Gotterdammerung for Mugabe?

Is it too much to hope that reports from Zimbabwe of an uprising by Mugabe’s ‘veterans’   means that Götterdämmerung has finally arrived for Comrade Bob and his thieving, murdering henchmen?

 

Their legacy is a state that no longer exists in any recognisable form, total financial ruin, and starving children in what was formerly the breadbasket of Central Africa, and the wealthiest country in the region.

 

So what went wrong?

 

There are contemporary commentators who blame it all on Dr Owen. But he had absolutely nothing to do with the peace agreement of 1979. He was out of office following the Thatcher landslide earlier. He was only one of a succession of leading British (and American) politicians who failed to solve the UDI conundrum.

 

Peter Carrington, the architect of Lancaster,  is described in a recently published book as  ‘morally vacuous, scheming and duplicitous’. In reality, it was he more than anyone who by deft diplomacy solved a problem that had defeated successive British governments since 1965

 

The Lancaster House Agreement was elegantly and subtly drafted to give something for everyone but not everything to anybody.

 

Crucially, it decreed a completely new constitution based on ‘one man, one vote’, which previously the white parties had flatly refused to consider on the belief that giving the vote to unsophisticated and uneducated people was a recipe for total collapse.

 

However, it also created 20 reserved ‘white’ seats until 1987.

 

Crucially, compulsory land redistribution was deferred for ten years; until then the issue would be dealt with on a ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ basis. The British and American governments established a compensation fund, and in the first year 70,000 of the landless were resettled.

 

The fund was US$2 billion, but by 1997 only US$44 million had been spent.

 

Then the wheels came off.

 

1997 saw the Blair conquest. Appointed as Minister for Overseas Development was the egregious Clare Short, arguably the worst person ever to occupy that post against some pretty stiff competition.

 

Quite out of the blue she reneged totally on the essential land compensation agreement. She wrote to the Zimbabwe Government saying that the election of a Labour government without links to former colonial interests meant Britain no longer had any “special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchases”. In short, racist white colonials are not getting any British money!

 

Mugabe was under great pressure from his ‘veterans’ for their share of the spoils of war; and so began the farm confiscations that are now almost complete, as is the total destruction of the economy.

 

He may have played the lead role in this continuing tragedy, but he did not cause it.

 

The real villain is back in the obscurity from which she should never have emerged.

 

Brexit: waiting for Armageddon

And so to Brexit.

 

‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive…..’

 

To the evident astonishment of the establishment the world was the same on 24^th June as it was on 23^rd. Brexit did not suddenly consign us all to a post-EU Siberia.

 

The media got it wrong, as did the pollsters (no surprise there, then). At the end of the day, they mostly climbed aboard the ‘leave’ bandwagon, apart from the BBC which clung to ‘remain’ even as the ship went down.

 

They predicted the immediate collapse of the UK economy, since when the FTSE has roared away. Incomes are rising, especially for the lowest paid. The number of people in employment is at a record level. Unemployment is about as low as it gets.

 

‘But’ they say ‘The GBP has tanked against the USD’. About the same level as 2001.. ‘And house prices are falling’. In London, perhaps, where the average house price is 6 times that of Liverpool. The downside of falling prices is that it slows the construction industry, but the upside is for first-time buyers who ae unable to get on the housing ladder.

 

At exactly the same time as the commentators were telling us that the economy was in freefall and we were all doomed, the Bank of England was announcing that Brexit had had no marked effect on the economy.

 

But an unexpected outcome has been the virulence from the ‘stayers’.

 

Here is the view of a student who has yet to contribute anything to the society that has given him his advantages at the expense of taxpayers comprising the white geriatric morons who voted ‘leave’.

 

‘The pale, old, white and stale majority with one eye on ruddy-faced patriotism, have opted for isolation over unity’.

 

This is Giles Coren of the Times as reported by ‘The Oldie magazine’:

 

‘The wrinkly bastards stitched us young ‘uns up good and proper. From their stair-lifts and Zimmer-frames, their electric recliner beds, and their walk-in baths, they reached out with their wizened old writing hands to make their wobbly crosses and screwed their children and their children’s’ children for a thousand generations’.

