Further to a meeting of people from all over Europe, this article contains a very brief assessment of the situation regarding Ukraine as seen at the current moment, plus a range of initiatives that people can conduct individually or collectively.
Slow death, sudden death or peace?
Ever since Liz Truss allowed Putin to open up the question of nuclear bombs and mutually assured destruction, the western world has been paralysed by self interest instead of facing Putin down. Whilst it is wise to be cautious about Putin’s decision making skills, it is wiser to not be paralysed by them. Here are the broad range of options on the table:
Slow death
Allow Putin to take Ukraine or a part of it : Putin is emboldened and continues his march through Europe. Result : The world gets nuked eventually aka SLOW DEATH.
Sudden death
Allow the current state of too little, too late sanctions runs the risk of making Putin think the West is not united. Result : The potential for WW III grows a step closer aka SUDDEN DEATH.
Peace
The West unites and faces Putin down on every level. This might mean NATO destroying Putin’s war machine on the march into Kiev etc. Result : PEACE.
I realise that these positions are far too simplistic and discrete, nonetheless accommodation and avoidance by the West may result in the same terrible outcomes in the short or longer terms. That makes them equivalent. There are also wider moral and ethical questions that arise from an invasion of a country which was not an aggressor.
Two cheeks of the same arsehole
What must happen?
Every day, sanctions must be ratcheted up to the point that they weaken the Russian war machine and affect the will of the Russian people to resist. Each and every country must take some pain as sanctions are not surgical devices. If we want to survive Russia they are essential.
NATO and UN must take decisive action. It is justified and essential – Russia have made an unprovoked attack on Ukraine. They have also used illegal weapons. Ukraine may fall without NATO involvement, then Putin moves on to the rest of Europe. Write to NATO via mailbox.ypp@hq.nato.int A no fly zone must be considered again. By not doing it, world leaders are committing Ukraine to sudden death and the world to slow death. Both are death.
Our own Government’s offer for refugees is beyond pathetic. Write to Priti Patel to point this out in your own way via withammp@parliament.uk
Write to UK MP’s about Russian Oligarchs to ask them to do more. Some examples of targets below. Click on this link to write to them. Sign the petition Support Ukraine.
Today Boris Johnson said oligarchs in the UK will “have nowhere to hide”. On the same day Andrey Guryev, owner of Witanhurst (the largest mansion in London after Buckingham Palace), attended a solidarity meeting of oligarchs with Putin in the Kremlin. Pretty brazen. https://t.co/81QgLXJohS
Behold Russia's business elite, in the Kremlin's Hall of the Order of St Catherine, where the astonishing security council session with Putin was on Monday.
Alexander Shokhin, who heads the oligarch lobby group, is talking about cryptocurrency regulation as Ukraine burns. pic.twitter.com/qpPkz3BYiV
It's very easy – please spare 10 mins of your time to help get the news into Russia. Don't forget, ordinary Russians have been cut off from most social media. Help bring the truth to them. Restaurant bookings have a "comments" box for free text. Try various images, facts etc.🔽 https://t.co/tZk3c7qqbG
— Paul Bowers (aka The Panda Chronicles) (@Panda_Chronicle) February 28, 2022
I’ve put this in the order of urgency and importance as the situation requires. This update contains several items to help everyone stand with Ukraine. Firstly an urgent practical call for supplies of clothing, medical equipment etc. Secondly a meeting on Monday 28 Feb at 8 pm GMT to come up with more practical actions on an individual and collective basis. Thirdly, a revelation about our own Government’s involvement via the unredacted Russia report and finally things you can do to face down the scandal of Priti Patel’s refusal to accept refugees due to her need to play to the racist gallery. Read on and act
1. URGENT and VERY IMPORTANT: Please contribute to these initiatives to supply vital supplies to Ukranians in Kent. Find out where your own schemes are in UK and help support them:
Click image to go to Ela’s Cakes fb page
Canterbury and East Kent – Riverside Vineyard Church Thanet Way Whitstable CT5 3JQ from 9.5 pm
2. URGENT and IMPORTANT: Join us on Monday 28 Feb at 8 pm GMT via ZOOM to consider what each of us can do individually and collectively to support Ukraine.
3. IMPORTANT: Please write to your MP, asking for the removal of MPs who were / are involved in supporting Putin’s regime.
Find the UNREDACTED Russia report at Google Drive. A summary of the salient points can be found in this tweet below:
This is the full text of The Russia Report.
This thread contains extracts. It is truly shocking and very scary. Our government and security services have been 'asleep at the wheel'.
— Shouting into the void 🇬🇧 🇱🇰 ⚒ (@VoxLibero) August 28, 2020
Here’s a letter you may use or adapt:
Dear [MP’s Name]
As a constituent of [YOUR CONSTITUENCY], I am writing to you to express my deep concerns with regard to the disarray and incompetence displayed by our current government.
Having read the Russia Report it is clear that the lives of millions of UK citizens are at grave risk not just from Covid-19 but from the infiltration of British politics and business by actors for the Russian state.
