In these crazy times it becomes difficult to tell satire from real life, so here’s a little help to separate facts from fiction:
FACT : Priti Patel has banned protests of more than two people so that Johnson can “Get Brexit Done”, without having to have any visible resistance on the streets. We can still organise resistance. See 11 ways to SuspEND Brexit in a COVID safe way.
FICTION : Donald Trump has not been accepted by Martians. Applications outside the Solar System have also been rejected by Star Trek command.
FACT : The Trump meltdown means that Boris Johnson has no “BATNA” in negotiation terms (BATNA = Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement). Just to follow the car showroom analogy, the EU showroom and US showrooms are not of equivalent value anyway, since 50% of our trade comes from our relationship with the EU. Walking out of the EU showroom to the Trump one is rather like leaving the Mercedes showroom for the Trabant one, in terms of cars.
FICTION : Nigel Farage has not infected anyone with COVID. He has however infected 17.4 million people with a pack of lies. Many people have now awakened to this fact and no longer want Brexit.
FACT : Boris Johnson has had to do a U Turn on COVID, due to Dither and Delayfor 6 weeks. He was told by scientists to introduce a lockdown on 22 September. Instead he waited 6 weeks to do so until bonfire night. In doing so he has already placed tens of thousands of people on the Corona bonfire. This will likely mean that the lockdown will be extended. Basically:
A stitch in time saves nine
FICTION : There is no such thing as a COVIDIOT detector. However there are many vital signs : the assumption that every nurse and doctor in the world is in on the “scam” ; the suggestion that dead people are fabrications and so on.
FACT : Nigel Farage’s new Reform party is spreading a very dangerous disease : ignorance. It will kill more people. Nearly 40 Tory MP’s turned into anti-maskers yesterday when the lockdown vote was taken.
FACT : Mars cannot support intelligent life. It can however support Donald Trump. Donald did claim that Mars was in fact part of the Moon in 2019. More on Brexit and David Bowie at Rebel Rebel.
FICTION : Larry the Cat has not been touched by Donald Trump.
FACT : Nigel Farage has not managed to blow up Parliament. Please give a penny for the guy, as Nigel’s Reform party appears to be failing. In other news, Thanet and Swale MP’s Craig McKinlay and Gordon Henderson have just voted against lockdown. It is perhaps no coincidence that their constituencies have the highest incidence of COVID in Kent. They get our award for COVIDIOTS and are literally going to be responsible for further unnecessary deaths through their careless attitudes towards the people that voted for them. Write to them to express your concerns : Craig McKinlay ; Gordon Henderson.
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With thanks to the image of Boris Johnson by Charlie Everett.
The aftermath of the Trump election shows us that we still have a long way to go in order to lead with truth, transparency and humility in a troubled world. In the UK, Boris Johnson is copying Trump’s design, by escalating his false promises, blame and lies to nuclear levels. “Operation Moonshot” has just failed to deliver. Christmas is almost certainly cancelled. Johnson continues to blame others for our Government’s continual “Cake and Eat it too” approach to Brexit negotiations. Changing Minds on Brexit on an industrial scale will be required if we are to return towards trust in politics and politicians. In this context I intend to serialise some chapters of my book “Let’s Talk About BREX..it“.
A successful Brexorcism takes skill, patience and time. Here is the preface to the book:
Why I wrote this book
I was in my late 50’s when Brexit began. I am now over 60 and although Brexit is “in the microwave, gas mark four”, it is still far from done, some would say overdone. Brexit will probably come undone in the coming year one way or another. Speaking personally, Brexit will not affect me positively or negatively. Outside my anti-Brexit life, I am an author, business consultant, speaker and knowledge worker who has always traded on a worldwide basis. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll be in a shallow grave by the time that any of the supposed Brexit benefits materialise. Even 18th Century retro-Latin imperialist adventure capitalist Jacob Rees-Mogg said that we will get nothing back from Brexit for 50 years … I’m impatient in the age of Corona … not for myself, but for future generations.
Setting Brexit and Corona aside for a moment, we are merely responsible landlords of planet earth. If we do well in our lives, our aim should be to leave the planet in a better state that when we arrived. If the nature of our life and work does not allow us to answer that call, we must at least be guided by the principle of “do no harm.” We owe it to our children, their kids and the planet to do our best and stand up to those who would do harm in pursuit of narrower and more destructive goals. Brexit is a narrow ambition that would continue England’s love affair with disaster capitalism, lower standards of environmental stewardship and increased carbon footprints from more global trading. This is all happening at a time when the drive to solve world problems requires greater levels of collaborative leadership and co-dependency. Complex world problems require joined up thinking instead of splendid isolation and “I’m alright Jack and Jill” behaviours.
This requires us to continue the conversation with leave voters and, of course, Remainers, some of whom now have terminal Brexit apathy. These difficult conversations are made even more difficult when we currently must conduct them using socially distanced means. This book equips you with strategies, skills and stories to help you have these difficult conversations. A mind shift requires skill, patience and time. Over thousands of hours of fieldwork, it becomes apparent that, sometimes you need several sittings with your chosen subject, client or victim. The book provides a compendium of support with skill and patience. It will also help you use your precious time to greater impact.
Grab a copy of Let’s Talk About Brex..it on Amazon – click the review
Human beings have achieved great things for the planet. Sadly the human condition also includes a few human faults. Greed, avarice, ego and so on. We have witnessed it most recently in the fanatical stockpiling of toilet rolls amidst the Corona crisis. It means we think short term, sometimes selfishly and nostalgically. Crucially we don’t always realise that we are in this together with our neighbours and others we share this fragile earth with. As far as I know, earthworms, hydrangeas and molluscs do not share the faults of the “human race.” It is perhaps time to stop racing and trying to Trump each other, to consider what we can learn from the rest of the animal and plant kingdom. After all, we are allegedly more intelligent than snails … We must learn to be responsible custodians of planet earth. Brexit threatens to isolate Britain in a world that desperately needs more collaboration and co-operation. Worse still, Brexit takes Scotland, Northern Ireland and some parts of Wales and England down with it. To what purpose? I am still waiting for answers.