 

Well, young men, if you had got off your arses to vote the result may have been more to your liking. The over-50s knuckle-draggers did just that.

 

And no, they are not a bunch of geriatric racists who were voting against immigration. The polls show that the main issue was the nature of the EU itself, loftily undemocratic and run by an arrogant bureaucracy. The British do not take kindly to being bossed around and told what to do by jobsworths, especially foreign ones.

 

Taking over TIGMOO!

With all eyes on the Tory shoo-in, the chatterati are not noticing what is going on in This Great Movement of Ours.

 

Corbyn and comrades dream of yesterday, the golden age when Red Ken was busy destroying the GLC, and providing pubic largess to every group of loonies looking for cash, on the principle that if you get enough minorities in the bag , you have a majority

 

These are nasty people. They have no wish to get a Commons majority. That is far too bourgeois. They want to ensure that every part of the body politic is controlled by Corbyn’s Commissars and fully compliant with the Communist Manifesto. The strategy is to infiltrate Trade Unions, local councils, fellow-travelling Socialist strongholds like the NUT.

 

They hark back to the glorious days of the 60’s and 70’s, when Governments danced to Arthur Scargill’s tune. Red Robbo could bring an entire industry to a standstill, Del-boy Hatton brought Liverpool City Council to the verge of bankruptcy, and the heavy industrial areas became rust-belts.

 

Revolutionaries? They are as reactionary as it is possible to get

 

Momentum is the offspring of Militant Tendency. ‘Entryism’, Trotsky’s concept of taking over a political party and subverting it from the inside was the method. Corbyn knows all about it; he was one of the originals forty years ago, when ‘loony left’ had become a cliché.

 

The target is the Labour Party itself; by taking over local branches they can control the party. They know from experience how easy it is; party members rarely attend meetings in any numbers, so outvoting them is no big problem. Then to the main task of deselecting sitting MPs and replacing them with the ideologically pure. Their dream would be the abolition of fixed-term parliaments; no more General Elections!.  In the world of Marx and Trotsky, the party never gives up power.

 

There is nothing remotely new about Corbynism

 

It’s just déjà vu all over again!

How to get on in politics. Fail!

‘Few things in life are more agreeable than seeing your neighbour fall off his roof’: Confucius.

 

‘Tory leadership: Theresa May warns EU migration could rise in the wake of the Brexit vote’. Telegraph headline.

 

If she is still in place after the leadership contest, this is a racing certainty based on her form.

 

Last year, immigration hit 630,000. This was a slight improvement on the previous year when the figure was 641,000. When she took over in 2010, the total was 591,000, which at least shows a certain consistency even if totally contrary to Tory manifesto promises of ‘tens of thousands, not hundreds’.

 

At the last count the foreign population of Britain was 8.5 million, a hefty percentage of the total.

 

And yet she has moved from ‘also ran’ to favourite in what passes for a leadership contest. The on-going farce in what is left of the Labour party is nothing compared with the shin-kicking, eyeball-gouging Donnybrook going on amongst the Tories.

 

Now she is advocating using the 3 million-plus Europeans as hostages, in her Brexit negotiations with Brussels. This is beyond doubt the most immoral and deplorable statement to be made by any politician during the whole referendum campaign. It elevates xenophobia to a political policy. She is supported in this by Hammond, the Foreign Secretary – another ‘get off the field and strengthen the side’ Tory lightweight.

 

She was immediately condemned by Andrea Leadsom who made it clear that the security of EU workers would be guaranteed; people were not there to be used as bargaining chips.

 

Andrea Who? A couple of weeks ago hardly anyone had ever heard of her. Now she is mounting a serious challenge to Teflon Tess.

 

And finally………..

Telegraph headline ‘Andrea Leadsom surges ahead…….’

No more than three minutes later ‘May surges ahead…….’

 

Tories seem to surge a lot

May for PM? Maybe!

These are salad days for Grub Street. Almost every day a front-page story drops into the media’s laps like over-ripe  fruit. There is so much stuff that sub-editors would be driven to distraction, except there are no longer any subs. The media prowls the field after the battle, bayonetting the wounded.