I’m sure you will agree with me that this is an extremely serious national issue and need addressing quickly and permanently. The Prime Minister has publicly stated that the ‘first duty of government is to protect British citizens’. He and his government are clearly not up to the job. I ask you to introduce a vote of ‘no confidence’ in this government and reforms to our political system.
The gravity of this situation is clear. Please take immediate action to ensure the views and concerns of the citizens that elected you are reflected in Parliament and in government policy.
I appreciate your understanding of my concerns as your constituent, and look forward to seeing my concerns represented.
Thank you in anticipation,
[YOUR NAME, YOUR ADDRESS]
4. IMPORTANT: Please write to Priti Patel at withammp@parliament.uk Ask her to reform the arrangements for asylum seekers. Her policies are quite simply killing children and families. She has lied about accepting Ukrainian refugees in order to play to the galley of knuckle-dragging racists in England, simply due to the need to pray on the altar of Brexit xenophobia. Stand with Ukraine.
Your own link proves you wrong.
Ukrainians without family ties to the UK have to get to a nearby country and go through a normal route. And even people applying under the close family route still have to meet conditions including on salaries and language. pic.twitter.com/dBeeT3PV8z
This is a kind of “end of term” report for Boris Johnson and the Conservative party. The Prime Minister has gone off for another summer rest. Well deserved? Adrian Ekins-Dauke’s invites you to judge for yourself:
THE RUSSIA REPORT: FUNDING AND MISINFORMATION
Ex-Russian intelligence staff say 85% of their work is not spying, but “political funding and misinformation”. Since 2012, the Tory party has received almost £3m in donations from members of Putin’s cabinets and 14 current ministers have had donations from individuals or companies connected to the Russian leadership
The government delayed the release of the Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in Brexit for 9 months. The reasons given for the delay were described as “simply not true” by the Committee. Our Home Secretary, Priti Patel said the Russia Report could be ignored because it was now 9 months old and “out of date” (One wonders whether she takes a similar view of unresolved murder, rape and other serious cases which become “out of date” after 9 months).
COVID 19
Matt Hancock boasted he had met the targets on his “six tests” on COVID-19. In fact 4 of the 6 targets were missed, one target couldn’t be met because it had never been defined, and one “relied on a definition [that] does not reflect practice”.
The cross-party Public Accounts Committee found there was an “astonishing failure to plan for the economic impact” of COVID-19. It also said the policy of discharging patients into care homes was a “reckless and appalling policy error”. It called the government “slow, inconsistent [and] negligent”. The Committee chair said “A competent government does not run a country on the hoof”.
DIRTY DEEDS
Now for PPE contracts …
£252m to Ayanda Capital, registered in Mauritius for tax purposes. PPE not delivered. £186m to Uniserve. PPE not delivered. £116m to P14 Medical Supplies, with assets of just £145. PPE not delivered.
£108m to PestFix, with just 16 employees. PPE not delivered.
£107m to Clandeboye Agencies, a sweet wholesaler. Yes, a sweet wholesaler. PPE not delivered. £40m to Medicine Box Ltd, with assets of just £6000. PPE not delivered. £48m to Initia Ventures Ltd, which registered itself as “dormant” in March. PPE not delivered.
£28m to Monarch Acoustics, which makes shop furniture. PPE not delivered.
£25m to Luxe Lifestyle, which has no employees, no assets, and no turnover. PPE not delivered. £18m to Aventis Solutions, which has total assets of £332. Not a typo, £332! PPE not delivered.
£10m to Medco Solutions, incorporated just 3 days after lockdown, with share capital of (not a typo) £2. PPE not delivered.
In all, approx £1 bn to inexplicable suppliers for PPE that hasn’t been delivered. This of course costs lives.
A Nuffield Health study found after 10 years of “chronic underinvestment”, UK is at the bottom of the league table for health resources, diagnostics and surgery by the NHS will take 4 years to return to pre-COVID levels.
The government’s “world beating” test-and-trace programme was described as “scandalous” by the British Medical Journal, and found to miss its 80% target in every COVID hotspot announced last week
A report from London School of Economics has shown a WTO Brexit will shrink 16 out of the UK’s 24 industry sectors by up to 15% each. Permanently. A Tory MP tweeted:
“? WTO here we come!”
Another pro-Brexit Tory MP with a grasp of what’s to come tweeted:
“my strong advice is: “take the chance to live abroad”.
MISCELLANEOUS
The cross-party Media & Culture Committee has reported that “government has consistently failed to recognise scale of challenge facing culture, sport and tourism and had been ‘too slow’ to respond to their needs during COVID-19.
Boris Johnson launched a “Fix Your Bike” voucher website. It broke within an hour. The editor applied and found that the website did not work. I called the people and was promised vouchers. On following up I was told the scheme was closed.
Johnson also said we should all lose weight. This is certainly true in his case at 17 Stone. However, Johnson is still issuing vouchers to help us buy burgers.
