The Basketcase Final between the Gargoyle Globetrotters and the Liberty Bells enters the final quarter
We are, finally, at one of those history-tunnel moments – the ones where it’s hard to tell a chink of light from the Bordeaux > Paris TGV approaching at 350 kph. But at least it’s better than the total darkness of last week.
As they say, there is good news and bad news. The Maitlis witch at the BBC has, it seems,(despite mendacious Auntie press releases) been ‘furloughed’. She should have been dismissed for the Newsnight introductory rant of earlier this week that broke almost every obectivity clause in the BBC employee contract; but she has been Unpersoned for a while at least. If nothing else, this might give others pause for a little more thought about the chasm of difference between news coverage and ideological codswallop.
Across the Pond, the astonishing act by the Twitter gargoyles of muzzling President Trump’s recent tweet at first set my teeth grinding. Nobody is above the Law, but you’d have to be truly vague on the earth/sky order of life to suggest that he was stoking up violence by what he wrote. It wasn’t very Presidential, but then The Donald isn’t: he’s just the elected guy in the White House….a fact that soi-disant liberal America seems unable to accept.
Never one to delay his gratification, the Tangerine Dream signed an executive order yesterday demanding a review of the rules that largely exempt technology companies from responsibility for anything members of the public post on their platforms. This could backfire in all kinds of ways unpalateable to those who genuinely desire free speech, but it is at least a shot across the bows of unaccountable private sector censorship.
The Times of London reported the Potus reaction, but couldn’t resist putting ‘censorship’ and ‘unfair’ in inverted commas. The ways of Truth bending are many, various, and increasingly subliminal.
Flying back by virtual Concorde, there is disturbing UK news: it appears – having stood his ground – that in private Dominic Commings is telling close allies that, once the final EU departure has been achieved on time, he will retreat from frontline political strategy in Britain.
I cannot blame him for the decision: twelve years ago, Mandelson, Marr and Brown (with some help from Morgan the Pirate) did their best to use an unfounded media storm to turn me into a leper. From the New York Times via Channel 4 to Huffington Post, The Guardian and the BBC, they lied about my political affiliations, wrongly accused me of being somebody else with the name Ward, and protected Brown’s poor mental and physical health by giving him, live on the Marr Show, a dependancy to deny….. but not something of which I had at any time accused him.
My wife, children and close friends were all put through the mincer. Given Mr and Mrs Cummings have a disabled child to protect as well, I am left in complete sympathy with their desire for privacy, while at the same time retaining my general sense that ideologically ruthless media lackeys are beneath contempt.
If Sir Mark Sedwill has been stripped of all his powers and positions by that time, there shall be great rejoicing among the 1 in 7 of us who still develop our opinions based on data and a sense of the Common Good.
In the meantime, the Remoanoid Last Stand Nazis in the Commons continue to excrete upon the Brexit Referendum. The apparently eclectic nature of their make-up should not hide what these “rebels” all have in common: an unshakeable view that the future is all about dictatorial MegaStates explaining to the silly little people what is in their best interests – that is, a Hypocracy. (Note spelling there, turning a vice into a laudable régime).
Sir Edward Davey – a LibDem nonentity he – is the sponsor of a Private Member’s Bill trying to force the Johnson Administration into accepting the wisdom of an extension to the Brexit “transition period”.
The European Union Withdrawal (Implementation Period) Bill 2019-21 was given its First Reading nine days ago, and passed without touching the sides. Two weeks today – on 12th June – it will get its Second Reading. The number of Tory rebels behind Jeremy Hunt – said to be “over 40” Tory MPs who have publicly called for Dominic Cummings to resign – but Laura Kuenssberg this morning claims the number of Tories sharing the sentiment behind the scenes “is a lot higher”.
Like Trump at the hands of the liberal press, the CIA, the FBI and the State Department in the US, the UK Government has the support of the People, but is loathed by The People Who Would Be King in the spectrum that stretches from Whitehall and the Media through to Labour internationalists, Tory neoliberal globalists and of course, BBC agitprop in the shape of the Kuenssberg Klan.
Like France for thirty years after 1945, Britain remains a hung jury. In the Fourth and Fifth French Republics, the issues were former Vichy collaborationists and Empire loyalists. In today’s United Kingdom, we have British culture loyalists and European Union collaborationists.
Where is the British De Gaulle who might make all the difference?
The Slog 