You may be asking yourself “Surely it is too late to stop Brexit? A piece of paper was signed on 31 January 2020 so isn’t it all done now?” I will work through the arguments as to why Brexit can be stopped later in this book. However, some Remainers suffer from what psychologists call “Learned Helplessness”? This is the condition where people believe that there is nothing they can do to alter the course of Brexit or that they should not interfere, due to faux notions of “democracy” or “the will of the people”. In other words “we can’t do anything” and “we must not do anything”. My own brother who voted to Remain is part of what the Rt Hon Ken Clarke calls the “indifferent majority” and has quoted “the will of the people”. In truth he is fearful of the far right and it’s easier to comply rather than resist. Whilst I completely understand his position and that of others like him, such people are an absolute danger to the resolution of such problems. I am quite sure that the vast majority of the German people did not think that Mr Hitler would do anything awful in 1938. Some simply looked away. Simply stated, silence is assent.
Taking first the issue of feeling there is nothing that can be done to change things, this is fundamentally untrue. This book offers a wide palette of things we can do. At the highest levels of thinking, quite simply, Brexit is a political process and not a legal one. All that is needed at the basic level would be an e-mail to cancel it, followed by a lot of grovelling in private, probably the fall of the prevailing Government or certainly the key players. Eventually a lengthy public process would be created and some “ceremony” to allow us to rejoin the EU or simply not to leave. However, this “christening ceremony” would almost certainly be followed by “terms and conditions”, based on the fact that our Brexit belligerence has been largely informed by decades of the UK “having its cake and eat it too” aka getting its own way on things like Shengen, the Euro etc.
On the question of “should we interfere?” this again is a simple matter to debunk. Democracy informed by gross lies on the NHS, immigration etc. targeted Facebook ads, overspending on election campaigns are not the high-water marks of democracy. In any case, some four years on, the demographics of Brexit have altered considerably with approximately 1.5 million leave voters having spun off this mortal coil and 1.7 million young people becoming eligible to vote, creating a significant shift on the “will of the people”. As I write this update, it rather seems that these demographics are likely to be disproportionately affected by Boris Johnson’s Corona Cull of older voters. In any case, “Generation Greta”, above all else, understand our connectedness and co-dependency.
The other question that should be troubling you some four years later is the one that asks the Buzzcocks’ Brexit question “What do I get?”. Perhaps we don’t ask the question in a selfish way, but nonetheless it becomes relevant to ask what benefits are on offer to our fellow citizens if we are to endure some 50 years of pain to get there. It is a question I’ve asked tirelessly during thousands of hours of street encounters and one I still cannot get any sensible answers on from the common man or woman. The best I have had in recent times came from the man who wanted to leave the EU so that he could land a 5 lb bass from the Swale in Kent and the other man who was willing to throw all the benefits of EU membership away because he personally thought that garlic was used too much in the local cafes and restaurants.
Click on the image to view the follow up volume on Amazon.
Brexit is, at one level, a gross example of selfishness, greed and avarice by a few disaster capitalists. These people have successfully persuaded the masses that Brexit will be good for them, although the mounting body of evidence suggests otherwise. The Dunning Kruger effect and misplaced pride prevent some leave voters from admitting that Brexit will not deliver any of the supposed benefits we were mis-sold so slickly and compellingly. This plays out daily via snappy catchphrases such as “Take Back Control”, “Brexit Means Brexit”, “Pop Brexit in the microwave”, “Let’s get Brexit done” etc. Feelings overwhelm facts in the tsunami of data that arrives daily across our TV screens, computers and smartphones. In the words of XTC “Senses Working Overtime”.
The information age is also in part responsible for the Brexit vote. Aside from interference in the voting process by Cambridge Analytica and underground targeted Facebook ads, another effect is in play here. We receive some 34 GB of data daily. This more than the average person received in their entire life in 1800. Quite naturally the response to “drowning in data” in some cases is to shut down from information overload altogether. Nigel Farage understood this well, when he asked the nation to vote with their hearts and not their heads after we were numbed senseless by data.
I originally titled this book “The Brexit Monologues.” Why a monologue I hear you say? Surely a conversation is a dialogue? Well some of the conversations I’ve had with some hardcore leave voters have been monologues. In other words they simply wish to unload their “story” on me before there is any possibility of a dialogue. I have had literally thousands of conversations with Brexiteers in cafés, bars and on the street. Listening skills do not usually begin until I have invested sufficient time and energy in understanding their viewpoints, however much I may disagree with them. It is also essential to establish a platform of expertise and some basic trust if they are to listen to you in preference to their own trusted advisor, whether that is Nigel Farage or the bloke in the pub. Why exactly should they wish to listen to me anyway? Many of them simply want to download their concerns, issues and fantasies about Brexit and their feelings of being left behind. In listening to these people, I have found that these monologues are actually quite revealing. At the same time, some level of change can occur by simply allowing these people to vent their feelings of rage, disappointment, and regret about their lives. Occasionally and usually after a degree of patient listening, it is possible to separate their feelings from the causes of these feelings. In other words to separate their regrets from the fact that the EU is not the root cause of their regrets. Once we achieve this, we have the possibility for what I term a “Brexorcism”, in other words a shift in their beliefs about the world and about Brexit in particular.
Click the image to find the book.
Changing Minds on Brexit provides strategies, skills and stories to help you change minds, whilst helping you to look after yourselves in the process. I use the word Brexorcism not because I’m expecting you to throw holy water at your subjects! Nor do I expect you to have to deal with people whose heads and viewpoints rotate 360 degrees. We are generally dealing with quasi-religious beliefs or even identity level change, where Brexit is intimately linked with people’s sense of self, Queen, country and flag. When we engage with a leave voter, we are sometimes challenging people at the level of who they are or the very why of their being. This requires skill, time, patience and flexibility on our part.
The book also helps with healing the divides that Brexit has set up on our DIsUnited Kingdom, whether family, friend or community based.
This book is not just about Brexit ghostbusting. Where Brexit leads, Trump, Erdogan and others follow. Just as sure as ladies’ hemlines rise and fall for no particular reason with the whims of fashion every year, populism and the rise of the far right in difficult times are also fashion statements that others follow. So, you will find this book of immense value if you are trying to fight populism anywhere in the world.
On New Year’s Day 2017 I coined the catchphrase “Break Brexit Before Brexit Breaks Britain” in the shower. I note this has been adopted and adapted quite widely. I recently realised that it needed updating. On New Year’s Day 2019 I came up with a new mantra which remains relevant:
“We seek a Better Britain in a Better Europe for a Better World.”