Boris Johnson would not get a job as a WeightWatchers coach
It was revealed the government spent £400m buying a bankrupt satellite company, OneWeb, to replace the Euro GPS system we have lost due to Brexit. Months before, a study by MIT found that OneWeb’s tech is 6 times less efficient than the EU solution: the worst of the technologies studied.
In June, the government guaranteed that there would be no cuts in overseas aid when the Foreign Office and International Development Dept merged. It announced cuts of £2.9 bn in aid on the day Parliament broke up for the summer, thus avoiding questions on broken their promises.
The government has permitted your health records to be given to Palantir, a large US data-mining company and to Faculty, owned by an associate of Dominic Cummings and said to have worked with Cambridge Analytica on Brexit.
Our overall assessment of the Government is 2/10. What’s yours?
Write to your MP and make these points. Ask them not to add the man made disaster of Brexit to Corona Crisis.
This piece helps to explain the xenophobia and hatred of foreigners that were a key driver of Brexit by the English in Britain. This was accelerated by key actors such as Nigel Farage and our Alt Right populist media (The Sun, Mail and Express). These are extracts from a forthcoming book by Irina Fridman called Foreigners, Aliens, Citizens – Medway and its Jewish Community 1066 – 1939.
On Tuesday, 4 December 1655, in the Council Chamber of Whitehall, a conference of representatives of political, theological, legal and business walks of life gathered to decide the following questions:
Was it lawful to admit Jews to England?
If yes, would the country admit them?
If it is decided that they are to be admitted, then on what terms and conditions?
Very quickly it became apparent that there was no legal prohibition preventing Jews from settling in England. But did the English want Jews to settle here? A small number of religious leaders were in favour, but the majority were against. They argued that Jewish customs and “their worship or religion is not only evil in itself, but likewise very scandalous to other Christian churches.” Merchants vigorously insisted that allowing Jews in would only enrich foreigners and would cause the decline of English trade. Even those who were in favour, wanted to impose stringent conditions which included:
That they may not be admitted to have any publicke Judicatoryes, whether civill or ecclesiasticall, which were to grant them terms beyond the conditions of strangers.
That they be not admitted eyther to speake or doe anything to the defamation or dishonour of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ or of the Christian religion.
That they be not permitted to doe any worke or anything to the prophanation of the Lord’s Day or Christian Sabbath.
That they be not admitted to have Christians dwell with them as their servants.
That they bear no publicke office or trust in this commonwealth.
That they be not allowed to print anything which in the least opposeth the Christian religion in our language.
That, so farre as may be, not suffered to discourage any of their owne from usinge or applying themselves to any which may tend to convince them of their error and turn them to Christianity. And that some severe penalty be imposed upon them who shall apostatize from Christianity to Judaisme.
In the end the conference produced no result…
With the restoration of the monarchy from 1660, anti-Jewish agitation was revived. The death of Cromwell in 1658 had already unleashed a campaign against the Jewish presence in England with some clerics, MPs and their constituents praying for the banishment of the Jews and confiscation of their property. In December 1659, Thomas Violet brought a case against Jews to court. Basing his statements on Prynne’s Demurrer he argued that settlement was illegal, and that the law should be upheld by banishing the intruders. Not being satisfied by the judicial opinion that there was no illegality in admitting Jews to England and by Mr Justice Tyril’s refusal to take action, he published a tract, asserting that the existence of Jews and their worship in the City of London was “the great dishonour of Christianity and public scandal of the true Protestant religion.” Following the judge’s advice, Violet also applied to the Privy Council, personally marching to the Whitehall and delivering his application to the Lords. Violet’s anti-Jew campaign received great support from the City of London Corporation. The Corporation feared competition fromthe Jews, whom Cromwell had granted the right to trade with native merchants on an equal footing. They were also eager to preserve traditional methods of trading, no matter how outdated they were. All this prompted the lord mayor and the aldermen to join Violet in his anti-Jewish campaign. They argued that Jews were a swarm of locusts, that they corrupted religion, that they presented a threat to English women, that they endangered public security, that they ruined trade.
The military campaigns of the early 18th century dominated public discourse, detracting attention away from Jewish aliens, though the relationship between the Jews and the English was tense under the surface. The situation erupted in 1753 with the introduction of a bill into parliament, which would have allowed any Jew who had continuously lived in the country for at least three years to be naturalised by parliament without taking the Sacrament. The arguments in favour stated the economic, social and religious benefits, like the introduction of capital into the country and the notion that Jews never attempted to make converts. On the contrary, allowing Jewish immigrants to settle in the country would present an opportunity for their conversion. An additional bonus was the tradition of Jews to provide for their own poor, which meant that there would be no recourse or drain on parishes.
