset of the total respondents - only 674 out of 1,025 - so the margin of error is greater. Even then, not all in that subset replied to all parts: the "current voting intention" line (line #1641, Columns Q-W) adds up to only 601 people, and only 596 people said how they voted in the 2016 Referendum (Columns H and I). We’re now down to a sample of less than 60% of people polled.

And Guido’s news about Brexiteers is not only cherry-picking statistics out of this reduced sample, but combining them to give a misleading impression of homogeneity of feeling. The 15 who say they intend to vote TBP next time and who "strongly supported" Boris' deal (Line 1641, Column T) are added to 36 who only "somewhat supported" it, to make a combined total of 51 people - then reported as "67% of Brexit Party supporters."

Step back: 1,025 people took part in the poll; of whom only 87 intend to vote TBP; of whom only 15 are strongly in favour of the deal. I say, if you really want to know what TBP supporters feel about Boris’ deal, do a more focused poll. 5,248,533 people voted for TBP in the 2019 European Parliament elections – there’s plenty of material there!

Using much the same approach, Guido tells us that 70% of Leave voters and 90% of Tories also back Johnson’s WA Mark 2. Is this a safe basis? I'm not inclined to think so.

In fact of ALL those who responded to question 26 and also indicated their voting intentions in the next General Election, only 137 "strongly supported" the proposed deal, and a further mere 158 "somewhat supported" it. Even adding them together - sheep with cows (Little Boy Blue, you're falling down on the job) - you get 295 people out of a total survey population of 1,025. 295 very variably informed people with probably very differently nuanced stances on their support for "deal".

I wonder what results we'd have got if respondents were restricted to those who did more than read the Daily Mail or watch BBC News, and also looked at the detailed analyses of the pros and cons of the full deal.

********************

We need informed consent, not managed consent; so we need commentators who view sources critically and present their findings judiciously. “If you can keep your head when all around you…”

For we’re not getting the straight gen from our leaders, are we?

It would have been comical, had it not been almost tragic, to watch ex-PM Mrs May castigating the Opposition in Parliament https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1192892/Theresa-may-speech-brexit-vote-today for failing to honour the statutes they helped enact - withdrawal from the EU, and the triggering of Article 50.

Did they mean it? she asked. Well, did she, when she then came to the Commons three times with a ball-and-chain Withdrawal Agreement? Or her successor, who has returned with much the same (lipstick on a crocodile, I call it)? Or those who now call for another Referendum, with a choice of a rotten deal or Remain - the latter being the one thing that was definitively ruled out in 2016?

Guido, we need people like you to be our compass, or we shall be lost on a sea of misinformation.

Guido Fawkes - "TBP supporters back Boris' deal" - REALLY?

Parliamentary gossip broker Paul Staines aka "Guido Fawkes" confidently transmits this news:

... commenting:

"Despite Nigel’s continuing opposition for opposition’s sake, it seems his usually loyal followers are abandoning him in favour of Boris’s new deal. Last man in the bunker… 

"A new Survation poll out this morning shows 67% of Brexit Party voters want the Commons to pass the deal, a little behind the 73% of leave voters and 90% of Conservative voters. In the country as a whole, the deal has 47% support versus 37% opposition. Theresa May could only dream of numbers like these…"

_______________________

Survation's Tweet makes it clear that their results indicate 51% still wish to leave the EU, versus 45% wishing to remain and 5% unsure.

More usefully, Survation give a link to the full results [https://t.co/kiRyQXmIJA] and it is worth seeing what underpins this apparently overwhelming endorsement for the new Prime Minister's deal.

The context is a worry. The first page of the spreadsheet (see the second and third tabs at the foot for Contents and Tables) show that the survey was conducted on behalf of the Daily Mail, a newspaper that has radically changed its stance on Brexit since Geordie Greig took over the editorship from Paul Dacre. Greig's preference is for Remain, but also for Scottish independence, a stance I find illogical - you either believe in national sovereignty or you don't.

Also, I'm not quite sure who set the questions, and why they did it that way. The answers you get are conditioned by the way you ask the questions.

At any rate, "Guido Fawkes" is picking his sample results from Table 60, which you can check for yourself on the third page as linked above.

Table 60 analyses responses to Question 26, which reads:
"From what you have seen or heard about the government's Brexit deal, to what extent do you support or oppose the deal?"
Already we wonder what the respondent knows - who has provided that information, and how has it been presented?

Moreover, the respondents are merely a subset of the total respondents - only 674 out of 1,025 - so the margin of error is greater. Even then, not all in that subset replied to all parts: the "current voting intention" line (line #1641, Columns Q-W) adds up to only 601 people, and only 596 people said how they voted in the 2016 Referendum (Columns H and I).

And, of course, this news item is not only cherry-picking statistics out of this smaller sample, but combining them to give a misleading impression of homogeneity of feeling. For example, of those who told the pollster they intended to vote for the Brexit Party next time, only 15 people "strongly supported" Boris' deal, as opposed to 36 who "somewhat supported" it. That's a dodgily combined total of 51 people - reported as "67% of Brexit Party supporters." If you want to know what TBP supporters feel about the deal, go and poll them. 5,248,533 people voted for TBP in the 2019 European Parliament elections - that's more than 100,000 times that 51-person sample!

The same kind of game is played with "Leave voters" (those who voted Leave in 2016) and "Tories" (those telling the pollster that's who they will vote for in the next GE - they'd never lie, would they?).

Safe and reliable? I'm not inclined to think so.

In fact of ALL those who responded to question 26 and also indicated their voting intentions in the next General Election, only 137 "strongly supported" the proposed deal, and a further mere 158 "somewhat supported" it. Even adding them together - sheep with cows (Little Boy Blue, you're falling down on the job) - you get 295 people out of a total survey population of 1,025. 295 very variably informed people with probably very differently nuanced stances on their support for "deal".

I wonder what results we'd have got if respondents were restricted to those who did more than read the Daily Mail or watch BBC News, and instead looked at the online commenters' analyses of the pros and cons of the full deal.

It would have been comical, had it not been almost tragic, to watch ex-PM Mrs May castigating the Opposition in Parliament for failing to honour the statutes they helped enact - withdrawal from the EU, and the triggering of Article 50.

