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News at the top – history at the bottom
Tory Nation by Samuel Earle review – tangled up in blue
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Any attempt to understand Braverman (and Sunak) is incomplete without reference to her Colonial heritage; the role her class played in enforcing corrupt British rule in Africa; and the attitudes towards the lower classes it acquired during this period as capo-regime to Don Britain.
Her caste were tax-collectors. Servile agents of the powerful hated by the people, and enemies of Robin Hood and Jesus.
Tory Nation by Samuel Earle review – tangled up in blue
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There are critical political eras when the level of hysteria and identity crisis purges language of all meaning – as the infantile defence mechanism of a bankrupt ideology faced with reality. Jargon and vacuous labels are key to this collective act of self-lobotomy.
The epidemic of meaningless, abusive babytalk is shocking, acting like an anaesthetic on the brain. A new nonsense cult-word is needed almost every week.
The overall effect is to paralyse thought at exactly the time when we need clarity most.
Man arrested after car crashes into Downing Street gates – as it happened
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And naturally, the welfare state is to blame for the collapse of Brexit, and for immigration rates (it’s far too cushy here for the unemployed).
So just as naturally, Cameron calls for welfare ‘reform’. By which he means slashing benefits for the poorest and most vulnerable (again) to see what happens.
Foreign Bodies by Simon Schama review – pandemics and prejudice
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‘ the ingrained conspiratorial bent in the human psyche’
Wrong.
The implanted conspiratorial bent in the dehumanised Property-obsessed Consumerist psyche.’
Right.
Human Reciprocal Altruism is ingrained. But is impossible in a species which suspects everyone else – which is the objective of the toxic culture now threatening civilisation.
Putin’s threat hangs over tiny Moldova, but its people filled me with hope
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In response to artheachtarsamradh
Look at it this way.
All Putin’s allies are hard-line advocates of unlimited fossil fuel extraction and use. Why wouldn’t they be? They’re all authoritarian, nationalist regimes, and oil/gas means easy political power in any language. Many are totally mineral-dependent economies with no other option. ‘Carbonists’, if you like.
The weaponisation of Russian energy supplies in this war has played a massive role in driving the Anti-Putin world away from Carbon death-fuels. And whether they know it or not, the Anti-Putin alliance is now fighting a global war to control the use of fossil fuels. It is not about territory, nationality or any other flag-waving mirage.
When they realise the true import of this war, they might finally put in the effort required to not just defeat Putin, but rescue the future.
Get a grip, Westminster – Suella Braverman speeding is hardly the issue of the day
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Let her pay her own lawyers for advice on private Road Rage Therapy.
Like everyone else.
In a contest between Tory MPs and reality, Rishi Sunak is refusing to pick a side
17 May 2023 14:52 In response to francoisP
It’s manifestly not as simple as that.
The political tectonic plates are shifting with the global pre-apocalyptic Identity Crisis of climate change.
The traditional ‘Traditionalists’ are now scientifically wrong, and they know it. All their assumptions are proven delusions which will destroy the ecosystem. And they know it. The only political alternative is everything they loathe and despise; cooperation, cooperation, cooperation. Or ‘socialism’ as they call it. The AntiChrist.
At this point in their crisis, they have to retaliate, and try to defy reality. It’s the only way to cling to their personal power and wealth. The global effect is a world war between the forces for a sustainable future, and those for repeating the past which got us in this mess. Progress and Reaction have never been so clearly defined, and naturally fighting over the use of fossil fuels, still the primary source of political power.
What else is the war in Ukraine about?
View discussion
In a contest between Tory MPs and reality, Rishi Sunak is refusing to pick a side
17 May 2023 14:37
Sitting on the fence in the current war between Rationalism and Nationalism is a loser’s game.
For a start, there is no fence. It’s a straight choice between Barbarism and Civilisation. A sustainable, cooperative future, or a mad hedonistic stampede to destruction.
It’s clear what the NatC’s want. “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” as the man who “mucked up” nationalism used to say.
Sunak wants a quiet road to power. That doesn’t exist either. More like the ‘primrose way to the everlasting bonfire’, down which all profess-ions are invited – especially Equivocators like Sunak.
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The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:42
In response to SparkTwain
According to the expert Astro-ethnologists who write TV series and movies, every civilisation ever, past and future, is as hierarchical and power-ridden as ours.
I wonder why?
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The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:37
In response to Fflb96
What sort of events?
This kind of bang has only been possible since the formation of cosmic dust. Our cision boundary is now almost at that point. Meaning that we are close to seeing the oldest big explosion that happened – and every one since.
The universe is big – and expanding – but not that big, yet.
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The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:34
In response to PDAWSON3
Human time doesn’t count.
This is looking back in time, to almost the beginning of visible matter.
The only kind that explodes.
Nothing in the real world is ‘infinite’ or ‘infinitesimal’. And the theoretical world doesn’t have a good word to say about them either.
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The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:30
In response to DecimusJunius
A very long wait.
Makes you wonder whether civilisations are designed to know all there is to know.
From our brief experience, it seems that just when we think we’ve cracked it – everything turns to dust in the desert.
View discussion
The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
16 May 2023 15:26
In response to Readout_Noise
Why is it that the same people who are keen to hurl nuclear bombs at asteroids, won’t raise a finger to prevent an equally deadly threat to civilisation from Climate Disaster?
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Bird flu could become the next human pandemic – and politicians aren’t paying attention
16 May 2023 15:23
In response to BlackAsTheNightCat
‘The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, caused by zoonotic SARS-CoV-2, has important links to biodiversity loss and ecosystem health. These links range from anthropogenic activities driving zoonotic disease emergence and extend to the pandemic affecting biodiversity conservation, environmental policy, ecosystem services, and multiple conservation facets.
Alignment of the full-length genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2 showed the closest relationship (identity 96%) was with the bat SARS-like coronavirus strain BatCov RaTG13. ‘
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00258-8/fulltext
And the more we destroy the ecosystem, the closer and nastier the next pandemic becomes.
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The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
15 May 2023 19:59
Since I first heard of it (courtesy of prof. Cox) the ‘Proton Gradient’ has fascinated me.
As a simple, causal explanation of how we are, and where we are going, it beats any religion anytime.
Not to mention providing a natural measurement of time in the Moment of energy exchange.
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The biggest ever space explosion has occurred – what do you mean you don’t care?
15 May 2023 17:30
In response to RichardWilkinson72
Every Junkie knows how, they just can’t.
The pain is just too much.
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A new mood of seriousness has taken root. Populist chaos won’t cut it any more
14 May 2023 12:23
The tories may be a pack of cannibal rats in a sack, but the global identity crisis that created them is still raging. America is even more insane than ever..
Nobody has yet concocted a magic spell to make the consequences of Climate Disaster go away, and with it the inevitable political implications for those whose imagination and sense of entitlement is petrified in the past. Those who are doing everything they can to deny and vilify the scientific methods of the modern rational world. The world is still split between Nationalism and Rationalism as in Ukraine.. Between Carbonism and Humanism.
The seedbed of hate-politics is as fertile as ever.
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Eurovision represents everything that is nonsensically termed ‘woke’ – that’s what makes it so special
12 May 2023 14:54
In response to fishworld
What existing word?
The noun meaning a monster that hides beneath bridges, or the verb meaning to promenade in a meaningful manner?
Either way its use never conveys any concrete meaning, and is always an ad-hominem cop-out from dialogue. Mostly when confronted with a repeated inconvenient question or request for evidence.
Something like this:
A. “Labour is a racist Party.”
B. “What evidence do you have for that accusation?”
A. “Stop apologising for Labour racism.”
B. “But what evidence do you have?”
A. “Troll!”
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The coronation arrests are just the start. Police can do what they want to us now
12 May 2023 13:39
In response to zblargx
Just as Brexit was insurance against EU Co2 targets – and global cooperation of any kind.
Cooperation is the Anti-Christ. All Eco-awareness is regularly labelled ‘communism” by the Trump’n’Mail world. Only the ‘free market’ can be trusted to avert the climate change it caused.
Not that there is a problem, of course. It’s all a plot by the global Bolshevik conspiracy, including every scientist on Earth (they all get rich from taxpayer-funded grants).
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Eurovision represents everything that is nonsensically termed ‘woke’ – that’s what makes it so special
12 May 2023 12:44
Almost all new verbiage of the internet era has been completely meaningless babytalk. The verbal equivalent of sticking fingers in ears and going LALALALALA!
‘Troll’, ‘snowflake’, ‘trope’, ‘blob’, ‘woke’ all clear signs of an argument lost, or pretentious jargon designed to bypass argument and pervert thought.
Another sad symptom of the further infantilisation of consumer culture, where everything, including truth, is merely a commodity which must be available in all flavours and colours NOW!
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The coronation arrests are just the start. Police can do what they want to us now
12 May 2023 12:20
How can any decent respectable concerned citizen now protest against the status quo? Their careers and livelihoods are threatened by a criminal conviction for holding an idea. Teachers will be threatened with disciplinary action for ‘bringing the school into disrepute.’ The same sword of Damocles hangs over all the professional classes essential to effective social struggle, but also intimidates everyone with a boss. Your business is now his business.
The base of climate-change protest will be forced back to the stereotyped crusty subculture beloved by the tabloids.
Obviously, the NatCs are criminalising ideas to deter dissent. But most especially, dissent against Fossil-Fuel capitalism – which is the ultimate heresy. They know that science has condemned their toxic dogma to the dustbin of history, but have to Deny this terminal diagnosis, and refuse to be reminded of it repeatedly by those who know better.
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Archbishop of Canterbury’s attack on illegal migration bill ‘wrong on both counts’, says minister – as it happened
10 May 2023 13:41
The King, the Archbishops of Canterbury and Durham, Head of the Armed Forces, former tory PM’s and a queue of current tory MPs. Not counting the entire legal establishment and diplomatic service..
All now Enemies of the People who ‘hate Britain’, apparently.
NatC isolationism is just another writhing spasm in the terminal Identity Crisis of ecocidal Consumerism.
View discussion
Go forth and socialise: why meeting up with friends is good for the economy
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The global economy has decisively and deliberately destroyed communities and community values all over the world. Healthy communities don’t need Consumerist Junk.
In Britain the ‘economy’ of the Right To Buy legislation has shattered previously coherent and healthy communities into alienated multi-pods of transient sub-tenants, all slaving away to much to do much more than pay their extortionate rents.
The Economy decides everything.
And this one, the one now destroying the eco-sysytem, stinks.
And the sooner it poisons itself the better.
Of course the BBC needs to change – but Britain must decide what kind of broadcaster it really wants
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Garbage.
Every commercial broadcaster is overtly funded by and a channel for lies – by definition.
They are all controlled by unelected companies that buy their ad-space.
The BBC does not make money from them or broadcast their toxic propaganda every 15 minutes. So like all other non-commercial organisations that cannot make more millionaires (the NHS) it must be hounded out of existence.
A hundred BBCs could never lie as in a year much as one day of commercial TV anywhere.
Sunak and Starmer are obsessed with home ownership. Neither seems to want to fix the housing crisis
2 May 2023 16:39
In response to bluejay2011
the bank really owns your home
In Sickness and in Health.
‘Til Death do You part.
Hence the term ‘mort-gage’
Sunak and Starmer are obsessed with home ownership. Neither seems to want to fix the housing crisis
2 May 2023 16:36
In response to jae426
You obviously don’t watch any of the million GetRichQuick property shows on TV.
I happen to be at a primary observation post at the battle-lines of social housing and its vandalisation.
The crazed Right To Buy pillage of social homes has blighted every community it got a hold of, further impoverished local councils, and delivered a gold mine to a new generation of Rachmannite spivs.
The conflict of interest between leaseholders and tenants naturally resulted in the cheapest option being chosen by TMO’s for regeneration work, not the safest – with famously horrific consequences.
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Sunak and Starmer are obsessed with home ownership. Neither seems to want to fix the housing crisis
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Most voters are homeowners
Steady on John.
Who told you that?
I agree that far too many are intoxicated by the property Fetish, and see themselves as lords of the manor, but I would bet that the ratio of properties to individual owners is actually going down. Ownership is being monopolised, not democratised. The people have never had less control over the national housing stock or the roof over their head.
Crack-Up Capitalism by Quinn Slobodian review – the economic anarchy of Liz Truss’s dreams
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Another widely reported study finds that a fifth of all CEOs are bona fide psychopaths.
And since, ironically, psychos of a feather stick together, it’s easy enough to understand how the tory government agglomerated.
Our bronze age coronation rites seem to speak to a modern love of the sacred
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Anyone bored by a Coronation is bored of their own history.
In this case, for many, a once in a lifetime chance to see the world through the eyes of a medieval peasant watching the Abbey at full steam imparting the cosmic force to its Earthly representative, and ensuring future prosperity for all God’s subjects.
If that isn’t like someone finding the ON switch for the Great Pyramid, I don’t know what is.
Rabid republicans just don’t understand that history can’t be uninvented. It should certainly cost us less to keep and should not interfere with democracy, but ignoring it is a strange and perverse form of intellectual self-denial. This is doubly strange in a culture apparently addicted to TV history.
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If you want the BBC (and therefore the NHS) to be sold to the highest bidder, just say so.
