EU Election; Game of Thrones edition

So with only a week to go in the EU elections, the leaders fight over who will win control of not much at all and hold no sway over Westeros or even Europe, it si worth a quick review of the character development in this season:







First off, current evil Queen Cersei May has long-ago locked herself in the Palace of Westminster declaring that Winter has arrived. Fearful of an army of undead socialists who have come back from the 1970's, she has instead seen her own army desert and sits lonely, waiting for the inevitable last stand.









To challenge, May comes the pretender Farage-Stark. Farage has mustered the Men of the North to fight both Queen Cersei, The Undead Socalists and the EU Emperor Junker. Whilst Farage has painted himself as loyal only to Westeros, he is in fact not even Northern, but a treacherous court minister, now turned rabble rouser. With a strong army, he advances towards the EU city of Brussels (Stasbourg on Tuesdays & Wednesdays) and then has set his sights on May's Palace at Westminster. With a touch but small army, he is likely to over-reach.







Next in line and keen on the Westeros throne, is Socialist Prophet and King of the Undead , Jezziah. Turfed out of his stately mansion in Islington and brought back to life from the pre-millennium period, Jezziah leads an army of Momentum Zombies who wish to make Westeros fair for all by levelling the whole place to the ground. With little strategy but enormous forces, Jezziah plunges on, heading for Westminster and trying to ignore Farage-Stark and refusing to entreat with the EU who he later plans also to destroy.





Returning in a frankly bizarre plot-twist is the High Cable, preaching peace to everyone as the expense of all Liberty and Democracy, he has gained an unexpected following as urban people revolt in protest against the Pretender, Queen May and the army of the Undead. Can't see it lasting and I bet the Urban types all get killed in the end. It would be better if he joined with some of the smaller characters but he is too old to do much.





The real winner of the series so far seems to be the made Lord of Dragons, Guy 'Daenyrs' Verhofstadt. He has long held that Westeros must be destroyed and won't even participate in the elections. Along with Lord Junker and Ser Michael Barnier, they seek to burn Westeros and claim it in the name of the EU. Never nice when the baddies win a season, but it is hard to see currently how the divided leaders of Westeros could unite to face the EU Dragons?




This covers the main characters but there are a few minor ones too that have developed:





A new group lead by Chuka Reek, seeks to betray all around and seize power for the old Lord of Blair religion. However, he has become quite a comedy character as everything goes wrong and the small rebellion he leads seems destined to be crushed and forgotten by one or all of the main leaders.





Also now departed by interesting was Tommy 'Bolton' Robinson, a nasty piece of work who thought he could win around a decent following by threating and scaring all he came across. Not really enough support for this approach and his character has long since departed the stage.

Weekend: The Things You Can Find in the Guardian

Quite genuinely, there is often some great stuff amongst the dross.  This week, for example:

1.  A really neat summing-up by Rafael Behr on Corbyn -

... impatient and frustrated with Brexit, but not in a way that speaks to the hearts of remainers or leavers. It is not an itch to complete the job or to abort it. Instead, the Labour leader sits tutting and drumming his fingers like a man who feels the wrong revolution has barged into history’s queue when it was meant to be his turn.

2.  Polly Toynbee

Unless you are a Liverpool or Tottenham supporter, you probably need cheering up and Polly Toynbee is a reliable source of a wry smile.  She has latterly taken to contorting almost every one of her thrice-weekly articles into concluding that only R2 can solve the nation's woes.  Her desperation is palpable, and this week it has reached new depths: an appeal to the PM, on the grounds that a second referendum is May's only hope!

As the knock on her door tells Theresa May her time is up, let her look to her legacy. With her unsurpassed reputation as the most pitiful failure of a prime minister, she has less than nothing to lose. A public vote is her last chance.