Did they mean it? Well, did she, when she then came to the Commons three times with a ball-and-chain Withdrawal Agreement? Or her successor, who has returned with much the same (lipstick on a crocodile, I call it)? Or those who now call for another Referendum, with a choice of a rotten deal or Remain - the latter being the one thing that was definitively ruled out in 2016?

What is "Guido Fawkes" doing, cheerleading this farrago of misleading information?

Walkabout to Wave Hill

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067959/mediaviewer/rm1550407936

Our ramble begins with an internet writer's reference to an Australian comedy book from the Seventies, The Outcasts Of Foolgarah. Surfing the reviews, I came across a Depression-era larrikin Oz classic, Here's Luck, by journo and rake Lennie Lower, which is now making us laugh.

But Outcasts, by Frank Hardy, was far from the author's most significant work. His most notorious was one that got him in court for criminal libel - the last case of its kind in Victoria; but that's not where this journey leads us. The experiences of the Depression that gave Lower his comic material had radicalised Hardy, as they did so many others, prompting him to join the Communist Party and use his talents to fight the Establishment.

We have since learned what Communism did; but the instincts that it exploited - compassion for the poor, and vicarious indignation - are valid. In our secular age, they inform ecological panic and adolescent self-loathing, an opportunity for ostentatious do-gooders to secure bossy, well-upholstered sinecures for themselves.

In Australia, they take us to the aboriginals.

Twenty thousand years before Neanderthals recolonised an unpeopled Ice Age Britain, forty thousand before modern man supplanted them in Europe, even longer before humans saw the Americas, the first Australians came to their island continent. Early agriculture? The cities of China and Mesopotamia, Egypt and Mohenjo Daro, the stones of Wiltshire and Giza? Last week's news.

For them, time had no meaning, as is so with all of us, our past always fading into dream, driving us to build, write, record images; futile attempts to preserve our intangible selves in something that endures forever, though nothing will.

Where are their monuments? In their minds, and in their tongues. In their myths of creation and arrival, in the songman's store of rhymes that give life-saving directions for nomads in a pitiless land; an inconceivably long heirloom of songs, some maybe stretching back to the birth of language itself. Old to young, old to young, the chain continued, handing on words and skills that gave them their law and culture; the policeman and warrior, the getter of food and drink, the builder of shelters contained in their skins and carried within their hands and brains wherever they went.

Until the last link broke.

Dispossession, displacement, disrespect; opium via the Oriental trading in Port Darwin; alcohol everywhere, ruining the young as it did their counterparts in America, where sometimes crazy-drunk First Nation kids hang out of cars as they tear around settlement lands which they cannot sell or mortgage.

Instead of the remorseless pressure of daily survival, jobs: money, enough to get by and for some, to dream the modern dreams of easy intoxication. And since the young stopped listening to the old, the elders (some, at least) shut their lips. One by one, the guiding stars of the aboriginal are winking out of existence, taking their knowledge with them.

Materially, a little is done to compensate material wrongs, some in response to action by the victims themselves. Following a walkout in 1966 by mistreated Gurindji aboriginal workers at the vast Wave Hill cattle station, a small portion of their traditional lands were eventually restored to them, and the law has begun to address past injustices. Frank Hardy helped to publicise the issues in his book The Unlucky Australians, and a TV documentary followed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tWBmqZVSTg

What can make up for the vast, invisible vandalism of an ancient way of life? Like all humanity, the original Australians have always known war and crime, but what they carried in them was no less precious and far older than the historical relics over which we wonder and grieve in museums.

Still, many times older is the history of humanoids written into all our genes, itself dwarfed by the general relay of life that began billions of years ago. It is fleeting life that endures.

Dumbographics: Greta Thunberg and the young "femographic"

Sex Pistols manager Malcom Maclaren said, "You can make more money exploiting yourself than by exploiting other people."

He didn't add, "Except your kids and other youngsters." That can be left to politicians, and quangocrats like Greta Thunberg's milieu. Canadian investigative journalist Cory Morningstar has already deconstructed the moneymaking juggernaut that has poor Greta tied to it like the secondhand teddy on the front of a lorry, referring to "the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”".

And the social media owners are happy to manipulate our discussions to help the panic along. Here's an example from today's Facebook feed:

What I'd like you to notice is that when you click on "1 comment" you find that comments are filtered for "relevance". How kind.

Except that when you drill down further to see "All comments", here is what that one person said:

I don't know whether this subtle censorship is done by machine, or is handmade. But surely that comment is spot-on for relevance. China is the world's biggest CO2 emitter.

When public affairs are to be guided by a latter-day Shirley Temple fresh off her Good Ship Lollipop we should start lowering the lifeboats.

Et Tu, Guido? The Boris Deal Is Lipstick On A Crocodile

"Guido Fawkes" on the proposed new deal:

Snap Poll: Public Want The Deal Passing

Important snap poll from YouGov. Top lines:

Excluding ‘don’t knows’, the public want the deal passing by 63% to 37%
A quarter of remain voters, Labour voters and Lib Dems want the deal passing – less than half of each group oppose passing the deal
Only 10% of Leavers and Tories oppose passing the new deal
With an election looming, this should be a huge wake-up call to MPs…

Here's the YouGov poll HEADLINE:

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/10/18/two-thirds-leave-voters-say-parliament-should-acce

Here's the YouGov poll FULL FACTS:

I comment at Guido's - not sure it'll get past the censor:

"Get it straight: 45% of the general population say they don't yet know enough to decide; 15% are neutral; 17% say it's a good deal, versus 23% saying it's a bad one. So far then, it's a NO."

UPDATE

Well, it's on, now. 
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/orderorder/snap_poll_public_want_the_deal_passing/#comment-4656930048

FRIDAY MUSIC: Ray Charles, by JD

Ray Charles Robinson (1930 - 2004)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Charles

Ray Charles is so well known that there is nothing I can add to Wiki's potted history of his life and career. But I can add a couple of my own anecdotes: I think it was 1962 when I bought the EP of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival concert. The two sides of that EP are the first and last videos below. A work colleague who was also a Ray Charles fan was with me when we visited a local record shop after work and we listened to both sides standing in one of those booths, remember them? It was great to be alive in those far off youthful days!