 

The headlines have written themselves; here’s a sample:

 

‘Stop Johnson’ plot may delay contest for months’

Osbourne mulls deal to make Boris PM.

Boris withdraws.

 

And just by way of a change

 

‘Corbyn crisis’

 

The story changes literally by the hour. ‘The man of tomorrow’  yesterday is yesterday’s man today.

 

On Wednesday, it was a shoo-in for Gove. On Thursday, it became the turn of the Home Secretary.

 

That Teresa May is now favourite when only a few days ago the bookies had her as an ‘also-ran’ is clear proof that politics has become deranged.

 

She has but one aptitude – survivability. She is the longest serving Home Secretary for about half a century, in a job that is a notorious graveyard for ambitious politicians.

 

One of the biggest issues in the referendum campaign was immigration - the total failure to control it, the promise to bring numbers down when in fact they spun out of control, the scandal over border force naval cutters or, rather, lack of them. In every respect, her management of border controls has been an abject failure. The consequence is that HMG has not the faintest idea about numbers, illegals, asylum seekers or much else apart from the fact that immigration is three times as high as the Government’s promise.

 

Some of her activities – or lack of them – border on the bizarre.

 

Despite being continually frustrated by deportation orders being set aside by the courts as a result of ECHR judgements, she rejected the chance to get rid of ECHR jurisdiction and revert to the position pre-1998 and the Human Rights Act. Otherwise ECHR judgements would be persuasive only, meaning that the courts would be free to follow them or not. At the same time, she refused to exercise an option to cease to recognise the oppressive European Arrest Warrant.

 

And when one of the biggest policing scandals of all time emerged, the neglect of duty or even connivance of all the regulatory bodies to take action against  child abuse by Pakistanis against young white girls that had gone on for decades, her head was well below the parapet.

 

To add to the gaiety of nations, there is now a spate of hair-pulling and eye-scratching between Teflon Tess and Sarah Vain, Gove’s wife, over an e-mail  that got into the wrong hands; it was a list of orders and instructions from this latter-day Lady Macbeth to Gove on how to deal with Boris.

 

The question that the Tory Party appears not to be asking itself is ‘Will she appeal to voters?’ She does not come across as empathetic, but her ambition is almost palpable. She carefully kept her head below the parapet during the referendum campaign, showing no real preference for either side. Likeable? Electable? Hmm!

 

And at the end of the day the Establishment is still missing the point.

 

It was not merely, or even principally, about ‘in’ or ‘out’. It was anti ‘them’, the condescending denizens of the Westminster Village who still believe that 17.5 million voters are  misguided fools.

 

It was an update of Cromwell’s advice to corrupt and useless MPs.

 

‘You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’

 

 

Brexxit =Fascist!

It was predictable and inevitable that within hours of the Jo Cox atrocity, Grub Street would be offering motives, explanations, theories about the sinister forces behind the murderer. It could not possibly have been the act of a mentally disturbed loner. There was a conspiracy.

 

First up, one Juliet Samuel in the DT.

 

‘It’s time to call the killing of Jo Cox what it is: 'an act of far-Right terrorism’ she  announces.  

 

According to her Britain is raddled with sinister fascist forces. No doubt they are secretly plotting a Final Solution that will rid the world of 1.6 billion Muslims, 22%of the world population

 

There is very little discussion of our enduring fascist heritage. Yet Britain has been home to fascist groups for decades. There was a strong vein of support for Adolf Hitler in this country before the Second World War. The first lists of banned speakers drawn up by university student unions were populated by hateful fascists (like Germaine Greer?), not Islamist hate preachers.

 

Of course it may well be that the reason there has been ‘very little discussion’ on ‘our enduring fascist  heritage’ is because there isn’t one. Researching fascism in Britain is an unrewarding task because of a paucity of information.

 

The British Union  of Fascists, Oswald Mosley’s lot, had declined from about 20,000 members to 1000 by1939. And there was no strong strain of support for Adolf Hitler before 1939. Early in the Third Reich there was admiration in some quarters for the way in which he revived the economy and dragged Germany back from the brink of starvation but not for the regime. Supporters were largely confined to the dottier members of the aristocracy, the Mitfords, Lord Rothermere (who recanted), and Lord Haw Haw( who was hanged).

