‘Cometh the hour cometh the man or woman’, according to the old saying. Looking at the Westminster collection, at the Tory men or wimmin ‘on offer’, I am forced to say that the hour, nay, several hours have come but alas, there’s no sight of such a ‘man or woman.’
The dahlinks of the Tory Party who top the monthly popularity contest in the Tory grassroots online paper ‘Conservative Home’ have revealed their tiny clay feet. From Mr Wallace at the MoD to Miz Truss at the Foreign Office to Sunak, no longer the dishi-Rishi: their hour came and they were shown to be severely deficient in judgement. I won’t even mention the dweller in No 10.
The war in Ukraine started four weeks ago to the day and Johnson, Wallace and Truss have done nothing but posture on the international stage, waving shrouds and making promises they know they cannot keep. On the day Sunak ‘revealed’ his budget, the PM ‘pledged’ another 6,000 missiles to Ukraine – and “£30m to support the BBC’s coverage in the region and pay Ukrainian soldiers and pilots.” (paywalled link).
Yes, dear readers: our money is being used to finance the BBC’s war propaganda because the BBC cannot possibly be expected to make ‘small sacrifices’ as we all have to. As for paying Ukrainian soldiers and pilots – what the fluffing fluff is that supposed to mean? How is that supposed to work?
Why isn’t Sunak, why aren’t the treasury mandarins telling the PM there’s no more money? Where is the protest by peace-loving Labour and the rest of the assorted lefty crowd populating the MSM? The print editions this morning (link) are a full-on wail-feast regarding the budget, and rightly so. Various economic editors are unanimous in pointing out that, thanks to no proper tax cuts, the living standards in our country are sinking to the lowest since the end of rationing:
“Real household disposable income will fall by 2.2 per cent, the greatest drop in living standards in any year since records began in 1956-57. The hit is worse than during the IMF bailout of the 1970s, worse than after the ERM crisis, 9/11, Lehman Brothers, and (thanks to massive intervention) worse even than Covid.” (paywalled link)
I have news for Allister Heath who wrote the above for the DT. The ‘real disposable income’ in my household has been falling for years and I am sure that the 2.2% he mentioned will have become a pious wish by the end of the year. Even worse is that Sunak and his treasury mandarins have shown that they are quite capable of totally scrapping VAT, for green blobbery stuff like heat pumps and such. 5p less VAT for petrol, certainly better than nothing, pales in comparison.
Why, given that Sunak is capable of scrapping VAT, has this not been removed from household energy bills? Handing out another £500m to ‘the poorest’ is an insult. Not only is he graciously giving back some of the money we’ve paid into his coffers in the first place, it pales into insignificance when related to the billions we’re handing out to Ukraine.
Moreover, gas will become even more expensive on the world market. Yesterday, Mr Putin announced that ‘unfriendly countries’ will have to pay their bills for Russian gas and oil in roubles (link).Predictably, the gas price on the world market rose:
“British gas prices have risen after Vladimir Putin declared today that Russia will only accept roubles as payment from ‘unfriendly’ countries in retaliation for sanctions imposed over his invasion of Ukraine. ‘Russia will continue, of course, to supply natural gas in accordance with volumes and prices… fixed in previously concluded contracts,’ Putin said, adding that sanctions had ‘destroyed Moscow’s trust’.” (link)
The DM helpfully provides a list of those unfriendly countries and mentions that “deals with companies and individuals from those countries have to be approved by a government commission.” (link). Well, what a surprise: sanctions like freezing all Russian assets, unto kicking out the Russian Central Bank from the BIS, do have consequences.