And then sometime later in the sixties I saw the great man himself in concert with his full orchestra, and of course, The Raelettes (including Margi Hendricks) Quite possible the most electrifying concert I have ever seen; sensational and euphoric.... pick any superlative you like and it will still fall short in describing that concert!

The Irish Backstop, and Common Sense - by JD

All of those who are arguing over where to 'draw the line' of the so-called Irish Backstop (whatever that means) should be compelled to read and re-read Spike Milligan's novel Puckoon. I say read and re-read until it enters their thick heads that the whole idea is an absurd bureaucratic fantasy!

The trailer to the film version of Puckoon contains the immortal line - "the only way to fight the stupidity of bureaucracy is with......stupidity!"



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

This excerpt from the book illustrate perfectly the stupidity and lack of common sense inside the bureaucratic mind:-

~~

"When an attempt is made to bury one of the locals across the border in what had now become “British territory”, Barrington, the customs officer in charge of the Border Customs Post, has a few preconditions:

‘I presume the deceased will be staying this side permanently?’ ‘Unless someone invents a remarkable drug – yes,’ answered the priest. ‘Then,’ went on Barrington, ‘he will require the following: an Irish passport stamped with a visa, to be renewed annually for the rest of his – ‘ Barrington almost said ‘life’ – ‘stay’, he concluded.

Well, that was that. While the deceased is off having his passport photo taken it’s decided that all corpses on the Unionist side of the border be exhumed, repatriated and reinterred on Irish soil."

~~

The events in Puckoon take place over a few weeks in 1924 when the Boundary Commission has just about agreed on where the border between Northern and Southern Ireland will lie. The only thing that stands between them and getting to the pub before closing time is “the microcephalic community of Puckoon” a fictitious village which Spike locates “[s]everal and a half metric miles North East of Sligo. When an accident destroys the surveyor’s equipment they decide to get the matter over with by all putting “one hand on the red pencil and draw[ing] a line that falls naturally and peacefully into place:”

In what was meant to be a solemn moment, all hands held the pencil and pulled slowly across the map. All was silent, the room filled with suspicion. Occasionally a gasp rent the silence as they all strained for the advantage.

‘Steady, someone’s pulling to the benefits of Ulster.’

‘Lies, all lies.’

‘Who gave that jerk?’

‘Ah! I felt that.’

‘Swine!’

Finally the pencil reached its destination. Faces broke into relieved smiles and a series of rapid unplanned handshakes ensued.

~~

Unfortunately the border cuts right through the heart of Puckoon separating houses from outhouses, the church from its graveyard and annexing a corner of the pub where the locals crowd because the drink is thirty percent cheaper there.

Yes, I know it sounds absurd but it does happen in real life. The partition of India and Pakistan was an arbitrary line on the map which no doubt pleased those who had drawn it but the consequences were unknown numbers who died in the resulting chaos and fighting as Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs suddenly found themselves on the 'wrong' side of the new border and were obliged to uproot themselves and try to move to the 'right' side.

The madness of bureaucratic systems and yet the politicians and civil servants remain oblivious to the problems they create!

And to answer the question what is 'common sense'?

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

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Common-Sense-Nation-Unlocking-Forgotten/dp/1594038252/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=common+sense+nation&qid=1571059682&sr=8-2

Faux: a lifestyle for many, by Wiggiatlarge

The recent faux outrage in the House Of Commons over a word, ‘humbug’ is in itself not worth talking about but the moronic MP who pursued the claim and demanded an apology is symptomatic of what has become an almost instinctive reaction to something that they believe will have a positive effect on the general population in their favour.

It took me back to thinking: when did all this start? Whenever it was it has been exacerbated by the massive spread and the use of the internet and social media, enabling the latest slights to become ‘news’ in minutes and back up comments from those who want to prosper from this nonsense to appear almost immediately.

When did it all start? Politicians have been using various forms of malfeasance since time immemorial to get their point of view across, but before the internet it had to be from a main player who had the ear of the press not the use of a smartphone which gives all and sundry access to their five minutes of fame or disgrace.

Much of it stems from the increasing use by those big players of spin doctors and advisors. A whole army of them now advise everyone on when and how they should use the media. For those people it is more a case of promoting an image, and the one that for me epitomises it perfectly was the sight of Tony Blair emerging from No 10 after the election in 2000 wearing a casual shirt, no tie and holding a mug of tea; he then crossed the road as a man of the people would, to speak to the press.
I remember watching this and saying to myself how utterly staged it all was and it was confirmed, not that it needed to be, by his never actually taking a sip of the tea, certainly whilst on air anyway, so false, so staged and so actually of the time. They have never looked back.

In ‘97 we had of course the mass outpouring of faux grief from the public themselves, proving if nothing else it wasn’t the preserve of the political class. Princess Diana's death sparked a nationwide epidemic of not wanting to be outdone in the grief stakes by tens of thousands who had never met her and knew precious little about her apart from what was seen in the tabloids. The British do State occasions well and the public were not going to let this one go without emptying the flower merchants in Amsterdam. Somehow those involved never saw the cringe side of this but everyone to their own.

The pattern was set after that. Blair exploited his man of the people profile, 'I’m an ordinary kinda guy’ and ever since the stakes for moral outrage have been set lower and lower.

Certain words and phrases go with the look that has been honed to perfection in the mirror and under the tuition of the personal PR aides. ‘Concern’ is top of the list, trotted out at the drop of the hat for every thing that veers from path of normality. It can be used in conjunction with the appropriate look for anything from too many road accidents, hurty words from a foreign power and anything else that seems appropriate. Nothing in the material sense ever follows up the concern though, even after a suitable inquiry is launched.

Inquiries themselves have proved to be nothing more than a faux response to concerns. When did anything of substance last happen to right the wrongs found after a lengthy and costly inquiry? 'Lessons have been learned': another phrase bandied about with no intention of learning anything.