Ah well.  Nobody on Team Corbyn is listening to the R2 pleading of the Wise Woman of Clapham Common, so perhaps Mrs May's desire for posterity is indeed Polly's best bet.   Anyhow, since the local elections, she's been out & about in the North to recharge her batteries at the front line.  What does she find? 

...I was in Middlesbrough, surveying Labour’s local election wreckage. The party now controls not one Tees Valley council, losing Middlesbrough, Redcar, Stockton, Hartlepool and Darlington. “We all got beaten,” said one of the surviving Labour councillors, grimacing at the pain of it. The regional mayor is Tory, and in Middlesbrough the new mayor is a multimillionaire hedge-funding property developer, standing as an independent.

And she thinks R2 will bring her joy?  As Behr says in the Corbyn article: "the current appetite for upending the British status quo has little to do with socialism". 

ND

When hard work is just not good enough

My fellow blogger Nick Drew made an interesting comment on the last post:


"Corbyn is workshy Bastard"


This is self-evidently true unless you count going on marches, making jam and winging-it making conspiracy theory demagoguery as work.


However, I have reflected on to consider where this is in fact a good trait? Because it's Friday so not entirely seriously, I thought about the records of some of the recent leaders in the UK and US, so as to compare what a lazy Corbyn PM may become:


May/Brown - by common acclaim these are the worst Prime Ministers of recent times. Both very hard working, both serious and somewhat pious in nature, both well-meaning but also, delusional. No good has come of their hard work, the more they did the more of a mess they made and boy, was it a mess. May at least inherited a very tricky situation whereas Brown hubristically was the author of his own from the time of his Chancellorship. The country has had a hard time under such leadership and growth has been weak.

Blair/Cameron - Both men easy in front of the cameras, happy to do some virtue signalling and occasionally given the putting in some work - but equally dependent on a cabal of hard working supporters to put in the hard yards. Both retired, Blair to become leader of the global lizard underground and Cameron to a quiet life with him and his money. Both made a decent impression, did some good things and in Blair's case some terrible things when he wrongly sought to try at something. The Country broadly did OK under both of them (Blair ended with the GFC of course, so was something of a chimera created by Brown) and us plebs rolled along OK


Major - Did naff all, had no power, sat around a lot post Black-Wednesday with not much going on. Huge defeat by Blair, contributed much merriment to the nation with the whole back to basics farrago which consumed time but no effort. The country boomed, jobs for all, growing tax take, the mid to late nineties after the 1990 recession was a happy time!


Then we can look to America too  -


Reagan, lazy and latterly sadly, demented. By all accounts properly could not be arsed with much at all apart from daytime TV. Fantastic President, economy soared, smashed the USSR by teatime.

Clinton , busy with Ugandan affairs and defending silly mud-slinging over whitewater and trying to avoid his wife at all times. US did brilliantly, economy grew and everyone now looks to him as being one of the best ever. He literally did nothing.


Obama, hard working, interfering, well-meaning and useless. Tough times in America and the worst foreign policy for decades and decades. Worked very hard and bequeathed the US Donald Trump.




All the hard workers have huffed and puffed to achieve nothing. Constantly screwing with the systems of Government at home and overseas suffers from a very strong and direct law of diminishing returns. Indeed, the least engaged have often done the best. I can see Thatcher as different exception but she was indeed the exception to prove the rule whose like we shall not see again.


We as voters should therefore be wiser in future, hard working politicians should not be voted for, they merely cause more trouble than existed before.


In conclusion then a lazy Corbyn might be good as despite his demented socialist dreams he wont actually get around to any of it. I do worry his fellow-travellers might jump in to exploit this, but we will have to see. Then if the choice is between Bojo and Farage as alternatives then all well and good, as they similarly won't be that bothered with really doing much, whatever sound and fury emanates forth.


Finally then, soon we may get a choice of three politicians who don't want to actually do much,  at last allowing the Country to descend into a period of relative political peace and economic stability.

This is the business we've chosen

 Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen!
  I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!

