So the most useless plonker in the House of Commons, Nigel Fartrage has thrown his toys out of his pram and resigned as an MP. Not because he’s fed up with all the work involved (he doesn’t do much work at all – just search for his attendance record), but because he’s pissing himself at the thought of the standards commission investigations coming to the conclusion that he should be suspended as an MP for the rest of his life as a corrupt fucker.
Fartrage’s plan is that the folk of Clapton will re-elect him to override the decision of the standards commission; which it won’t do. The investigation is currently suspended because he has resigned and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has accepted his resignation and appointed him the Steward of the Manor of Northstead (a ridiculous legal fiction as MPs aren’t allowed to resign unless they are appointed to certain posts under the Crown).
The fun thing is that every single mainstream political party have refused to put up candidates to oppose Farage leaving just two joke candidates – Farage himself and Count Binface. This has left the Reform PLC party – who have somehow deluded themselves that Farage isn’t a joke candidate but a serious one, in a panic and have resorted to claiming that Count Binface is really an establishment figure.
Which of course is laughable, and says more about Reform PLC’s level of panic than anything else.
Clapton deserves a real MP, but if their only choice is a joke one, Count Binface is a clear winner.
So we have just had a few local elections here in the UK and Reform PLC have won quite a few elections and some councils are now under Reform PLC’s control. They have my sympathy; well the residents that is. Not much sympathy for the Reform PLC councillors although they might have to work harder than expected.
I don’t think Reform PLC was quite as successful as they would like to proclaim. According to the BBC, Reform PLC won 1453 councillors. Given there are 18645 councillors in the UK, Reform PLC won just a smidgen under 8% of the total. Of course not all councillors were up for election – just 5066 were up for election, so Reform PLC won around 28% of this.
Which is impressive but not quite world shaking. But look at the councils they’ve won control over – 14. Quite impressive but it’s all in the North or London. There’s nothing down south.
“Borrowed” from an anti-Reform Facebook group.
This is a kick in the teeth for Labour – not totally unexpectedly given the unrealistic expectations on a Labour government. The funny thing is that the Tories are also still being kicked – they’re down to controlling fewer and fewer councils. Loosing even though they’re not in government.
But enough about the election, what is the attraction of Reform PLC?
It is all too easy to categorise Reform PLC supporters as racist and thick. It is true that Reform PLC have an unusually high number of former representatives with a distinctly racist past and present. And Reform PLC supporters are well known for being somewhat lacking in educational attainment …
But it is all too easy to pain Reform PLC uniformly as racist thugs – there’s certainly some like that, but there’s more.
One of the things that comes up in the cesspool that is Twitter, is the “Uniparty” word. Which is a concept inherited from the US and warped to pretend there is no real difference between Conservatives and Labour.
I can certainly see their point – Labour is far too concerned with worrying the wealthy elites and the mainstream media which is one of the tools of the elites are far too willing to engage in sabotage of the current Labour government.
And if you look at where Reform PLC was strongest – the old Labour heartlands in the North, there is a significant factor – not enough has been done to mitigate the damage that Thatcher did to the old Northern industries in the 1980s. Promises have been made and broken.
So no wonder certain folk have the urge to destroy the current system – I’ve felt that way since Mad Maggie was in power in the 1980s myself. But Reform PLC is a con job.
A crafty one at that. Reform PLC takes genuine issues – housing shortage, wages not keeping up with inflation (to a small certain extent that’s the fault of the government’s freeze on tax bands), Islamic terrorism, etc. and blames it all on immigration. That is an unbelievably facile explanation for all the problems.
The problems are real – no mistake there – but the causes are a good deal more complex than just immigration whether legal, illegal , or asylum refugees.
But rather than criticise ReformPLC supporters for falling for the con, we should instead be congratulating them for recognising that something is broken, and come up with a better answer than ReformPLC’s.
The Twitterverse is agog with dumb Trumpists whining about NATO not kowtowing to Trump and following his lead into war with Iran. Clearly illustrating they have no idea what NATO is.
What Is NATO?
NATO is a mutual defense treaty where members agree to come to the assistance of other members who are attacked. There is no obligation to assist a member who wants to carry out military adventures – even if those military adventures have reasonable goals behind them.