What we are now seeing and which has been much promoted since the Brexit vote and Trump becoming POTUS, is an increase in faux outrage against both by those who wish to derail the two. This has reached levels of absurdity in faux statements, remarks and intent from people who in some cases one thought better of, but when it comes to retaining or regaining power all bets are off and lies upon lies are trotted out with the full knowledge of what they are. But as any marketing outfit will tell you, repeat the lie enough and many will eventually believe, so as with the constant emails and postal fliers that bombard you with anything from funeral plans to '50% off windows this month only', enough bite to make these approaches however fake worthwhile for the companies involved. The fake discounts are a classic example of marketing to the naive: we have a chain of bathroom retailers who have a permanent 50%-plus reduction on everything it has been doing it for years; many other examples exist.

Yet more worrying today is that the faux concern used by politicians and NGOs has spread to the public at large. The recent XR demos have shown a new twist to demonstrating: no longer content with being a bloody nuisance, the demonstrator has added faux emotion to his public face in an attempt to curry favour with even more vulnerable people. Anyone who saw the man crying under the car with the picture of his children in his hand, repeating 'their future is being taken away' while crying for the camera, can be in no doubt that faux emotion has reached a new level. Anyone believing that display needs a reality check.

What next, who knows? Most of these fads blow over with time, but not in this case, too many politicians and their ilk have this whole fake PR act embedded in the way they now approach the public. The Twitter feeds from the likes of two prime examples, David Lammy and Stella Creasy (picked, I might add, because they are two prime examples, not because of their party loyalties} are just fake in what they say and what they purport to support. It is amusing to read, if you can be bothered, and I have included Lammy’s now infamous “haven’t seen a policeman since we have been here picture” but worryingly they get that percentage they are after who support their inane utterances and that of course is what it is all about. So the whole thing goes full circle, faux emotions and image supported by people displaying faux loyalties to in many cases something they have no grasp of other than a misguided fake belonging to a false narrative.

We now await what could be the biggest fake announcement of our time, the leaving or not of the EU. If we end up with the PM declaring we have left with a version of Theresa May's agreement (which means we have not left), expect levels of faux euphoria in the political classes that will put them in the running for Olivier awards; or alternatively if we leave without a deal, armageddon and threats of people eating their babies will be the mantra from the other lot - all fake, of course !

Greta Thunberg: Little Girl, Big Business

The Columbo moment - the telling detail - was when she said “Thank you.” Greta Thunberg had just finished telling the UN that they were useless hypocrites set on killing her generation with their greed and complacency; and then she thanked them - and got applause and cheers.

What a performance!

Nothing like a young girl for melting the hearts of us crocodiles. Think of cute little Olga Korbut.

Still - why “thank you”?

Because it WAS a performance. I’m not sure what if any help she got with writing the speech, but her delivery came within a whisker of earning that political Oscar, the Nobel Peace Prize - even though she hasn’t had anyone killed, unlike some previous winners.

Yet how many of us realised that her first line, “we'll be watching you” wasn’t just juvenile rhetoric?

Who, in fact, are “we”? And how could Greta be propelled in such a short time from a lonely vigil outside the Swedish Parliament in August last year, to world prominence?

Turns out, it’s a corporate thing. There’s not just money BEHIND greenery, there’s money IN it. Less than six months after Greta’s first one-girl school strike, Canadian journalist Cory Morningstar was exploring the business nexus that has been using this child as the tip of its spear. Morningstar’s objection? It’s not nearly green enough.

The Left are happy to discount Richard-Littlejohn-ish bottle-throwing at look-at-me SJWs, labelling common-sensical sceptics “far right”; but it must be very disconcerting for them to hear the whizz of bullets from behind: from the real Left, not from the sort that used to stencil Ho Chi Minh images on Oxford college walls in the 1970s before easing themselves into soft jobs in the arts, broadcasting and politics.

Try this “deep green” statement for size:

“The environmental heroes in the West are NOT the Richard Bransons or Leonardo DiCaprios of the world. The real heroes for the environment, due to their almost non-existent environmental footprint, are the homeless – despite the scorn they receive from society as a whole.”

Well, up to a point, Cory. If you want all humanity to be nomadic, you’ll want the world’s population to shrink to prehistoric levels, though the high murder rate in those times might put you off the idea. But San Francisco’s homeless aren’t nomads, except in the sense that many of them have been attracted to the area by free food, a thriving drug market and deliberately lax policing, a hospitality they have rewarded with toxic litter, faeces and communicable diseases, all of which is very costly to deal with.

Not for Greta’s handlers, such grungy right-on-ness. “Work is of two kinds,” said Bertrand Russell. “First, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.” The Thunberg crew put a big tick in Box B. For Morningstar alleges that their goal is to set themselves up as Olympian judges – prizegivers, examination markers - of corporate greenwashing:

“The main sources of revenue come from commercial players who have received high climate rating and confidence in the We Don’t Have Time’s member base. … The revenue model will resemble the social platform of TripAdvisor.com’s business model, which with its 390 million users annually generates over $ 1 billion in good profitability…We will work with strategic partners such as Climate Reality leaders, climate organizations, bloggers, influencers and leading experts in the field.”

Doubtless their fundamental agenda – and Greta’s – is well-meaning; but it’s going to be a very good life up there among the Gods. When you become the Standard & Poor’s of eco-ness, the schmoozing will be epic.

And, argues the Canadian journalist, fundamentally the project is conservative: it is there to sustain our current rapacious big-business model, to give the machinery a coat of green paint as it roars around the world ripping out whatever it needs to maintain shareholder returns.

“Little Sister will be watching you.” So don’t forget to take us out to lunch.

Thank you.

FRIDAY MUSIC: Pink Floyd, by JD

Pink Floyd are probably one of the most famous 'rock' bands in the world so no introduction is necessary from me as more than enough has been written about them already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Floyd

Among the videos below is an excerpt from the film "Pink Floyd - The Wall" (1982). Bassist Roger Waters wrote "Another Brick in the Wall - Part 2" as a protest against rigid schooling, particularly boarding schools but it also reflects Aldous Huxley's views on the education system and I am sure Waters was familiar with Huxley's writing.

Huxley was well aware of the fact that the "Pharisees of verbal orthodoxy" often dismiss those who advocate the cultivation of our perceptual skills as "cranks, quacks, charlatans and unqualified amateurs."
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Educational-Prophecies-Aldous-Huxley-International/dp/1138832499

The final video here was written in memory of founder member and inspiration Syd Barrett who left in 1972 due to his mental illness. He died in 2006.