 

Once the true nature of the Reich appeared, the British public reacted in their traditional way  with mockery and ridicule

 

Enter far left Polly Toynbee. Of course.

 

According to her it was all the fault of Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and the Brexiteers. The cardinal sin was to actually mention ‘immigration’. Along with ‘race’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘gender’ (sex, actually)  the very use of the word should constitute a criminal offence in the make-believe world of The Guardian.

 

Rude, crude, Nazi-style extremism is mercifully rare. But the leavers have lifted several stones. How recklessly the decades of careful work and anti-racist laws to make those sentiments unacceptable have been overturned.

This campaign has stirred up anti-migrant sentiment that used to be confined to outbursts from the far fringes of British politics. The justice minister, Michael Gove, and the leader of the house, Chris Grayling – together with former London mayor Boris Johnson – have allied themselves to divisive anti-foreigner sentiment ramped up to a level unprecedented in our lifetime.

It’s the Far Right up to its evil tricks again fronted by Nigel Farage, Sir James Dyson, and other fascist puppets.

So where are all these fascists, members of ‘an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization’? Perhaps these hacks are using the Nuspeak definition of fascist: ‘anyone who does not totally agree with me.

However, there has been no confirmed sighting of a Blackshirt for 75 years, which in scientific terms means that the species is extinct.

1.   

 

the acid test

‘The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous’.

 Goebbels.

 

Does it really matter?

 

If the verdict is ‘leave’, the unravelling process will take 10 years (or long enough to see the British suits in Brussels safely to their index-linked pensions).

 

Or if ‘stay’, the whole rotting edifice will collapse in those ten years. The signs are clear.

 

Like the Bourbons, the Brussels nomenklatura have learned nothing and  forgotten nothing

 

They persist in recruiting new members despite the disaster of admitting countries such as Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, none of which meets the basic criteria for membership.

 

Briefly, these are

 

·       Democratic constitution with free elections;

·       The rule of law and an independent judiciary;

·       Recognition of human rights;

·       Protection of minorities

·       A functioning market economy;

 

Turkey could have few problems here. In the queue also are Macedonia, Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia, in total about 88 million people.

 

The Balkan candidates are third world criminal states. Bosnia ranks 103 in the world GDP pp league table with Albania at 93, below Gabon, Lebanon, Botswana , even bankrupt Venezuela. None of these countries is, to quote LBJ,  ‘worth a pitcher of warm spit!’.

 

They have the disastrous Euro around their necks and cling to it as if it were the Holy Grail. This shows very clearly that they remain committed to ‘ever closer union’ which means monetary union. If members agree to this, it will signal the end of independent nations, most of which will have suffered greatly in obtaining independence. Instead they will become satrapies of Brussels, ruled as mere provinces.

 

Do they seriously imagine that 500,000,000 people will accept this? Dream on!

 

The structure of the EU has the integrity of a Bangladeshi textile factory; the fault lines cannot be repaired. The fatal flaw is that Brussels, when reflecting on the essentials for a successful union, never asks ‘What is the community of interest?’. Only eleven of the 28 members of the EU are in the world top 25 of GDP pp, so national wealth is not a major consideration for membership. And if not, what is?

 

Perhaps more importantly, the British have absolutely nothing in common politically with the other members; it is the only member of the club that has a continuous tradition of constitutional democracy and the supremacy of Parliament preceding 1945. Britain was an ancient nation before many of the club members even existed  in their present form. (Britannia, who still features on the reverse of our coinage, has been there since around 200AD).

 

‘The Continent’ is dirigiste. People tend to look to Governments for the answers to most problems, on the ‘always keep a hold of nurse’ philosophy. The British are exactly the opposite, which is why one of the most loathed characteristics of the Brussels elites is its never-ending meddling in ordinary people’s lives, especially in areas where there is no EU commonality e.g. the little herbalist shop that sells only in the immediate area is nevertheless subject to the full weight of the EU Directive of Traditional Herbal Medicine Products.

