Sterilising the Labour Party, smearing Jeremy Corbyn, immunising the élites against the Rule of Law, pensioning off John Ralfe, and Barack Obama jacking off. Situation normal, full speed ahead.
It’s always an advantage to be neutral in sterile ideological debates. I’m not and never have been a member of the Labour Party, although I still admire the astonishing achievements of the 1945-51 Attlee government.
Now – as the crew of the Mayflower put the finishing touches to the demolition job begun by Thatcher and then continued by Blair and Cameron – Labour has chosen this of all moments to do what it’s never done before in its history: try and unseat an elected leader.
You can almost hear the chant:
“Why do we want it?” >>> “Cos we never did it before!”
“When will we do it?” >>> “When it’s more inappropriate than ever before!”
The Party could’ve done this to Sunny Jim in 1977 – or Mr Donkey Jacket, or Brown or Miliband – and the Nation would’ve cheered. But no, the Campbell-Blair-Smith tendency choose to do it at the very moment when everyone from junior NHS doctors to senior Waspi pension victims needs Labour’s undivided attention.
The PR suit below tweeted this last night. He is a Brussels man through and through, and a Blairite from tip to toe. You can tell this by the irrational smear at Corbyn’s expense:
My Uni thesis was largely to do with Nazi syntax and propaganda. If Whitehouse can see Hitlerian rhetoric in this, I’d like to borrow his glasses; but his own tweet is pure Goebbels: ‘Everyone hates Jews, let’s accuse him of being a Jew’. (For Labour activists about to point out that ‘Jew’ is absent from the smear above, try and see the parallel. Please.)
When the Rule of Law turns into a pool of wee, it’s funny how rarely the activist Left notices it. It’s probably a case of either blindness to the principle, or people in glass houses with stones to hand; but either way, it is far more often the tolerant, well-educated level heads who first spot that other heads are over heels on the issue.
I’ve been following Fred Walton now for over two years, and while I can agree or disagree with him in roughly equal measure, it’s hard to accuse the bloke of tribalism. Whatever the topic, his Benthamesque sense of fair play is always to the fore. In the two retweets from Fred below, he supports two entirely different tweeps for the same reason: they’re about people being above the law….and in a genuine liberal democracy, nobody is above the law.
The arrogance of the Clinton Club and the immunity of bankers makes me feel at times that so numerous are the people above the law, there’s nobody left to uphold it from below. All the Diamonds and Dimons and Blankfeins and Camerons and Osbornes and Campbells levitating happily above the law flutter about and smile as officials, cops and legislators ask them ever so politely, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, to please come down so we can ask you some pertinent questions about drug barons, and you can tell us we’re actually being impertinent.
But they ignore the politesse. This could be a clue as to how pigeon shooting got off the ground. So to speak.
Meanwhile, over in the Infant School playground, John Ralfe has been at work again. Mr Ralfe is ‘a Pensions Consultant: Helping company and trustee boards to address their pension issues in a clear, focused and practical way’ it says here in the script. I’m not really sure what that entails, but it certainly doesn’t involve any adult attitudes or interest in the wellbeing of Waspi women deprived of their State pensions. Here Smiley John offers a gratuitous insult about a recent Slogpost, copying FT hack Josephine Combo on the tweet in order to wind her up:
Anyway, the post attracted eighteen 5-star votes and 2,165 views – the highest this week. Mr Ralfe is frequently wrong, usually about the case for absolute State Pension rights. But then, being a corporate pension consultant, perhaps it suits him to be deliberately obtuse.
And finally, as he winds down to say goodbye to eight utterly wasted years, President Egobama is still desperately in search of something – anything – that might justify the most banal election claim in history, “Yes we can”.
As usual, Barack’s rhetorical gets tangled up in his grammatical:
It kind of has to be said that way, otherwise it comes out as ‘it is acceptable for me to pass on the ocean I grew up with to my kids’. This sounds like something of a non-event, but is of course impossible. Otherwise you’d have to believe that this complete Canute really does think he can order the waves about (whereas the original was more humble).
Or maybe – you never know – Uncle Tombama meant to say, “Leave the ocean I grew up with to my kids? I’ll pass on that one”.
What is totally (sorry, todalleee) unacceptable is for Obama to claim he is passing on a Pacific Ocean in the same state as he found it.
Make an anagram out of the following: Fukushima Canute.
First prize for the best effort will be wealth beyond the dreams of Avarice. (Sponsor: J Ralfe)
The Slog 