The immediate backlash ensued with the familiar anti-Jewish arguments under the banner “No Jews, No Wooden shoes!” – a nod to the Jews from Amsterdam. William Northey, MP for Calne in Wiltshire (1747 – 1761) and for Maidstone (1761 – 1768), claimed that “the Bill was an attempt to rob them of their birthright as Christians”, that swarms of Jews would come and settle in the country. Others argued that Jewish merchants were a threat to the English ones; that Jews would force the Protestants out of all offices, trades and professions; that Jews were a threat to the female population, as the daughters would be forced to marry rich Jews. The previous wild rumour of the conversion of St Paul’s Cathedral into a synagogue was revived as well as the well-trodden path of blood accusations. A novel argument claimed that the eventual act would reduce the consumption of ham and bacon. The situation was so intense that the archbishop of Canterbury, being sympathetic to the Jews, feared a general massacre.
There are no absolute figures for population in the first half of the 18th century, but the best estimates suggest that there were overall between five and a half and six million people in England and Wales. By 1750 the Jewish population of England was about 8,000, according to the consensus amongst academics.
Hostility and xenophobia were common features of the working English class of the time. Almost 40 years since the end of the 17th century were occupied with military operations. Even though they had done nothing to ease the despicable conditions in which people lived, the poorest of the poor had learnt that through being English, they were better than anyone.
Having secured equal rights to participate in politics on the municipal level in 1845, it was important to achieve and secure similar equality in parliament. However, this last and the most important bastion of English identity was to be defended by those who perceived any changes as their personal threats, for well over a decade longer.
A familiar trope of ‘unchristianising’, this time the legislature, raised its head again. It was acceptable for the laws of a Christian country to be managed by Jews, but the country would be in great jeopardy if non-Christians were permitted to be part of the making of the laws.22 The anti-Jewish campaign was gathering pace.
John Bull, a weekly periodical, which was described as ‘admirably adapted to country gentlemen’ and had on its masthead the crown and sceptre lying on the Holy Bible accompanied by the text ‘FOR GOD, THE SOVEREIGN, AND THE PEOPLE’, pursued a long-term campaign against Jews. They were often portrayed, together with Catholics, dissenters and Muslims as deadly opponents of Protestant Christianity. Every attempt to admit Jews to parliament inflamed John Bull. For example, in 1845 it stated that ‘to do so, will, in our judgement, be virtually to un-Christianise the British legislature, and thereby to invite the displeasure of Almighty God’. According to John Bull, if allowed any political power, Jews then might be admitted to the ancient universities, which will result in the ban of pork and the New Testament. The attacks on Jews in the press continued. The same accusations of perceived wealth and greediness, the imagined propensity to treachery, but in essence, inability to be Englishmen, irrespective of the time spent in the country, wilfully ignoring the fact that most Jews by that time were English born. A leading article of the Morning Herald on 18 March 1853accused Jews of being mere traders, who did not contribute to the country as soldiers or husbandmen, and therefore could not be Englishmen. The editor suggested that if English required new allies, they’d better ‘take the Mahommedan, the Hindoo, the Buddhist,’ who, according to some convoluted and contradictory editorial argument, respect and venerate Christianity.
In the 1880s a big anti-immigration campaign ensued, with many eminent Jews travelling to Eastern Europe, trying to discourage emigration.
In addition, the un-English characteristics of the new arrivals were feared would jeopardise the amicable relations of the English Jewry with the Gentiles and ignite a new wave of antisemitism. Indeed, a less than subtle hostility towards Jews became discernible. Samuel Henry Jeyes, an influential writer, expressed his view in no uncertain terms:
‘English Jews… have their faults but they’re English to the core…. But [the immigrants] from Russia and Poland have all the vices which are generated by many centuries of systematic oppression. This immigrant class would never be popular in Britain ‘since they succeed, if not taking the bread out of English mouths, at least in reducing the margin of wages which might be spent on beer and gin [and] they are naturally and not quite fairly detested.’
Joseph Banister, a rabid antisemitic writer, in his work England under the Jews referred to all foreign Jews as thieves, sweaters, usurers, burglars, forgers, traitors, swindlers, blackmailers, and perjurers.
Arnold White, a journalist and a virulent antisemitic campaigner against immigration, spouted the all-familiar diatribe about ‘the rich and powerful Hebrews who really the rulers of the civilised world.’ In 1886 he and Lord Dunraven formed and financed a Society for the Suppression of the Immigration of Destitute Aliens, with White wanting to stop ‘the leaks which take in the riff-raff from other countries’.
White’s views were challenged by Stephen Fox, who used statistical data as evidence against hostility towards pauper immigration. The data showed that immigrants were no burden on the communities and the local rates; on the contrary, they were a source of profit, having introduced two additional branches of trade – shoe manufacturing and tailoring.
However, anti-Jewish attacks were not restricted to Conservatives only; the Liberal party had its own antisemites. Hilaire Belloc was concerned with ‘Jewish peril’, while Professor Goldwin Smith was convinced that it was beyond the power of any legislation to make Jews patriots – his vicious attack prompted the chief rabbi to pen an article entitled Can Jews be Patriots? in terms commended by Gladstone.