On This Day

President Nixon' sets up a "madman" nuclear alert, 50 years ago. For three days, B-52 bombers circle over the North Pole to scare Russia and indirectly North Vietnam:

https://www.businessinsider.com/that-time-nixon-wanted-commies-to-think-he-was-crazy-enough-to-nuke-them-2015-8?IR=T

My latest article on The Conservative Woman

A version of the post immediately before this one was published yesterday on The Conservative Woman. The comments are interesting and some informative.

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/where-dawkins-gets-it-so-wrong-about-leavers/

Grumpy McGrumpface: Dawkins on Brexit, democracy and God

Here is part of Professor Dawkins' "Diary" in this week's Spectator magazine:

I hate the very idea of a referendum. Referendums are capable of naming a ship ‘Boaty McBoatface’. We are a parliamentary democracy. We vote for representatives who have the time (and salary) to examine complicated economic and political issues thoroughly and give an informed vote. Nevertheless, having got into this mess through David Cameron’s cowardly folly, the only way out is another referendum. If Leave wins again, we should accept it with good grace and make the best of it. But it’s hard to imagine that Leave could possibly win again, now that we know — as we did not in 2016 — what Leave really means. A connoisseur, too, of religious faith, I detect it in the fanatical zeal of Brexiteers: those for whom the 2016 vote has become unchangeable holy writ; those who are prepared to force Brexit through at any price, even if the price is the obvious and undeniable disaster of no deal. Boris Johnson’s bullying, threatening bluster, when he should be apologising if not resigning, may betoken cynical ambition, but the ill-mannered cheering-on by his barmy supporters surely stems from blind faith.

The kitten of his argument is eaten alive with polemical fleas. Washing these off, we see that he says referendums sometimes give answers that those in charge don't like, which is true, but trite; and that we should have a second referendum because Leavers didn't know what they were voting for the first time, which is not trite and not true.

If anything, during the pre-vote campaign the Leave-inclined public had an unduly bleak picture of economic consequences painted for them by the PM, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Governor of the Bank of England, CBI and all the other panjandrums riding Tom Pearce's grey mare towards Widecombe Fair and their downfall.

One could also argue that Remain-inclined voters were insufficiently informed of the likely consequences of staying in the EU: the military buildup, the legal seizure of control over UK Armed Forces, the aspiration to Empire, the dangerous fiscal imbalances in the Eurozone, the growing regional inequalities that are feeding social unrest, the threat to the UK's Welfare State of unlimited Schengen "free movement of people." Professor Dawkins may find it hard to imagine Leave winning again, but his view is coloured by the knowitall Oxford milieu in which he lives, and which prevents him from understanding - perhaps he has never even met them - the "fanatical", "barmy" and "blind" majority of his fellow subjects.

You may also care to de-flea his preceding paragraph, which is equally tendentious and oratorical:

I would normally not mention Brexit in a diary such as this. But the humiliation of our sick-joke Prime Minister has dominated the week and cannot be avoided. I expected a good verdict from the Supreme Court, but its unanimity and decisiveness had me whooping and thumping the table with joy. It really deserved a standing ovation and I sensed one rising up from decent people all over the country. Whether you voted Leave or Remain, you are surely revolted by the unashamed manipulation of the Queen for partisan political ends. Ends, moreover, that have no sensible connection to ‘the will of the people’. For when ‘the people’ expressed their will in 2016, ‘Leave’ most certainly did not mean ‘Leave with no deal’. It meant, as we were repeatedly assured, an orderly and amicable separation.

One reason he will have been given this space to air his views is that he has just brought out another theological tome, "Outgrowing God." The review in Private Eye magazine (issue 1506, p.36) is unsympathetic and identifies, I think correctly, a weakness in him: an inablity to appreciate alternative points of view. He seems to be the sort of person who "knows what he knows" and that is not a quality to make the best sort of university teacher, I should have thought.

But then the professorship he held from 1995 to 2008 was not for scientific research and teaching per se - though he is a highly distinguished geneticist evolutionary biologist (corrected - please see Bruce Charlton's comment below). The chair of "Public Understanding of Science" was created specifically for him by the billionaire Microsoft applications developer Charles Simonyi, who will not have been unaware of Dawkins' views on religion. Dawkins was given a position that required him to communicate with the public; though under the circumstances, one wonders what is the gist of the messages Simonyi wished him to convey.

In any case, such is the Professor's "fanatical zeal" that he is in danger of undermining his own credibility. Philosopher and Christian Peter Williams says "far from being a disinterested advocate of truth, Dawkins spends his time preaching the gospel of atheism using a raft of fallacious arguments dressed up in an obscuring cloak of science" and gives examples of Dawkins' logical weaknesses here:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/Darwins_Rottweiler_and_the_Public_Understanding_of_Science

Returning to "Outgrowing God": the Private Eye reviewer says

... Worse still is the book's lack of empathy. There is no acknowledgement, let alone understanding, of the fact that, for some young people, science and reason may not offer the same degree of emotional comfort provided by the notion of God and, what's more, this does not necessarily make these individuals wankers. [...] There remains a coldness at the heart of Dawkins' writing that is as self-defeating as it is wearing.

I am sure that when discussing matters within his scientific field Dawkins makes perfect sense. But he may be blind to science's - and his own - limitations.

The philosopher AJ Ayer used to maintain that meaningful statements were only about what could be proved, a position from which he resiled later on. I suggest that one of the unprovable ones is Leibniz's question; "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

It seems to me that any scientific attempt to explain the origin of the Universe can only refer to things we observe in the Universe itself - time, space, matter, energy - and so the explanation will be circular. If the universe had a beginning, we cannot know how it started, even theoretically (references to a multiverse merely raise the question of how that started.) Alternatively, if there was no start, the brute fact of the Universe's existence is equally enigmatic.

I accept that by itself this conundrum goes nowhere near justifying all the tenets of religious dogmas; but I think Professor Dawkins should temper his assertions with a little humility and empathic understanding. He lays about him insensitively, like someone playing Blind-Man's-Buff.

