Author Archives: grumpy

Martin Schulze (SDP) gives the UK a no-cost exit route from the EU

The UK should root for Martin Schulz, Leader of the German SDP; if he gets his way, it would save us GBP 40 billion.

“I want a new constitutional treaty to establish the United States of Europe. A Europe that is no threat to its member states, but a beneficial addition.

A convention shall draft this treaty in close cooperation with the civil society and the people. Its results will then be submitted to all member states. Any state that won’t ratify this treaty will automatically leave the EU.”

Heh,we can get thrown out of the EU and won’t have to pay a penny.

Trump and libel

Trump appeared on CNN on 12.01.18 and made the statement that libel laws in the US were a ‘sham and a disgrace’.

Compared with the legislation in Europe related to slander and libel, this is probably objectively not an unreasonable suggestion. It is hard to imagine a British newspaper reporting (as was done with Roy Moore in Alabama) a election candidate as being a ‘child molester’ without the qualification of ‘alleged’, given Mr Moore had not been charged, much less found guilty of, any such offence.

However, it’s laxity (if such it is) is driven by the First Amendment to the US constitution, and the tension between defamation and free speech (as indeed in all jurisdictions) is ever present. It is what it is, as far as the US goes.

However, for Donald Trump to make this statement is breathtaking. Here is a man who broke new ground in the primaries with insults to his competitors (including the ‘Crooked Hilary’ label, assigning guilt in an issue on which she had been specifically cleared of any criminal liability), but has gone on as President to make multiple accusation of illegal behaviour against individuals and institutions which are presented as facts.

It is Trump, who in demeaning the presidency, who is the ‘sham and disgrace’, by his rash resort to personal insults with anyone who, and any institution which, dares to criticise him.

Theresa May creates fudge aplenty on Vacuum Cleaners

The single most common thread in the history of UK involvement with Europe is the wish of politicians to obfuscate, confuse and plain lie about the ramifications of our membership thereof. Grumpy read the Theresa May agreement for Brexit with a mixture of irritation and resignation. Some 17 years ago Tony Blair and his odious henchman Keith ‘Beano’ Vaz sought to persuade the populace is that the words in the Charter of Fundamental Rights did not mean what they say. In the Alice in Wonderland world of Westminster, the logic of Humpty Dumpty applies – “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

Commission Regulation (EU) 666/2013 on vacuum cleaners limits (amongst other things) the power of cleaner motors to 900 watts. When the UK ‘takes back control’ of its own laws and regulations will it be able to legislate to loosen this restriction or not ? Alternatively, if the EU changed the regulation to 750 watts would the UK be bound to follow this, post Brexit ?

If not, and ‘regulatory alignment’ means what it says it means, the UK will be forever bound by EU law, and the whole exercise has been an utterly pointless exercise leaving us without any control of our lives, and with no EU representation to change this – we have become a vassal state of Germany.

However, if so, and UK shops were then able to sell cleaners with an increased limit of motor power of (say) 2500 watts , how does this play with no hard border with the EU ? So in one of the oft quoted Irish farms with the border running through the house, would it be ok to vacuum the living room but be subject to a Gardai raid if the owner moved on to the dining room ?

It’s a logical nonsense. It won’t work. Everyone knows this, and yet politicians persist in trying to fudge reality.

We all now know that the price ‘independence’ is to become an irrelevant excrescence off the shores of Europe. If that’s what the UK wanted, fine. But what we seem to have negotiated is neither fish nor fowl, and now that die is cast.

F**king her way to the top – how things changed from female exploitation to sexual paranoia

Lana Del Rey released a track in 2014 entitled “Fucked my way to the top” which in an interview in Complex magazine (and reported in the Daily Mail) stated was in part at least autobiographical.

You can buy a book from Amazon called Honey Money” in which Dr Catherine Hakim extols the notion that women can progress their career by exploiting what she describes as ‘erotic capital’. In Hakim’s estimation, for all young women, and in particular those who are without other benefits – financial, intellectual, situational – an entirely legitimate form of self-advancement should consist in their getting the best out of – if you’ll forgive the pun – their assets. It is pretty evident that the meaning of that word in the context is the same as what the Daily Mail normally describes as ‘ample assets’ on women with an upper quartile bra size, of which more later.

Forbes magazine – a reputable publication grumpy understands, reported a few short years ago that a survey of hiring managers reported that seven in 10 (72%) said beauty was an asset to women in the workforce. Why ? How so ?

And no less than Ivanka Trump, prior to her elevation to political power, said in an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, that women should “emit sex appeal on the job to make them more alluring” In other words, if you’ve got it, flaunt it – the ‘it’ being sexual attraction.

In a more recent issue of Cosmopolitan, females were encouraged to make known to a man they they were attracted to by ‘invading his personal space’ and ‘touching him and making it look like an accident’ – all acts for which MP’s are being cast into outer darkness and career oblivion.