I once argued fiercely for child-free spaces. As a mother, I still believe in their sanctity
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God how we hate children and childhood in this benighted, paedophobic backwater.
Not content with treating them as status symbols from day one, we then pack them off on the one-way express to productive labour, stopping only at graduation, mortgage and marriage before a long debt-ridden crawl to the care-home. Eliminating as much spontaneity and life as possible.
A not-so-pale imitation of the ideal joyless Victorian Utilitarian upbringing.
Calls for Boris Johnson’s role in Richard Sharp’s BBC appointment to be examined – as it happened
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It’s like watching war criminals in the dock – automatically denying the authority of the court. They should remember that they are the lucky ones.
Sometimes their equivalents end up hanging upside-down in garages, or dead in Libyan sewer pipes.
If Dominion prevails against Fox News, that won’t harm press freedoms
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It may not damage press freedom but it will help stop media lies.
But then who next?
Politicians? Advertisers??
All obliged under law to stop butchering the truth.
No wonder our Neo-feudal barons are petrified at the thought of Fox getting its overdue come-uppance..
Sunak needn’t worry – maths mania already has our schools in a stranglehold
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If Sunak wanted more kids to enjoy Maths – or anything worthwhile – he should do something to curb the toxic Junk-Mania which is sucking the native curiosity, enthusiasm and joy of discovery out of childhood, and turning it into profit for the corporations.
Instead, Sunak and his crew of paedophobes see children merely as units of production to serve the needs of a dying Consumerism.
Sunak needn’t worry – maths mania already has our schools in a stranglehold
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The ‘anti-maths mindset’ is just another Heath-Robison weapon in the tory culture war against the inevitable, alongside the ‘anti-growth mindset’ which opposes green policies.
In this case, the term is another squalid code for the Humanities in general, which corrupt technocrats like Sunak see as a complete waste of profitable manpower. Not to mention being a route to ideas beyond their control.
Dangerous ideas.
Sunak needn’t worry – maths mania already has our schools in a stranglehold
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Sunak wants a Nation of penny-pinching accountants, serving a faceless technocracy.
A Spreadsheet stamping on a human face – forever.
David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
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So how do you propose he makes the films which have done more to educate and provoke than any products from any other media, print, radio, TV, movie or internet?
From a desk in Leicester?
When fat tourists stop flying twice a year to sprawl by heated pools in the desert, to forget their empty lives as slaves of eco-cidal consumerism then you’ll have a case against Attenborough. But of course, if they did, there would be no need for Attenborough in the first place.
David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
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After we are gone, the earth will heal itself.
Who told you that?
And how long will this ‘healing’ take?~
When ecology spins out of control, as we have seen to, there is no clear end in sight to the vicious cycle.
For all you know, the Earth might spiral into another toxic Venus indefinitely. With no life bar some primitive microscopic viruses trapped below ground. Possibly.
Is that the universe you want?
David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
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AND anglers have to know what fish eat what and at what time of year.
An angler without a knowledge of the ecology being fished is like a midwife without a bicycle.
David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
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Anglers are the most widespread, long-serving and accurate monitor-force for British rivers.
The vast majority of anglers now fish for fun, so they throw their catch back, so they can hook it again. Some become old friends.
Good luck to anyone trying to feed a family from the rivers these days. And if they could, it would be the food with the lowest carbon footprint. So what’s your problem?
David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
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Then, like most BBC Bashers, you would have your foot in your mouth without engaging your brain.
The Paul Whitehouse series Our Troubled Rivers pulls no punches either.
Or doesn’t he count, on the Lineker Principle?
David Attenborough’s online Wild Isles isn’t too hard-hitting for TV – it doesn’t go far enough
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In response to ChampagneEcologiste
He did nothing except lead the BBC Nature project for 50 years as presenter and manager, without which most activist organisations would still be struggling to get enough members to fill a parish hall.
Before Attenborough arrived, an interest in nature was mocked as an eccentric pastime. For bullied anglers and pigeon fanciers.
After, being able to recite the carbon cycle became cool.
In fact, there is generally a footnote to most Attenborough series which warns explicitly of the dangers each case-study faces. Perhaps you couldn’t wait.
Also slipping beneath the radar is the Paul Whitehouse series on the poisoning of British rivers and coastlines.
Not to be missed.
The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
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In response to Skanderbegthegreat
Irregardless.
Everyone knows the world they’d prefer to live in.
And it isn’t the one of mass cold, disease, serfdom, illiteracy and endless bloodshed after the Roman collapse.
Europe was rescued by the very glimmers of civilisation you mention. They were hardly representative of a brutal time. Which only serves to demonstrate the contrast.
The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
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And you know the difference, do you? For everybody, everywhere – and even everywhen.
Talk about the Spanish Inquisition.
No fantasy – no mystery.
No mystery – no curiosity.
No curiosity – no science.
Rigid demarkation never does any good.
The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
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You’re almost a millenium late.
If it hadn’t been for Charlemagne, the Carolingean revolution, and the work of the Northumbrian abbeys under Alcuin, the classic texts would not have been translated and the ‘Enlightenment’ would have been postponed indefinitely.
The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
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“any thinking Socialist will concede to the Catholic that when economic injustice has been righted, the fundamental problem of man’s place in the universe will still remain.”
Orwell. As I Please.
The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
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Long story, but it was this ‘fantasy’ that rescued European civilisation from the Dark Ages – by the skin of our teeth.
Don’t diss fantasy, it’s far more useful than you realise.
The decline of churchgoing doesn’t have to mean the decline of churches – they can help us level up
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Mosques often serve as invaluable support centres, preserving the sense of community which ‘native’ Britain has sold for a mess of pottage.
Which is a major reason that mosques and Islam are hated by the property’n’profit-driven British establishment.
Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way
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The property market is as toxic and ruthless as ever.
Social housing is needed more than ever.
Homes are not a charity but a vital infrastructure. One which not only provides a stable family and community environment, but also liberates the individual for more creative activities.
Which is why social housing is the enemy of the current band of brigands masquerading as politicians.
Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way
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If you mean people prefer private tenancies to council tenancies I’d love to know who told you.
Deaths, black mould, failing staff: social housing doesn’t have to be this way
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Social housing is being eaten by the cancer of the Right To Buy larceny and Rachmanite absentee landlordism.
And the related communities are killed too.
Many of Britain’s evils stem from this sacrifice on the altar of Property Worship.
I should know, havingt been a TRA secretary for 20 years off and on.
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Everyone forgets the Europhobic propaganda oil tanker which had been steaming through the British media for decades before any ‘remain’ campaign could even gets its boots on.
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How long will this promise to ban wet-wipes last?
Not that it will make a blind bit of difference, or stop farmers dumping into watercourses because of slashed environmental grants.
Or eradicate the crony capitalism which pays giant corporations to poison Britaint at the taxpayers expense.
You couldn’t make it up.
Abby Dow’s four tries help England thrash Italy in Six Nations mismatch
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But Rugby is inherently a game of ‘mis-matches’. Of David wings and scrum-halves against giant Goliath locks and props. That is part of its glory.
The issue is one of creating space for creative play and eliminating as many impacts as possible. The relative reductions in size, speed and (probably) brutality of the Women’s game help in this regard, which is why the womens’ game can often be more lively than the mens’, which all too often runs into a blind alley.
The simple solution, given the lack of attendance all round is to literally provide more space by making the pitch 10 meters wider for elite games.
If the sport cannot find the paltry investment needed for this investment in the future, it is doomed.
.
Every indictment will make Trump stronger – and Republicans wilder
4 Apr 2023 11:16
In response to AlfredMurnau
Which ‘truths’ do we hold to be Self-Evident, again?
Trump is a brutal mega-gangster fascist of the old school. Bribery and corruption are his bread and water, which, if the is any justice, will be his diet soon. 60% of Americans now seem to agree.
Far from being the end of the world, threatening future presidents with the Trump treatment is a very welcome extension of justice over the White House elite.
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Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 15:01 In response to brookbond
How about ‘defunding’ a few tax-dodging billionaires.
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Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 15:00
In response to Cdnner
Not on your own you can’t.
Rearing children used to be a far more communal effort, involving neighbours and extended family.
Which is why, when communities were destroyed, the fake word ‘parenting’ had to be invented.
View discussion
Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 14:57
In response to HereWeGoAgainDost
So the problem is the inferior ‘blood’ in the class system of those genetically unsuited to parenthood.
It’s a good thing we can test for that sort of faulty gene now, so that we can eliminate it from the gene pool.
View discussion
Our first few years as a child can determine the rest of our lives
3 Apr 2023 14:52
It is only the world of the alienated nuclear family that needs reminding of this truism.
Most of humanity throughout history has understood that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.
The commodification of childhood in our culture, and the indoctrination from birth in the dogma of consumerism, amounts to a form of child-abuse, but on a monstrous scale.
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Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer review – the human face of the socialist state
2 Apr 2023 12:40
As made crystal clear in this review, and apparently in the book itself, Stalinist East Germany was to socialism what the Spanish Inquisition was to Christianity.
So why the headline?
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Keir Starmer publishes tax returns, revealing he paid £118,000 in last two years – as it happened
23 Mar 2023 12:09
In response to musigny
He ‘knows’ now that he misled the house by telling it that the rules and guidelines were obeyed.
So he has to invent a different set of rules for No 10 which were easier to obey, and which, in his head, he can claim were ‘imperfectly’ but adequately met.
As with every aspect of sick consumerist toryism, everything is packaging.
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Keir Starmer publishes tax returns, revealing he paid £118,000 in last two years – as it happened
23 Mar 2023 11:10
His desperate defence boiled down to an absurd attempt to retrospectively rewrite & downgrade the rules we all obeyed to match the level his No10 booze-culture broke them, and to give credibility to his ridiculous claim that inside his head he believed he was telling the truth.
In other words he merely admitted there is one Rule for Him and another for us. As we said all along.
The man is clearly sick, like too many CEO’s.
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Boris Johnson ‘very much looking forward’ to appearing before MPs investigating whether he misled parliament over Partygate – as it happened
21 Mar 2023 12:59
To recognise existence of ‘institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia’ is to recognise that there is such a thing as society after all. Which is why it must be constantly denied in the face of incontrovertible evidence.
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How many of those calling for Putin’s arrest were complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq?
20 Mar 2023 11:53
In response to grm69
Correlation is not causation.
Civil chaos in Iraq was the breeding ground for DAESH.
The cause the chaos was not the removal of Saddam, which many Iraqis yearned for, it was the lack of a post-war plan – as in 1945 Germany.
(too ‘socialist’ for Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Condo-leeza Rice.)
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How many of those calling for Putin’s arrest were complicit in the illegal invasion of Iraq?
20 Mar 2023 11:40
In response to eamonmcc
Removing a hated dictator of his own people did not cause the devastation of Iraq and chaos in the region and beyond, not replacing his regime did.
Whether by apathy or design, the absence of any plan except blind faith in market forces caused the chaos we a re now living in.
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Boris Johnson and Partygate: the stakes will be huge at this week’s critical inquisition
19 Mar 2023 13:51
What’s this new excuse he’s about to publish?
Long-Covid amnesia?
We’ve heard everything before, likewise the committee, so no need for a long hearing on Wednesday.
A simple “We’ve heard these lies already. On yer bike.” should do.
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Mona Lisa v ‘the monstrous’: the grotesque, shocking side of Leonardo da Vinci
16 Mar 2023 12:46
In response to LouisRiel
If artists are not curious, they are not artists. Just decorators.
Likewise. No curiosity – no science. Just technology.
You can’t in fact ‘assure’ me of anything.
The ‘anti-intellectualism’ is all in your inability to address the common aspirations of humanity. And your managerialistic need to divide and package disciplines, and alienate them from each other.
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Mona Lisa v ‘the monstrous’: the grotesque, shocking side of Leonardo da Vinci
15 Mar 2023 16:51In response to LouisRiel
‘they’ve neither the training nor the philosophy for it’
Here we go again with the meaningless, divisive, stagnating qualifications.
Both artists and scientists express themselves in the universal medium of curiosity. Which paths they take is largely down to chance and freedom, not ‘training’. Until very recently, you could hardly tell them apart, and the words hadn’t even been invented.
What ‘training’ have you had to deserve the vote? Or have an opinion on the existence of god?
View discussion
So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:58
In response to Billbunt
Lineker is a civilian.
The politicians are claiming that as such he has no right to express political opinions.
This rules us all out as voters – unless we have the right ‘qualifications’.
And also gags our freedom of speech.
And yet they claim Lineker was ‘offensive’?
A new low, if that were possible. But probably not at the depths of depravity yet.
So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:52
In response to ColdRobin
Lineker earns far more for the BBC than he’s paid. A bargain at twice the price – which Sky would pay in a heartbeat..
Why so bitter.
I’ve noticed that those who get paid well for doing a job they love and are better qualified for than anyone else, always get the most vitriol from the Eunuch Classes.
View discussion
So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:35
In response to ByrhtnothofEssex
Dead on.
The morons who claim sport and politics don’t mix don’t admit to how interconnected they are by strict rules, laws, conventions and ethics.
The sports fans watching this farce knew that the Ref had bungled, and that the decision should be referred to VAR and reversed. Sports fans have an instinctive respect for rules and ethics. This generated the wave of solidarity which forced the result.
