Category Archives: News and Politics

Current affairs, madnesses of government, politics and politicians

Execution first, trial afterwards; the #MeToo baying mob

Once again, the lunatic harridan fringe of #MeToo has sought to undermine a basic foundation of due process in England. This was because Jeremy Corbyn had failed to take action against a male MP who had been accused of wife beating. Notice the word ‘accused’ – an allegation, as yet unproved by due process.

However, the hysterical Labour harpies screamed “The allegations against the man are horrific. There is no way he should be an MP and the party cannot just sit on its hands and do nothing.” In old movies, the Wild West state of law in those days was characterised with the cliche “we’ll give him a fair trial, and then we”ll hang him”, but these female tyrants have updated this to “we’ll hang him, and then investigate to see if he was guilty”

Sitting in the middle of this pack of hyenas was the odious and despicable hypocrite, Harriet Harman. She is a lawyer by training, but in matters concerned with ‘Womyn’ (sic) she is happy to put the edict from the Digest of Justinian – “Proof lies on him who asserts, not on him who denies” – to one side.

It’s too tedious to list the full panoply of Harman’s hypocrisies, including her abandonment of the concept of due process for males, her disgraceful action on FOI requests (especially as she was fraudulently pocketing tax payers money), repeated law breaking at the wheel of a motor vehicle, and dishonesty or incompetence with expenses. Grumpy can only earnestly hope that any vestige of influence she may have on British life is eroded or extinguished as soon as possible.

The Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has received global opprobrium for sanctioning the extra-judicial execution at the hands of the police and the community where they suspect an individual might have had involvement with drugs. Grumpy sees Harman in the same light; those accused or suspected of any impropriety against women loose their livelihoods and reputations at the hands of an ugly, baying mob, made worse by the acquiescence of males in authority too cowed and too terrified to ensure basic justice.

TV play rejected as “too fantastic”

Writer : “I’ve got a script for a new play which combines, political intrigue, sex and threats to world stability – it’s a real corker”

Producer : “Ok, run it past me…”

Writer : “Well, there is this sexy heroine called Kim K with an incredibly enormous butt who in spite of having no discernible talents except physical assets, teams up with son in law of POTUS to revise prison reform in the country even though neither have been elected or have any political experience.”

Producer : Hmmmm… go on

Writer : “Well, POTUS is under investigation for colluding with a foreign power, and being sued by a porn star who alleged that he slept with her whilst his wife was pregnant. He also has threatened nuclear Armageddon on another country, and, oh yes, appointed his daughter into various positions.

Producer : You’re going to tell me there’s more …

Writer : This is just the tip of it. The FBI (who illegally spied in him) and the Department of Justice are corrupt, and he appointed a climate change denier to be in charge of environmental protection, and …

Producer : Whoooaah ! I know it’s fiction, but there has to be some level of credibility in the underlying story. This is way too over the top, sorry, no rational viewer would take it seriously. Sorry, no go.

UK should play tit for tat with Barnier

This is the first of a series of ‘tit for tat’ posts in which Grumpy plans to highlight how threats from EU bureaucrats seeking to influence the outcome of Brexit negotiations, can be turned round to be ‘foot shooting’ on their part. So here is one to start.

(UK) Officials have insisted that it was not the government’s intention for UK drivers to need IDPs in Europe, but in an EU notice issued last month, the European commission said: “A driving licence issued by the United Kingdom will no longer be recognised by the member states.”

Fine. There are about 2.9m EU nationals in the UK, and (tit for tat!!) they had better start applying for a UK driving licence if they don’t have one; right now they can use a licence from another EU member, but if the EU ceases to recognise a UK licence, two can play. There are about 900,000 uk nationals living permanently in the EU, so that’s 2 million more of their own get hit than UK citizens. To quote from “Startrek IV : the Voyage Home” in Spock’s words ‘ a double dumb ass on you’.

Visitors driving on either side will both need to get IDP’s ; fine. However the EU’s move is both pointless and spiteful, and David Davis needs to take a leaf from the Trump book here and play rough.

Lammy Paranoid

Home Secretary Sajid Javid was reported as saying that illegal immigrants would be subject to a ‘compliant environment’, which triggered David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, to erupt into a paroxysm of hyperbole and bizarre conflation which exceeded even his normal tendency to extreme interpretation of the English language. He replied by saying (according to the Huff Post)

“Slaves having to nod and smile when they were being whipped in a cotton field or a sugar cane field were compliant. Watching your partner being tied to a tree, beaten or raped, on a plantation, is compliance.”