That, or course was then, a few short years ago when feminism was about how to exploit and dominate men with sex (watch the Spice Girls Wannabe video), as opposed to the current day which is about MGM (as opposed to FGM) i.e. castration of any man who might presuppose that a woman might have some interest in him.

The Daily Mail illustrates perfectly the current schizophrenia about sex. On 29.10.17 – taken as a random day – it featured (as usual) multiple photographs of ‘celebrities’ annotated with captions such as “puts on a busty display” / “flashes her ample assets” / “flaunts her pert derriere” / “flashes ample cleavage” / “flashes her underwear” / “showcases her ample cleavage” / “suffers wardrobe malfunction” / etc. and 50 other references in the same tone of flaunting, grappling, sizzling, displaying, showcasing, flashing and so on.

Yet on BBC’s Newsnight on 02.11.17, more than half of some high minded entourage agreed that merely ‘looking at a woman’s breasts’ constituted harassment.

It simply illustrates in Grumpy’s view that certain (predominantly female) politicians and others with some vacuous and overstated point to make, exploit the media’s wish for crisis and scandal by disconnecting from reality.

The 50 odd ‘celebrities’ in the Daily Mail on that day did not expose their breasts, underwear or ‘pert derrieres’ by accident or for their partners in the privacy of their home; they did it in front of a camera deliberately or by posting to twitter to titillate ( no other word for it) in order to advance their ‘careers’ and to enrich themselves. They know that sex sells., and exploit their sexuality ruthlessly. Kim Kardashian has made countless millions by parading her almost naked, absurdly large, butt to mostly slavering males whose testosterone has defeated their rationality and common sense.

From The Sun Newspaper in July 2014, encapsulating the Spice Girls ethos, Kate Hopkins wrote “If a woman is really good-looking, that is a power. If she has found a way to make men like her, she should utilise it.” and “If a female employee can flip that around and be the dominant one, albeit by luring him into bed, then more power to them.” Or Lucy Kellaway in Biz News – “Flirting is a tried-and-tested way of getting ahead at work.”

This was how it was, and the current clutch of irritating harridans screaming about an allegedly a unidimensional perspective of power balance between the sexes were nowhere to be seen.

In spite of this self evident truth that women are equally capable of manipulating men by using sex for their own ends when it suits them, various band wagon riding, sanctimonious female MP’s and others appear on television in a state of righteous and gratuitous arousal from destroying someone’s career and life, not in the courts, but by allegation without due process. If they truly believe that no normal woman would ever, at work or elsewhere, flutter her eyelids when it would result in benefit for them, they are surely living on Planet Zargon.

Look but don’t touch

Sabrina

Most readers will never have heard of Norma Ann Sykes, who was known as ‘Sabrina’. She was the embodiment of the 1960’s blonde ‘bombshell, but had no discernable talents except for those which the Daily Mail calls ‘ample assets’ – in her case 41 inches of them, over which Grumpy would ogle as a frustrated youth.

Rather like the modern day Kardashians and their ilk, her stock in trade was sexual titillation, and it highlights a disconnect from reality by the legion of Weinstein haters. Although Grumpy would not ever defend Harvey Weinstein, there is an unspoken question about the relationship between the aspiring actresses who were allegedly assaulted by him.

Knowing that Mr W could make or break their career, did they ever seek to exploit their ‘assets’ by using their (shall we say) allure to influence Mr W’s attitude to them ?

Feminists reading this. will of course, be outraged at the suggestion that this has anything to do with Weinstein’s behaviour. However, although the very nature of allure or the sort of titillation employed by Sabrina relies on notion that although the goal of same is arousal of a subject to achieve some benefit for the arouser , it is assumed that the response to this ‘temptation’ can be of a cerebral nature only. Therein lies the contradiction inherent in such personal interactions between sexes – the tempter can set out food in front of a starving man, but then punish him for picking up an olive.

Studies at Universities on both sides of the Atlantic have show that women can gain advantage in job progression, negotiation and other aspects of business (and presumably personal) life by exploiting what UC Berkely / London School of Economics calls ‘feminine charm’ aka sexual allure. Women have exploited this weakness of men (brains in their pants) in this respect since Helen burnt the towers of Ilium. (It is telling that Marlowe’s towers were in fact ‘topless’)

However, the unspoken balance of ‘look but don’t touch’ has become disturbed by the retribution heaped on manhood generally when the occasional idiot breaches the pact, and this may well at some point generate push back by the disadvantaged sex i.e. men.

Carwyn Jones leads Wales in spineless hypocrisy

Carwyn Jones is the odious First Minister of Wales. He was trained as a barrister, and is a member of the Privy Council.

He recently sacked a Welsh Assembly (a sort of toy parliament) Cabinet Member, Carl Sargeant, following unspecified allegations being having been made against Mr Sargeant. Within days, Carl Sargeant committed suicide without ever knowing the nature of those allegations.