If only this gang of tory hooligans had the same respect for the rules of civilisation?
View discussion
So Lineker is back. The mutiny is over. But the BBC can’t risk this humiliation again
13 Mar 2023 14:28
In response to GaryFenton77
Football is just a sterile folk-ritual without the socialisation that goes with it.
The endless post-match discussions in the pub which drag on longer than the game did.
This is invaluable to your ‘real’ fans.
Unfortunately this is TV, so punditry has to step up to the plate.
And very good pundits they are too. Far better qualified than any pub loudmouth.
View discussion
It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:28
In response to Cenobite
What are your political ‘qualifications’?
I hope you never vote.
What would you DO with it?
View discussion
It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:27
In response to vulgarius
You can’t ‘get your political views’ by yourself?
Lineker is expressing his views, not stuffing them down your throat.
If you have better ones, you’re free to express them too.
Oxbridge professors don’t have any monopoly on political thinking. No ‘expert’ does in any field. In fact, the more regimented, the more hidebound and static a discipline becomes.
Or Universal Suffrage would be as absurd as its Victorian enemies claimed.
View discussion
It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:20
In response to Hak_a_dalan
“With the country focussed on ” the tory corruption of the BBC, and the obscene can of worms it unearths, along with the unavoidable unhelpful links to a wide range of pernicious tory policies, heads will have to roll. And none of them will be Lineker’s. Given the degree of solidarity expressed by the BBC sports team, his decapitation would be catastrophic.
View discussion
It’s taken a brave football star to inject morality into our shaming debate on migrants
12 Mar 2023 12:13
Ist Lesson of politics.
Don’t tangle with sport – or babies.
View discussion
England suffer historic humiliation after France’s Twickenham tour de force
11 Mar 2023 19:37
In response to AD2023
What’s the ‘relevance’ of any crowd anthems?
The whole point is that they spring spontaneously from the tradition of rugby.
Why shouldn’t English rugby fans express a deep yearning for a purer, better place?
Especially after today.
View discussion
Macbeth review – the lady vanishes in filmic gangland hybrid
8 Mar 2023 10:56
In response to ClareBrennan
Did Beckett?
View discussion
The romcom effect: will a new movie gentrify Peckham as Richard Curtis gentrified Notting Hill?
7 Mar 2023 17:13
Reading through the general trend of comments, I’m depressed, but not surprised, at the priority given to the number of rip-off bars in a postcode over any perceptible sense of community generating from the place.
Another triumph of Consumerism over Humanism.
View discussion
Macbeth review – the lady vanishes in filmic gangland hybrid
6 Mar 2023 23:15
In response to ClareBrennan
In the age of the cinema mechanised war and Relativity, is suspension of disbelief and tragedy possible?
View discussion
Macbeth review – the lady vanishes in filmic gangland hybrid
6 Mar 2023 14:26
“the performance itself is a construction… context…”
And Brecht doesn’t get a credit?
View discussion
The BBC news channel revamp has been a PR disaster – but it also makes perfect sense
In response to LittleRichardjohn
(p.s. If the world pays a fee too, Brits might end up paying nothing. After all, we invented public service broadcasting. Time we got some reward)
The BBC news channel revamp has been a PR disaster – but it also makes perfect sense
Cut to the chase. The BBC is the only source of information available to the British people not in the clutches of the advertising industry, property speculators in particular – without which the Daily Mail would not exist – or would have completely different politics. As would British society.
It is naturally the establishment voice, but an establishment which can be rejected at the ballot box.
Unlike the perpetual torrent of lies peddled by mercenary hacks of the billionaire, phone-hacking, tax-dodging, drug-dealing, money-laundering, unaccountable, un-elected, price-fixing, profit-crazed gutter media.
The BBC news channel revamp has been a PR disaster – but it also makes perfect sense
there will be advertising for viewers outside the UK
Then why not the choice of paying the licence fee instead?
Surely, as the Guardian must testify, a subscription service is infinitely preferable to one at the mercy of the markets. By definition, it is more independent.
Right, Guardian?
Wasn’t much of the location footage of Holy Grail shot in North Wales?
Too simplistic.
What is the Cause and Effect at work?
What series of events caused Johnson?
Take one global financial crash, add the certain knowledge of climate disaster, and it’s not difficult to cook up a wholesale neo-fascist identity-crisis paranoia, lavishly garnished with Johnsons, Trumps, Putins and the rest of the madmen.
Like how to run a government?
In fact, Gray was never in the position to get personal goods on anyone.
He has to choose this weekend or he’s toast.
This is the week when the S hits the F.
It only looks ‘piss poor’ to those with minds already in the tory sewer.
Yesterday, Smogg raged against Gray on the grounds that she would have the goods on tory ministers (as if there was even worse to unearth).
This is because blackmail and extortion come naturally to his debased cult.
Rishi Sunak is shaping up to be a prime minister Keir Starmer should be wary of
“Sunak is capable of rebuilding at least some of the reputation for Conservative competence.”
You flatter them.
If the Windsor Knot did represent the glimmerings of sanity, it was soon snuffed out by the sight of Sunak praising the benefits of pre-Brexit Britain, and within the hour his press office contradicting him.
NI being able to trade feely with the EU – GOOD.
UK being able to trade feely with the EU – VERY VERY BAD.
And this is only the lunacy at the top.
When the Minister for Women and Equality equates the menopause with having ginger hair and sneers at the idea of caring, when the ex minister of Education hates teachers – the list is endless – Sunak has to do a lot more to re-staff the asylum before he can make any credible claims to competence.
In response to B1ngoCrepuscule
Now that the No 10 office has contradicted the Prime Minister, the game is not merely lost, but the loser has overturned the board.
In response to WulfrunianInGermany
The odds are that the DUPs vastly inflated sense of its own importance will kybosh this agreement at some point.
Anything to avoid their democratic duty to share power with republicans.
There is a surefire way for the English to correctly pronounce Irish names. Just ask us
I would say that the success of English-speaking Imperialism always had negative side-effects on English culture. One being the traditional assumption they they know how to pronounce a word or place-name better than the residents speaking it.
‘Aberfan’ being the most infamous, sickening example.
In some circles, to pronounce foreign words correctly was an effeminate sign of ‘going native.’ After all, the natives are only allowed to speak their own language at all by kind permission of the English.
They should be grateful.
There is a surefire way for the English to correctly pronounce Irish names. Just ask us
According to Alf Garnett:
“I grant you that other countries have got noises for things – but they’re not like – a real language.
So I’m not surprised the cloth-eared English cannot pronounce the ethereal construction of Irish Gaelic.
They can’t even get their tongues around the pedantically phonetic ‘noises’ of Welsh.
They don’t want to. They won’t listen.
Rishi Sunak can’t compromise his protocol deal. He must face down the DUP
In response to Freedomofspeecg
In Northern Ireland, the majority voted Remain.
The same Shouty Minority that lost base their identity and bet their future on the Battle of the Boyne and are now trying to destroy the Brexit agreement they welcomed two years ago, or the Good Friday Agreement which guarantees peace, or both.
In fact, there isn’t much they don’t want to destroy.
If we defund opera saying it is for toffs, then only the toffs will go. Where’s the sense in that?
what Britain has that continental Europe doesn’t have (on the whole) is a class system.
Total and utter garbage.
Capitalism is now the world religion, and its hierarch is everywhere, and now computerised.
If yo want to know your economic class, just check your ‘credit-rating’.
Same thing.
Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place
In response to RomanTotale_XVII
Covid, as managed by Pile-em High Johnson, taught us that the effect of ignoring scientific advice to lockdown is the highest death-rate in Europe and a cull of thousands of the most vulnerable (and expensive) members of society.
Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place
In response to ruffledfeathers
Pigs and poultry do not have to be intensively farmed
Depends if you want to make a profit and want your business to survive in the face of overwhelming corporate competition. Or not.
Be warned: the next deadly pandemic is not inevitable, but all the elements are in place
How is the creation of more zoonotic pathogens not inevitable when all the toxic forces of deforestation, mass-extinction and industrial and factory-farming which created Covid are even more rampant now?
We don’t need ‘miracle’ technologies to fix the climate. We have the tools now
At what point is the inherently huge waste-level of consumerism ‘factored-in’ to the sums?
Eliminate that (as must happen) and the task of available technologies becomes much easier.
Stop trying to defy the laws of thermodynamics. Or ‘get a quart from a pint pot’, as my granny used to say.
‘pint’ – An amount of liquid capable of quenching the thirst of a farm-labourer after a morning’s work.
‘Quart’ – Two ‘pints’
We don’t need ‘miracle’ technologies to fix the climate. We have the tools now
7 Feb 2023 12:44
Available technologies are easily able to meet our needs.
Especially if the obscene waste driven by toxic consumerism were eliminated.
The advocates of hi-tech gimmicks like nuclear power are trying to keep pace with the exorbitant demands of capitalism. This is trying to get a quart out of a pint pot. Perpetual Growth within a closed system is not physically possible.
And even if the Greenhouse Effect was a myth, our ecosystem is still doomed from the poisoning of our oceans, and the mass extinction of species to make burgers.
The radical shift from the failed competitive dogma to a sustainable cooperative global ideology has never been more vital.
When the Sec.Gen of the United Nations sounds like Trotsky, something significant is happening.
View discussion
The Guardian view on rugby union: a sport rich in drama is at a crossroads
3 Feb 2023 13:22
In response to Tiffie41
Where there’s brass there’s muck.
Rugby has just become part of Gravy-train Britain, with all its corruption and poison.
View discussion
The Guardian view on rugby union: a sport rich in drama is at a crossroads
Skill has nothing to do with sport.
By definition ‘sport’ is unpredictable. An organism which suddenly displays a characteristic for which there is no explanation. A chance mutation which can occur in any game at any time.
In the case of rugby, this means constant suspension of expectation.
Result – drama.
As opposed to a computer game – only with human victims.
The wreckage of Brexit is all around us. How long can our politicians indulge in denial?
The Identity Crisis you identify is not merely post-imperial British, but pre-climate catastrophe Global.
Who wouldn’t be panicked into conspiracies, denialism and myths at the prospect of extermination?
Tom Jenkins’s best sport photographs of 2022
The Sam Ewing shot is riveting.
Reminiscent of the classic images of colliers by Bill Brandt and Eugene Smith.
I’m 100% faithful: The Traitors is the most exquisite reality TV of the year
Sounds disgusting.
Why should I bother?
We had no idea we could get social housing, but it has changed our lives
And until someone did it, powered flight was not possible because ‘God did not give us wings’. Have you seen footage of the first attempts at aviation?
The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse
9 Dec 2022 14:42
In response to phvero
For the same reasons people happy to live in the shadow of a volcano.
View discussion
The US is a rogue state leading the world towards ecological collapse
9 Dec 2022 14:41
In response to MarkPJNY
‘The U.S is anything but monolithic.‘
The global corporate hegemony is.
And is determined to impose its death-worship everywhere.
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:51
In response to DauGiHyfryd
Stonehenge was a giant international effort on the scale of the Euro-tunnel, involving the peaceful cooperation of ‘tribes’ from the Orkneys to Germany.
It could never have been completed by force, and the timescale of its construction means that the era was largely peaceful.
How does your single piece of research refute the achievement of over 1500 years work, which is still standing?
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:41
In response to thegreatfatsby
‘These characteristics are nearly always in tension.’
Human nature has been perverted by power ever since we learned how to manage excess production.~
That is NOT ‘always’.
And given that we now have enough productive capacity to easily cater for the global population, Power as such becomes obsolete.
But try telling that to those addicted to it.
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:38
In response to Beleagured
Where do you want to live?
Not that ‘life’ will be an option apart from a few acid-resistant algae.
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:36
In response to roverthehillandfaraw
Genuine Austerity (combined with Utility) won the 39-45 show.
Then it was a collective sacrifice for our survival as a country. Now it will be a sacrifice for our species. Which is more important?
The orgy cannot go on forever. The laws of nature state that indefinite growth is not possible within a closed system (you can’t get a quart out of a pint pot).
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 12:27
In response to SimplyBlue
‘that is what humanity is, always has been, always will be.‘
Garbage.
Toxic property-based power structures have only been prevalent for a few thousand years of our existence, and only in a few areas of the globe.
In many cultures, co-operation was still the norm until we exterminated them.
Ask Captains Cook and Blye what they thought of Tahiti.
Human ‘nature’ is inherently cooperative and tends to egalitarianism.
Human Reciprocal Altruism, the Evolutionary geneticists call it.
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 11:44
In response to Beleagured
Money Makes Morality.
If the markets say it’s right, it’s right.
That’s why Bishops can bless battleships.
View discussion
Don’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 11:42
In response to roverthehillandfaraw
I do absolutely mean ‘levelling down’ the West’s gross level of over-consumption.
And stripping the Billionaire class of its booty.
Any problems with that?
It’s going to happen sooner or later when global civilisation cracks under the strain. So better do it in an orderly fashion while there are still governments and electricity.
View discussionDon’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 10:58
In response to ceales
And get less Human with each pathetic status symbol squirrelled away.
It’s a disease.
‘Class-insecurity’ would cover it.
View discussionDon’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 10:55
In response to Chris2817
Wherever money is put into education and general welfare, birth-rates collapse.
