The Slog has been evoking a fair amount of vitriol of late in his determination to be equally nasty to Left, Right Wing and Centrist bigots, Warmists and Change Deniers, Zionists and Islamists, Republicans, Tea Partiers and Democrats, Seb Coe, Harriet Harman, Dan Hannan, and Boris Johnson.
He has also seen fit to point out that Ed West, Vince Cable, Frank Field, Kate Hoey, James Delingpole, John Redwood and Ron Paul are often proved right in the end.
In this context, regular Slogging troll Smash Tory Reds and Nigger White Supremacists writes to ask Conan:
Do you think The Slog is being secretly bankrolled by the Barclay Brothers and Unite?
I too have heard these rumours, and I am sure they are true for the simple reason that they fit my World View of this site as muddled, wishy-washy, and unable to decide which side it’s on. I should stress that the only reason I guest-blog here is that Mr Ward pays rather well and has 14,500 daily followers. His strategy of trying to please everyone is thus working, but strikes me as despicably dishonest.
In conclusion, I would say that the very homogeneity of the criticism among people like Erika, Bankrupt Taxpayer, Just Sayin’ and Abdul B’ludba’ath proves my point.
Jim O’Neill for King writes from Manchester:
Is there any truth in the lie repeated every day about China’s economy being in trouble?
No, none whatsoever. Let me give you the latest figures for Chinese exports of walls: 1990: 3 / 2000: 7 / 2010: 496 / 2012: 68,903,222.
As you can see, the growth in the sales of Chinese Walls has been astronomical, and reflects the fact that every bank or media combine in the world now has them as a vital defence against impertinent suggestions about devout Christians involved in laundering drugs and whitewashing phonehack enquiries. Sales of Chinese wives are also holding up well, a trend started some years back by Mr Muppet Burdock, the well-known Alzheimers victim and committee-hoodwinker.
From downtown Wall Street, IwantBob’schildren wonders:
Wasn’t Robert E. Diamond merely fulfilling the ‘risk’ element of Capitalism?
Yes and no. On the one hand he took the heart-stopping but admirable risk of being caught bending the Libor rates. This kind of risk is precisely what the best aspects of neoconservatism are meant to be about: being morally bankrupt is, after all, a matter of opinion; whereas being financially bankrupt is deeply disgusting and must be wiped out with vigour and thoroughness, especially in Greece although not necessarily in Spain. Friedman abhorred debt but supported leveraging. We must remember that.
On the other hand, Mr Diamond quite rightly avoided the risk of lending money to every hare-brained, half-baked, revolutionary and dangerous entrepreneur who came his way. That is to say, he did not lend any money at all to entrepreneurs, and for this he is to be commended.
To understand this, we must return to the original meaning of the word ‘risk’, viz: uncertainty. Uncertainty is the root of all evil: it upsets bond markets and worries shareholders. This is why Bob did the right thing, along with many others as yet unfingered, in rigging the Libor rates, the gold price, the Lehman collapse and his immunity from prosecution. He has selflessly created certainty throughout his entire career, and history will judge him on that basis.
And finally, BubblyBorisisbangon writes from Docklands:
What do you think of all this Commie tripe about commerce ruining the Olympic Games?
There will always be the Old Labour diehards and Kennedy Democrats who disapprove of privatising the Olympic Games and clearing out all that rank amateurism of flabby athletes like Jesse Owens, Chris Brasher, and Konewumo Agama. But since they became properly sponsored (and athletes decently paid) the Games have been a model of what enlightened capitalism and marketing can do for brands, and the competitors who wear their shoes, or train with the help of globally fizzy fruit extracts that have been instrumental in teaching The World to Sing.
Few people understand this more than UK Trade & Investment Minister Lord Green, whose global ownership of Chinese Walls puts all others to shame. As Boris Johnson said two years ago, “All this Newscorp stuff is a lot of Leftie drivel, and if we don’t recognise this and go along with the odd Mexican Laundry venture, we really are going to show that Britain isn’t open for business. So stay ahead of the Olympic gridlock and don’t get caught out”.
For the full credentials behind Dr C F-B’s innate wisdom, go here.
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