"It's time for votes at 16" - Labour Party (UK) - oh, really?

The latest Labour Party proposal is to add 1.5 million 16- and 17-year-olds to the British electorate, presumably gambling that they are more than averagely ignorant, gullible and excitable and so will vote for the cost- and trouble-free Utopian visions given them by the backroom people who steer the "narrative." https://labour.org.uk/latest/stories/time-votes-16/

Dropping the voting age didn't work for Harold Wilson and wisely, many young people refrain from balloting on issues and parties about which they know next to nothing.

But some can be wound up to a pitch of melancholy hysteria and used as disposable spokespersons. Their 15 minutes of fame may cost them dear personally in the long run, but they will have served their purpose as far as the political chessplayers are concerned.

Here's 16-year-old Greta Thunberg at the UN Climate Action Summit, 23 September 2019:
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit?t=1570181143532

"My message is that we'll be watching you.

"This is all wrong. I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you!

"You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!

"For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you're doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.

"You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.

"The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees [Celsius], and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control.

"Fifty percent may be acceptable to you. But those numbers do not include tipping points, most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist.

"So a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us — we who have to live with the consequences.

"To have a 67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise – the best odds given by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – the world had 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit back on Jan. 1st, 2018. Today that figure is already down to less than 350 gigatons.

"How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just 'business as usual' and some technical solutions? With today's emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than 8 1/2 years.

"There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today, because these numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.

"You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.

"We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.

"Thank you."

If we take protesters like this seriously then we need to get down to the Chinese embassy and tell their government to shut off all China's coal-fired power stations.

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement 196 nations made a collective undertaking to reduce global warming to "1.5 to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels" and each country is to do its part - known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs

But China, trying to raise its people's standard of living above the mire in which it was stuck for thousands of years, is determined to continue with its industrial development and it sits on a vast coalfield. Accordingly, its CO2 output is assessed as consistent with global warming in the 3-4% bracket - a "highly insufficient" commitment, according to climateactiontracker.org.
https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china/

Of course China is aware of problems connected with burning fossil fuels. It is concerned to reduce the atmospheric pollution that concentrates in the geological basin containing Beijing, for a start. But it won't commit to rigid targets that entail an economic crash. Still, they have a strong incentive to act, in their own way and on their own timescale, without a tearful lecture from a child/woman with Asperger's, OCD and selective mutism.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-beijing/chinas-capital-beijing-vows-air-quality-improvement-but-gives-no-target-idUSKCN1Q90TU

As to the underlying science of "climate change", despite the threats to their careers and reputations some scientists are beginning to poke their heads above the parapet and call into question the facts as well as the pros and cons:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/28/global-climate-intelligence-group-founded/

It is always good not to be wasteful and messy. There's a lot we can and should do to manage our material needs in a more efficient and less unsightly way. Just don't ask the poor to stay poor to suit our Marie Antoinette toy-farm fantasies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hameau_de_la_Reine

But we should deplore the use of youngsters for propaganda purposes who have limited understanding of the issues and are encouraged to make emotional rants. Or allowing (accompanying, leading!) placard-wielding, slogan-chanting children to take time off school to tell us simplistic nonsense, as I saw in Oxford a few months ago.* If their political education is "gob open, ears shut" then we need to raise the voting age to allow them time to outgrow the indoctrination of their stupid teachers...

... some of whom may have learned all the wrong lessons themselves. I remember the sit-in at Oxford's Examination Schools in 1973, and the marches ("Thatcher! Thatcher! Milk-snatcher!"). Not being a natural joiner, I just watched as nondescript men halfway up lampposts took telephoto shots of the ninnies for the Press and/or the Home Office. What the crowds didn't realise is they were just being used by the self-selected leaders of tomorrow, as sheepdogs practise penning flocks. Then the few worked their way into organisations so they could take charge of the many, for real.

There's much to do; and much to undo.
________________________________

By the way, one of the the slogans I saw there, "There is no Planet B," is plain wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri_b

______________________________________________________________________________
UPDATE: originally, after the "Marie Antoinette reference", I wrote the following, which Sobers' comment below informs me was a subversive stunt to upset AOC's meeting:

And we can do without insane certainty and crazy, desperate proposals like this one from a young town hall meeting attendee who wore a T-shirt with the slogan "Save the planet, eat the children."

[video was embedded here]

She is well-informed in the modern sense, i.e. knows everything she wants to know. For she is right up-to-date in referring to a Swedish professor (Magnus Soderlund) who recommends cannibalism as a greener form of nutrition.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7443707/Swedish-scientist-says-humans-cannibals-fight-climate-change.html

Since that intensely embarrassing outburst, Democratic Party Congresswoman  Ms Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez correctly tweeted, "This person may have been suffering from a mental condition and it's not okay that the right-wing is mocking her and potentially make her condition or crisis worse. Be a decent human being and knock it off."

But in that case, we should also deplore the use of other youngsters for propaganda purposes who, like this one, have limited understanding of the issues and are encouraged to make emotional rants...

FRIDAY MUSIC: Frank Zappa, by JD

Watching the Proms this year they featured something written 100 years ago which was dire, it was very loud and percussive and tiresome. The presenter Suzy Klein enthused at the end but it was obvious she didn't like it but the Beeb pay her so she had to be polite.

They have over the years been trying to broaden the scope of music. Big band jazz has become more or less a regular feature and there have been Proms devoted to the music of Motown with Sam Moore and William Bell among others. Musical theatre such as West Side Story (with all those 'evil' triads!) has become a staple also and I have already covered the first ever Tango Prom.

But sometimes the choice seems bizarre. If it is good music it is welcome but if it is for 'diversity' they shouldn't bother. (I am too polite to mention the guilty parties.)

My ever fertile brain thought - when will they have the nerve to devote a Prom to the music of Frank Zappa! He recorded with the LSO many years ago and I have been listening to his music recently. He is seriously underrated, he is not a rock musician he is a jazzer who uses rock instruments. Wiggia has already posted FZ's version of Ravel's Bolero so........... are your readers ready for a Zappa musical post? Ready to be Zapped?