What ? The various meanings of ‘compliance’ as per the OED can essentially be summarised as “The state or fact of according with or meeting rules or standards”

Grumpy lives in a compliant environment. If he breaks the speed limit and is caught the law applies sanctions for his non-compliance. Every citizen has to comply with the laws and rules of society without exception, including one assumes, David Lammy himself. But Grumpy doesn’t see this obligation (imposed as a social consensus to avoid anarchy) as somehow harking back to the days of the stocks and disembowelling, and those days of yore of English serfdom are not ‘written deep into our souls’. It was not passed down from our ancestors.

The Windrush immigrants – British citizens and legal immigrants – have been treated disgracefully, and that current wrong should be righted. But Savid Javid didn’t include these in his statement – he talked of illegal immigrants, which valid Windrush individuals are not.

What Lammy seems to be saying is that seeking to hold illegal immigrants – not to mince words, criminals – subject to the same the standards of compliance with the laws of the land as the indigenous population because of events which were abolished in the Empire in 1833 is somehow abhorrent. The guy is as harmless as he is ineffectual, but he does need to reign in the wilder excesses of his associations, or he simply looks stupid.

The Oxford English Dictionary has of ‘paranoia’ “.. mental condition characterised by delusions of persecution”. His hyperbolic, irrelevant and patently unsupportable statements seem to meet that definition well.

EU vacuum test

The picture shows the Nace HD14 Vacuum Cleaner, which Grumpy rather likes. It is sold by Walmart in the US, and presumably after the UK is free of the bonds of the EU, might conceivably be available in its UK subsidiary, ASDA.

Importantly, the (hypothetical) situation provides a key test for the post Brexit structures. If the UK decided that it was happy to have this imported (and why not?) and a ‘Customs Partnership’ applies. what would stop Grumpy from taking this over to the his holiday cottage in in Ballylickey, Eire, since there is no border ?

The issue here is that the HD14 has a 1000 watt motor, which is banned under EU legislation, so how is this anomaly to be resolved ?

The test for Brexit is whether we take back control of (amongst other things) our Laws and Borders. If the UK decided to allow 1000 watt cleaners, how could this possibly work? It’s clearly, to quote the Mogg, a ‘cretinous’ concept.

This could only be resolved by aligning UK standards with EU standards, over which parliament would have no control – and this doesn’t seem to pass the test. The likelihood is, however, that Theresa May has left this minor detail out of her rhetoric, and hopes to slide it in under the radar.

So, citizens, whatever comes out of the tedious discussions, the simple check to apply is whether they would be free to buy a product which didn’t comply with EU rules – the vacuum cleaner test. So far, it fails.

Guarantee nonsense

For some reason, Grumpy has a ‘thing’ about Emma Barnett, a new(ish) BBC Newsnight presenter. No, not an ‘old man drooling’ thing, but that he finds her intensely irritating. For example, she asks a question to establish a context, and then moves on without allowing the interviewee to answer (e.g. with Matt Hancock, 03.06.19); an allegation without opportunity to refute. She (and she is not alone in female presenters – listen to Radio 4 Today) is also a serial interrupter.

However, the underlying source of Grumpy’s annoyance is that the questions she asks are mainly inane, biased to an assumption of her perception of the ‘desired ‘answer, and frankly, carping. Barnett seems merely to want to ‘get one over’ on her subjects to burnish her credentials as a tough presenter, whereas she actually comes across as a bullying harridan. Grumpy bemoans the rare presence of Andrew Neil on political programs because of his impeccably prepared research and generally neutral questioning.

However, the foregoing is a digression from the main point here , which is about the phrase’must never happen again’ and the word ‘guarantee’ (a favourite of the aforementioned lady) . Both are generally meaningless and annoying when applied to other than a small number of discrete and limited states of events, but doubly so when combined together and uttered by the logically and statistically challenged Barnett.

Now if she is referring to situations with an indeterminate set of out outcomes (the norm) which also include those over which the interviewee cannot possibly control, a binary outcome of a future state cannot be ‘guaranteed’. That’s merely statistics, which the logically and numerately challenged history graduate either cannot grasp or ignores. Indeed, Barnett uses this ploy as a win-win question, because a binary answer is not valid and anything else can be triumphantly picked over as a refusal to respond.