Equality is the answer to the population problem.
Not mass-extermination by the Consumer God.
View discussionDon’t panic about the birth of Baby 8 Billion. Before he’s 65 our numbers will be in reverse
20 Nov 2022 10:52
In response to Beleagured
‘Homo sapiens wants ever more and more of the ‘good things in life’
It wants no such thing. The natural human instinct which put us in charge of the environment is cooperative, and therefore far more interested in sharing than stealing.
You’re confusing Humanity with psychopathic billionaires.
View discussionOur leaders had a final chance to halt climate breakdown. They failed each and every one of us
18 Nov 2022 16:08
In response to dwatsuts
‘there is nothing special or sacred about human life‘
So destroy it as fast as possible.
Makes sense to a maniac.
Name another life-form that even knows that it’s mortal, let alone that it is conspiring in its own death.
Name another species that knowingly kills itself.
What gives us the right to exterminate the millions of other species who would also perish because of us
View discussion
The Guardian view on Britain’s electric vehicle industry: slow-motion car crash
15 Nov 2022 16:30
In response to woolwich
Billions are about to die.
And global cooperation is the only viable strategy for a sustainable future.
The competitive Consumerism which is poisoning the planet cannot be trusted, it is dead. And the closer the climate disasters get, the more people will become conscious of their common dilemma, and the causes of it.
View discussion
Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
15 Nov 2022 15:50
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
Languages are ways of thinking about the world.
Each one provides a different viewpoint.
Your C19th Utilitarian rules demand regimentation and monoculture.
Is that the world you want?
View discussion
Austerity 2.0 is not a necessity – it’s a choice. Why won’t the media say so?
15 Nov 2022 13:03
Austerity 2.0 is not a necessity – it’s a choice. Why won’t the media say so?
Why indeed?
Where indeed?
Here indeed, for a start.
BBC: 4 days ago.
‘Economists question ‘black hole’ in UK finances’
‘ the Progressive Economy Forum, which campaigns to end austerity, said that “fiscal hole” is merely the difference between an uncertain forecast – of how much the government will spend and borrow in future under current plans – and what it can afford to do if it is to hit its own targets – that debt starts to fall as a proportion of the economy three or five years from now.
If the economy grows faster or the time frame changes, the “hole” can shrink or grow dramatically, the economists said – far more than it would because of spending cuts or tax rises.
Using official forecasts from the OBR, the authors of the research, economists Jo Michell and Rob Calvert Jump, conclude that small changes in forecasts for future interest rates and growth, and what is counted as government debt, dramatically alter the size of the predicted gap in the public finances.’
Read on.
View discussion
The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:53
In response to StevenPG
Why SHOULDN’T the rich pay for the industrialisation that made them that way?
View discussion
The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:52
In response to digit
The thirst for oil is the thirst for power.
If every home were energy-self-sufficient, politicians would become obsolete overnight. As would most laws.
In other words, if Ukraine was powered by renewables at a local level rather than nuclear hellholes, Putin would be impotent.
Power-independence of the many threatens the status of the powerful few. So renewable technology must be suppressed as much as possible.
View discussion
The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:47
In response to PeterNewcastle
‘they have been aided and abetted in this by much of the mainstream media. including the BBC,‘
Total and utter garbage.
Without the BBC pioneering environmental awareness for the last 50 years, often alone, organisations like Greenpeace and FOE would hardly exist.
As for the token appearances of the cranks, if the world of hard science can’t make then look like the idiots they are, gawdelpus.
View discussion
The British right’s hostility to climate action is deeply entrenched – and extremely dangerous
13 Nov 2022 15:39
In response to Echoshedman
‘The trouble is the consumerist identity is it’s the one the vast majority still identify with‘
Until the lights start to go out and the holiday home slides into the sea.
There will be a lightbulb moment for the world. Let’s hope it’s soon enough.
It’s not as if there is any choice in the matter.
View discussion
What next, petrol on a Picasso? Threatening art is no answer to the climate crisis
14
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And stopping a horse-race to get the right to vote is also going ‘too far’.
Spoiling people’s enjoyment.
Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
28
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In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
Speaking more than one language expands the mind (Fact).
Teaching French and German in English schools is a sheer waste of time since a year after their GSCEs it’s all faded from lack of use.
The 2nd language to teach in English schools is obviously Welsh, with conversational experience available within an hour or two drive.
It would do just as much good to the young brain, educate the English in the culture of their nearest and oldest neighbour, stop the English from sounding silly when trying to pronounce basic Welsh place-names, and help revive the language which the English deliberately tried to exterminate more than once.
Call it ‘Reparations’.
Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
15 Nov 2022 16:38
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
the world speaks English.
No it doesn’t. Thank goodness.
And even if it did, that would be all the more reason to preserve the last surviving alternative viewpoint on the world.
Looking at how politicians and businessmen and generals have mangled, perverted and abused English, you’re welcome to your Triumph.
There is such a thing as too much victory.
View discussion
The Guardian view on Britain’s electric vehicle industry: slow-motion car crash
1
Recommend
Billions are about to die.
And global cooperation is the only viable strategy for a sustainable future.
The competitive Consumerism which is poisoning the planet cannot be trusted, it is dead. And the closer the climate disasters get, the more people will become conscious of their common dilemma, and the causes of it.
Second homes are hollowing out Welsh communities – and pushing our language into decline
33
Recommend
In response to ComputerSaysPerhaps
Languages are ways of thinking about the world.
Each one provides a different viewpoint.
Your C19th Utilitarian rules demand regimentation and monoculture.
Is that the world you want?
Trump’s march back to power has faltered. Now comes the real challenge for the global left
9 Nov 2022 18:58
The message is simple.
‘Cooperate or perish’
António Guterres COP 27 day 2.
There Is No Alternative.
‘We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over. Only a root-and-branch transformation of our economies and societies can save us from accelerating climate disaster.’
(Inger Andersen, executive director of UN Environment Programme.)
‘Root’ as in ‘radical’, as in uprooting the choking weed of Consumerism.
View discussion
How can we cut soaring demand for meat? Try a hybrid burger
4
Recommend
Why?
Because so-called ‘choice’ is destroying the ecosystem. And …
It isn’t real ‘choice’ at all since it is not informed, but based on the publicity and propaganda of the fast food industry, which is the second biggest misinformation culprit after the fossil-fuel gangsters..
How can we cut soaring demand for meat? Try a hybrid burger
7
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How much CO2 does it take to process vegetable protein into a cosmetically acceptable state?
How can we cut soaring demand for meat? Try a hybrid burger
12
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Try taxing the pants off it and cutting portions down to something Human.
Every main course I see in restaurants looks like Desperate Dan’s cow-pie. Since when did pizzas and Yorkshires get to be the size of car tyres?
A ‘small’ portion of chips now feeds two.
32
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And in today’s Times:
‘A minister has claimed that Sir Gavin Williamson raised details about her private life during a conversation in an attempt to silence her while she was on the back benches.
… Another female Tory MP has also provided evidence to the party about a recent encounter with Williamson.’
Is there no end to this man’s f****g talent?
06/06/2022
I may be wrong but I think Boris Johnson is done for. I can’t see his Tory cult surviving
6 Jun 2022 10:50
In response to Foster6the6imposter6
The stupid “Left-Right” distinction makes no sense when looking at this sort of policy.
Let’s face it, this fake symmetry has never been fit for purpose.
As useful as the terms ‘up’ and ‘down’ in outer space.
Nobody can define the difference between ‘left’ and ‘right’ to a visiting Martian. It is a polarity which stupifies political thought, while invoking a mass of ancient emotive cultural associations from every Old Master of the Last Judgment to everyday language like ‘adroit’ and ‘gauche’.
‘Sinister’ – ‘right’?
View discussion
03/06/2022
Martin Rowson on the Queen’s platinum jubilee – cartoon
3 Jun 2022 20:29
Plati-Jube will neither prolong nor help end the Monarchy.
To call for its ‘abolition’ is putting the cart before the horse. Trying to cure the symptoms rather than the disease.
The embodiment of a Hierarchical culture based on property and power-worship can only be smothered under a wave of egalitarianism. Such as the one required to combat the causes of climate change.
View discussion
01/06/2022
Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
1 Jun 2022 17:55
In response to MattB242
It is completely natural to feel an affinity for the place you grew up. The deepest influences are instilled during childhood.
This is very different to the power-politics of nationalism. Patriotism is passive, nationalism is aggressive.
When the British left stops sneering at patriotism, it might stand a chance of winning an election.
View discussion
Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
1 Jun 2022 17:49
In response to MattB242
You call abolitionists who will watch the Coronation ‘hypocrites’.
Rather, they are simply taking part in a slice of history, and acknowledging that, whatever its negative influence, the Monarchy is an inextricable part of their culture, and displaying an inescapable understanding of their history.
How do you propose to ‘make it gone’?
Mass brainwashing? A bonfire of History?
You might as well try to abolish religion.
Religion and monarchy will die out in good time, when global crises create a more egalitarian norm. But even then, the cultural influences of both will not disappear overnight, as most of them will be too deep-seated and indirect to be identified with their causes.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Trying to cure the symptom, not the disease.
View discussion
Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
1 Jun 2022 13:30
In response to tonystoke
Johnson’s politics would have lost us the war. And yet the history of the cooperation which won it has been hijacked by the Squander-bugs and Spivs. Fake patriots who refused to even wear facemasks to protect their fellow-citizens.
Very few people alive have seen a Coronation, unlike previous generations, who would have seen more than one in their lifetime.
I pay my rates. I want my coronation!
View discussion
Try as he might, Boris Johnson can’t use the jubilee as ammunition in his culture war
The appeal of Platijube is based on people’s perennial eagerness to feel that they are part of history – of something bigger than themselves.
The notion that an institution as extended as the monarchy can be dismissed as meaningless, and can be eradicated, is bizarre. As will be demonstrated by the number of abolitionists who find themselves watching the next Coronation, if only to get a sense of what Westminster Abbey was created for, to see the old girl working at full steam, and to get inside the minds of our ancestors who witnessed the same ceremony a thousand years ago – IF they have any sense of and respect for history.
The same sense of history as those who witness the solstices at Stonehenge.
Why not demolish it and build a much-needed hospital for the Hampshire area?
View discussion
31/05/2022
Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 18:23
In response to alexito
For scientific purposes.
But would you force everyone to wear digital watches? Because it’s the same technocratic agenda. The same obsession with pointless precision.
And just as debilitating to the imagination and intellectual freedom.
View discussion
Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 18:11
In response to ProjectXRay
You’ll want to ban the analogue clockface next, and emasculate all imagination from everyday life.
When you start your project to build a Moon-Rocket, metric units will be very useful to you.
Most people buying spuds and ordering pints will still think in analogue units, with a relationship to the objects of the world they see.
View discussion
Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 18:06
In response to Chrispytl
For some on the metric side, it is a matter of fundamentalism.
A browse of social media will uncover an alarming number of people who would totally eradicate Analogue Humanist units of measurement. In the name of ‘progress’.
It’s hard to conceive of a more effective means of alienation than Total Digitisation, forcing all thought into scientific units too cosmic or microscopic to be visualised or imagined..
View discussion
Pounds, ounces, pints! Johnson is offering a whole bushel worth of phoned-in gibberish
31 May 2022 17:57
Johnson’s new gimmick is as mired in pop-nostalgia as everything else he tries.
But, there is a strong case for retaining Humanist or Analogue systems of measurement which relate to objects in everyday life and exercise the imagination, however useful metric (digital) systems are to technocrats and accountants.
There is plenty of room for both.
Metric claims for precision are undeniable, but so is the fact that the Pyramids of Giza were built on a unit determined by the human forearm. Vitruvian Man is not based on the circumference of the Earth; rather, the other way round.
The alarming revelation of this debate is the degree of outright hostility and intolerance expressed by those claiming that metrication represents ‘Progress’.
Their demands to eradicate the past and sterilise culture don’t sound very ‘progressive’ to me.
View discussion
27/05/2022
even science can’t explain the creatures clinging on to Johnson
The science of Psychology can explain them with one word.
Psychopaths.
The victims of a disease which destroys the ability of the sufferers to empathise with their fellow creatures and enables them to believe that the damnable heresy of yesterday is the glorious orthodoxy of today. As with the tory Windfall Tax U-Turn, which is one of the most egregious cases of doublethink outside North Korea.
Stalin is smirking in his grave.
19/05/2022
It’s too soon to celebrate Putin’s losses – the hard miles are yet to come for Ukraine
19 May 2022 15:33
There is already pressure on Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow, and it will only increase as the broader economic impact hits home.
Economic impacts which will only increase pressure even more while the so-called ‘alliance’ refuses to behave like one and share the burdens of war, instead of imposing all the pain on front line states in the fuel embargo and refugee crisis.
The winners in a war are generally the side which rations most effectively.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MehmetJoe and @MayorofLondon
It’s not just ‘a racist with a gun’, it’s a huge proportion of the official U.S. opposition, who peddle the same fascist ‘Replacement Theory’. If that doesn’t worry you, you’re braindead.
axios.com
Racist ‘white replacement theory’ goes mainstream with Republicans
A growing number of Republicans are promoting “white replacement theory,” once the provenance of white supremacists.