Politicians like to imagine their plots and deals and arrangements are like the events in slick political thrillers. Or powerful dramas. Or even the twisted machinations of TV medieval-dragon super-blockbusters.

But, in reality, the business of politics is more akin to being in a gang. 

Unquestioning loyalty to the boss. 
Enforcement of discipline.
Make sure everyone shares in the spoils.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Reward obedience and punish the faithless.
And remember, that even when  everything is going really well, somebody will need to get whacked.


At the very beginning of her reign, Theresa May ditched George Osborne, for Spreadsheet Phil. 
This was something that had to be done. A new Prime Minister needs her own choice as the number two in the land. The office of Chancellor repays an awful lot of debts.

Osborne, rather oddly, seeing as he had a bit of history with Theresa May, did not resign himself. Something he should have done the instant his own Boss resigned. He was never going to hang on to being Chancellor under a new broom. 
 In the news at the time, 2016, it was reported that Osborne was 'shocked' to be sacked.
It later emerged that he was more 'shocked' about the manner of his sacking. She told him he was crap, and needed to go. 
 No arrangements were made for the former senior cabinet minister, now a lowly MP, and he ended up being found some space in one of the smallest offices in Westminster. Well and truly out of the loop.

Osborne was a very inconsistent Chancellor. Like Cameron, he paid far to little attention to the detail. Left underlings to sort out the nuts and bolts while he continued in the Brown tradition of making grand, sweeping statements and delivering tricks and flourishes to deceive and mislead the media. Something in which he was only ever partly successful. And not nearly as convincing at it as Brown was. 

Where May made a real miscalculation, one that can be seen now as the first of very many, was in making a mortal enemy of Boy George.
She had no need to do it. She was PM. And he was just an ex Hand-of-the-King.
She set out her stall, almost from day one, to rubbish the Cameroon years as being too right wing,
{Yes I know! But she did.} 

She must have known Osborne, realising his support and loyalists were now only a very small faction within the party, would quit party politics. He was destined to be Cameron's successor. His power stemmed from that. Reduced to the backbenches, he had no riches to offer anyone. So a threat neutralised.

But foolishly, and characteristically, she failed to look at the wider ramifications of her sticking the boot in.

She could not have known he would become the editor of London's Newspaper. Giving him significant local power and influence, and a huge opportunity to point out her numerous shortcomings.

But she knew he was going somewhere. 

He was a young, mostly successful, very ambitious, chancellor. Popular with the Bilde-a-bears. She must have thought he might end up at the IMF. The UN. Facebook. Airbus. HSBC. Probably all of them. And dozens of directorships more.
He was going to turn up again in some position of importance.
So she had no need to humiliate him to the point where he talked of chopping up her body and keeping dismembered remains in his freezer.

Yesterday, Mr O, took a measure of revenge by calmly and rationally explaining what a total failure Theresa has been. What an utter loser she is. And how she should be removed from office immediately.

Blair, with far more justification, was never so disloyal to Brown.
Theresa should have heeded the advice of all successful Mafia Dons.

Venezuela; a sad story for all concerned

In recent years, a stick to beat Corbyn and lefties everywhere has been the dire state of Venezuela.


Venezuela is a super case study. President Chavez took over a very corrupt country, a victim of much cold war interference and narco-terrorism. However, he took it over with a Marxist-socialist government of a country that was one of the world's largest producers and that was producing vast revenues for the Government from already state owned PDVSA. Those revenues lost a lot to corruption, but were there for the Government


As such, it is a real world example of the magic money tree basically coming true. There was money for school and hospitals, for poverty relief, for Cuba, for London buses (under Red Ken) and for generally fomenting revolution. It became quickly a text book case for the likes of Corbyn and lefty fellow-travellers - how the poor were helped by Marxism.


