The MSM have Mr Putin on their front pages, and so can we …

 

I am sorely puzzled. While there’s uproar in the Western media about President Putin’s speech yesterday, about his mobilisation of reserve troops, about Russia possibly going to use nuclear weapons there are also analyses of our UK economy. It’s as if the one won’t have anything to do with the other. how is that possible?

Mr Putin’s speech as interpreted by ‘political correspondents’ and Truss herself dominates the front pages of this morning’s print editions (link). Some headlines refer to Biden condemning Putin, others have our own Truss’ response as their lead article, with a nice photo of her speaking to the UN General assembly. Reluctantly, and only ‘for the record’, here’s what Truss said as reported by the DT:

“Liz Truss has vowed that “desperate” Vladimir Putin will be defeated in Ukraine after the Russian president threatened nuclear war. The Prime Minister said that the world was witnessing a “decisive moment in the history of freedom” and that 2022 was “the story of freedom fighting back”, as she addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the first time.” (paywalled link)

So that’s that, and since the MSM across the West are speaking in unison, it must be correct that Mr Putin threatened nuclear war. However, Larry Johnson in his blog entry (link) has a clip of the relevant passage of Mr Putin’s speech, published on youtube by the Guardian. An unbiased watcher will be hard-pressed to find the word ‘nuclear’. You might also like to read the translation of Mr Shoigu’s remarks (link) which clarifies a few points omitted by the Western MSM.

Of course, there’s the inevitable video ‘speech’ by Mr. ‘e at the UN which is the lead article this morning in the German paper “Die Welt”, according to which Mr ‘e presented an Ukrainian ‘peace plan’ (paywalled link, in German). Oddly enough, our broadsheets omitted to report on this speech, perhaps because they glanced at TASS (boo-hiss!), according to which Mr ‘e ‘ruled out peace talks with Russia’ (link) because Russia wouldn’t accept the Ukrainian plans, lock, stock and barrel …

After the acres of reports about Mr Putin and ‘that’ war, our MSM swerved to the rather more relevant economic situation in the UK. This is where I became sorely puzzled. Some opinion piece writers suddenly elect Truss as the heroine of the economy, e.g. Allister Heath in the DT, others are daring to point out that not all in the Truss universe is gold.

With a report asking why Truss apparently didn’t raise the ‘Channel Crisis’ when she chatted with Macron at the UN (link, paywalled), The Times is at the forefront of that pack. Good question! It’s not as if the huge number of dinghy-drivers invading our shores are a negligible item in our budget.

It’s not as if our esteemed economic and political ‘correspondents’ were incapable of connecting the cost-dots between housing said illegal immigrants and keeping them warm in the winter, given the announcements of support for businesses which, according to the CBI, might need to be extended beyond the proposed six months:

“The business lobby group the CBI described the support package as “a substantial short-term fix to a long-term problem”. It will almost certainly avert the closure of viable companies brought to their knees by the surge in energy costs. And with the cost of the package estimated at anywhere from £22 billion to £48 billion, according to Investec, resulting in a halving of bills for many businesses, this is a serious intervention: less a sticking plaster than a tourniquet. There is, however, no escaping that it is a temporary measure that does not solve the crisis […]” (link, paywalled)

Note the sums being thrown around: £22bn, £48bn. The sum of £2.3bn promised by Truss to the Ukraine next year, in addition to the money we’re already handing out, is peanuts, in comparison After all, it’s only the tax-paying UK public which bears that burden.

And so, in the run-up to that ‘mini-budget’ to be presented by Mr Kwarteng tomorrow, the Institute of Fiscal Studies has been getting their warning wail in first:

“Liz Truss’s tax-cutting blitz will push the UK’s borrowing bill to crisis levels this year and leave the Treasury with an annual £100 billion gap in the public finances for years to come, a leading think tank has warned. […] The IFS says that permanent tax cuts will force the government to keep borrowing more than £100 billion a year long after the emergency price cap on energy has ended.” (link, paywalled)

Allister Heath in the DT rejects the wails from the IFS. His ‘ra-ra-ra Truss’ essay is sickening, but there’s this paragraph which shows he’s not lost all his marbles despite his heroine-worship:

“Yet the IFS doesn’t seem to grasp why Truss will be unfazed. There is a new dividing line in British politics: between those who believe that much faster sustainable growth is possible, and those who don’t. Truss knows that the country will be in trouble if she doesn’t increase GDP substantially, but she also correctly realises that we are equally doomed if she chickens out of slashing taxes. Our present low-growth rut is not sustainable with an ageing population.” (paywalled link)

Here’s why I am sorely puzzled: IFS (lefty), Heath (Truss aficionado) and the CBI all leave out one factor: the ongoing war in the Ukraine, including the ‘nuclear threat’ from Putin as depicted in the Western MSM. Are we to believe that this is negligible in regard to our and the West’s economies? Are we to accept that the following can be disregarded: and left out of those economic analyses:  energy crisis, economic disaster in Germany and indeed the USA, tribal wars between muslims and Hindus here in the UK, increasing numbers of ‘refugees’ we must welcome?

Is it ‘business as usual’ for our economic correspondents, as if that war in the Ukraine doesn’t really matter to us because we’re giving them money and training their troops? Are the warnings Putin has addressed to NATO just an occasion to show that one is ‘Western’ through and through, standing with one of the most corrupt regimes on earth?

Does it even matter that a population squeezed by ever increasing inflation simply won’t have the money to fire up the economy as so lovingly painted by Mr Heath? As for the ‘ageing population’ he bemoans: haven’t we huge numbers of idle young men who live off our work and taxes? Do these sums not matter? How can this government ‘fire up’ growth when too much tax money is flowing into the behemoths of NHS and ‘bennies’, especially housing of ‘refugees’ which are still flooding in?

I leave you with a report on the latest ‘health issue’. The Times reports that ‘US health panels’ have detected a huge rise in anxiety, proposing a general screening of all people under the age of 65 for this mental illness. We in the UK are also suffering, but the gracious NHS is already giving guidance, one of the points being to do more exercise (link, paywalled).

Odd, isn’t it: those experts simply disregard that politicians and their MSM propaganda outlets have created this ‘climate of fear’, to make us accept and follow whatever they deem to be the ‘next big thing’. It’s as if ‘anxiety’ suddenly broke out – like a pandemic.

Yes, I am sorely puzzled. Perhaps though I’m ‘only’ suffering from the latest ‘health issue’, anxiety. Perhaps I‘d better go and do some physical jerks in my little garden …



Print Friendly, PDF & Email