7:39 PM · May 16, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @DPJHodges and @brianmoore666
Apologism for Johnson is not ‘compromise’ but COLLUSION. Without political pragmatism there would never have been any Labour governments. Including 1945. Your determination to stay in opposition is a credit to your fundamentalism, but a disaster for ordinary working people like me.
6:07 PM · May 15, 2022·Twitter Web App
Remote working is making the UK a more equal place – however much Jacob Rees-Mogg may sneer
15 May 2022 17:54
It’s a matter of ownership.
The lives of supervised workers under one roof are the property of its employer. And the routine of being owned tends to condition the political behaviour of the workforce, making it more obedient and institutionalised.
Any taste of freedom, such as that provided by Covid requirements, is hard to relinquish, and the Ratchet Principle kicks in.
In the words of the song: ‘How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?’ The Black Death opened similar horizons. Much to the despair and downfall of the feudal Catholic hegemony Rees-Mogg still clings to.
View discussion
14/05/2022
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 15:26
In response to RationalFacts
It only helps to prove that 1970 was 50 years ago, when Climate Science as we know it was in its infancy.
This we knew already.
Infants cannot walk, talk or think properly. Chemistry was Alchemy once. Astronomy began as Astrology.
Climate Science has been grown up for a long time now, and can runs rings around your puny urban myths and Click-Bait sites.
Want more evidence? Real evidence..
“The influence of global warming on the unprecedented extreme climatic events between 2006 and 2017 has previously been underestimated, according to a new study from Stanford University, US, which could have major consequences for people’s lives.
The study shows that predicting the likelihood of future extreme weather events by analysing how frequently they occurred in the past underestimated about half the actual number of extremely hot days in Europe and East Asia.”
Cosmos
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 14:03
In response to Paulhalsall
The first mention of the Greenhouse Effect I remember was in a school library edition of Paris Match from 1970.
Mentions of global cooling from the time were based on the fact that we were due one, and indeed entering a cold phase.
Technically, we still are. But we have spewed so much CO2 that we have overcome the natural cycle.
View discussion
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 13:57
In response to RishiNoLongerDishy
Now you’re denying’ the science of assessing the methodology of science.
You haven’t provided any evidence yet. Just half-remembered hearsay from decades ago.
Why break the habit of a lifetime?
More science for you to refute with memories.
“”Most climate models are a little too eager to glaciate below freezing, so they are likely exaggerating the increase in cloud reflectivity as the atmosphere warms,” said LLNL coauthor Mark Zelinka. “This means they may be systematically underestimating how much warming will occur in response to carbon dioxide.”
These results add to a growing body of evidence that the stabilizing cloud feedback at mid- to high latitudes in climate models is overstated. “
SCIENCE DAILY
Rob Kenyon @biginaboxReplying to
@Vayod3 @IiiSocrate and 3 others
You’re still basing everything on current rates of consumption and predicted ‘growth’. All chasing rainbows. A sustainable future means radical reduction in energy consumption. IE. the death of Consumerism. Which is inevitable one way or another. Nuclear epidemic or no..
1:40 PM · May 14, 2022·
Twitter Web App
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:41
In response to Luvelyguy
A common social media myth.
Try some science.
“the Danish institute’s models show ice volume at the 2021 minimum extent was greater than in some past years, such as 2019 and 2020. However, it was still much smaller than levels seen in the early 2000s.
Arctic ice shrinking is a trend that goes back decades, according to records from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Satellite surveillance since the late 1970s shows Arctic sea ice cover during the minimum extent has declined by about 13% each decade, NASA says on its website. And the pattern holds all year round.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/21/fact-check-arctic-antarctic-ice-didnt-reach-record-highs-2021/6503500001/
View discussion
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:31
In response to Umberleigh
In case you hadn’t noticed, Britain just missed yet another Winter, and has seen a Spring drought across huge areas.
View discussion
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:23
In response to ServiusGalba
They really need to get some better advice on how to sell their message
Science is denied. Direct action is criminalised.
Let’s wait until the chaos starts.
Maybe that’ll get the ‘message’ across to the Consumerist Zombies.
But even then, it won’t be seen as the result of toxic Pig-Trough culture, but be blamed on the ‘hordes’ of ‘migrants’ ‘flooding’ Britain to scrounge off our welfare state and steal our women.
That’s what’s happening now, so why not then?
View discussion
14/05/2022
‘Fun in the sun’ photos are a dangerous distraction from the reality of climate breakdown
14 May 2022 12:14
In response to RishiNoLongerDishy
You are denying almost everything.
It’s becoming clearer every day that the only thing ‘wrong’ about the science is how much its predictions were underestimates of the chaos to come.
“We found that the institutional aspects of assessment, including who the authors are and how they are chosen, how the substance is divided into chapters, and guidance emphasizing consensus, also mitigate in favor of scientific conservatism. Thus, so far as our evidence goes, it appears that scientists working in assessments are more likely to underestimate than to overestimate threats.
<a href=”https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/”
rel=”nofollow”>Scientific American.
““It’s not so much that climate change itself is proceeding faster than expected — the warming is right in line with model predictions from decades ago,” said climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University. “Rather, it’s the fact that some of the impacts are greater than scientists predicted.”
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2021/07/26/624249.htm
13/05/2022
We need optimism – but Disneyfied climate predictions are just dangerous
13 May 2022 16:57
In response to GaryCross
good, honest private sector scientists
How ‘honest’ are they about their unstinting endeavours on behalf of the Toxic Sector seeking ever more creative uses for oil and gas and plastics? And ever more efficient methods of deforestation.
The ‘private sector’ merely serves the needs of the Consumerism which poisoning the environment and society. When it finally admits its true role, and abandons it, then it might show signs of ‘honesty’.
Until then it is in profit-driven Denialism. The lapdog of every Kleptocratic tyrant on the planet.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @JinglyLenny and @paulmasonnews
When Putin invaded and occupied Crimea, he surrendered all rights to expect that the West would not react. By threatening to invade the EU and Finland, he proved his paranoid megalomania, and preparations had to be made. He is the ‘existential threat’
7:50 PM · May 11, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @RivetStuart and @BBCNews
The fetishisation of Power in our sick culture is the cause of most psychopathic behaviour. Sexual abuse is just one assertion of identity by those who can only achieve respect through fear.
2:01 PM · May 10, 2022·
Twitter Web App
09/05/2022
You say Partygate, I say Beergate – let’s call the whole thing off
9 May 2022 18:04
“He has been punished by the electorate for lying about it”
(!!!?)
‘Faith, here’s an Equivocator!
That could swear in both the scales against either scale;
Who committed treason enough for God’s sake,
Yet could not equivocate to heaven:
O, come in, equivocator.’
You say ‘Tomato’ and I say maggot-ridden dead dog in Downing Street – let’s clean the whole stinking mess up.
Equivocating Johnson with Starmer is incredible.
View discussion
05/05/2022
Ukraine is already winning: victory can be achieved without risking nuclear war
5 May 2022 12:45
In response to StandishDunbar
Russia is at the forefront of a Climate-Science Denying global Kleptocracy that will do anything to preserve its power.
China, India, Brazil, the USA if Trumpism regains control.. The list goes on.
Civilisation is outnumbered and any hopes of achieving IPCC CO2 targets are ashes.
Working out the consequences doesn’t need a computer the size of a planet.
View discussion
Ukraine is already winning: victory can be achieved without risking nuclear war
5 May 2022 12:17
I can only repeat what I said 2 months ago – that if there is an anti-Putin alliance, it should act like one, and equitably share the burdens, not expect Hungary to go bankrupt and Poland to house most of the refugees..
Putin’s warmongering has presented progressive politics with an opportunity for both promoting Western cooperation and cutting CO2 emissions. Both long overdue and inevitable in the long-term.
When Russian gas supplies to Europe end, Western allies should share reserves. It will mean reduced per capita consumption, but this had to happen sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any to start.
In retrospect, Russian expansionism and its search for new fossil fuel markets in China was always a reaction to Western ‘threats’ to achieve Zero CO2 emissions. Ukraine is a Gas War…
03/05/2022
You get filthy’ – the photographer who shoots sweaty workmen in building sites
3 May 2022 14:05
he often uses black-and-white film, partly because it’s cheaper, partly because it can handle the varied light on site, but also because it shows up the grime.
Sorry to be contrary, but from working on sites and photographing a wide range of workplaces for 40 years, digital is much cheaper than film, and shows up grime just as well.
If anything, now, film is the ‘middle class ghetto’.
View discussion
28/04/2022
In an era of electoral fragmentation, Labour must learn to embrace power-sharing
28 Apr 2022 11:50
In response to Plovdiv12
The Disaster Capitalism background of the Great Depression, blurred many political lines.
The terms ‘left’ and ‘fascist’ meant little by comparison with general opposition to the homicidal idiocy of the status quo. ‘Fascism’ did not mean what it means now – though it became obvious very soon, roughly when Aneurin Bevan saw through Mosely.
Ten years later, in another life-or-death crisis, Churchill was the blue-eyed-boy of the Communist Party. And Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’ to the Daily Mail.
Go figure.
View discussion
In an era of electoral fragmentation, Labour must learn to embrace power-sharing
28 Apr 2022 11:41
In response to BonyFido
Labour party decoupled from the unions
In other words a Labour Party robbed of financial backing, with only rich people able to afford to run for office. Eliminate the working class at a stroke! Brilliant.
Why haven’t the billionaire-backed tories thought of it before? Oh, they have, repeatedly. It’s their wet-dream.
Very constructive.
View discussion
In an era of electoral fragmentation, Labour must learn to embrace power-sharing
28 Apr 2022 11:34
In response to MikePicken
Sarwar and Starmer’s ploy is a cynical move to try to reassert the notion that only sole Labour rule at Westminster is the way forward.
A mirror of Corbyn, then?
View discussion
27/04/2022
What’s the best thing that Elon Musk can do with Twitter? Delete it
27 Apr 2022 12:50
Delete it
And throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Surrender the Information War to the terrorists.
There are as many uses for Twitter as there are users, which is just a club with rules which hold it together. And which is more self-didactic than it is diatribe.
Musk’s adolescent interpretation of freedom ( ‘When people you don’t like say things you don’t like‘) is no licence to shout FIRE! in a crowded theatre. Neither is his obscene wealth.
View discussion
25/04/2022
Working 9-5 doesn’t mean being chained to a desk. Someone tell Jacob Rees-Mogg
25 Apr 2022 16:53
” Deloitte tells staff they can work from home forever
Boss Richard Houston says accountant’s 20,000 UK employees will not be required to be in the office for any set number of days a week.
Deloitte has told its 20,000 UK staff that they can work wherever they want when Covid restrictions are lifted as the accountancy firm adopts a fully flexible approach”
( Daily Telegraph.)
If it’s good enough for the top accountancy firm Toilette & Douche, it’s good enough for Downing Street.
View discussion
21/04/2022
Boris Johnson to face inquiry into claims he misled parliament over Partygate – as it happened
21 Apr 2022 15:46
In response to ConansMight
Brexit was caused by decades of Europhobe lies by mercenary hacks like Johnson and peddled by billionaire, phone-hacking, tax-dodging, drug-dealing, money-laundering, unaccountable, un-elected, price-fixing, profit-crazed gutter media.
Propaganda which perverted British culture, and corrupted Truth in the name of power.
The last straw for reactionary brexiteers was the fact that Global Warming would demand the end of Consumerism, and as proven by Science, require unprecedented global cooperation. Cooperation is just another world for socialism. And that would never do, even though it means rescuing civilisation from the ravages of profit. Even though it means denying science.
View discussion
19/04/2022
Seriously, Tory party, there is no pooper scooper big enough to clear up Johnson’s constant mess
19 Apr 2022 12:38
In response to Deling63
“Keir having a beer and eating pizza at a constituency office” at a planned meeting.
Eating at meetings was not illegal. Whitehall staff did it all the time.
Planning a party certainly was illegal.
How many times did Starmer lie about his meeting? What was the verdict of the Metropolitan police?
Next pathetic excuse for the lawbreaking liar?
View discussion
15/04/2022
Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go
15 Apr 2022 17:07
In response to NeitherYankNorBrit
How would that go?
Let’s hear his denial as you imagine it (omit the roars of Kremlin laughter)
View discussion
Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go
15 Apr 2022 17:04
In response to GarethapdDafydd
As a proven liar, he is a weapon in Putin’s information war.
How do you imagine him dealing with the next Russian lie?
View discussion
Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go
15 Apr 2022 17:01
Until Johnson resigns, Britain can never again accuse Putin of lying.
The Information war is lost.
View discussion
13/04/2022
Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?
13 Apr 2022 16:16
In response to SterlingPound
Putin will accept this propaganda gift with thanks.
Johnson’s crimes validate Putin’s Alt-Truth ideology, and discredit the entire alliance against him.
Don’t try holding your breath until Johnson calls him a liar again.
View discussion
Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?
13 Apr 2022 15:36
In response to Baggywhacker
“is it not better for Johnson to remain in power? “
Definitely better for Putin’s Alt-Truth ideology too.
Now he can run Johnson’s lies to Parliament on a loop on state TV, sending the message to his troops that their crimes will go unchallenged.
View discussion
Lie, deny and move on – how much longer will the Johnson mantra plague British politics?