And it isn’t the US going to war with Iran; it’s Israel going to war with Iran and the US is helping its ally. Israel isn’t a member of NATO, so there’s even less reason for NATO to assist.
Is It Legal?
I’ve no idea if Netanyahu’s military adventure is legal or not, but there are legitimate concerns about whether Israel’s and the USA’s actions are legal. There’s no mandate from the UN giving permission to spank Iran; there’s not even a consensus amongst the nations of NATO.
Whilst it may seem strange to USAians that some country leaders worry about whether their actions are legal, it is not unreasonable to refuse to assist a military adventure if doing so may end up with a time in gaol.
Unlikely but not impossible.
The Nukes?
Is Iran developing nuclear weapons? Well come up with proof of that, and you’ll get cooperation. But we haven’t seen any proof; we’re supposed to trust the word of Israel (who are currently short on trust). No thanks.
Particularly when previous military adventures supposedly destroyed the weapons programme.
The Money Question
One of the things that keeps cropping up when the USians want to whine about NATO is that the US is supposedly paying for Europe’s defence. A great deal of that whining is based on lies.
First of all the direct costs of running NATO are funded by all members making a contribution based on how wealthy they are – the US contributes 16.2% of the total (Germany is also on 16.2%), and that percentage is of the entire NATO budget of €5.3billion.
NATO membership also requires countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on military spending. That target is increasing to 5%.
However whilst Europe has traditionally lagged at below the 2% commitment, the situation has changed considerably in recent years with 23 out of 32 countries meeting or exceeding the 2% of GDP.
You will hear a great deal of the US’s $1 trillion spent on European defence. That’s another lie; the US spends that amount on all military spending including world-wide commitments. And yes that’s more than every other country in Europe – that’s how that “2% of GDP” works out – the rich pay more, and the US is effectively as large as the whole of Europe.
Now if you add up all European military spending, it still doesn’t match the US spending and that should be corrected (which is slowly happening) but it is actually a huge chunk of money – $472 billion. That’s well over twice what Russia spends militarily.
Who Defends Who?
The only time NATO was obligated to defend one of its members under “Article 5″ was in the aftermath of 9/11. Defending the USA.
Every single measure taken to improve air quality on roads, add facilities for cyclists, restrict parking, restrict entry to overcrowded cities invokes a cry from the loony right of “Not more war on car drivers”. As if there really were a war on car drivers!
To those who read this and say “There is”, just imagine if there really were such a war – we could legalise shooting cars with shot-guns, setting up traps that’ll dump cars in the sea, etc.
Well perhaps not. But if you look at the harm cars cause, you do have to wonder if there shouldn’t be a war on cars – cars kill roughly 2,000 people a year (or just under) :-
And that ignores the thousands of “live-changing injuries” (that means important bits came off) that occurred over the same time period. If you compare with the number of deaths that occur through shooting in the UK, and the response to that cause of death, you see if anything we underreact to the deaths caused by cars.
And deaths are not the only aggravation caused by cars: noise, localised pollution, space on our streets, excessive priority, and probably a whole lot more.
Boat Skeleton
So the answer to “Why the War on Cars?” is “Well it’s about time.”
No country believes in this religion or that religion; it is an individual choice of the members of that country as to what religion they should believe in (or not).
The lunatic fringe of the far right want to push the notion that the UK (and the USA) is a christian country because they want to use that as an excuse to punish anyone who isn’t. Oh, it’ll start with Muslims and Hindus and end with anyone who doesn’t follow their brand of Christianity.
As of 2021, the UK was 46.5% Christian; that’s the single largest religious group. But it isn’t the majority; there’s plenty of other religious groups and the non-religious. Of course the christofascists will point out that in the past, the UK was nearly 100% Christian, glossing over the fact that this was forced on us – either explicitly or more subtly.
The past is the past – whilst we may have a christian tradition we also have a pre-christian tradition (or a pagan tradition). Christianity is a foreign religion – it’s an immigrant from the middle-east.
I use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. I do this to improve browsing experience and to show (non-) personalised ads. Consenting to these technologies will allow me to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