Of course, reality took  a different turn, then non-oil side of the economy had suffered repeated collapses since the 1970's due to over-reliance on oil revenues. As soon as Chavez took over he started pressuring what little private economy existed, which resulted in a general strike led by the bosses against the workers - but in defence of their right to exist as businesses. This quickly managed to make both Chavez and the bosses unpopular, even resulting in a failed Coup.


Chavez, sticking to the Marxist script, slowly took more and more dictatorial powers and turned democracy into a sham in the country. The huge oil revenues of 2006-2008 covered much of this up but since then it has been a total disaster.


The revenues have collapsed but with huge political interference (read nepotism and graft) in PDVSA production from the world's largest oil reserves has plummeted to less than half of what it used to be. All at a time when the USA has nearly tripled its domestic production.


President Maduro has continued the sham democracy and increased the kleptocracy in the County in line with all other previous Marxist-socialist experiments. There are quite a few billionaires in Caracas at the same time as the now hyper-inflation has literally ruined the economy and people.


Of course, being pretend Marxists, the Government of Venezuela is quick to blame the USA for all its ills. The USA has not really been that involved until recently, but under Trump seems to have finally decided to play a role in trying to oust Maduro - as it happens this is far more likely  to do with stemming immigration from a large failed state than gaining access to oil it no longer needs. But for the Left in this country, it makes more comfortable reading to believe the old anti-imperialist tropes (easily supported because China struck a mega-deal with Venez when it was broke to buy all its oil super cheap and is keen to keep this one sided bargain going) as China and Russia back Maduro.


But then as of this week the US interference has failed, its soft backing for the alternative Government has resulted in a failed coup. Moreover, its sanctions on PDVSA have hurt the finances of the Country even more to the point where medicines long ago ran and out people have been forced to eat their pets - all in a country that should be as rich as Norway. Now the US is discussing military intervention that will not have either world or perhaps even local support (you might hate Maduro but your family being killed by us bombs is not an improvement, is it?). So the US may yet turn into its imperialist caricature from the left.


Meanwhile, for me, the main lesson is that even with a magic money tree Marxism fails. It simply does not work to hand out free money to as many people as you can and then somehow think the socio-economic underpinning of a country will survive. People stop working, businesses collapse and everything focus's on imports - this inevitably leads to hyper-inflation and collapse.

Weekend: Sport: Last Word

Judd Trump.  Wow. 

If, by the age of 29, Danny Cipriani had turned around his attitude to the same degree, England would be RWC favourites by a goodly distance.

ND 

Weekend: Sport Deeply Unsettles the SJW Left

Not, of course, the cheerful men-of-the-people Left, whose enthusiasm for soccer, rugby league, fishing, whippets, racing pigeons, etc etc knows no bounds.  In this category we must also clearly include the Ed Balls of this world: he typifies whole swathes of healthy middle-class social democrats who also love their sport.

But for other, altogether unhealthy leftist categories, sport is deeply troubling in many dimensions.

1.  Healthy bodies, healthy minds ... and your classic bedsit marxist is, in the immortal words of Molesworth, "uterly wet and a weed".   No good at sports; resenting every second of it at skool; retreating to the library and vowing his revenge on the cruel society that mocked his performances with bat, ball and running shoe; He Hates Sport.  Yes, it was social ineptness and Sport in particular that drove him to becoming a marxist in the first place:  "I'll show you!".  It gets nastier, too: these are the people who, physical cowards to their bones, drool at the thought of ISIS and IRA psychopaths who are actually willing to do the violence to their opponents that weed-boy can only dream about.   ("You only have to look at the little faces of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell in the photos with Gerry Adams to conclude that they’d have been almost erotically impressed by the whiff of cordite" - Marina Hyde). 

2.  Sporting endeavour, including team sport, exemplifies individual effort and determination to win, to rise above the others, to prove that, unequivocally, there is better and worse in the performances and achievements of people, and to glory in the prospect of being best.  As far from "all have won, and all must have prizes" as can be.  And would Man U be willing to field a handful of 'under-represented' categories if they were no good at soccer? Would the millions of supporters stand for it?  Yes - but only as team mascot, where it doesn't matter.