I coined this phrase on New Year’s Day 2018. It’s still relevant.
We are all in this together and it is about time we woke up to the fact. We can no longer live in unsplendid isolation in the 4th industrial age. Yes, we need to reform our politics and the very notions of capitalism if we are to survive. But turning our backs on problems and opportunities that we face as a global village is not a sensible response.
I hope this gives some clues as to why you might want to read the book … read on …
Take Action
Write to your MP and demand that they oppose the toxic combination of Corona + Brexit
Here’s a sharp reflection on the week’s developments over the pond from our stalwart anti-Brexit anti-Trump campaigner Don Adamson, written on November 3rd and left as a contrast to the developing news. Johnson has no BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) with the EU in the wake of Trump’s demise from power. Time to SuspEND Brexit now that Brexit is Trumped. Please write to your MP today on this matter.
November 03, 2020
Across the USA people begin to vote. Over 100 million have already voted and we await the long process that is election day. As millions prepare I reflect how very few will actually decide on anything than an emotion or even at worst insecurity. The political process in the USA is now simply that of identification.
The author formerly known as Don Adamson.
As we prepare for the great God Demos I think of how much the founding fathers of the USA feared Demos, the demagogue and indeed ancient Athens. I have finished listening to Gore Vidal’s book ‘1876’. It’s about the election of that year where a corrupt Republican party stole the election by corruption, manipulation and intimidation. Then I think on the events of 2020, as armed Trump supporters surround a Biden bus in Texas and Trumpian SA like militia stand outside polling stations intimidating African American voters. Fascism has come to the USA wrapped in the flag and carrying the bible. Whoever wins, it is clear that the USA is broken and the culture wars that are waged will soon to turn to that of civil war. America will break as the declining white males lose influence and power. Fear and loathing grows. Trump devalues knowledge, learning, respect and tolerance. The battle inside the large ego of a 74 year old toddler with a thin skin spills out to possess the electorate.
A boarded-up Washington prepares
Our 2016 composition on Trump – depressed jazz.
In 1876, the result was not known for days. I suspect it will be the same this week. I shall watch the results tonight and speculate. Biden’s lead is far more substantial than Clinton’s and of the 8 states that Trump won last time six show substantial leads for the Democrats. Biden should win but it remains a totemic prize. A corporate Democratic victory will enable the USA to take a few steps back from the abyss of WASP Fascism. It will give brief breathing space to allow a socialist grouping to emerge for the first time since since the days of Eugene Debs and Upton Sinclair. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be part of a socialist bridge head in the American state. If Bernie Sanders becomes Secretary of State of Labour, radical policies not seen since FDR will become possible.
Dump Trump.
We stand at a crossroads. A Trump victory will embolden the far right across the world. It will empower Farage here with a Libertatarian COVID denying, conspiracy laced party to burst onto the political scene in time for election to the Welsh Senedd and create a block of them within it. The street gangs of the DFLA and the EDL will soon be on our streets intimidating and silencing opposition.
Nigel’s new party – Licensed to Kill.
And so today, my thoughts are with the young people of the USA the radicals, the left, the feminists, those of Black Lives Matter standing up against the red necks with their AK 47s, their prejudice and hatred. The USA stands at the crossroads, but we also stand with them. As in the USA so it will be here soon. This is the moment as the Moon wanes and the days shorten.
The world is changing but to what direction and purpose? America will break. That is certain. A new nadir like 1876 is here. The next century will see a new period of history. Post Modern Fascism is here and the moment of choice will be made. Chlorinated chicken after Brexit awaits us with a Trump victory. The dice are rolling and knives are out … what will be will be … and the scales hang in the balance.. the only thing certain is that America is in terminal decline and much that was will soon be swept away for good or ill. If Trump loses, he faces prosecution and conviction. If he wins, the whole world faces the same, but our judge and jury will be the generations who come after. Gilead will be born in the USA and fused with a new American Third Reich.
Let us stand in the eye of the Hegelian storm between thesis and antithesis. A brutal synthesis will follow. Whomever wins, things will never be the same again. A COVID post modernism beyond perception awaits to be born as a slouching beast lurks with its ginger hair and crawls towards the swamp. All things threaten to fall apart …
Take Action
Write to your MP and demand that they oppose the toxic combination of Corona + Brexit
Write to the press with the same ambition
Write to EU leaders and encourage them to hold firm on Brexit negotiations now that Johnson is alone
Please do not give in to Bullingdon Bullies – we have been betrayed by our own Government. Do not encourage more bad behaviour https://t.co/jxmdYdcin8
— Reboot Britain – Rage Against The Brexit Machine (@BrexitRage) November 7, 2020
Daily Maul. Click on the image for our satire book on Brexit.
I am grateful to Cheryl Noti, New Jersey, USA for writing this excellent reflection on a troublesome conundrum of binary politics which seems to bedevil the world on both sides of the Atlantic. It turns out that Cheryl is a Trumpist but I decided to give her a platform.
We here in America are 33 days away from Election Day, 2020. Not normally significant, except for the fact the country seems to be made up of either those who hate Trump and will vote for anyone else, including a chimpanzee, or those who see Trump as the only real option to Make America Great Again.
There is NO in between.
Editor’s note: It is the same here in Britain with a two horse race between Johnson and Corbyn. Johnson and Brexit did not exactly win, but Corbyn and Brexit apathy lost. Now we live with the consequences.
2020, a year not to be repeated, has brought raging wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, a major pandemic that crippled the economy and forced us to wear masks and live like hermits, the race centric BLM movement, and last but not least the icing on the cake, an election with no real choice.
I, and others like me, have a difficult decision. Do we vote for the self-proclaimed bully, or the creepy old Grandpa who has seen better days?
With all the lies being flung and a media full of forked-tongued devils, it really is a tough call.
Four months ago, if asked would I vote for Trump, the answer would have been NO Way, NO How! His constant tweeting and childish behavior left me wondering could we stand another four years of this man?
Lou Reed often sums up the range of social problems that political leaders face.
As a registered Independent, with no allegiance to either party, I had pretty much bought into the mainstream media rhetoric and thought the choice was an easy one, simply vote along democratic party lines.
