THE ODOUR OF RATS 

 

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

This seemed an appropriate subhead for tonight, given both the macro and micro events of the last two weeks. I’ll be looking at Brexit tactics, blog host behaviours, gold and banks, and schoolkids on strike.

There was an odd lead in The Times this morning.

‘Britain will soften its demand that the EU reopen the Brexit withdrawal agreement to solve the Irish backstop issue, The Times has learnt. The Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay suggested to the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier during talks this week that the government could accept legal guarantees that fell short of renegotiating the draft withdrawal treaty’ 

I use the word “odd” there in that intro for various reasons:

1. If true, the Barclay promise pulls the rug out from under many Tory MPs telling us that Mrs May is “holding her nerve and waiting for Brussels to blink”. It also of course destroys what little potential leverage UK negotiators still have, because, um, we just blinked.
2. As it is patently obvious that Parliament will defeat any Withdrawal Deal without a Backstop Alternative in the body of said Deal, one’s first impression is that the Prime Minister has decided that No Deal is the best option.
3. The question arises as to who leaked the conversation. As I cannot see any motive for either Barclay or Number Ten to be caught doing that on such an embarrassing climbdown, the only culprits left are Michel Barnier and Olly Robbins.

A second glance reveals where this is going. The one near-certainty in the spiral down to March 29th is that there is a good majority of MPs prepared to force an Article 50 extension rather than leave with No Deal. This is precisely what both Brussels and federalist fanatic Robbins want.

Politically, the cunning stunt envisaged by Theresa May is (I suspect) to keep running about like a shuttle diplomat on crack cocaine, but fail valiantly to shift the EU on Backstop, and then find that Parliament has seized control at the last minute and taken the No Deal option from her grasp.

This would leave her covered in very few brown solids…while free to blame Dublin, Brussels and Remainers of every hue.

Or rather, it would in theory.

There are so many rats involved in this mess, the smell is unmistakeable.

————————————-

Moving swiftly on, veteran Slogger Dietrich von Ausland’s eagle eye having (on a different browser) spotted some ads at The Slog,  I contacted the chaps at Wortscheiss and asked what the caper was. They ignored the message, but as the ads kept on appearing I went on Twitter (it is the best way to get action) and said stop it now please. Back came this gem:

So just  to be clear here, we ignore you, then when you make life awkward we suggest this is all perfectly normal and don’t complain because we have bills to pay and alright then if you’re being picky, no we didn’t tell you and no we didn’t think to cut you in hahahaha!

Last night I put up this post, and by the morning it had disappeared. So I put it up again (these days I always make a duplicate) and you’ll never guess, the comments were disabled. I contacted the silos again, and was told all would be fixed within the hour.

That was fourteen hours ago. However, because I went on Twitter again, the hits have doubled. Words like shoot and foot spring to mind.

Wortscheiss are supposed to be the good guys. This is how far civilisation has sunk into the quicksand of digital Mammon.

The desire to make money now breeds amorality, borrowing, and being prone to blackmail. I smell censorship…..and not for the first time.

————————————-

Cut now to the continuing quest to move what little money I have left as far away from banks as possible. My pension trustees are owned by one bank, and had put my money “ringfenced” hoho in another. I know for a fact that both banks are in trouble. 34 working days after the process started, the trustees still have the money. At this rate, it will take me eight months to move all the money back into the markets.

My UK bank is a large mutual. After 19 days of being messed about, I fired them: the delays, obstacles and excuses changed on a daily basis and became dafter (and contradictory) as time went on. When I tried to escalate the complaint, the request was ignored. Then everything I asked about online was ignored.

It is an open secret among finance professionals that all banks and their subsidiaries in the US, UK and eurozone have been briefed by the three central banks to go-slow on any large monies moving to another sovereign. Specifically, gold purchases requiring bank cooperation are delayed and, in some cases, discouraged by the suggestion of alternative investments.

My biggest single portfolio change over the last month has been into gold bullion. My mistake was to tell global banks I wanted to do this.

It has been posited by hundreds of online commentators for over three years now that central banks round the world are buying as much gold as they can in order one day soon to stop private sales of it….and then revalue it to its real worth in order to rewind the clock to zero after Crash 2, and emerge with solid balance sheets.

It is almost certainly a serious option being considered.  Gold buying by central banks haas reached its highest level since the fourth quarter of 2015. Around $5.82 billion was spent during the third quarter of 2018 to boost central bank reserves.

The buying was offset by heavy selling of gold-backed funds during the same period. That is highly significant: the bankers want the real thing, not gold associated paper and trackers. But heavy dumping of ‘paper’ gold keeps the price in proportion. Neat, huh?

Today there is no such thing as certainty.

But I smell rats getting off the sinking ship.

————————————- 

Ripple dissolve to the strike for climate control taking place by schoolchildren across Britain today. If ever there was a cast-iron case for dumping the entire idea of votes at 16, this “strike” is it. Some evidence for the prosecution:

• Kids are not allowed out of school without the connivance and encouragement of teachers. The teaching profession in the State sector has long been the preserve of Leftlibs. The moronic chants, three-word banners and four letter words were a bit of a giveaway.
• If girls of sixteen are too immature to take a decision about sexual intercourse, they sure as hell are not up to understanding the Brexit issues. There are millions of middle aged Britons who freely admit to being completely bamboozled by it.
• My Uni flatmate when I was eighteen was an enthusiastic Communist. He went on to become a senior currency exchange adviser at the Bank of England. You cannot give voting choices to people at that age…..even eighteen is too low, but age is the wrong criterion anyway: the need (as Plato said over and over again) is to have an informed electorate.
• The cognitive dissonance of the Leftlib tendency on this issue is right up there with its opposition to fgm on the one hand, and support for the religion practising it on the other. Yvette Cooper describes 22 year-old yobs in Calais running amok while shaving twice a day as “children”. The mental gymnastics involved thoroughly deserve to be made an Olympic sport.

Young, idealistic kids with half-formed ideas are not a good basis for liberal democracy unless the civics elements in their teaching has been strong, and they’ve been encouraged to ignore mobs, agendered media and pretty much anyone who asserts stuff without evidence.

Hitler was smart enough to see how totalitarianism becomes an approved norm. That’s why he made the Hitler Youth a central plank of his thinking.

It’s  also why Erich Hönnecker in East Germany created communist Youth Leaders….of whom Angela Merkel was one.

Oh dear….what have I said?

More smelly scurrying rodents in the murk.