13 Apr 2022 15:32
As a proven liar, Johnson can now never accuse Putin of lying.
Until he resigns, the information war with Russia is lost, and Putin can commit genocide with impunity.
The ‘Ukraine Defence’ is not only cynical opportunism and insulting to the people of Ukraine, but a strategic disaster.
View discussion
12/04/2022
They broke the law and are disgraced. Whatever they do now, shame will cling to Johnson and Sunak
12 Apr 2022 17:35
In response to ScottieDug
Fabricant plumbed the depths of disgust when he accused NHS workers of being criminals, and thereby excusing Johnson & Sunak.
He even had the gall to blame anti-Brexiteers for Johnson’s predicament.
View discussion
They broke the law and are disgraced. Whatever they do now, shame will cling to Johnson and Sunak
12 Apr 2022 17:25
In response to FellingUpBeat
can’t see anything fundamentally being done about this other than Labour calling for them to resign and both of them just ignoring it.
The Speaker can be asked to recall Parliament for a vote of no confidence.
Given the tory majority, this may not evict Johnson, but it would expose the tory MPs who endorse the Big Lie. Their constituencies would then at least know the truth about the representatives they have chosen – for future reference .
View discussion
They broke the law and are disgraced. Whatever they do now, shame will cling to Johnson and Sunak
12 Apr 2022 17:02
You can always depend on Johnson to lie, lie, and lie again. To display utter contempt for the public and parliament.
And on his Zombies to find bizarre excuses for him.
The fact is he is either a total liar, or an utter fool, or both.
Any permutation renders him unfit for office – especially during an economic, medical and security crisis.
View discussion
06/04/2022
The United Nations has the power to punish Putin. This is how it can be done
6 Apr 2022 16:57
In response to VM1964
You can laugh at the principles of partnership all you like, but they are essential to defeating Putin.
Your posturing would be less obvious and hypocritical if you were prepared to make the same sacrifices you are demanding of Germany and other front line states. Are you?
Any Putin Quislings in Europe are not in power, and Germany remains the state which has implemented the most genuine sanctions against Russia – unlike Johnson’s job-saving bluster. His cowardice in appeasing his xenophobic electorate by refusing to accept refugees, and his cynical opportunism in exploiting Putin’s butchery to save his miserable skin are in sharp contrast with the measured constitutionality of the German coalition. Contrary to populaist lies, Germany did not refuse to allow over-flights of its territory by NATO, they would have been illegal under German law – not that NATO was prepared to risk any such flights planned anyway.
Britain’s anti-alliance free-market approach to the Ukraine war will extend it by a year.
Post Cold War trade with Russia in a globalised economy was widely seen as a key to peace. Captain Hindsights like you did not foresee what Putin would become.
View discussion
The United Nations has the power to punish Putin. This is how it can be done
6 Apr 2022 13:58
In response to lindecarr
Members of the EU feeding Putin with billions of euros in exchange for fuel are supporting his destruction of a country
There could be an energy embargo tomorrow if all members of the so-called ‘Anti-Putin Alliance’ agreed to share their reserves equitably with the states dependent on Russian oil and gas. There is no ‘alliance’ until all members of it agree to bear the burdens, rather than cash in as front-line states like Germany risk bankruptcy.
Britain’s position is ‘I’m All Right Jack.’ Let Poland house 3 million refugees while we take none. It’s their fault for being in the wrong place.
Let Germany, Italy, Hungary, Greece and the rest suffer drastic cuts to their energy supplies – their fault for conducting legal business with Russia and trying to heal the wounds of the Cold War. While Londongrad’s illegal blood-money fed the Kremlin war-machine for decades.
View discussion
04/04/2022
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @_V_5_M_ @Poodog73 and 2 others
What matters is the degree of sharing the burden. If Putin turns off the tap, which he probably will, Johnson will watch in glee as the German economy crashes. Then take the credit for the UK’s rise in the league table.
8:29 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @_V_5_M_ @Poodog73 and 2 others
That’s fatal to solidarity. ‘Equitability’ is the key element. If Germany is forced to bear all the cost of an embargo unaided, it would create a split in the alliance. It’s not too late to share. Either to defeat Putin or avert Climate Catastrophe.
8:14 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Poodog73 @GrumpyAmb and @KyivIndependent
All Anti-Putin states can ‘afford’ to share energy reserves equitably – IF they want to defeat Putin. AND climate change. CO2 emissions have to fall drastically. Now is better late than never.
7:41 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @jefemundo1 @Mels_ChechenKo and @KyivIndependent
Forcing the frontline states to bear all the pain is totally incompatible with any concept of ‘solidarity’, and totally disastrous. A gift to Putin. Germany has already taken more radical action than most other countries, even to challenging its constitution.
7:37 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Rather, Kremlin lie machine is so GOOD because it lives in a forest of untruth. By offering multiple-choice alternatives, it makes Truth a matter of ‘personal choice’. Truth has been Commodified.
What the KGB used to call ‘The Grey Masses’ like that.
6:03 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @scoobi66 and @MayorofLondon
No evidence, as usual. Just routine Trumpist smear-mongering and ‘Alt-Truth’. More hysterical reaction to the inevitable implications of Consumerist Climate Catastrophe. When refugee levels DO reach crisis levels, I hope you have a stock of tranquilisers.
5:43 PM · Apr 4, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @scoobi66 and @MayorofLondon
The Salisbury Poisoners didn’t need asylum visas. Ukraine isn’t at war with the UK. And unpaid parking tickets do not indicate terrorist sympathies. The truth is you just HATE the idea of the UK ‘Doing It’s Bit’. Enough of you in 1941 and we would be talking German now.
1:12 PM · Apr 2, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @scoobi66 and @MayorofLondon
They carry out checks on all, so they are all suspected of terrorism. Nobody else does that. You obviously HATE the idea of helping anyone. And dump all the burdens of this war on the front line states who have no choice. Time you ‘WOKE’ up to the realities your degradation.
1:07 PM · Apr 2, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @soave1000 @mrjamesob and @KevinStuart56
Cheap Brexit energy was based on the lie that Britain could not cut VAT. Johnson refused to do this before the Pandemic & still won’t. Neither will he take as penny from the corporations who are profiteering from higher prices while decent people choose between heating & eating.
8:56 PM · Apr 1, 2022·Twitter Web App
Boris Johnson wants you to forget Partygate. Don’t let him get away with it
1 Apr 2022 15:12
In response to PopeGregoryTheNinth
Ukraine was a golden opportunity for Johnson to save his miserable skin. His Falklands War. Delivering surplus stock to Ukraine cost nothing.
His only achievement so far has been to distract public attention from his crimes and fool what the KGB used to call the ‘Grey Masses’ into a fever of hero-worship.
His contribution to the anti-Putin alliance has been minimal at best. He concocts a refugee policy designed to fail, and would never countenance sharing any of the burdens of war with the front-line states. If Putin does cut gas to Europe, Johnson will sit back and watch while rival economies crash, the UK climbs the league tables, and he will take the credit.
His policies are pure war-profiteering, and actively damaging to the solidarity needed to defeat Putin.
View discussion
Boris Johnson wants you to forget Partygate. Don’t let him get away with it
1 Apr 2022 14:56
In response to chrisd324
At the height of Johnson’s Party-shame, I remember one of his Zombie MPs standing up in parliament and saying much the same thing.
That the problem was not that laws had been broken, but that the laws existed in the first place.
This from the ‘party of law and order’.
View discussion
31/03/2022
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @bbcworldservice
If Putin does cut off energy to Europe, he will sped up the drive to nett Zero CO2 – which is his enemy and what we should be doing anyway – & which will make Europe more secure.
If China chooses to buy his cheap oil, Zero targets will be trashed, & civilisation far less secure.
11:02 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App
Charging for Covid tests in England just as infections surge? This is an act of national self-sabotage
31 Mar 2022 16:30
In response to JohnnieAysgarth
“Why?”
Because it will that mean people won’t know when they are infected and will infect others.
Causing higher rates, which will increase exponentially, under the current delusion that Covid is now ‘endemic’ and just another another minor inconvenience. Which will lead in turn to yet more variants, which may well be both more infectious and more deadly.
Next question.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @RichardBurgon
There is no alternative to equitably sharing available energy supplies among all members of the anti-Putin alliance. Forcing front-line states to bear all the burdens of energy costs & refugees means there is no ‘alliance’. Just those suffering & those carpetbagging on their pain
5:00 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @JimmyMonsieur @MarkGraham8492 and @DanielaNadj
EVERYTHING is wrong with a refugee policy designed to fail. A country which cashes in on war by dumping every burden of it on the front line states is a traitor, not a member of an ‘alliance’. A country which financed Putin’s war machine for decades.
chathamhouse.org
05 Reputation laundering and political influencing
4:51 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @scattysmum @CusackRitchie and 2 others
This government is cashing in on the war, and raking in billions in VAT from increased prices. While refusing to demand any sacrifices from the Corporations, it demands that you choose between food or fuel. And you LOVE it! No wonder this country’s going to the dogs.
4:44 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web A
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Sentinel49 and @michaelwhite
If you want Nazis, Russia has more than any European state. Many in the Duma itself. Nothing excuses Putin’s genocide.
https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2016/04/NeoNazism-and-Racist-Violence-in-Russia-Harriet-Neely.pdf…
2:12 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Anything the Glorious Leader does IS the law. He can make it AND break it simultaneously with no contradiction simply because he is The Leader. That’s DOUBLETHINK.
Johnson can get away with it, so Putin certainly can.
2:07 PM · Mar 31, 2022·Twitter Web App
24/03/2022
23/03/2022
Tory MPs call the green transition ‘unaffordable’. Europe is proving that’s a lie
23 Mar 2022 15:16
In response to Martin_in_Cardiff
Of course it’s ‘him again’.
Anything to avoid cooperation on any scale, let alone the global cooperation needed to avert climate disaster. The knowledge that membership of the EU would mean adopting a common CO2 policy was a prime mover for Brexit.
Cooperation is just too close to socialism for him, and a deadly threat his sense of identity and entire Junkie lifestyle.
And he’s right on both counts. Like his buddies Trump and Putin.
View discussion
Tory MPs call the green transition ‘unaffordable’. Europe is proving that’s a lie
23 Mar 2022 15:08
In response to cardiffleftie
Ukraine IS the battle against climate change.
If Putin wins, and is free to peddle his fossil fuel to every despot and crackpot on Earth, so does the rest of the Denialist Kleptosphere, and you can kiss every CO2 target goodbye.
The IPCC recently made this clear.
View discussion
Tory MPs call the green transition ‘unaffordable’. Europe is proving that’s a lie
23 Mar 2022 14:58
‘The truth is that we can’t afford not to transform our economies.’
Fossil fuel dictators like Putin have to oppose transformation to cling on to power – which is a more powerful instinct than averting Climate Disaster.
To them the Nero Decree of the bunker: ‘Better an end with horror than a horror without end’ makes perfect fanatical sense.
Putin himself has said that a world without Russia is not worth living in. Like the rest of the Kleptosphere, he recognised long ago that the nett zero CO2 targets of the Survivalist world meant the end of his power. His 30-year oil deal with China secured his future market, and meant that a fossil-fuel embargo by the west was relatively toothless.
Invasion of Ukraine therefore became a risk worth taking, And so here we are, in the first global climate war, fighting to avoid ‘the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of’ Putin, Trump and Xi’s perverted science.
Never in the field of human conflict have the stakes been higher.
View discussion
18/03/2022
Here in Hong Kong, Covid has surged and we’ve run out of coffins. Please learn from our mistakes
18 Mar 2022 15:24
In response to MickyPea
Until the next variant comes along.
Or even worse, the next Consumerist-spawned zoonotic pathogen.
Vacccinations and masks are all well and good, but do not address the causes of the plague of Pandemics we have created in the last 30years.
Namely,, the systematic demolition of wildlife habitat to make burgers. Which is also a key factor in accelerating climate change.
It is therefore doubly vital that the sabotage of Consumerism is halted, by any means available.
View discussion
Here in Hong Kong, Covid has surged and we’ve run out of coffins. Please learn from our mistakes
18 Mar 2022 15:16
In response to LastOfCarlos
They call themselves ‘Patriots’, but refuse to do the most patriotic thing they will ever have the chance to do.
If they’d been around in 1940, we would be talking German now.
View discussion
12/03/2022
Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:51
In response to LastDays
What makes a nation ?
There was no such thing until the invention of the steam engine.
Before that there were empires, kingdoms, city-states, and other fiefdoms. But no coherent, tax-collecting ‘nations’ defined by their ability to defend their borders with ammunition trucks.
China would seem to be an obvious exception. But even that was a multi-lingual empire united as much by its pictographic script as by brute force.
It only became a nation after industrialisation shrank it to a manageable size.
View discussion
Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:38
In response to Fallowfield
Hong Kong was ceded to Britain in 1842 and expanded into Kowloon later. The hand-over date was, by treaty, set as 1997.
And in all that time, it was never a democracy.
So much for ‘you never miss what you never had’.
View discussion
Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:30
They will not be able to protect cities from short-range shelling, but should be able to prevent bombing from the air and by long-range ballistic missiles.
Likewise, a steady supply of Bayraktar drones could permanently cripple the advance of tank convoys headed for Kyiv, and any other city. Especially when the Spring rains make the fields nice and boggy.