Things however changed when I became a “COVID 19 Hermit” with plenty of time to do some fact checking on both parties. And what I found just did not add up.
I, like many others considered to be “The Silent Majority”, those who refuse to buy into the BLM movement, and believe in supporting the police and military, have found ourselves questioning whether Trump could really be as bad as the mainstream media makes him out to be?
The media blamed everything on Trump including the COVID 19 virus. Silly me, I thought that was a China mess up. Well, if the media said it, then gosh it must be true!
Editor’s note: As a scientist, I would point out that Trump’s knowledge on science and the nature of wicked problems don’t impress me much. Regardless of the origins of COVID, the outcome of any situation is the result of leaders’ responses to the challenge. Both Trump and Johnson have undoubtedly contributed to many thousands of unnecessary deaths through their laissez faire approaches and scant disregard for experts:
The problem for me, however, was the facts did not match the rhetoric. Trump was being praised by the Democratic governors in the Northeast, the center of the pandemic, for the outstanding job he and his administration did, yet the media mouthpieces still said he was doing a horrible job.
The left and the media even went so far as to call Trump a Xenophobe and racist for closing the border to China.
Then the whole left back BLM movement and the media coverage really made me wonder if everything being said about Trump was a lie.
As the BLM movement and the so called “peaceful protesters” were burning cities across the U.S., tearing down statues and demanding we get rid of Aunt Jemima, the racist pancake syrup, the media continued to say these were all peaceful protests and again blamed Trump.
It seemed to me that the blame belonged with the radical left and the states and cities. What I, and others like me, began to see is a carefully-architected plan by the left to discredit Trump and his party.
They blamed Trump for stirring up the racial unrest and causing carnage, when in fact, it appeared the opposite was true. It appeared the left had unleashed a monster in BLM and was now unable or unwilling to control the problem.
As the rioting continued, I had to ask myself why wasn’t anyone stopping this? And why did the media and the Democratic party keep saying these were peaceful protesters? I saw with my own eyes the devastation occurring in NYC and Philadelphia. These were not peaceful protesters, and it was no longer about George Floyd, the man killed in Minneapolis, at the hands of the police. Something more sinister was going on.
The “race card” had been thrown by the Democratic party, who declared there was systemic racism throughout the country. BLM and the Democratic party declared all whites were privileged and racists, and we needed to be cleansed. For an organization that talked about ending racism, they seemed to be nothing but a bunch of racists who hated all whites and America.
Red, White and Blue.
I had to question how if we were such a racist country did Obama, a black man, get voted in as President not once, but for two terms? And why hadn’t Obama in his eight years and Biden in his 47 years in office done anything to end this systemic racism?
Editor’s note: I completely resonate on this point. It is said that Obama could not touch the issue as the first black President. Over here we have politicians now running scared from Brexit and outright racism as the far right take over our politics. Someone must stand up.
Something else did not add up. Where was all the money coming from to fund these riots? They were not grass roots. Instead, paid anarchists were being bussed from city to city to wreak havoc and burn down American cities. And why was the left not decrying the destruction of our cities? They seemed to be cheering these anarchists on.
Wow, could I get behind a party that did not believe in law and order? This was so not the party my parents supported. It seemed to have moved so far off center that the party was now being called the party of the radical left and their supporters were referred to as the “Libotards”.
Seemed like the mainstream media was not really telling us the truth about anything. I felt like a sheep going to slaughter.
To Trump or Not to Trump? All indicators seem to be pointing to the right, but to be fair to all involved, I need to wait and see the debates before casting my vote.
Gardening shoes on …
I sit here knowing my last thread of hope for any clarity will come from the soon-to-be televised presidential debates. Would I be swayed by smooth-talking Joe Biden, or would I become a member of the “Silent Majority” who supported Trump and believed in law and order? Only time will tell.
Editor’s notes: This post perfectly sums up the dilemma of voters confounded by fake news on all sides of political debates and the terror of being caught in a binary trap of A or B, Black, or White, On or Off, Yes or No etc. when most issues in life are analogue rather than digital in nature. We need total reform of our politics and political systems and this is why I started Re-Boot Britain. We will have some exciting news on this front shortly. Meanwhile:
Here is a roundup of Brexit news in case you are bored with COVID apathy. Remember COVID is a crisis. Brexit a disaster in slow motion. Brexit will make the bigger impact on our country in the long run. The toxic combination of Corona + Brexit = a Britastrophe. We must pull back from a Do or Die Brexit. Your ditch awaits Mr Johnson.
Down on the farm
I watched with dismay, as Parliament voted to lower our food standards. This opens the door to hormone fed beef, chlorinated chicken and a host of other dodgy practices. In case you think this doesn’t matter, US cases of food poisoning are some 10 times higher than our country.
I have mixed feelings about the farmers. I helped Liz Webster, PPC for Swindon, gain the only TV coverage for the Lib Dems in the entire South West in 2017. Liz organised the farmers marches. I attended the last event to be told that they did not wish to mention Brexit, as the issue was toxic. Instead they protest to save themselves. Parochial self-interest is a hardy perennial problem of Remain. There is a hierarchy of problems here with Brexit at the apex. In other words, stopping Brexit leads to solutions to other issues such as food standards, EU citizens rights and so on. But people would rather form into silos (sic), allowing our Government to operate “divide and rule” politics. Oh well, the farmers have been composted and we all lose.
Die Another Day
We’ve had “Do or Die” and “Die in a Ditch” from Boris Johnson, so we may as well have “Die Another Day” or “Live and Let Die”. Brexit negotiations remain deadlocked. Johnson is trapped by the ERG on one side, funded by Russia and wanting No Deal, which nobody voted for. He is also confounded by the EU, who must satisfy the four freedoms and protect their enterprise. It is always unwise to capitulate to bullies. The EU cannot give Britain a better deal for less money, as it will threaten the cohesion of the other 27 member states. I covered this point in the post Brexit Choices.
Why then are the negotiations deadlocked? Quite simply the “mechanics” of Brexit remain unresolvable. By moving one part of the puzzle to resolve one issue, the other parts become entangled. It’s what we call a “Wicked Problem” in consulting circles. Wicked problem do not lend themselves to simple solutions as Boris Johnson would like to believe. As reported last year, changing the leader or applying more “bluster” does not alter the underlying problems that exist with Brexit.