To justify the country’s involvement [in the war of 1914-18] from religious and moral perspectives, politicians, clergy and journalists employed highly emotive rhetoric of ‘a final battle against ‘good’ and ‘evil’’, a ‘holy war’ and a ‘just war’ against now ‘pagan’ Germany. In autumn 1914 Prime Minister Herbert Asquith argued that Germany had become ruthlessly expansionist and was no longer guided by Christian principles. ‘We do not covert any people’s territory’, declared Asquith in October 1914, oblivious to the irony of his statement: ‘We have no desire to impose our rule upon alien populations. The British Empire is enough for us.’
The image of the Christian ‘knight’ on crusade against the ‘pagan’ forces of Germany, evoked by politicians, journalists and ecclesiastics, exacerbated the collective hostility and xenophobia already existent in the preceding years. Britain’s residents, either aliens, or naturalised British subjects, but identified by their German-sounding names became an easy target for this Christian anti-Germanism. To distract attention from their German connections, some anglicised their names, as was the case with the Fehrenbachs [non-Jewish], local jewellers and naturalised British subjects, who changed their name to English-sounding Fairbank. Even King George felt compelled to change from Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor in 1917.
[After the war] The backdrop of the post-war crisis and class conflict, intensified by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, provided fertile ground for the establishment of the first British fascist organisation in 1923. For those hankering for the ‘good olden days’, the allure of Mussolini’s fascist movement with its promises of ‘discipline’ and ‘order’, destruction of democracy, outlawing the trade unions and parties to the Left, and opposition to egalitarianism, was irresistible. By November 1924, the British fascist movement was well established and going strong in Gillingham. Editor’s note – fascism continues under the encouragement of Brexit to this day.
Cemetery headstones smashed at Chatham Memorial Synagogue in 2019
In October 1929 the American stock market crashed, sending ripples across the world. Within three years unemployment in Britain sky-rocketed from one to almost three million. The Labour government under the leadership of Ramsay Macdonald stuck to traditional economic policies, making cuts to balance the budget, keeping the overvalued pound, and upholding free trade, despite the changed economic reality and growing criticism. One of the critics was Winston Churchill. In his Oxford lecture in 1930 Churchill discussed the ‘failure’ of democracy and appealed for alternative methods of governing. In consequence, some aristocrats fearing the loss of their estates through taxation, advocated for more authoritarian rule and the temporary disbandment of parliament. In such an event, they proposed Churchill as leader.
The other critic was a Tory defector Sir Oswald Mosley. When a memorandum, where he proposed an expansion of credit, protectionism to revive the economy and increased public spending was rejected, Mosley resigned from the cabinetand turned the Mosley Memorandum into the Mosley Manifesto. In December 1930, 17 Labour MPs, including Frank Markham, MP for Chatham, signed the Manifesto.
By March 1932 the direction of the party was rather clear – Mosley talked about the need for a disciplined body of young men to resist the threat of communism. Party representatives were dispatched to study the methods of Hitler’s Nazi Party, and Mosley himself visited Italy and met Mussolini.
During that year, however, the New Party was rapidly losing its members precisely because of its close association with fascism. To pursue his ideas of a protectionist economy and strong government, Mosley needed to find a solution, and to find it quickly. On 1 October 1932, amalgamating the die-hard members of the New Party and other far-right groups, Mosley founded a new party, the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Believing that he was the only saviour against the Communists, Mosley managed to convince Mussolini and Lord Rothermere, the owner of the Daily Mail, to provide considerable financial backing. Parroting Mussolini’s movement, BUF members wore ‘Blackshirt’ uniforms and were operating as a para-military organisation. Meanwhile, the economic crisis in the country was deepening, and the number of unemployed surged further.
At the start, BUF denied institutional antisemitism, though it had a fair share of antisemites and racists. When challenged by the Jewish Chronicle to disown them, Mosley’s response was rather ambiguous: BUF ‘would never attack Jews because they are Jews’, but if Jews attack BUF or were ‘international capitalists’ or subversives, then the BUF reserved a right to counter-attack. However, his thin veneer of pretentious political respectability slipped in October 1934, when the BUF leader launched into a demagogic assault on an imaginary ‘international Jewish conspiracy,’ drawing his attack from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The epistle, which originated in Russia in 1905, was created in the annals of the Russian gendarme police to stoke the anti-Jewish feeling and entice pogroms. It claimed that the ultimate aim of the Jews was world domination, using any means necessary, through political and financial gain. The document reached Britain in 1920 and was exposed as ‘fake news’ in 1921. However, that did not stop the missive to be widely used by both far-right and the establishment, exploiting the image of ‘Jew’ as both, capitalist, motivated by financial greed, and simultaneously as communist, hungry for political influence among dissatisfied working classes plotting a revolution.
Mosley visited the Medway Towns several times. One of the visits was on 23 June 1936. Addressing the audience, Mosley claimed that the fascist regime would carry out the ‘will of the people’ unlike the current parties, who existed only to slow progress. To win the peace, he said, Britain had to ally with Germany, Italy and Japan. Mosley berated the socialists and argued that fascism was the only antidote to the socialism and the saviour against the Soviets.