“Can you guarantee” she starts, “that this event will not happen again?” If the hapless interviewee seeks to inject some rationality into the response, Barnett jumps into gleeful action “It’s a yes or no, Mr X! Answer the question – can you guarantee it?” {It’s the equivalent of a witness in the dock being asked “Was the rope long or short? yes or no?” The offered choice of response has no meaning.]

Similarly, the hackneyed expression “this must never be allowed to happen again” where there is a continuous spectrum of possible outcomes is also meaningless. Of course it can (the option of a zero probability here being not valid if that spectrum remains unchanged), but it allows the opposition politician (for such it normally is) to score points, whilst praying that nothing similar happens on their watch.

Come back, Andrew !

Kinnock is a byword for arrogance

Neil Kinnock has said that Jeremy Corbyn will commit a “serious evasion of duty” if he does not change course on his current Brexit policy. He also described anyone who did not agree with his views as being guilty of “infantile leftist illusion”.

In doing so, he joins a growing band of politicians, including Osborn, Cameron and others who, rather than present a rational argument, seek to close it down by attacking the intelligence or sanity of anyone who does not subscribe to their view of life – it’s an old ploy of ‘attack the man and not the ball’, perfected by the current incumbent of the White House (remember ‘little Marco’ ?). Apart from being an intellectually bankrupt approach, it displays breath-taking arrogance. Grumpy is of the view that, when politicians told the populace in the run up to the 2016 referendum that citizens would be stupid to vote leave, they went out and did just that out of sheer bloody mindedness.

His injection may have had more weight if Kinnock himself was not such a abject loser and serial failure. Remember, the man has never been in government, and presided over two defeats for his party (of which he was leader), and the 1992 conference in Sheffield demonstrated his tendency towards self-aggrandizement. He has no possible qualification to make such proclamations.

Following what should have been a humiliating experience in electoral defeats, he was appointed to various lucrative sinecure posts, and entered into the privileged and tax-payer funded European gravy train structures that he purported, in earlier times at least, to despise. However, he was presumably enjoying the excesses of the EU lifestyle too much to allow principles to stand in the way of taking the citizens shilling.

In 2005, he further demonstrated his lack of any principles when he was ‘elevated’ to the upper chamber, an institution of which he had been a critic for most of his life – he had said earlier in life “The House of Lords must go – not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished.” Once asked to join the club, however, he grasped he daily allowance and subsidised lunches earnestly – hypocrisy incarnate.

Kinnock’s characterisation of those who disagree with his Brexit views as committing a serious breach of professional standards, and indeed, being ‘infantile’, shows his self-indulgent myopia. Given the intellect, experience, standing and dedication to public life of many in government of the opposite view, it is an insult Kinnock should be ashamed to voice.

However, he is not and if readers want to see “infantile left wing illusion”, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TOgB3Smvro at the Labour Party election convention, fittingly held on the 1st April 1992; he hasn’t changed.

EU needs a history lesson

The BBC reported that EU diplomats ‘demanded’ that the UK should adopt a ‘one state two systems’ approach with Northern Ireland – keeping the province in the customs union while the rest of the UK quits it. They said this would copy what happened in Hong Kong – which Margaret Thatcher agreed would be handed back to China on condition it kept its own institutions and laws. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41901294

Setting aside the bizarre notion of the EU having any right to ‘demand’ how the UK treats its territories, they clearly need a history lesson.

Hong Kong and its hinterland were never part of the UK, China being invaded by the UK in a war asserting its ‘right’ to be a state heroin dealer. In spite of the ‘holier than thou’ position on most topics adopted by the British establishment, the UK was undoubtedly the largest state sponsored and supported drug dealer in history, causing misery to millions whilst generating wealth for the British aristocracy.

To the point : Although as part of the spoils of war Hong Kong island was ceded in perpetuity to the UK, the hinterland – the new territories – were not, and were leased for 99 years from China. When the lease expired, Chinese sovereignty had to be reinstated and as retaining the island as an entity without the hinterland was not viable, the UK was forced to abandon the agreement extracted by force and withdrew. Mrs Thatcher was in no position not to agree to its return, and was lucky to extract any concession from the Chinese at all. Whatever, she was probably overjoyed to be rid of the pompous and odious Chris Patten, Governor at the time.

Attempting to conflate this situation with Northern Ireland is pathetic, desperate and ignorant, and should be dismissed without discussion by David Davies.