The question therefore remains; Why the hell hasn’t this already been done? Barricades of tyres and milk floats won’t last long.
View discussion
Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:23
In response to HELovelace
Putin is the latest autocrat in the long unbroken history of ‘Czarist Russia’, and has rewritten the book on Stalin, who cannot now be classified as a ‘socialist’ of any kind. Even to the most mercenary hack at the Daily Mail.
View discussion
Ukrainian heritage is under threat – and so is the truth about Soviet-era Russia
15 Mar 2022 10:16
In response to BogDweller
What repercussions?
Let’s start with the loss of the Ukrainian harvest.
The last time that happened the entire Middle East erupted into the Arab Spring.
This is much bigger.
View discussion
08/09/2022
All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 13:10
In response to Freedomofspeecg
The idea that capitalist competition is a form of cooperation is a popular delusion.
An abuse of language no better than ‘War is Peace’ and ‘Freedom is Slavery’..
View discussion
All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 13:06
In response to bonnielass35
If everyone consumed as little carbon as my household, we would do fine.
Since I started working on a computer from home, my footprint has been drastically reduced. Just eliminating the daily commute put me in the black on the balance sheet.
The global democratisation of communication has been vital in informing the world of the dangers of Consumerism. An essential tool in raising class-consciousness in the struggle.
View discussion
All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 12:06
In response to Hermanovic
A zero-carbon world would rob the Oil-sheiks of their power. End of problem. Their power would be intensely diminished – they would do everything in tents.
So the sooner we get on with it the better.
As for the nuclear nightmare, not only are the decommissioning costs unsustainable. and they take far too long to build anyway, but the secret police needed to protect them is not a culture we should be promoting on a global scale. Not to mention the inevitable accidents…
View discussion
All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 11:59
In response to WhatEnlightenMeant
It’s no accident that the leaders of the Kleptosphere, from Farage to Trump’n’Putin are the most flagrant Denialists of climate science. They know that a zero carbon world would strip them of their power, and are determined to resist to the last – whatever the cost to everyone else.
View discussion
All-out economic warfare is the best way to stop Putin
8 Mar 2022 10:57
We have to decarbonise eventually. Now is as good a time as any to start.
Naturally, it will mean that Western economies break the habit of a lifetime and learn how to share – to cooperate, rather than compete. But that was also something else which was inevitable for a sustainable future.
Consumption will also have to reduce to meet the capacity of sustainable, zero-carbon energy generation, obviously. But Consumerism is now a busted flush anyway, a toxic machine for destroying the environment, fuelling endless wars and spawning pandemics, so its death will be no loss to anyone.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MayorofLondon~
European economies are our competitors. When they are devastated by 7 Million refugees, Britain’s will benefit enormously. Their pain = Britain’s gain. Our policy is wholesale economic sabotage. Great news for the Brexiteers.
8:50 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @KalimeroFryWing @izgledakevrne and @carlbildt
He’s invading Ukraine to destroy Truth and corner the market in selling his fossil fuels to the Chinese and the rest of the Kleptosphere he leads. Thereby retaining power for the rest of his short life, and taking revenge on the rest of Humanity for his imminent death.
8:34 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @BaconatorJames and @MichaelRosenYes
Those who objected most to the removal of Assad and DAESH were the same people who SAID they objected most to islamophobia. Namely the vacuous pacifist nobodies to whom the Iraq War was a rhetorical gift from god. Those who gave a green light to Putin to massacre the workers.
8:30 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @PeaceFlowerSoul and @MichaelRosenYes
The fake words ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ have a long history of demonisation & sanctification. ‘Right’ is literally more ADROIT. ‘Left’ is SINISTER, GAUCHE, CACK-HANDED & wrong. The Blessed in Christian iconography sit on God’s Right Hand. Judas sat on Christ’s left. etc.etc.
6:21 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @AVO8OHM and @MichaelRosenYes
A cop out. Either you believe in Progressive values of equality & fraternity, or in reactionary elitism & nostalgia for mythical past glories. It is not possible to believe in both or neither. Which is why ‘centrist’ muddies the waters as much as ‘left’ & ‘right’. Use REAL words.
6:12 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @KalimeroFryWing @izgledakevrne and @carlbildt
Ukraine has its share of fascists for the same reason many other countries do 1) Post Imperialist disintegration – in this case of the brutal Stalinist empire. 2) Encouragement by Stalinist Putin & his ally Trump. But few places have more fascists in the seat of power than Russia
6:00 PM · Mar 7, 2022·Twitter Web App
Every day Ukrainians beg me to save their children. Violence and terror are raining down on them
7 Mar 2022 13:54
In response to Gettrotted
Putin’s pretext for this war was to ‘de-nazify’ Ukraine and liberate a terrorised population.
He could have avoided this war months ago by simply opening his borders to grateful Ukrainian people, flooding the airwaves with footage of their welcome, and basking in his image as their ‘Little Father’.
But he didn’t, because he knew nobody would go. That it was all lies.
Instead he chose this global disaster which almost certainly destroys any hope of meeting IPCC carbon targets. Literally a ‘scorched earth policy’.
Or ‘Nero Decree’ if you like. A revenge on Humanity which poses some very real questions about his state of mental and physical health.
View discussion
Every day Ukrainians beg me to save their children. Violence and terror are raining down on them
7 Mar 2022 13:35
In response to JustAnotherProfile
‘Russia’s economy is largely internal,’
I’m afraid that’s nonsense.
Russia’s economy over the last 20 years has been based almost entirely on exports of its mineral reserves. Especially on sales to Europe. They need hard currency wage war, not just to buy imported goods – which nobody is now prepared to sell them anyway.
‘Super powers and great powers before them’ who have depended on the Russian model have collapsed catastrophically. Spain is a classic example.
If China and India want to support Putin’s Nero Decree, that’s their choice. But they are led by relatively pragmatic regimes which realise that their relationship with the wider world is worth more than the cheap energy Russia can provide. They have far more to lose than gain.
In practice, this war has rubbed the world’s nose in the overriding environmental agenda.
Sitting back and watching Putin destroy Truth is not an option.
Czar Vladimir claims he is liberating Ukraine from a nazi regime. Apologists and surrender-monkeys need to remember that if he believed this, he would have opened his borders to the oppressed population months ago, and flooded the airwaves with footage of their welcome by the Fatherland.
There would have been no need for any war as the rest of the world would have offered wholehearted support for his agenda. The fact he has not done so blows away his smokescreen of lies.
View discussion
Every day Ukrainians beg me to save their children. Violence and terror are raining down on them
7 Mar 2022 11:39
In response to Kdykes
Energy sanctions will hit Putin’s military most.
That the world continues to fund it is not just absurd but obscene.
I remember the Three-Day Week.
It wasn’t that bad.
View discussion
06/03/2022
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @richardintheuk and @BBCNews
So dump all the burden on the front-line states as usual. Never mind, Britain will easily find ways to cash in. With any luck the record number of refugees will break their social services, and put Britain ahead in the economic tables. Good for the image of Brexit too
6:31 PM · Mar 6, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @KimThor93328499 @brianmoore666 and @CliveMyrieBBC
He hasn’t mentioned that Russia is the state where REAL nazis are in power (see link). Not leftovers from 1989 as in most european states. (Fuelled by Putin.) You’re saying France deserved to be annexed by Hitler because of Dreyfus and Gringoire. My arse. https://cers.leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/97/2016/04/NeoNazism-and-Racist-Violence-in-Russia-Harriet-Neely.pdf…
3:47 PM · Mar 6, 2022·Twitter Web App
History replays like a half-forgotten song, but once we remember, it’s far too late
6 Mar 2022 12:38
In response to MontyReplies
Plaid and the SNP have not been ‘nationalist’ for decades.
They are ‘seperatists’ – from England, but ‘unionists’ with Europe, perfectly prepared to incorporate their national identity into a greater whole.
Ulster ‘Unionists’ are ‘nationalistic.
View discussion
05/03/2022
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @chen65913021 @jackiepatie and 3 others
The recent history of the Donbass is one of myths, lies, and revenge. The same cocktail mixed to cause slaughter in the Balkans. The same mix that Hitler used as a pretext for his crimes. https://jstor.org/stable/261051
8:17 PM · Mar 5, 2022·Twitter Web App
02/03/2022
This is Russia’s way of war. Putin has no qualm about medieval levels of brutality
2 Mar 2022 11:30
In response to 1nn1t
If we’re serious about ZeroCO2 targets, now’s the time to start putting words into action.
It’s no accident that Putin risked his western oil & gas market now, after a decade of warnings that he was holding a stock near its sell-by date. A major trader in Spats and Bustles, with its only possible future market in China and other denialist regimes. No fossil-fuel sales for Putin = no power for Putin.
The rise of the Fossil-fuel Kleptosphere (including Brexit) coincides perfectly with the rise of irrefutable scientific evidence that the environment will not survive being poisoned for much longer.
Ukraine is a war against science and the future.
View discussion
This is Russia’s way of war. Putin has no qualm about medieval levels of brutality
2 Mar 2022 11:10
When are the drones supplied by Turkey going to strike the sitting-duck convoy headed for Kyiv?
Is it a case of seeing the ‘whites of their eyes’, and getting the tanks within range of Ukrainian ground-patrols to supplement the air-attack?
Since the off-road route seems to be too soft for tanks, are the roads mined?
View discussion
28/02/2022
Johnson’s government has drastically misjudged the public mood over Ukrainian refugees
28 Feb 2022 17:01
When the truth came out, Johnson immediately called it ‘fake news’.
I wonder which fascist prophet taught him to say that? Trump or Putin?
The foundation of this tory government is never, ever to share anything with anyone.
The concepts of Unity and Solidarity are anathema to them. Consistently, the Pain of front line states is Britain’s Gain. Let them bear the burden of refugees. Let them cripple their economies with an energy embargo.
They prove Nye Bevan right when he called them ‘vermn’.
View discussion
Johnson’s government has drastically misjudged the public mood over Ukrainian refugees
28 Feb 2022 16:58
In response to InAsMuch
So make the frontline states bear all the cost and burden as usual.
Britain’s economy can easily find ways to profit from their loss. Good for the image of a Brexit which has stalled even more than Putin’s fascist brigades.
Time the tories looked up the word ‘Solidarity’ in the dictionary.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @D_G_Alexander and @bbclysedoucet
And for those who still care, if Putin’s proposed Free Carbon Market with China comes off, he is guaranteeing that IPPC climate targets are killed stone dead, and consigning civilisation to dust.
He certainly cannot survive an EU style Zero Carbon future, so what else can he do?
5:34 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
Consumer Junkies addicted to CO2 are destroying the planet. Your deliberate ignorance will not shelter you for long. Barbarism like yours is the enemy represented by Putin and Trump. The most powerful gangsters in history
3:22 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
The end of Human civilisation and mass extinction of huge numbers of species is the highest stake there has ever been. The fact you are too terrified of being denied your Consumer Junk to admit the reality is not surprising. You will be forced into Cold Turkey sooner or later.
3:20 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
The stakes are that high A Zero carbon world would strip Putin of his power. This must not be allowed to happen. All psychopathic despots who deny Climate Science agree. This is the predicted war spread global ecodical Kleptocracy. Which is why Trump loves it. The lines are drawn
3:00 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
I’m astonished you can’t see the implications ‘sanctions will impact development ..and could expand to include Russian energy projects. This will likely push Russia closer to China as it seeks non-Western sources of financing for critical Arctic projects.’
wilsoncenter.org
World Reaction to the Invasion of Ukraine
2:55 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @theriptorn @Psemtex and 3 others
This is ‘world politics’ now. “for Russia, China is its top country trading partner and a key source of investment in its energy projects” And the result will be a High-CO2 Pact, including every science-denying despot on Earth. This is World Climate War 1.
aljazeera.com
Why are China and Russia strengthening ties?
Deepening of ties between China and Russia is unprecedented and comes at a time of escalating tensions with the West.
2:04 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @theriptorn @Psemtex and 3 others
How was the west to blame for Georgia or the invasion of Crimea? They were retaliations for the Ukrainian people’s rejection of a corrupt Putin puppet. For the assertion of freedom which set a bad example for the Russian people – your contempt for them is obvious.
1:58 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
As a fellow-traveller with Trump, Putin and the rest of the barbarian cult, you’ll believe anything they tell you. Sadly, all the science proves you wrong. This war destroys any hopes of avoiding climate disaster. As intended.
1:54 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to
@MartinC15307664 and @guardian
This war is a way for Putin to sell his oil and gas to China and the rest of the fascist Kleptosphere in order to retain absolute power. This means death to IPCC CO2 targets, and death to civilisation.
This is ‘unlike anything you have ever seen in history’ as the madman said
12:04 PM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @NarcAware @dissident_the and @DavidGauke
A widespread psychopathic apocalyptic reaction in the face of irrefutable science. The cult unable to abandon its Consumerist religion to save civilisation and the global environment.
11:57 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Musica101 @GaworMarkus and @guardian
Because Ukraine is NOT A MEMBER. Which again disproves your deluded theory that NATO is to blame. If only Ukraine WAS a member.~ Putin would not have dared to invade. Sorry – you do regard this an invasion, unlike the Chinese? Do you think Putin is a ‘genius’? Like Trump?