 

In short, the European template is the Holy Roman Empire which was neither Holy nor Roman but was definitely German. Britain, of course, distained to be part of that club.

 

To return to the here-and-now, the latest ‘Remain’ propaganda gets more absurd by the day.

 

Dave’s latest bit of scare mongering is directed at pensioners. Brexit will put your pension at risk, he tells us.

How come? Pensions are purely a matter of domestic policy. The level of pensions is entirely for the government to decide. And, come to that, it was Gordon Brown who wrecked final-salary pension schemes by withdrawing tax breaks on investment earnings. Dave has done nothing to rectify this, but has watched private pension funds  accrue massive deficits as demand outstrips resources

 

Osborne tells us that that interest rates will rise and house prices will fall.

 

Bring it on, George. Millions of us who saved for our retirement and now find that the return on capital is less than  the rate of inflation due to the Bank flooding the financial market with almost-interest free loans.!

 

The ‘10% fall in house prices’ is another George porky. The reality is that house prices may not rise by the predicted 10% by 2018. They will be the same as today.

 

The immigration issue is a simple one. It is racist and discriminatory.

 

Under the present dispensation , Britain cannot control its borders or immigration from Europe. Anybody with an EU passport may come here without let or hindrance – and immediately claim social benefits without contributing a penny. This includes hordes of ‘refugees’ once they qualify in Germany or whichever EU member has given them sanctuary.

 

The only means of immigration control left to the UK is over non-EU citizens – Indians, Australians and all. So when it comes to admitting a Romanian labourer or an Indian doctor, it’s no contest.

 

Simple as that!

 

Here is the acid test.

 

If this referendum was not about leaving the EU  but about joining it, how would you vote?

This is Trumpism!

I said this time next year I'm gonna be the one to do

Everything and more you said I couldn't do.

Well, look at me now!

 

If a week is a long time in politics, a year is an aeon. About this time last year, The Donald was one of the biggest jokes in political history; a loud-mouthed demagogue, a political child with no known ideology or convictions, a clown, a ranter, a racist, a much-married sexist, a multi-bankrupt. He was given a 2% chance of success.

 

Now he’s King of the Midden in the GOP, and the cognoscenti are scotching their heads wondering how the impossible happened.

 

The answer to their dilemma is simple; ask the people!

 

Their reply will also be simple; ‘ We are fed-up!’

 

We are not for Trump. We are against you, the Establishment.

 

We detest the selfish, self-seeking, self-satisfied, self-regarding and self-perpetuating oligarchy that over the past 40 years has stealthily infiltrated what was once a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Not any more, it ain’t!

 

We reckon that we are very close to a dictatorship by MOTU - the Masters of the Universe who cosy up to each other: Wall Street, multi-national business juggernauts, bankers getting 8+-figure pay-packets, politicians in gerrymandered constituencies who never need to bother about re-election.

 

We are totally pissed-off that blue collar wages have not improved by a single cent in 25 years. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor has grown obscenely’. And with the bankers who cost many of us our homes in the sub-prime scandal. How many are in jail?. And the plutocrats and their tax-breaks; remember how the? fabulously wealthy Mitt Romney disclosed how he paid less tax than his secretary.

 

We are sick of aggressive feminazis, the saphist force de frappe and their incessant search for new grievances. And with all this garbage about transgender. There is no such thing; you either have xx chromosomes or xy. All this stuff about trannies being allowed to use the toilets of the opposite sex is a perv’s charter.

 

Soo who is the more valuable member of society – your senator or your plumber?

 

It is long past time when the MOTU were cut down to size.

 

That’s Trumpism!

 

This is for everybody

Who always put me down

I hope you open up your eyes

And take a good look at me now.

Who willm speak for England?

‘….man drest in a little brief authority,

plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.

 

We are now in purdah, which means that Cameron can no longer use legions of civil servants to invent new porkies to push for a ‘stay’ vote. Cameron’s statesman-like response to the challenge of Brexit is to warn about more expensive mobile phone calls and budget-airline fares. So vote ‘leave’ and it’s Clacton, not Benidorm. Yeah, right!