On 13 March 1938 German troops marched into Austria. The same year Chamberlain’s government abandoned their ally Czechoslovakia, allowing Hitler to annex its Sudetenland area. In July 1938, the Evian Conference where 32 countries convened to design a plan to manage the increasing numbers of refugees from Nazi Germany, did not produced any result – hardly any country loosened their immigration restrictions. The inability or unwillingness of the countries to take decisive steps in resolving the issue, emboldened Hitler, who saw it as endorsement to escalate his antisemitic attacks.
On the night of 9 November 1938, which became known as ‘Kristallnacht’, or Pogrom Night, Jews and their property were attacked across Germany, Austria and Sudetenland. The pogroms continued during the day of November 10, and in some areas violence carried on for the next several days. Over 48 hours more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or otherwise damaged; about 7,500 Jewish businesses were looted and ransacked; at least 91 Jews were killed; Jewish hospitals, schools, cemeteries and homes were vandalised, often by neighbours. About 30,000 Jewish males aged 16 to 60 were arrested; the concentration camps of Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen were expanded to accommodate new prisoners. On 15 November Jewish children were barred from attending schools, and the local authorities were ordered to impose curfews. By December 1938, Jews were banned from most public places in Germany.63
The November events were reported in the media, including the local newspapers. Letters to the editor followed. Two weeks after the pogroms, in the Chatham Observer R G Baker from The Quest, Yorkletts, Whitstable, complained about ‘sob-stuff on the persecution of the Jews in Germany and elsewhere (with the object perhaps of getting more of them here)’. Baker blamed Jews for their own persecution, the source of which he saw in the Talmud, which according to him, confirmed all those conspiracy theories regarding Jews.
On 15 March 1939 Hitler tore up the ‘peace in our time’ Munich Agreement and invaded Czechoslovakia. Several days later Mosley visited the Medway Towns again, giving an hour and a quarter speech at the Gillingham’s Paget Hall. He concentrated on the developments in Europe, defended Hitler’s actions and ranted against Jews and refugees, accusing them of taking jobs from the two million British still unemployed.
British re-armament was well underway, and the new war in Europe started to look imminent.
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I am bombarded on a daily basis by people who tell me that Brexit cannot be stopped. These are not leave voters but weary remainers who suffer from the condition known as learned helplessness. I concur that it has been a long battle, and many saw the General Election victory as a turning point and an opinion poll on Brexit. However, I must also make the uncomfortable point that Vote Leave would not have given up so easily.
Students have demonstrated that effective protest works. We must continue for our children’s sake. There is no Brexit deal that will deliver the promises made by Vote Leave and, in any case, all Brexit deals will destroy the four freedoms of EU membership leading to the destruction of the EU itself over time. The 27 members are more important than any single country.
So, here is a long list of things we can do to resist by effective protest under COVID safe protocols. No more objections please. Just get out and do something.
1. Write to your MP to explain why Corona + Brexit = Britastrophe … if you have written, write again … and again – if you are not a letter writer, ask for help.
2. Ask to meet your MP and interview them. Publish the results as a video so they can see you are serious and make more ripples in the pond. Alternatively ask to make a video to your MP with us.
3. Write to the media, making a powerful case – help can be given.
4. Brexorcise your friends – if you need help, read the book.
5. Restart the conversation on social media. Open your timelines up so that your Brexit friends can see you and Brexit have not gone away.
I was gobsmacked to note that The Sun reported the possibility of water shortages under Brexit the other day. Yes, water shortages !! Also food and electricity. Well it’s all going well …
Don’t buy The Sun
The more subtle story that The Sun did not report concerns the watering down of the water regulations (pun intended) under Brexit. This means that we will have dirtier rivers again, polluted beaches, etc. The EU are largely responsible for environmental improvements such as clean beaches and there are clear public health consequences for such policies.
Winter of discontent
Don’t buy The Sun
Bordering on the insane
Aside from clean water, another assumption that Vote Leave played under Brexit was that it would enable us to take back control of our border and therefore immigration. This is yet another piece of blind faith.
Once Brexit is done, our “border” will be on British soil / waters, whereas before it was on French soil. Since migrants have essentially no economic value to the French, it’s really quite likely that the French will not seek to stop them travelling to Britain, as it relieves France of the “problem”. Equally, we will not be able to send them back to Calais and will have to repatriate them to their country of origin, effectively sending them to their deaths in some cases. I am left wondering how happy the brave keyboard warriors will be to know that they have put children to death in order to “take back control” of their blue passports?
BorisJohnson has been sacked twice for lying in his earlier career. He continued the habit during the referendum and now as Prime Minister. The following are some significant instances of his lies up to mid August 2020. In none of these cases has he issued an apology or a correction.
“The money going into the NHS is the biggest increase in living memory, a £34 billion increase.”
(November 29, 2019, in response to a caller on LBC during the election campaign and on other occasions)
Johnson’s figure for the NHS budget for the next 5 years is the ‘cash’ increase, which allows for inflation to prevent NHS from shrinking. The real increase, taking account of inflation, is £20.5 billion, just over half Johnson’s figure. This is far from ‘the biggest increase in living memory.’ There were bigger increases in both cash and real terms during the last Labour government. Indeed, Johnson’s planned increase of 3.2% per year in real terms is below the 3.6% average for the NHS’s 70 year history, as well as barely half of the 6% achieved by Labour. (Source : Institute of Fiscal Studies.