11:51 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
What’s going on inside Putin’s mind? His own words give us a disturbing clue
25 Feb 2022 11:27
His ‘mind’ is first and foremost concerned about where to sell his fossil fuels in the Zero Carbon world needed to combat Climate Change.
Like all panicking reactionaries and despots from Nigel Farage upwards, he is in flight from scientific reality. The Kleptoshpere he wants to lead would create a vast alternative market for his oil and gas and therefore guarantee the absolute power he awarded himself for life.
His buddy Donald Trump naturally agrees, and China, his principle proposed partner in crime, could not even bring itself to use the word ‘invasion’ for yesterday’s outrage. Even though it regularly poses as the defender of ‘sovereign states’ when it suits it.
The battle lines are therefore drawn in this First Climate War, which has little or nothing to do with recreating the past glories of the USSR, and everything to do with reorganising markets. Not a war of acquiring resources, but one of distributing them. Not unlike the Opium Wars.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @MartinC15307664 and @guardian
Putin is the one ‘punishing’ Russians. His fascist Kleptocracy has stolen everything from them and is shedding their blood to keep it. Sanctions will punish ordinary people on both sides. They have to. The stakes are too high.
11:11 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon@biginabox
Replying to @Musica101 @GaworMarkus and @guardian
Free countries wanted protection from a dictatorship they knew only too well. To protect their new freedoms. No maniac has the right to deny them their right to defence. Or to claim a ‘sphere of influence’ like Imperial Japan. Self-defence is no offence.
11:06 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon@Biginabox
Replying to @Pagebike1 and @guardian
And after all those centuries of subjugation, Ukraine was finally FREE once the people peacefully got rid of Putin’s Poodle Yanukovych. Why do you hate their freedom do much? Putin started this war, & will spread his fascist Kleptocracy worldwide, ensuring Climate Catastrophe
11:02 AM · Feb 25, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @AndrewBodinger and @bbclaurak
These days real courage is always fascinating. Time will tell whether the British people will prove to be as ‘fascinating’ when the lights go out and the queues get longer. Especially the flag-wavers who weren’t fascinatingly patriotic enough to wear a mask to protect pensioners.
9:16 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @keithschapman and @guardian
A populist misconception. “Contrary to media reports published on Jan. 17, 2022, Germany did not deny British C-17 transport aircraft access to their airspace. “
theaviationist.com
No, Germany Did Not Deny RAF C-17s Bound For Ukraine Access to Its Airspace
The decision to avoid the German airspace was made deliberately by the Royal Air Force C-17s and the British were not really forced to fly around the
8:51 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @paulmasonnews
The most significant contribution was from China, who refused to call it an ‘Invasion’. This means they are playing their usual game of ‘See Who Wins’. Usually they are all over ‘breaches of sovereign territory’ – when it suits them. Not now, with a cheap Russian gas deal pending.
8:47 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @rblava and @guardian
“This is genius.” “How smart is that? And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper, that’s the strongest peace force “There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen—they’re gonna keep peace all right,” #Kleptocrats stick together.
fortune.com
Trump cheers on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. ‘This is genius’
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hasn’t diminished Donald Trump’s longtime admiration of Vladimir Putin. Quite the opposite.
7:47 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @fatfei_ @BBCPolitics and @bbclaurak
The story comes from the Electoral Commission, and shows that the tories are by far the biggest recipients of Kremlin Gold. Putin doesn’t bother bribing the powerless. You think the EC is lying on Starmer’s behalf? You’re crazy.
What are you prepared to sacrifice to defeat Putin?
7:21 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @irnbrudreaming @fatfei_ and 2 others
What sacrifices are you prepared to make to defeat Putin? Because, as Starmer makes clear, unlike Johnson, this is not a war on paper, but one which will put up prices of goods and services.
5:21 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @RhonddaBryant
Does the HOC and government have backup systems for when the cyber-attacks start on broadband services and other national infrastructures?
4:52 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @jonlis1 and @JANUSZCZAK
#Brexit was largely a reaction to the prospect of the radical policies needed to combat Climate Change. Putin’s fossil-fuel deal with China is the same – only with bombs. ZeroCO2 = Zero power for Putin. And the same for every other misanthropist Kleptocrat.
3:41 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web Ap
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OwenJones84 and @115tpryan
Then consider this ‘opinion’. Between them Russia & China are forging a Fossil-Fuel Pact which will make Climate Disaster inevitable. Unless China pulls out, we are all stuffed. The word ‘democracy’ will merely be a word future archaeologists dig out of the rubble of monuments.
3:31 PM · Feb 24, 2022· Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OwenJones84
All sanctions will effect ordinary people most, and turn them against the Kleptocrats. They can’t go on stealing from Russia forever. The same sanctions will also effect British & European ordinary people. No pain – no gain. That’s war.
3:26 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Otto_English
Given that Farage’s wet-dream of a fractured Europe was another green light to Putin, I’m not surprised he’s in hiding. The list of Kleptocrats who do not condemn this war against the future will be very interesting. Any news from Trump, Bolsonaro, Orbán and the rest?
2:50 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 14:35
Putin’s hopes of retaining absolute power rest entirely on selling fossil fuels to China and the rest of the Kleptosphere. A High CO2 Pact which would guarantee the Climate catastrophe the sane world has hoped to counter by consent.
Today killed off all hopes for that project – unless China now comes to its senses and assumes the responsibilities of the super-state it aspires to be.
Future historians, if there are any, will probably ascribe a significant degree of blame for this disaster to the market-madness and attack on European solidarity represented by Brexit. But they should also consider the persistent, pernicious influence of the ‘free markets’ in perpetuating the power of crazed despots of all complexions.
The results of the U.S. mid-term elections should be very interesting to them.
View discussion
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
Putin’s ‘ideal’ is perpetual power. He knew a Zero CO2 world would emasculate him. A fossil-fuel alliance with China would save him. Unless China comes to its senses ‘the whole world including all that we have known & cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age’
12:17 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Berkorichard and @MichaelRosenYes
The ‘issue’ is the role of fossil fuels to empower dictators, using the ‘free market’. Putin’s planned Fossil-Fuel Pact with China & the rest of the Kleptosphere kills any hope of combating climate change, and guarantees a bleak future for Mankind. China will have to grow up fast
2:14 PM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 12:10
In response to Tiberius123
China has to be convinced that any fossil-fuel alliance with Putin is madness.
So far it has played its usual silly games, but now it’s time for it to grow up and bear its global responsibilities.
View discussion
Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 12:06 In response to clarityofthought
‘Sanctions against oligarchs while they might feel morally superior have never achieved anything. ‘
What sanctions?
How many Kleptocrats have had their assets seized?
View discussion
Rob Kenyon @Biginabox
Replying to @Tommy38276028 and @vicderbyshire
You think you’re safe? Putin’s plan to continue unlimited CO2 emissions in partnership with China means the end of Human Civilisation. Are you Human?
11:57 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @teach313al and @vicderbyshire
Tell that to the madman Putin, who would rather destroy civilisation than surrender his fossil-fuel power. This is not a war in a strange country far away, it is a war against YOUR future and that of your children.
11:55 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @cwab1964 @vicderbyshire and @EmmaKennedy
What’s ‘cold’ about it? This literally means a hotter world of unlimited CO2 emissions and the end of Human Civilisation – UNLESS China comes to its senses. All political and diplomatic efforts should now be directed at Beijing.
11:52 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @Soothsayer_True and @RealScottRitter
‘Plagiarising’ who? How many Cruise missiles on Kiev will it take to convince you that Putin declared war? Sooner or later it will dawn on you that this also means the end of any global effort to combat climate change – as intended. Maybe that will bring you to your senses.
11:40 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @Biginabox Replying to @urbanigreen @ExtinctionR and @KremlinRussia_E
Like Trump et al, Putin would rather sacrifice Human civilisation than his power. ZeroCO2 would emasculate him. A Denialist fossil-fuel alliance with China would save him. So unless China grows up fast, Civilisation is doomed. We can never achieve EPPC targets All eyes on Beijing
11:18 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @ExtinctionR
It’s over. At the back of Putin’s mind was always the fact that ZeroCO2 meant the end of his power. Today’s outrage means the end of that project. Unless China turns its back on him, Human civilisation is doomed. This is not a war to reinstate the past, it is against the future.
11:12 AM · Feb 24, 2022· Twitter Web App
Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 1
In response to nonanon1
Unless China can be brought to its senses and persuaded to ditch its fossil-fuel alliance with Putin, we are all stuffed. Any hopes of meeting IPPC CO2 targets are doomed and with them Human Civilisation.
The question is not how insane is Putin, but whether China realises the consequences of his insanity.
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Who can prevail on Putin now war in Ukraine has started? Peace depends on it
24 Feb 2022 11:10
At the back of Putin’s mind was always the fact that ZeroCO2 meant the end of his power. Today’s outrage means the end of that project. Unless China turns its back on him, Human civilisation is doomed.
This is not a war to reinstate the past, it is one against the future.
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Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @michaelwhite
At the back of Putin’s mind was always the fact that ZeroCO2 meant the end of his power. Today’s outrage means the end of that project. Unless China turns its back on him, Human civilisation is doomed. This is not a war to reinstate the past, it is one against the future.
11:09 AM · Feb 24, 2022·Twitter Web App
23/02/2022
Rob Kenyon @biginabox
Replying to @OzKaterji
The biggest consequence (of the Ukrainian war) is the end of any global effort to combat Climate change. Climate Wars were always predicted, but not in such minute detail, and Putin’s denialism is as much a matter of record as Trump’s. Between them they have done for Human civilisation.
10:53 PM · Feb 23, 2022·Twitter Web App
Fighting the threat from Putin will take teamwork. But who trusts Johnson’s Britain?
23 Feb 2022 21:09
In response to OneTanahMerah
Reported what suited them.
Not much of this:
Jeremy Corbyn 12th March 2018.
‘There have been more than £800,000 of donations to the Conservative party from Russian oligarchs and their associates. If that is the evidence before the Government, they could be taking action to introduce new financial sanctions powers even before the investigation into Salisbury is complete.
But instead they are currently resisting Labour’s amendments to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill that could introduce the so-called Magnitsky powers. Will the Prime Minister agree today to back those amendments?’
Hansard.
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Fighting the threat from Putin will take teamwork. But who trusts Johnson’s Britain?
23 Feb 2022 21:02
Judging by Yesterday in Parliament, Johnson’s sanctions dithering could cost him more 1922 committee letters than Partygate.
Ranks of assorted tory MPs queueing up to knock lumps off him. Not one word in defence of his tepid response to Russian aggression (except from the obligatory tame minister..
It was as if they had been straining at the leash to castigate Londongrad for years, and now was their chance.
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LittleRichardjohn
If you’re clinically vulnerable in England, Johnson’s ‘new normal’ is a kick in the teeth
23 Feb 2022 11:40
In response to river1993
We had an epidemic of mental illness for decades before Covid. Strange how the so-called libertarians didn’t worry about that then. Or, more tellingly, ask why people were so sick. This lack of curiosity is of course completely natural. To ask the question would be to reveal the reason, namely that the consumerism they defend to the hilt is a sick system which creates sick people. One which does not value human life, just wealth and power – when it is not actually spawning a range of zoonotic pathogens via its eco-cidal industrial practices. And yet they still persist in dragging us all down this dark alley to be mugged again by catastrophic climate change and all the diseases of consumerism, from cancer to the next Novel Virus.
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22/02/2022
The west knows the cost of appeasement. We can’t rule out any option for stopping Putin
22 Feb 2022 12:48
Putin’s warmongering has presented progressive politics with an opportunity for both promoting Western cooperation and cutting CO2 emissions. Both long overdue and inevitable in the long-term.
When Russian gas supplies to Europe end, Western allies should share reserves. It will mean reduced per capita consumption, but this had to happen sooner or later. Now’s as good a time as any to start.
In retrospect, Russian expansionism and its search for new fossil fuel markets in China was always a reaction to Western ‘threats’ to achieve Zero CO2 emissions. Ukraine is a Gas War.
It’s no coincidence that Putin’s declaration of war came the day after the Chinese Olympics ended. As predicted a month ago. So much for the sneering at Western intelligence.
When will certain stuck-in-the-mud elements realise that Iraq was a long time and several satellites ago? And that their energies should be directed to take geo-political advantage of Putin’s madness rather than carping on his behalf..
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14/02/2022
The Stasi Poetry Circle review – East Germany’s unsettling war with words
14 Feb 2022 12:49
In response to WoodWorker2008
Yes it is right.
Neo-feudalist Stalinist Russia used precisely the same methods of oppression as the Spanish Inquisition. See the trial of Galileo for reference.
No charges, just the question ‘Do you know why you are here?’ – As in Room 101.
Socialism is a dynamic model based entirely on cooperation – the fundamental human instinct of Social Reciprocal Altruism which predates all property-based power-structures, and still survived in unspoilt cultures until invasion by industrialised slavery capitalism. (Ask captains Cooke & Blye)
The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.
And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.
…Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. .”
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/fun.html
The only deluded ‘creators of Utopia’ are the apologists for modern Consumerism. The deranged toxic cult which has inflicted untold Wars, Plagues and Famines, and is now abut to devastate civilisation.
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biginabox 