The Golf Club analogy
BOJONA-20
The latest instalment of industrial scale lies and gaslighting comes from yesterday’s COVID announcements. With £40 Billion worth of tax rises now inevitable, let’s examine some COVID facts that Boris Johnson must have missed whilst chasing a violinist …
Scientists advised the Government to install circuit breakers to stop Corona contagion on September 21, 2020. Ignored.
Keir Starmer has just asked the Prime Minister to follow the science and install a 2-3 week circuit breaker across the UK. I predict he will either be ignored or blamed for the deaths already baked in by Johnson’s lack of action from mid-September, when he was talking about “Getting Christmas Done”. This is a repeat performance from February, when Johnson was more concerned with bonging bells, shaking hands and minting 50 pence coins than running the country.
670 NHS deaths during the first wave due to inaction. 30 000 unnecessary deaths overall
Test and Trace is still not working, despite Matt Hancock promising to get it up and running many months ago. Without measurement, there can be no management of COVID and the idea of “Controlling the Virus” is at best fanciful, at worst dangerous.
Still pursuing Cummings eugenics aka herd immunity model
In case you think that the idea of unnecessary deaths are a feature of Brexit, please read what Wendy Novak has to say on the matter at Brexit : A matter of life or death.
And Johnson now does not want to appear in front of the public, having hired Allegra Stratton to handle “comms” so he can move on to pursue more important matters.
The lesson for us all is neatly summed up by James O’Brien:
The four key lessons of the first lockdown: 1) Going in late makes everything worse. 2) Coming out early makes everything worse. 3) Not using it to get proper Test, Track & Trace in place makes everything worse. 4) Unclear messaging makes everything worse.
I stumbled over the work of Holy Mole the other day – a satirical radio show to rival BBC Radio 4’s Now Show and videos to die laughing to instead of COVID. I called him up to find out more. Find Holy Mole on Twitter. Support their work via Patreon. Here are some examples of his work:
Holy Mole – click the image to listen to the radio shows
Holy Mole collaborates with Chrissie Grech and Chris Doc Strange on the radio show. It deserves much more love so please subscribe and support the radio shows. They also produce an extremely diverse stream of music. Please find them on You Tube.
The Big Molehill Mashup Mix
Here it is; the big mix of my best mashups from the last 10 years
MashUp Track List:
1. Get Up, Get Down – James Brown Vs KC & The Sunshine Band 2. Somebody’s Watching My Sweet Dreams About Bleeding Virgins – Eurythmics Vs Rockwell Vs Leonna Lewis Vs Madonna 3. She Said I’m Common – Plan B Vs Pulp 4. Teenage Brightside – Killers Vs Undertones 5. Why Alison Got The Love – Moby Vs Elvis Cosetllo Vs The Source 6. Let’s Get It Out Loud – Ed Sheeran Vs Marvin Gaye 7. Just Be Good To The One I Love – S.O.S Band Vs Charlatans 8. Money’s Too Crazy To Mention – Gnarls Berkley Vs Simply Red 9. Tinna Turner’s Nine Inch Nails – T Turner Vs NIN 10. Teardrops On The Street – Massive Attack Vs Radiohead 11. Blame It On Lightning Bolts – George Ezra Vs Jake Bugg 12. Good Luck With The Police – Basement Jaxx Vs The Police 13. I Like Weak Heroes Music; Just Be Scummy, Man – Arctic Monkeys Vs S.O.S Band Vs Starlight Vs Bodyrockers 14. Play Human – Bjork Vs Rag N Bone Man 15, Power Of Fighters – Christina Aguillera Vs Frankie Goes To Hollywood 16. JCBs in Babylon – Nizlopi Vs David Gray 17. The Jesus Army Mash – White Stripes Vs Jesus Christ Superstar Vs Moby 18. Criticize The Big City – Luther Vandross Vs Gnarls Berkley 19. Born Loser – Beck Vs Albert King 20. Running In The Rain In Baltimore – Counting Crows Vs Leonna Lewis 21. Stop Me Crazy Mashing – Mark Ronson Vs Gnarls Berkley Vs Simply Red Vs Rockwell Vs S.O.S Band Vs Kim Wilde
By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
This week’s homework: 1930s Japan has been described as a period of ‘Brainless Patriotism’ An out of control government embarked on mad, bad and dangerous policies. This led to a terrible war with tragic consequences for millions of people. In this country we have an out of control government that is full of ‘Brainless Patriotism’ and which carries out mad, bad and dangerous policies. The Labour Party has nothing to say about this except vague assurances about ‘making Brexit work.’ If you are going to steal ideas from other people (Japanese or anybody else) would make sense to steal ideas that are otherwise than mad, bad and dangerous.
Therese Coffey has been dumping infected gammon into supermarkets. In other news, she was seen with a wooden leg … Cannabalism is suspected after Iain Duncan Smith was seen running away from the scene.
This week’s quotes: “What Gary Lineker taught us about taking a stand… The BBC, its board stuffed by Tory culture warriors caved in … Lineker has a history of anti racist statements … Tory decision to wage a culture war has left no middle ground … progressive people were dismayed by Labour’s stand on the ‘Illegal immigration bill’ … ‘it would not work’ rather than its cruelty … beyond awful … unfairness and hypocrisy behind the BBC response … Lineker spoke for all of us … Tories bereft of answers … Lineker activated a mass of discontent among BBC journalists … who are clearly sick of the Tory appointed managers … Hunt’s budget proves that Brexit is only paying off in a parallel universe … Britain is living in an alternate reality … surreal world where the government lives … the rest of us can see the damage that Brexit is doing … Office of Budget Responsibility … showing how Brexit is wrecking everything, everywhere, all at once … economy is 4% small than if we had stayed in the EU& .. the only opportunities from Brexit are lost opportunities … costing the government a fortune … without Brexit we could have increased NHS and social spending by from around £184B to about 327B… government is still borrowing lots of money … the largest tax burden ever … hard to get debt on a downward path … disastrous fall in living standards … slashed long term growth and little sign of it improving … good news for the very rich … huge tax breaks for the wealthy …
Pip Pip Medway Delta (Retired) Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
Check out Private Eyelines – Perfect for April Brexit Fools’ Day
By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
This week’s homework: 1. is there any truth in the rumour that Elon Musk is funding the Labour Party? 2. Whenever the Tories FUBAR (Foul Up Beyond All Repair) the standard excuse they trot out is ‘we got the big calls right.’ What exactly is a ‘Big Call’ in this context and how horribly disastrous must things become before these Tories admit they got it wrong?