 

Heir to Blair? Heir to Neville Chamberlain, more like!

 

This does not mean that the lacklustre ‘ Brexit’ campaign will get any better, split as it is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

 

There is no coherent message, and it is way past time when they should be setting out the issues in plain language that people can understand, not just the ’pollies’ who occupy the Westminster village. Here are a few:

 

Should 

·       Westminster  be the ultimate source of laws  for the British?

·       the Supreme Court to be the final legal authority for Britain, excluding any jurisdiction from any foreign court?

·       Britain have sole control over immigration, including terms of entry and visa policy?

·       Britain have sole responsibility for all public health matters, such as tobacco and alcohol policies? all consumer protection matters returned to Britain e.g. power of vacuum cleaners, standards for light bulbs?

·       Britain have complete control over fisheries and agriculture?

·       Our armed forces be merged into the proposed (but not disclosed) EU defence force?

 

And many more….

 

The outrageous ‘no-balls’ from Bremain should be whacked over the boundary right now. It’s not difficult.

 

‘Wages will fall’. The greatest threat to wage-levels is uncontrolled immigration from Eastern Europe as the €-zone falls deeper into recession.

 

‘House prices will fall’. And that’s bad? Not for first-time buyers in particular.

 

‘Unemployment will rise’. Like it has in the €-zone, to insane levels, especially under-25s, where it has hit 50% in some places?

 

‘Inflation will rise’. That’s a sign of a buoyant economy. But they say that the economy will shrink. Stagflation as in the €-zone, maybe?

 

‘Food prices will go up’. Hardly. The EU imposes swinging tariffs on the import of many foodstuffs. EU tariffs on agricultural products average 18% – over four times more than charges on other goods, with isoglucose (sweetener derived from starch) hit hardest by a staggering 604% duty. It would sell for 40% less than EU-produced sugar.

 

‘Farmers will lose their CAP subsidies’. Actually, the subsidy paid to farmers by Brussels is half what HMG pays into the CAP. It could double the subsidy without additional cost to the UK taxpayer.

 

Britain must decide whether it is to remain shackled to a corpse or free itself from a moribund economy (the slowest growth rate of any region in the world), a bloated, unaccountable, meddling and self-serving bureaucracy, and inevitable coalescence into an up-dated version of the Soviet Union, a collection of so-called republics slavishly answerable to Brussels.

 

The DT eloquently describes the EU ‘as an ultimately doomed, job-destroying, declining and mismanaged behemoth which stands no chance in an increasingly agile, globalised world’.

 

The alternative is for Britain to cut the painter.

 

After all, this is the world’s fifth largest economy and is destined to become the largest country in Western Europe as the population of  Germany continues to fall.

 

As to governance, we have the perfect example of the attitude of Brussels towards democracy.

 

Boss Juncker (elected by nobody, of course) threatened the people of Austria that if they had the effrontery to vote for a ‘right wing’ President, then there would be serious repercussions. We have been here before , in 1999 when the elected Government of Austria was effectively black-balled by the EU.

 

Juncker is also making threatening noises in the direction of Hungary and Poland.

 

And yet the rise of the ‘far right’ is inexorable for the time being. Blame can be heaped on the centre-left and centre-right parties. They form cosy coalitions, as was the case in Austria since 1945 until recently. The reaction of the people is ‘stitch-up’ and they look for alternatives, and this usually means ‘far right’, as there are few alternatives for the protest vote. The Eurocrats simply dismiss them as ‘neo-Nazi’.

 

The current referendum campaign is the most shameful episode in recent British political history on a par with  1930s ‘appeasement’.

 

The ultimate peril is that the EU will grow even more oppressive and authoritarian. Several member states have a solid track record of throwing the rascals out by force. There are modern examples of political violence in Spain, Portugal, Greece, where the regimes were overthrown; Germany and Italy which suffered years of nihilistic terrorism; France, which was on the brink of civil war over the abandonment of Algeria, has a long tradition of revolution.

 

To echo Leo Amery on 2 September 1939, ‘Speak for England, Dave!’

 

And finally:

 

‘’Fat cats with huge salaries should be cut in half’

UKIP leaflet.