If, as some European analysts say, there’s no option in the supply contracts for payment in roubles, then this means that these contracts would have to be re-negotiated:
“Vinicius Romano, senior analyst at Rystad Energy, said that “insisting on rouble payments may give buyers cause to re-open other aspects of their contracts, such as the duration, and simply speed up their exit from Russian gas altogether”.” (link)
Have fun with that. It’s not as if Russia is forced to sell to ‘unfriendly countries’, there are others who’ll be happy to get Russian gas. I’m sure the G7 who are meeting in Brussels today, together with NATO, will come up with some sort of solution, won’t they! After all, the US President will be attending, as will Mr Z who is driving the whole set-up with his demands.
I wonder how much longer the G7, EU and NATO ‘leaders’ will let themselves be herded by Mr Z. without questioning his ever more outrageous demands, his ever more distasteful comparisons. The latest comes from his cronies in the Ukrainian Parliament, the Rada. Remember that Mr Z has just forbidden all Ukrainian opposition parties. RT (boo-hiss) reports (my emphasis):
“Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday appealed again to the West to impose a “no-fly zone” over the country. However, the parliament raised eyebrows online by comparing the devastation suffered by its cities to that suffered by Nazi Germany during Allied bombing raids. The bizarre choice of comparison is the latest Nazi-related statement to come out of Kiev. […] Bizarrely, the image shared by the parliament asks the same allies that bombed Hamburg in 1943 to fight on Ukraine’s behalf today.“(link)
Rationality and historical knowledge have long since left the building. Now it’s about somehow manoeuvring the west into WWIII, in order to ‘degrade’ Russia and get rid of Putin, regardless of the predictable consequences for Europe. Even without a war the effects for the European and world economy are going to be huge.
Those ‘leaders of the world’ meeting in Brussels today, having driven the west’s propaganda storm, seem to believe their own propaganda to an extent that they are blind to the reality experienced by their own people, never mind those in the rest of the world. Sunak and the treasury mandarins must know that their sticking plaster, that extra £500m handout to ‘the poorest’, won’t help in the looming economic disaster.
Instead of giving in to helpless despair, and recalling the saying by Martin Luther: “Even if I knew the world were to end tomorrow, today I would still plant my little apple tree.”, yesterday I’ve planted another little rose bush in my tiny garden.
That’s my way of saying “[expletive deleted] you” to the treasury mandarins and ‘our leaders’, all the way up to the G7 and NATO.
I had a surreal conversation with a friend today who was lamenting the situation in Ukraine and how wonderful Me Z is!!! I pointed out some actual facts and some fake pictures that the MSM had printed and not only didn’t she believe me (the BBC and Sky can’t both be wrong), and then she said “it’s o.k. If our press print lies as Putin does it all the time and it balances everything out”. For once I was dumbstruck.
The Blabbermouth Director-General is in action this afternoon with his loose cannon of a mouth at the NATO conference, promising this and promising that and promising what seems to be a bottomless pit of money to finance the Ukrainian Army, whilst his own citizens can essentially go to hell and visit a food bank if they so wish. When are we as a country going to wake up to the fact that we have an absolute charlatan in residence in 10, Downing Street, and that we need to be demonstrating against his appalling style of government on the street. This man is screwing this country into the ground and needs to be stopped in his tracks. His stupid party who at the end of the day will be out of power for a generation or more as a consequence of his gross mishandling of Brexit, the economy, covid 19, immigration etc etc, will seemingly not pull the plug on his reign, so the good people of this country will have to do their job for them and take to the streets. Totally sick and tired of this imbecile, and have been for some time now, and bitterly regret giving him my vote back in 2019.
So here we are down in Devon and an eighty yr old man cannot get help , to get his wife who is hurt due to a fall , out of bed and washed each morn! AND our IMBECILE payes the Ukrainian army wage bill!’
Hes a total moron
Only a moron? You’re too kind!
Disgusting but he is far worse than a moron; he is part of the enemy within.