(This was a comment on the Bolero video - "Interesting that Ravel was very taken by jazz and became one of the few composers to incorporate sax into his works, Bolero being a prime example. Here we see the four major saxes interpreting his work with great feeling. Classics meets jazz meets pop?")









This final video is his last professional public appearance, as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating". Recordings from the concerts appeared on The Yellow Shark, Zappa's last release during his lifetime.

Brexit and the Remain backlash: the reactionary use of language

"ELITE" vs "POPULISM"

Look at the use of these two terms - as they appeared in UK news - and note how the word "populism" spiked around the time of the Referendum, and then got going again in the autumn of 2016 as the propaganda campaign to negate the result got underway:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=16&date=today%205-y&geo=GB&q=populism,elite

Child abuse: breaking the chain

When I worked with Looked After Children there was a saying - apparently an old saw in this field: "All abusers have been abused, but not all who have been abused go on to become abusers."

Once you are tuned in to looking for it you'll find it's more common than you really wanted to know. It's even in what used to be a standard schoolroom read: "Quiet incest flourished where the roads were bad..." Laurie Lee, "Cider with Rosie" (1959).

What I didn't know until today is that Sigmund Freud addressed this issue in a lecture to colleagues in 1896 (1) and instead of acclaim "the donkeys gave it an icy reception." It was news they didn't want to hear.

Like metal-detector-wielding treasure hunters, those who look for truth sometimes have to wash off a lot of muck before they can examine their finds. In this case, I've learned a bit of the history of abuse denial by reading a Frenchman who seems to have it in for Jews - but unlike naive SJWs I don't expect to get all my information from completely untainted sources: Laurent Guyénot's "current research focuses on the religious and civilizational backgrounds of Zionist geostrategy" (2). Still, a fact is a fact and it appears from his article today in The Unz Review (3) that Freud's own father sexually abused his children, as Freud told a colleague:

"On February 11, 1897 (4), after mentioning that forced oral sex on children can result in neurotic symptoms, he adds: “Unfortunately, my own father was one of these perverts and is responsible for the hysteria of my brother (all of whose symptoms are identifications) and those of several younger sisters. The frequency of this circumstance often makes me wonder.” "

But, says Guyénot, Freud then backtracked and transformed the issue into one of childhood fantasy instead: hence the Oedipus Complex.

In 1932 one of Freud's followers, Sandor Ferenczi also postulated the reality of child sexual exploitation but when he presented his paper (5) to the 12th International Psycho-Analytic Congress in Wiesbaden he got the same cold treatment as his master: "Ferenczi was ostracized by Freud and his sectarian disciples, and his paper was never translated in English for the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, as was customary. He died a few years later, a broken man."

Now our French intellectual spins all this into a rococo condemnation of Jews and Jewishness and works it into a pseudo-psychological explanation of Israel's relations with its Middle Eastern neghbours and the USA.

But Laurie Lee's neighbours weren't Jewish, so far as I know; nor are all child abusers men, as we see in the UK's 2009 Plymouth child abuse case (6) [I wonder what had happened in the perpetrators' own childhoods?]

It's a horribly vexed issue, and of its nature hard to prove - especially if accusations are directed against the rich and powerful, as we have seen.

And abuse doesn't have to be physical to be harmful and long-lasting. Merely withholding affection from a child and constantly criticising it builds up a debt that the child will eventually seek to have repaid, if not by the parent (and how?) then by 'revenge' on innocent third parties (including their partners and offspring) and/or by self-hatred and various forms of self-harm.

Yet the worst, most systematic abuse case I encountered didn't drive the victim screaming mad. She was able to give evidence against her father that got him jailed; to normalise relations with her mother, who accepted her own complicity; and when asked to do her bit for a Christmas concert at the children's home, stood up and recited the Nicene Creed.

I felt like cheering.
__________________________________

(1) "The Aetiology Of Hysteria" https://www.freud2lacan.com/docs/The_Aetiology_of_Hysteria.pdf
(2) https://www.greanvillepost.com/2019/06/05/9-11-was-an-israeli-job/
(3) http://www.unz.com/article/freud-sexual-abuse-and-cover-up/
(4) Letter to Wilhelm Fliess, also quoted by PBS here: https://www.pbs.org/youngdrfreud/pages/analysis_doubts.htm
(5) "Confusion of the Tongues Between the Adults and the Child" http://icpla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Ferenczi-S-Confusion-of-Tongues-Intl-J-Psychoa.-vol.30-p.225-1949.pdf
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Plymouth_child_abuse_case

FRIDAY MUSIC: Ian Anderson, by JD

By RicHard-59 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

In the late sixties and early seventies pop groups become more and more hirsute. Among contenders for the longest and straggliest hair were Jethro Tull. Just another rock and roll band you might think.

But no, because, led by vocalist and songwriter and flautist extraordinaire Ian Anderson, they shot to the upper reaches of the 'hit parade' with a lyrical song in 5/4 time. That was unheard of, most R/R music is 4/4 with occasional waltz time (3/4) and the raw stuff in 2/4.

But it was no fluke because Anderson has subsequently enjoyed an illustrious career and proved his musicianship with jazz and classical as well as performing an interstellar duet with an astronaut! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Anderson

 



 

 



  

 

 



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

A late addition (second above) was Boris Dancing! Too good to resist even if it is about Boris Yeltzin and not 'our' Boris.

Brexit: Patriot Games

"He has put himself at the service of Britain. By proroguing Parliament he has appealed to democracy. He remains virtually the only dictator of modern times who, in the last resort, uses his power to defend democratic principles. Britain will undoubtedly go through great turmoil. In the end the will of the people will prevail. Those who had faith in Britain even during the dark days of the war can have faith now."

Of course, the quotation above is not about Boris Johnson - not de Pfeffel but de Gaulle; and it's not from now, but from the Paris rioting of 1968 (1). All I've done is alter a couple of terms.

In the same article, the writer - eminent historian AJP Taylor - says:

"I once heard a French historian say: "When English people are discontented they form a committee. When French people are discontented they make a revolution." I thought this rather exaggerated, but he turns out to have been right."