Jones issued a statement, which contained the following

“I quite properly did all that I could to make sure that everything was being done by the book. I had no alternative but to take the action that I did and I hope that people will understand that.”

and

“He was a great Chief Whip and a Minister who served his country with distinction”

On the basis of the limited facts at hand, the confluence of these two statements is gag inducing. If Jones believed that Sargeant was guilty as alleged (as presumably he did, and hence should have been sacked and not simply suspended pending investigation), Sargeant did not serve with distinction, He was a sex abuser who disgraced public office, and Jones should have had the courage of the belief which led to his termination, and not issue this sanctimonious and mendacious statement. He presumably did this because, whatever the real motivation for the sacking, he was terrified of the impact on his own career of any backlash.

In the current febrile atmosphere surrounding any allegations of any sexual impropriety, the de facto modus operandi has become to abandon the bedrock of our legal system – the notion of due process. The prosecuting authority has become any female who makes any allegation regardles of the severity or veracity thereof; the jury is now the media together with the general populace fed a diet of salacious details; and the judge has become a motley band of employers, clients, and anyone else in a position to grant favour or enforce sanction.

The sentence is common to all such instances, and bears no relation to the severity or validity of the offence, given it were proven, and is as a minimum the ending of the accused’s professional life or, as so tragically in the case of Carl Sargeant, his physical life.

Carl Sargeant had not been found guilty of any offence when he was sacked; he was not even aware of the nature of his unknown accuser’s allegations. He was found guilty by Carwyn Jones and sentenced without due process – the actions of tyrants through history, and the antithesis of the principles of English law as articulated in “The Rule of Law” (Bingham 2010).

For a barrister and a member of maybe the most powerful structure in British Governance to dispense with due process, and then claim that there was no alternative to so doing, is a disgrace to his profession and to the very concept of justice in the UK. Carwyn Jones has acted like a medieval village head in days of yore in his miserable and insignificant apology for a country.

Donald in a parallel universe

CNN reports (11.11.17) that Putin told him that “he didn’t meddle” in the election, and that he “believes him”.

Hmmm … let’s see. The US intelligence agencies tell POTUS of overwhelming evidence that Russia interfered with the presidential election. Trump declares this as fake, and yet believes the leader of the foreign power accused of so doing.

Let’s connect with the real world, a Euclidian space which eludes the Donald, who resides in a parallel universe,

The police catch a burglar as he runs from your house with a bag of your prized possessions. They tell you that they caught him red handed. You declare this as fake, and for verification you ask the burglar if he did it. He denies it, and you believe him over your own law enforcement agencies.

Clearly with this president, satire is dead.

#MeToo is another subjective, recipient defined, reaction to Weinstein hysteria

The shy and sensitive Alyssa

Alyssa Milano (who Grumpy understands is a minor actress) started a hashtag #MeToo inviting people who had been sexually abused to tweet, to show the extent and scope of the ‘abuse problem’, typified and made currently topical by the Harvey Weinstein affair.

On 17.10.17 some female was featured on the normally reliable ‘Today’ program as having posted to the tag because a business associate told her over a dinner that he was sexually attracted to her. She stated that she dropped her fork in horror / disgust / surprise / whatever but was too taken aback / timid / weak to respond to this blatant case of overt abuse, with rather more than just the implication (by juxtaposition if nothing else) that she had suffered from the same sort of abuse as Harvey Weinstein’s victims.

In some other time, this event over dinner might have been regarded by the woman as a rather crude attempt at a pass, and that would be it. But not now – it’s ‘abuse’ and ‘harassment’.

The fundamental problem and illogicality with ‘abuse’ of this type (if such this was, so let’s call it harassment) is that there is no objective framework for the harassor to determine if his act or utterance is that – it’s entirely determined by the effect on the recipient. You don’t know you harassed until you have harassed – is commenting on how nice your secretary looks with a new hairstyle harassment ? Grumpy is a serial offender if that is the case. Comment and then discover. It’s rather like having the speed signs at the end of a restricted road.

The issue here is (as an example) that it is impossible for a man (and we are talking about men here) to know whether looking at a woman will be perceived subjectively as an admiring glance or a perverted leer by the recipient – it’s entirely in the mind of the woman. If the lady in question had been dining with George Clooney or Brad Pitt (or whoever passes for the female icon of irresistible maleness in this age) then she may have been instead flattered by the same remark and smiled coyly in anticipation of the flirting to and fro innate in seduction. But since the man in question was considerably older and not perceived as a desirable mate, the self same comment becomes abuse.

Outrageous though it is, Grumpy cannot help but feel that women in his past (if rejecting the person in focus) would have merely given a biting response and shrugged such a comment off; accordingly, one questions whether some current complainers see an opportunity for self publicity, rather than just seeking empathetic responses from their kind. Twitter has a lot to answer for.