“The economy of our country under this Conservative government has grown by 73%.”
(January 31 2020)
Assuming Johnson refers to the period since 2010, the true figure is around 20% (up to the pandemic). 73% is the figure for the whole period since 1990, 13 years of which were under the Labour government.
“97% of the primary schools which have submitted data are now seeing kids come back to school.”
(Reply to Keir Starmer in Parliament. June 10, 2020)
The true figure from the Department of Education for that day was 69%. In other words, 31% of primary schools had not reopened – 10 times the 3% indicated by Johnson. When Full Facts asked No 10 for the source of the 97% figure, no reply was given.
“Yes, of course it’s true that it would be great to have an app, but no country currently has a functioning track and trace app.”
(Reply to Keir Starmer in Parliament. June, 23 2020)
At the time, track and trace apps were being used in France, Germany, Australia, Poland, Latvia, Denmark, Japan and Italy. (Full Facts website, June 23, 2020).
“He (Starmer) is completely wrong in what he says about poverty. Absolutely, poverty and relative poverty have both declined under this government and there are hundreds of thousands – I think 400,000 – fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010”.
(June 17 2020)
Response to Starmer in Parliament. Starmer had quoted from the government’s Social Mobility Commission’s report, that there were now 600,000 more children living in relative poverty. That report was based on the widely accepted definition of poverty generally used in government reports. No 10 could not provide a source for Johnson’s figure. Nor could the BBC’s Reality Check Team find any evidence for it.On July 30 the Office for Statistics regulation agreed with the chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition that Johnson statement was incorrect …
“Of the tests carried out at the 199 testing centres, as well as at the mobile centres, they’re all done within 24 hours”.
(June 3, in reply to a question from Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the House of Commons health committee)
Johnson’s reply was contradicted by the NHS’s official statistics for the week to June 3. These show that the proportion of people in England receiving their tests within 24 hours was 19% at regional test sites, 5% at mobile test units and 6% at satellite test centres.
In response to a question from Starmer who had asked whether it was right that care workers from abroad working on the NHS frontline should have to pay a surcharge to use the NHS themselves, Johnson replied:
“Those contributions help us to raise about £900 m. It is very difficult to find alternative sources.”
(May 21 2020)
Johnson’s figure of £900 million is the cumulative total of all such payments from all immigrants, whatever their job, over the past four years. It is estimated that to exempt the care workers in question would cost government about £76m, at the new higher rates to be applied from October.
For more than 24 hours, ministers had been sent to radio and TV studios to defend the government’s decision to reject a proposal by Manchester United football star, Marcus Rachford, to continue free school meals through the summer holidays. On June 16, Johnson stated;
“I talked to Marcus Rashford earlier today to congratulate him on his campaign, which to be honest I only became aware of very recently – well, today.”
(June 16 2020)
Are we really supposed to believe that while this issue was dominating the news and politicians and journalists were talking of little else, Johnson was oblivious to the storm that was raging around him?
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I coined the phrase “Britastrophe” a while back to explain the toxic combination of Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster. Today sees the launch of the song “Britastrophe” by “Mutant Algorithm”. Download the mini album with three tracks and a free ringtone here. Here’s the trailer video:
Please GIFT the song to MP’s – both to ConservativeMPs in order to persuade them to pull back from breaking international law and to Opposition MPs on all sides, to persuade them to grow a backbone and suspend Brexit in the wake of a Britastrophe.
Please send your gift with a personal message – a template is below for your use or adaptation. Personal messages work best.
Dear xxx,
I write to you with the gift of “Britastrophe”, a song which explains the toxic combination of Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster. I ask you to exert your influence to suspend Brexit by voting against the UK Internal Markets Bill, currently passing through Parliament. The bill breaks international and domestic law and represents a new low point in our reputation as a great nation. Of course, your own reputation as an MP and that of your party goes hand in hand with this.
You will be aware that even Theresa May, Lord Howard, Sajid Javid, Norman Lamont, former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC and many others have raised serious objections to the bill as well as six former Prime Ministers on all sides of our politics from Sir John Major to Gordon Brown and even David Cameron. It has also gained international condemnation from world leaders across the globe, for its parallels with the 1933 Enabling Act. I need not remind you where that led. Our membership of the EU costs us 37 pence a day for 70+ years of peace and offers us opportunities for our children and country to be world leaders through the membership of the most successful experiment in collaboration on the planet. I write this letter as we learn that Kent is about to have a hard border in order to deliver Brexit chaos.
I ask you to restore trust and decency in politics and pull back from the brink of this Dominic Cummings inspired initiative. I am aware that MPs on all sides find the power grab by Cummings and Johnson extremely unacceptable with extremely worrying implications for democracy in the UK as Britain slides into a banana republic. Is that what you really want on your Wikipedia page as a legacy?
Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = a Britastrophe
Silence is complicit behaviour. Will you act to suspend Brexit before it’s too late?
Yours sincerely
Your name
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In this update we look at the latest facts about the economics of Brexit. The popular view is that COVID is the great destroyer of the economy. Think again and read on. The report by LSE shows that Brexit offers a much greater and more sustained shock to our economy than COVID. It also compares No Deal and what might be expected as a Brexit deal and finds no great differences in terms of the long term damage.
In the wake of the 2019 General Election result, there appears to have been a great deal of conciliation and accommodation by Remainers, in terms of the acceptance of some form of Brexit and accepting the illusion that an 80 seat majority is invincible. Yet, as the figures demonstrate, all forms of Brexit are toxic, in terms of their long term and sustainable damage to the United Kingdom. If you feel worn down by 4 years of Brexit boredom, I, above many understand this, having fought full time for several years on this topic. It does not alter the hard fact that Brexit is a shitstorm that we may still avoid, if political will is there or can be created.
The difference between a Brexit Deal and No Deal is really the difference between a slow painful death and a sudden death.
Read up on why Rejoining may be a unicorn in the long term at Fool Britannia.
Write to your MP using these facts to help you compose your letter.
Boiling Frog Blues
If you still feel that Corona is more significant than Brexit you may well be experiencing what psychologists call recency bias. This is the reason why we think that air disasters are a regular occurrence after a significant airplane crash occurs.
Speaking analytically, Corona is merely a crisis, whereas Brexit is a disaster in slow motion. We tend to confuse the two because what is called the boiled frog syndrome. The LSE report shows clearly that Brexit offers a much greater existential risk to Britain. The question remains:
How quickly and how badly to you want to die?
Brexona – Combined effect
An accountant will teach you about the concept of avoidable costs. We must endure Corona as a natural phenomenon. We don’t have to add Brexit to Corona. Combination of 11% GDP loss from Corona and a 5-8% loss from Brexit will be catastrophic. In case of doubt it only took a 3.5% GDP loss to create the 2008 Crash.
“Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = Britastrophe”
Ground Control to Boris J
Brexit has already cost us more than The International Space Station (ISS). Brexit is set to cost £200 BILLION by the end of 2020. An ISS costs a mere £115 billion. In case the figures are causing you to be “lost in space”, that means £3030 from EVERY PERSON’S TAXES to be taken from you at some point in the future. And you get a blue passport and a hard border in Kent. Is it worth it?
Write to your MP. Ask them to pull back from the brink of a Britastrophe before it’s too late.
Another piece of very dirty linen has emerged from Dominic Cummings’ laundry basket. Almost 20 years ago, he had a cottage built on land adjacent to his father’s farm house, without planning permission. Consequently, he never paid council tax on it either. The Valuation Office estimates that the outstanding tax on it amounts to between £30,000 and £50,000.
Breaking the law
There is apparently a statute of limitations on planning permission which allows unauthorised building to remain untouched after a certain period. Durham Council cannot therefore have the cottage demolished. However, there is no such loophole for arrears of council tax. Nonetheless, Cummings has somehow managed to arrange that he should be let off.
This is nothing short of scandalous. Any ordinary citizen who fails to pay Council tax, particularly on a property whose existence he had deliberately hidden from the authorities, would surely be required to pay not just the full amount of tax but interest and perhaps penalties on top. Failure or refusal to pay would normally result in a jail sentence. Yet Cummings, who likes to describe this cottage as a ‘pile of cement blocks’, gets off scot-free.
Cummings’ pile of cement blocks …
Regulation 47 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 states people can be given prison sentences for not paying council tax if they have done so due to “culpable neglect”. This regulation is strictly applied. Nearly 700 people were imprisoned between 2010 and 2016 for not being able to pay their council tax, with a further 7,000 handed suspended orders threatening imprisonment. An extreme case was that of Melanie Woolcock of Porthcawl who was jailed for a £4742 Council tax debt she could not pay . She was a single mother and was caring for an elderly neighbour when she lost her job and fell behind in her council tax payments. Woodcock spent 40 days in prison before being released in view of her poverty. Comparing her degree of ‘culpable neglect’ with that of Dominic Cummings can only arouse a feeling of sickening disgust at the immunity he receives and the Government which grants it to him.
This new demonstration of his immunity from the law follows on from his notorious visit to Durham in complete disregard of COVID regulations and his trip to Barnard Castle, claiming that he was having his eyes tested. The fact that he thinks this ridiculous excuse should suffice for the authorities, the press and the British public shows the total contempt in which he holds us all. Now he is evading tax at a time when the rest of us will shortly face major tax increases. By shielding him from any penalties, Johnson, Gove and the law officers who disgrace their profession make themselves accessories to his deceptions and his illegalities.
With the wonderful people of North East for Europe – Getting our eyesight checked
There are other areas where Cummings activities raise very serious legal doubts. These will be dealt with in a coming issue where we ‘wash’ more of Cummings’ laundry.
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