And so the piqued Top People have resorted to getting an opinion - a ruling on policy, not on law - from the "Supreme Court" as part of their subversive campaign. Committees, Parliamentary motions, legal rulings, appeals - as in "The African Queen", the very deckboards of the Constitution can be torn up and fed into the flames in the reckless dash towards antidemocratic servitude. The People must be kept down, at all costs.

Again and again, I read - and hear from friends - that releasing us from the EU is somehow a Conservative plot. Yet ten years before we finally entered the EEC (having been held off by de Gaulle while he nailed down the Common Agricultural Policy in favour of French farmers so that it would be unavailable to British ones as well), Professor Taylor clearly understood that getting us in was a Tory policy:

"The Common Market is, for the Government, an end in itself, which will automatically provide a solution for all ills. Conservative economic policy has been a failure. Instead of prosperity and expansion, there has been stagnation and the pay pause. [...]

"Once we are inside, Dr. Adenauer and President de Gaulle will reveal, in a kindly way, the secret of expansion. This is the height of absurdity as well as of evasion. For, just as the Government nerve themselves to take the plunge, expansion is ending in the Common Market countries.

"The move into the Common Market has been, from first to last, a confession by British Ministers that they did not know what to do. Originally it was a scheme for smuggling through devaluation of the pound, and hence reduction of wages, without anyone noticing. Now it is not even that. Entry into the Common Market is not a policy. It is a substitute for a policy. Its consequences, its implications, are never explained. [...]

"What else can a puzzled voter do except doubt and turn his back? He receives no guidance and much confusion from the Government. He receives equal equivocation from the Labour Party. Here too the same refusal to decide. The same refusal to state clearly the issues involved for and against. The failure of the Labour leadership to come out clearly against the Common Market has been the greatest lost opportunity of our time. It is this failure more than anything else which keeps the Government of Mr. Macmillan in office." (2) (emphases mine.)

As to the "Supreme Court", that child of Blair's constitutional vandalism - it should go, and the Law Lords return.

________________________________________

(1) AJP Taylor: "Will Germany be the Next to Explode?" The Sunday Express, London, June 2 1968
(2) "Macmillan Has Not Found The Answer Yet", The Sunday Express, London, July 15 1962

Climate crisis? by JD

At the weekend the Mail Online had a headline about Greta Thunberg receiving a 'rock star' reception at the UN. Today (monday 23rd) the same Mail Online had two very different headlines: one was how Soros and all his money was supporting the 'climate crisis' hysteria and the other was about how Dinesh D'Souza compares Greta Thunberg to an Aryan poster girl used by the NAZIS (The story linking Soros to Thunberg has been removed since this morning)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7489121/Greta-Thunberg-receives-rock-star-reception-New-York.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7492489/Dinesh-DSouza-compares-teen-eco-warrior-Greta-Thunberg-Aryan-poster-girl-used-NAZIS.html

But is there now a realisation that the relentless and fact free propaganda is nothing more than a 'sky is falling' scare story. A lot of stories and comments are emerging criticising the hidden agenda in all this. This video is just one of them-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hofAsL8q4A&feature=youtu.be

At the end I laughed out loud, spluttering my tea all over....... Greta's middle name is Tintin! What!! What on earth possessed her parents to call her Tintin. I know there is a current fashion for daft names but...... Tintin?

But to be serious, as noted in the video, Greta's grandfather is Olof Thunberg. His Wiki entry says that he is related to the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Svante Aarhenius, possibly his uncle for Aarhenius' mother is a Thunberg.

Svante Aarhenius is well known as the 'father' of global warming far he first established how CO2 could combine with H2O to form carbonic acid in the atmosphere and it was this which retained the heat; thus global warming. 

https://prabook.com/web/svante.arrhenius/3721469

But he did not think that this was necessarily a bad thing and was probably beneficial and provided an opportunity to increase crop yields and bring agricultural production to areas of the world which are currently dormant.

"We often hear lamentations that the coal stored up in the earth is wasted by the present generation without any thought of the future, and we are terrified by the awful destruction of life and property which has followed the volcanic eruptions of our days. We may find a kind of consolation in the consideration that here, as in every other case, there is good mixed with the evil. By the influence of the increasing percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere, we may hope to enjoy ages with more equable and better climates, especially as regards the colder regions of the earth, ages when the earth will bring forth much more abundant crops than at present, for the benefit of rapidly propagating mankind." (p63)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14370181-worlds-in-the-making-the-evolution-of-the-universe

Other sources are also asking pertinent questions or maybe impertinent questions, depends on your point of view.

"A workplace strike shows company owners and management that workers are able to harm them economically. A school strike, on the other hand, constitutes a form of self-harm, undertaken to attract adult attention. And the global school strike for climate is led by a girl with a long and tragic history of self-harm to her own body.
(Greta does not skip classes from just any school, but one for children with special needs. Many other Swedish families fight hard to get their children into such schools, because places are rare.)

https://quillette.com/2019/04/23/self-harm-versus-the-greater-good-greta-thunberg-and-child-activism/

And other sources are highlighting that the 'climate crisis' is just another way to increase the tax burdon on us all as well as being another part of the political desire to keep us all poor and stupid. (see links at end) The 'climate crisis' is also a good business opportunity for 'green entrepreneurs' to make a great deal of money. Who is Ingmar Rentzhog for example and what is his connection to Greta Thunberg?

“How is it possible for you to be so easily tricked by something so simple as a story, because you are tricked? Well, it all comes down to one core thing and that is emotional investment. The more emotionally invested you are in anything in your life, the less critical and the less objectively observant you become.” — David JP Phillips, We Don’t Have Time board of directors, “The Magical Science of Storytelling”

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/

So in all this fog of misinformation who is right; the 16 year old school girl with Asperger's or her Nobel Prize winning great uncle?

=======================================================================
'poor and stupid' -
https://vikingpundit.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-conspiracy-to-keep-you-poor-and.html
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?101232-The-conspiracy-to-keep-you-poor-and-stupid
https://muskegonpundit.blogspot.com/2008/03/conspiracy-to-keep-you-poor-and.html

The various links to http://www.poorandstupid.com/ all say - Not Found.

Looking at the products of our education system it is clear that the 'stupid' target has already been met; school leavers and college graduates have been taught to obey the system and not to think. That leaves the 'poor' target and that is getting ever closer!