This week’s quotes: “ Brexit has been painful … it will get worse when full import controls are imposed next year … a lack of genuine respect for the complexity all this involves … the more the Tories try to imitate Thatcher the less she is remembered … miserable times … an asylum processing process that has been allowed to collapse … most shocking claim, that Braverman has now repudiated … an activist blob left wing lawyers, civil servants … blocked us … it is baseless … classic language of dehumanisation … what the Nazis did to the German Civil Service … main reasons for dismissal without pension … unbecoming conduct (could involve buying goods in Jewish shops ) … failing to protest against insults to National Socialism … aimed at those who refused to go along with the politicisation of public administration … biggest and most racialised infraction of human rights in Britain since the 1930s … power to deport without regard to British law … puts Braverman way outside the Tory mainstream … pitch for the Tory leadership, becoming the Enoch Powell of our time … repudiation of human rights … raising anger at facts that are not true, grievances that are manufactured … new asylum law will not work … repressive forces do not want fairness or progress … they claim that their populism is motivated by a belief in free speech…. BBC sees nothing wrong in having a chairman who made huge donations to the Tory Party … helped Johnson secure an £800,000 loan … is there anything this government can do competently? … synthetic rage … Braverman has admitted that her policy contravenes the law … not dissimilar to the language used by 1930s Nazis … language similarities between Der Sturmer and Volkischer Beobachter in 1930s Germany and the Mail, Express in recent decades … Richy Scumbag is not as incontinentally dishonest as Johsnon or as utterly useless as Thick Lizzie … such a low bar … hrdly worthy of comparison … Brexit is undermining the judiciary … making it hard for the young and poor to vote … easier for the Tories to break election law … reward their friends … TV and radio pander to rather than challenge their vile agenda … Johnson asked for show of hands on who thought Brexit was a good idea. Two hands were raised. One was his own … Johnson sees rules as for others to follow … trimmed down his list of honours from three figures to two … Richy Scumbag should cross them all out … failure to do so will leave him as tainted as Johnson … Murdoch may have a soft spot for Johnson but he recognises that Johnson will never again be PM, unlike Rothermere lackeys … Britain’s manufacturers have turned their backs on the government … attacks on the government open and strongly worded … political mismanagement of the economy cannot continue … no government strategy at all … the idea that ideology can trump common sense is grim news to the industry … EU businesses are not interested … the government has given up pretending to care … German Nationalists … the parallels between the language adopted by the New Tory Party and the Nazis are obvious … poisonous cocktail of ideologically driven nationalism and gradual erosion of our rights … the difference between right and ‘the Right’ has never been clearer … Tory Party is being relentlessly dragged to the extreme right … moderate Tories have gone, never to return … any pretence at decency from Richy Scumbag is gone … what were May, Johnson and Thick Lizzie doing apart from dreaming up slogans to distract our attention from the disastrous effects of Brexit … the government ordering the BBC to purge itself of dissenting voices was not the best way to refute the suggestion that it is fascist … 1823 Foundation of the Anti Slavery Society which led to abolition of slavery in the British Empire. 2023 Removal by Sue Ellen Braverman of legal protection from modern slavery in the UK … putting major bankers into the hands of a bank with the world’s worst reputation for money laundering is not without risk … recent events have not dulled the taste of MPs for largess from Russian Mafia … cosy relationship between Clipper Logistics and the Tory Party continues … no bid contract to distribute PPE for the NHS receiving at least £112M… “Arise Sir Wife Beater … Stanley Johnson’s former wife said ‘He was always hitting me …. Boris saw it … many times over many years … ‘ s well as the broken nose that landed her in hospital Wall suffered a nervous breakdown … just the sort of thing that deserves an order of chivalry … HM Revenue and Customs ‘too slow to tackle fraud and error … recovery of the billions paid out …. woeful … many in Whitehall refused to follow their own restrictions, lied about them and covered them up … Downing St broke the lockdown rules, taken the public for fools and lied … News UK received emails from management accusing them of misdemeanours … ‘f***ing outrageous’ … Fox News commentators helped to propagate the most damaging conspiracy theory in post war democracy … damning evidence from Murdoch and other Fox executives predicted to result in $1.6B …Former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has become toxic in his own constituency … Tories considering deselecting him … local businesses shunning him … GB News … bonkers rightwing ideologues … Jacob Rees Mogg … half witted persona … observers call him a ‘complete c**t’ … Nigel Garbage makes happier viewing for Remainers than Leavers … seriously off his muttons … he considers Moggy to be dangerously leftie … GB News ratings are bad but Murdoch’s TalkTV are worse … criticising the Far Right from the perspective of the Really Far Right … GB News lot £30M in first year … GB News output increasing Batsh*t crazy… £29B has been lost through Brexit … not convinced the UK Infrastructure Bank has a strategic view … limited delivery … A right wing coalition that would undermine the rule of law and undermine … and weaken democracy … country is in turmoil … fiery rhetoric from right wingers … bad solutions to real problems … woeful remedy … far right fringe has grown, fuelled by demagogic politics … inequality … a country that is betraying its liberal roots … this government relies on extremists … reckless words have consequences …, Jeremy Hunt’s budget is better at diagnosis than treatment … the bar for a successful budget was dramatically lowered last year … underlying problems persist … a bizarrely blunt way to do it … a bad decision that will raise carbon emissions … a dreadful fudge … Britain desperately needs a stable tax regime … a hostage to fortune … by 2024 real living standards will have fallen by the greatest amount over a two year period since records began .. Dismal record on productivity … not yet tackled Britain’s biggest headaches … populist politics another stumbling block … fixation with cultural controversy is another distraction from real needs … nor did the budget provide much for Britain’s struggling public services, particularly the health care system … Britain takes a fresh look at foreign and defence policies … a Europe shaped hole … Johnson’s tilt to the Indo Pacific region was a boosterish folly, not least after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine … the risk of escalation is greater than at any time in decades … the biggest question is if Britain has the resources to realise the vision … the government has left this tricky dilemma to successors … Tories should forget about the small boats and stop the dodgy car washes and sweet shops … car washes … archetypal example of black market economy … Tories have made it easy to run law breaking industries … law breaking is endemic … Ministers know all this … these businesses are profitable because they do not adhere to the law … illegal conditions … withheld wages … fire doors being locked shut … enforcement of basic rights is weak … clear and obvious scams in London … skipped business rates to the tune of £9m … weak and slack enforcement allows scammers to thrive … plenty that the government could do to crack down … no guarantee … resources to crack down on black market … a government serious about dealing with the root causes of illegal immigration, not just looking tough, has plenty of options available …”
Pip Pip Medway Delta (Retired) Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
This week’s homework: 1. Governments sometimes have to make tough decisions about controversial questions. There is a right way and a wrong way to do that. This government always chooses a wrong and stupid way to make tough decisions.