Incidentally, mention of team sport leads to another leftist phenomenon we'll come to a bit later.

3.  Sport also handily and daily reinforces some inconvenient truths the SJWs would very much like to deny.  In fact, they do deny them, actively, all the time.  But being confronted with constant, self-evident refutation is never a comfortable thing.

Yup: there are inherent, significant, objective differences between - how shall we put it - different sectors of humanity, as everyone but the most tortuous doublethinker really knows.   Sorry, *trans women*; sorry Semenya: but there it is (even the Graun knows this really - and the feminists are fast being forced to recognise it too).  Women want to have opportunities to enjoy meaningful elite sport?  (not to mention other, quite important things they might like to enjoy, like physical safety).  Then the facts of nature just have to be recognised.  Sport will be the undoing of the current attack-of-the-trans, in all but the most right-on universities.

(Breeding horses and dogs for sport leads to other *awkward* conclusions well-known to every working man, too - and of course George Orwell.  What a minefield!)

4.  Communists in power have never quite known what to do about sport.  On the one hand, they know the workers love it; and it would be great for communist countries to dominate on such a globally prominent stage.  But then the problems set in.  Actually, they often lose: and how humiliating is that, for the superior and wholly scientific doctrine they represent?  So then it has to be drugging and cheating; but that ends up in even greater humiliation: manifest inability to win, and desperation to do so, haha!  What lessons does that reinforce?

As a specific instance of this, China's attitude to soccer is pretty funny.  Apparently, Xi is dead keen on the game.  China has a lot of able bodied people nowadays, and most of them are comendably well fed and healthy, too (I say this because it wasn't always the case).  And team sports - shouldn't that be a natural for them?  With their love of cooperation and coordination and discipline and etc etc etc.

Xi would really, really, love China to excel at soccer; temperamentally, nationalistically.  And wouldn't it be just great politically, too!  How does he privately explain to himself their utter failure to do so, and the deeper implications of this all-too-evident failure?  (Hardly a shortage of resources!)  It's an amusing thought and, by the way, a very good indicator that Maoism and 'Xi thought' contain glaring deficiencies in their supposedly profound, *scientific* socio-psychological assessments - even in their understanding of their own people.

So - a plague on the SJW left in their bedsits, and let's go enjoy the holiday weekend!  A quick lunch - then off to the match.

ND 

UK Local elections give some hope in a dark time

In a time when the Country has the worst collective political leadership since we had mad kings on the throne, the local election results coming through offer a small glimmer of hope.


In the north of England, voters have finally begun to turn away from both Labour and the Tories. This is good news, both parties are led by incompetent and perhaps even malevolent cabals - not voting for either at the current time is good. Perhaps a message will be communicated that they should both radically change their approaches.


In addition, the independents have risen, across the Country lots of councils have fallen to groups of independent people, tired with the poor and partisan service from Labour or Tory and keen to take on responsibility at grass roots level. So far Independents have won 25% of the seats they have contested - a huge movement.

Sadly, the Lib Dems have done well as they return to their traditional role of the protest vote. In many places, there are only 3 candidates and so if you don't vote Labour or Tory then the Lib Dems get your protest vote as a sort of anti-vote. We will see if there are euro elections in a couple of weeks as to how people vote when there are some positive alternatives such as the Brexit party for of the CHUK group.


Still, the populace is at least reacting to the mess that is Westminster, hopefully next time out we can make sure they are all de-selected. That will be my take on it, every MP from the 2017 slate should be kicked out so we can start afresh, none to be spared after the worst Parliament in two centuries.

Loyalties

It's all rather difficult, n'est-ce pas?  On the one hand, well, Huawei?  Really?  I know I said back in 2016, darker deeds than the Nissan deal would flow from May's desperation: (Nissan: The Shape of Things To Come) - but Huawei? 