That situation is being repeated up and down the land! The fact is that the likes of Johnson are oblivious to the plight of the elderly. If they ever give any of them a thought it is only to wonder what else they can do to make their lives difficult and miserable in the hope that they will die and rid the Country of the burden of ‘useless eaters’! Whole departments supposedly exist to help ‘carers’ to look after their loved ones. However, accessing such help in practice is much like trying to win the lottery! Johnson and his ilk are far from being morons. They know what they are doing and they simply do not care! In my book that makes them evil! Giving money to Ukraine when so many in this Country are in financial difficulties with fuel bills and excessive taxation is treasonous! But as the whole House of Ordure seems to be in sheeplike agreement I doubt that there will be any outcry of disgust or disapprobation. Draping the Ukraine flag everywhere across Britain seems to be the order of the day! All to give Johnson the chance to p r a t about on the World stage full of his own self righteous ego! The man is rotten to the core!
I am far more afraid of Alexander Johnson than I am of Putin! Does that make me a Putin supporter???? No of course it doesn’t. It just means that the mean average chance of finding a decent politician in the West and in UK in particular has just taken another nose dive! Johnson is about the most childish of childish types. When it comes to running the UK, we are looking at a set of the most juvenile self-loving egomaniacs we have ever been landed with! Johnson’s grandstanding on the World stage might suit his own vision of himself but he scares the pants off me! Bring on the r e v o l u t i o n!! What we need is a Neil Oliver or Martin Lewis type at the top. They at least know a bit about real people and the real meaning of government! Running the train set into the buffers isn’t my idea of good governance!
Representatives of multinationals attend Davos along with politicians, and they meet at the UN this and that, the G whatever, and no doubt other gatherings too. Big Tech joins them. What now seems inevitable is neo-feudalism, a new class of lords exploring ever more ways to control the serfs. Accountability is horizontal even across national boundaries from lord to lord and the vertical accountability that democracy implies, and was once its raison d’être, may prove to be an historical aberration. Choosing between Labout and Conservatives here is an illusory choice and Ukraine, fighting for its right to choose which kleptocrat oligarch rules it, is only possibe because our lords support it. America 2024 will be interesting, more so than 2024 in the UK, but draining the swamp in the US appears to be even harder than doing it here. Expect some false dawns, but overall no grounds for optimism. All that is left for us are individual acts of resistance such as not downloading government and various corporate apps, and using a goverment planned digital currency, for as long as that is possible before they link up and become mandatory. The ‘laws’ of social psychology have not evolved in a thousand years and therein lies our downfall.
“living standards in our country are sinking to the lowest since the end of rationing”
So after 70 odd years I am back where I started. I remember watching the moon landing and avidly following Tomorrow’s World (Raymond Baxter, James Burke) and wondering what heights might be scaled in my lifetime. But as the years passed it became clearer and clearer that we were heading for Dystopia not Utopia; technology used to distract and lobotomise and control and, if we are not careful – and all the signs are that we are not – soon to enslave.
It’s a bit much when you have to admit that perhaps YOUR side are the baddies…
I didn’t think I could get more angry at the helplessness of dealing with the covid propaganda, but this latest fiasco is doing it. However a headline in the WalesOnline says “Student paramedic 18 died of clot two weeks after having covid vaccine”. Are they breaking ranks?
There was an interesting poll yesterday from Canada. It showed that the more jabbed you are the more likely you are to believe the narrative on the war in Ukraine (Russian war crimes, as opposed to simply war). It suggests that people who think for themselves about an issue, think for themselves about all things. Whereas those who follow one narrative, never do, and will follow every narrative. This was actually evident long ago. You could almost predict that anyone who saw the evil nature and danger of the EU, was very likely also to see the evil nature and danger of the climate emergency guff. This held up with the Covid scam, the PCR scam and the jab scam, and we can now add war narrative blindness.
And isn’t it also interesting that those labelled fruitcakes and loonies are so often proven right, yet still maligned. Farage warned the EU parliament in 2015 of the dangers of ‘poking the Russian bear’ over Ukraine, and was jeered. Trump warned the Germans in 2018, to a show of great disdain, that making oneself dependent on a potential adversary was stupid and dangerous.