This week’s homework: 2. Brexit has failed and has been seen to fail. Every day produces more evidence that Brexit can only be a fiasco. Tories respond by sulking and blaming everybody but themselves. Labour Party responds by insisting that everything will be hunky dory so long as we pretend that Brexit is working (despite all the evidence to the contrary).There is no question of either Labour or Tories shifting their backsides and doing something to reverse the biggest act of stupidity any British government has perpetrated for many years. Which party is showing the greatest degree of hypocrisy and moral cowardice: Labour or Tories?
This week’s quotes: “English Chamber orchestra had to cancel a US tour … visa problems … King’s Singers … concert Pensacola College cancelled … one of the singers is gay … (COMMENTS: This does not sit well with Johnson forever talking about ‘new opportunities outside Europe’) … earthquakes in Turkey … Erdogan stripped the ‘experts’ out of state institutions … including the disaster response agency (COMMENT: 21st century Tories have interesting things to say about experts. Perhaps it is just as well that UK is not in an earthquake prone area)… Britain’s creeping corruption … best assessment is Transparency International’s index … Britain is sliding to its worst ever score … Richy Scumbag is another in a growing list of Tory Prime Minister’s undone by Brexit … British companies do not train their staff … a lack of skills is making almost a quarter of all vacancies hard to fill … Covid 19 and Brexit have made that worse … government has completely ignored this puzzle … at a Facebook content moderation centre in Kenya run by Sama, an outsourcing firm … workers told Time magazine they were mistreated by both companies … accusing them of union busting, forced labour and human trafficking … Royal Mail is failing its duty to deliver letters on Saturday … Food chain may collapse when Brexit checks come in later this year … underlying problems caused by Brexit … to understand the problem you have to understand that this is a sector significantly disrupted by Brexit … UK market is not attractive … Brexit is adding to the chaos … despite what the ‘nothing to do with Brexit’ Brigade might believe … food logistics industry is less resilient .. a warning of what lies ahead … problems like this will be worse in future … sub standard meat is entering the country … could lead to African Swine Fever or another highly contagious and devastating disease … huge problem … small sign of what lies ahead … you ain’t seen nothing yet … government has had seven years to come up with a solution … and has failed … if ‘take back control was the lie that unleashed Brexit might ‘let them eat turnip be Brexit’s epitath? … We are on our fifth Brexit PM … ‘nothing to do with Brexit’ supply chains … Thick Lizzie believes it but her judgement is catastrophic … the environment secretary could not have looked more bored, disengaged, could not give a toss about farmer’s problems … Johnson said ‘F*** business’ … Coffey said F*** Farmers’ … the never ending civil war in the Tory Party … dire figures about NHS … Lasers are precise, powerful and efficient … when James Cleverly said ‘we remain laser focussed on finding a solution … the reaction in Brussels was bemusement mixed with scepticism … the closer Richy Scumbag gets to a deal the more the lunatic fringes of his party seem determined to stop him … there is no way to divide and conquer the EU … they have stuck together for years … the involvement of Johnson is seen as hugely damaging in Brussels … last year alone Therese Coffey chomped her way through £4,442 of hospitality … Johnson’s memoirs will cause a massive problem for booksellers and librarians … should they be classified as fiction or fantasy … Brexit ideas … hopelessly flawed, poorly conceived or just plain suicidally stupid …. Britain stock market has languished. Gilts may be next … disastrous budget by Toilet Kwarteng … long running exodus from London … shrivel compared to the rest of the world … Big firms are ditching their British listings … Britain’s stock market … on a downward path … make matters worse … buyers of sovereign debt departing … British assets no longer seem like a must have for global investors … totemic blow to the City of London … Richy Scumbag’s deal softens the Irish Sea border but not as much as he claims … London does not seem to grasp … Johnson still dreams of returning to Westminster … idiotic rows … Johnson’s deal was disastrous … the case for long term despair is compelling … public services are exhausted … day long waits in A & E … some crimes have, in effect, been legalised … slow growth, rubbish public services and falling incomes will probably doom the Tories at the next election … After 7 years of Brexit EU has emerged as the clear winner … Tories heading for a thumping defeat at the polls … thanks to Brexit … Vote Leave claimed to have all the cards … nobody ever worked out what the British really wanted … fuzzy notions … not even the maddest populist on the continent thinks leaving the EU is a good idea … dire governance … a bad official always says yes to the ruler … goes along with him even when he is wrong … Journalists will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. The Turing Test of the near future may be a machine’s ability to convince a Daily Mail reader that the latest polemic by a flesh and blood employee and not by a machine designed to generate rabid headlines to stir up xenophobes … If the Tories are crushed they will be replaced by something even worse … Richy Scumbag’s sudden conversion to competence … if we are lucky that may go down as the first moves in a Tory campaign to avoid electoral oblivion … whenever I enter a TV studio for a political … there is nearly always somebody from the far right. Their shtick is always to avoid logic and evidence … Caution prevents Labour from telling the truth about Brexit … there is no shortage of Leave voters who now think Brexit was a mistake … A majority of Labour voters backed Remain and a sizeable share of Brexiters now think Brexit was a mistake … (Johnson) Lying Putrescence …Brexit continues to wreck the lives of Britain’s small farmers … Liz Webster (a small farmer) always knew Brexit would be a disaster … she underestimated how quickly that disaster would overtake the industry … It is actually worse than we predicted … everyone is suffering … some of the countries from which we import agricultural goods have much lower standards … prospect is terrifying for the food industry … always contradictions in Brexit promises … to hide that reality … Farmers thought they would get more money while the government planned to shrink the industry … industry is bracing itself for the pain to come … Government refuses to demand that imports comply with UK food standards … this could hardly have come at a worse time … farmers were promised the world and have been sadly disappointed … the agricultural industry is a sacrificial lamb for Brexit … Richy Scumbag has all but given up pretending to be a presence on the world stage; still less believing ‘Global Britain’ was anything more than an empty slogan … he is reluctant to go anywhere … partly because he is worried about what plots against him might be hatched in his absence and an awareness of what other world leaders think about him and Brexit … Johnson Fanzine the Daily Mail was having problems finding Tory MPs to say on the record that he could come back as PM. The style of the paper is to quote unidentified ‘friends.’