Still, a complete failure to understand its significance is all of a piece with May's utter solipsistic stupidity.

On the other hand:  Williamson.  One could get quite extravagant with the epithets here, so let's just say: a man whose overall maturity makes Osborne look positively statesmanlike.  "No one will be sorry to see him go" - a bit of an understatement.  (Oh, my mistake: May will be sorry to see him go, apparently.  By their acolytes shall ye know them ...)

And finally, Mordaunt!  Who in 2018 regaled us with her opinion that "trans women are women".  Maybe that came with some qualifying nuances: but this is not a string of words I expect to hear from, well, anyone with claims to native English-speaking adulthood and the power of reason.  

Still, being a naval reservist is nice.  We must clutch at such straws as we find.

ND

Surely, Somme Mistake?

Over the recent 4 years of national remembrance for the Great War, General Haig, mostly got away with being a bad general. The 'celebrations' and documentaries concentrated on the lead up to the war. The failure of politics and nation states. Covered that very well. 
And were more in sorrow than anger about the Somme.The post war poets 'Lions led by Donkeys' was much reduced from its 1960s/Vietnam conflations. 

Field Marshall Douglas Haig,in more recent times, has had his Somme legacy put into context. The Somme wasn't the Blackadder slaughter by incompetence. It was a highly detailed, highly planned battle. With well thought out ideas to counter the difficulties of advancing upon entrenched works on a front that was miles wide and deep.

The 'walking slowly towards the enemy' was simply advice for heavily laden soldiers to not panic and rush. The reason for being heavily laden in the first place was so they could combat previous offensive problems of not having sufficient supplies to withstand the immediate counter-offensives that a successful breach of the enemy lines would entail.
 Walking would be fine, because the largest bombardment ever undertaken would have broken the enemies strong points. Blown apart the barbed wire. Killed and concussed many of the defenders. 
 The air force was up in superior numbers and the humongous mines were detonated.


And ...it was an unmitigated disaster. 

Largely for reasons outside Haig's control.
He had to make the attacks as the French were in deep trouble with the main German 1916 offensive.
Battles had to be planned to a timetable rigidity, as communications could not keep pace. A commander lost almost all control the moment battle was joined. Even more than in Wellington's day, where at least a General could see most of his forces. Haig couldn't see even a tiny portion of his. Couldn't contact them. It was 18th century comms with 20th century weapons. Hence the slaughter for everyone, on all sides. Made worse on the Somme as the British Army of 1916 was made up of troops of limited military experience, education, fitness and training.

Field Marshall Haig is not really responsible for the first day massacre of the Somme and the failure of his untried conscript army to breakthrough the German lines and win the war.
By necessity, he worked to a highly centralised, rigid, inflexible and simple battle plan, in which, if everyone did their job, and nothing went wrong, then all would be well.

So, Haig gets a let off for the worst single day in the history of the wars of the united kingdom and empire.

 Passchendaele, on the other hand, is a rerun of the Somme. Same commanders. Same tactics. Same battle plan. Same hopes.
 Where all those manifest failures of the earlier battles of the western front are repeated, in an even worse, more devastating way. With similar, catastrophic results.


People over the age of 50 could be forced to pay more than £300 more in national insurance each year in to fund social care, under plans that have been branded a tax on getting old by Labour.
Senior Tory MP Damian Green has proposed a major shake-up to funding for care, arguing that it should follow the state pension model where everyone is entitled to basic support but individuals top up the pot through their own savings.

The former cabinet minister, who was given the task of drawing up the long-awaited green paper on social care for England when he was in government, suggested a 1 per cent rise in national insurance for the over 50s as a last resort to fill the £2.75bn funding gap in the system.
In a paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, he said £350m could be generated by taxing the winter fuel allowance and even scrapping it for the highest earners.

The Independent.