… Johnson’s ‘friends’ would have more authority if they talked like real people … ‘Partygate is a political show trial with an outrageous level of bias that would make Stalin blush’ … absurd tabloidese … Mandrake challenges the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday to quote real people willing to talk on the record … long suffering readers of the Times and Sunday Times reacted with dismay to the papers’ ‘exclusive’ serialisation of Paris Hilton’s memoirs …’ has the times become The Sun?’ … ‘I thought my subscription was to the Times and not some grubby tabloid’ … Rebekah Brooks, CEO of News UK, forced the book on the editors of both titles … (Conspiracy theories) we have seen a combination of people who have deliberately manipulated the situation and misrepresented the facts … conspiracy theories are impossible to knock down. Any presentation of the facts is dismissed as part of the plot … Conspiracy theorists hold 16 random beliefs and eight contradict the other eight … the only thing that holds them together is resentment and distrust … symptoms of Brexgret … many layers of denial, bluster and jingoistic claptrap … spiteful, empty pride … you let a bunch of hucksters, gangsters and race baiting demagogues hoodwink you into destroying your livelihood and your grandchildren’s future … justify the unjustifiable and repeatedly deny the evidence … Britain has endured a decade of early deaths … pandemic is not the only reason … something went wrong in the early 20102 (COMMENT: About the time we started getting corrupt and incompetent Tory governments) … between 2012 and 2022 approximately 700,000 Brits died sooner than they might have … death rates for 30 to 49 year old steadily increased in Britain since 2012 in sharp contrast to with neighbouring countries … life expectancy has fallen for the poorest and increased for the wealthy … Britain has done worst out of its European peers … hospital wait lists of record lengths … crisis in primary care … poorer Brits are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a later stage … it will be tricky to find enough radiologists and GPs to make a difference … life expectancy worst affected in places with the largest decline in housing services and social care spending … cannot obscure the fact that something has gone badly wrong in the last decade …no European country has stalled as much as Britain … funding cuts are likely to have worsened health outcomes … 40% of the burden on the NHS may be preventable … services have been pruned in the last decade … 10m years of life have been in lost in Britain over the last decade compared with what might have been expected in 2011. The grim total keeps ticking up … Russia’s war on the Ukraine has vindicated Macron’s call for a stronger EU … A new plan to stop migrants in boats is unlikely to work … impractical, morally and legally dubious … a myriad practical flaws … echo an earlier failure to tackle the problem … lawyers say plan has made no actual difference … though it may temporarily please the right of the Tory party … the plan is the wrong way round … new law will not stop the boats … Tory intellectuals (sic) declared that culture had vanquished economics … ‘It is not the economy, stupid’ ran one headline … What is going on out there is brutal … miserable politics … economic competence is decisive in general elections … Tory right wingers who call themselves Thatcherites have treated distribution networks much as a toddler with a hammer treats a wristwatch.
Pip Pip Medway Delta (Retired) Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
This week’s quotes: “A mess of Johnson’s making … Johnson is wading in making things worse … outrageous even by Johnson’s standards … a new low for an ex PM who has long since left the moral gutter behind … I hope Richy Scumbag goes down to a crushing defeat but I also hope he fixes the NI Protocol problem … oven ready meal that turned out to be half baked … it is hardly in China’s interests to see a strong Russia … The more Russia weakens the more vulnerable Siberia looks. Chinese encroachment is a future headache waiting to happen … Gove is now being ‘honest’ about the failure of Brexit … if he were really honest he would apologise and shut up… Johnson crashes his way through democracy like a poltergeist who has not noticed his own demise.
Nigel Garbage hosts a TV show on a channel nobody watches … (Richy Scumbag) it is almost charming how the son of Punjabi immigrants still thinks he can become the darling of bigots … Johnson is buying a house … we wait to hear with whose money … the plan seems to be that whatever is left of the Tory Party after the next election will flock to his bloodstained banner …
Turd Reich
George Takei finds British politics illogical … Brexit was a disastrous mistake … every bit as bad as those who opposed it predicted … and getting worse … Nigel Garbage … a deluded and dangerous man … politicians lack imagination and have had very privileged lives … cannot understand what other people’s lives are like … Trump is a good example … worst President we ever had … Takei feels despair at the lies told by politicians … He has raged magnificently against Brexit … Only Boris Johnson could make Thick Lizzie look competent … Thick Lizzie’s brief, miserable innings …
The UK has a long term productivity problem. Since 2008 it has been running at less than a quarter of its usual rate. … the government has no idea how to improve things … the government seems to be deliberately making things worse instead of better … what the economy needs is a well functioning government, massive levels of investment, better training and far better management … investment has flat lined since Brexit … the government has slashed so many jobs that the accountancy profession complains the HM Revenue and Customs is so inefficient and understaffed that it is stifling the creating of companies;, jobs and wealth … we have had a tax dodging chancellor, a PM whose wife was a non-dom, billions of Covid loans that mysteriously disappeared, billions wasted on crony contracts for PPE … we have had Boris Johnson who could out bunga Sylvio Berlusconi … and we have had Thick Lizzie who makes corruption and incompetence look like a model of fiscal responsibility … the collapse of inward investment is extremely damaging, Britain is seen as too risky to invest in … stupidity over the Northern Ireland protocol … wasted resources, an economy that overheats easily …
UK is losing the race to be a leader in new technology .. Failing to ride the hi-tech wave of growth potential… If things were not bad enough for UK musicians in the EU they get worse by the minute in the USA … “
Pip Pip Medway Delta (Retired) Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class
