WEEK’S NEWS: DECEMBER FIFTEEN

The death of Nelson Mandela may have wiped out the world for so many but it still continued to turn along with all its stories and news. Most of it nasty, slipping into oblivion under the weight of obsequious slushing and gushing. For some, one man’s demise was a treat, such as News International journalists up in the dock for phone hacking and other miscellaneous dirty deeds. Like others with the power of the press behind them along with powerful political friends they thought they were immune and perhaps they still are! Then there’s the family saga of a celebrity chef in all its misery, dragged into public view for everyone to sneer at. Poor Nigella, having to pay the price for the life of money and celebrity she chose. Never mind, there was always David Cameron to come to the rescue, drugs or no drugs. But then trawling through the dirt of the rich has always been a specialist subject for certain newspapers who know there’s an avid public out there ever ready to lap it all up.

Let’s leave them to swill at the trough. Other matters run deeper and are far more important. Yes, the police are at it again. Not content with now being officially allowed to decide what is right or what is wrong they’ve become semi-official arbiters of political correctness as well as public morality. True, they’ve missed a whole number of big tricks in recent times like Jimmy Savile, or being caught earning bundles of notes selling stories to journalists then coming up wanting over the Hillsborough Disaster let alone the demise of innocent bystanders, but now they have others well in their sights. They’re into politics all over again. Not content with their role in protecting fascist marches during the 1930’s, ‘dealing with’ the Print Workers Strike years not so far back on behalf of News International then the Miner’s Strike and lately doing in Tory politician Andrew Mitchell, they’re now busy with students. Having decided that it was quite lawful to detain and imprison them on the streets they’re now arresting them for occupying university premises demonstrating against social welfare cuts and increased tuition fees. Arresting them, taking them away in vans and locking them up with all that it means. The semi-literates attacking the literate and clearly enjoying the brutalizing of those who are decent and caring.

However it is entirely naïve for students to claim that the police are becoming political. The police would say that they’re only doing their job and quite rightly so. ‘Dealing’ with striking print workers and miners IS their job, same as it is arresting students occupying university premises. This is the job the State requires them to do and if necessary rough up participants, so no complaints please from the politically naïve if they think the police are acting out of hand.   

And if few people care, what does it say about Britain today, when so many are out shopping for Christmas, spending money they don’t actually have or working for wages that are pitiful at best? What kind of country are we living in when so many contribute hundreds of millions of pounds to alleviate natural disasters overseas and have no concern for their own basic rights here? Students, and there are so few of them nowadays that care about anything compared to the sixties, seventies and eighties, are at the very front line of the nation’s social conscience and having to deal with police who decide what they can say and exactly where or where not they can say it. On the other hand there are those who commit crimes ten a penny like cycling on pavements, being illegal immigrants, aggressively begging on the streets of Central London, or far better, defrauding the public of money through innumerable financial swindles and selling horsemeat for beef. No-one ever arrested or prosecuted for these things! Strange how the police see nothing wrong in such criminality! That it’s all somehow okay! What is not, however, are student demonstrators who believe in something worthwhile. No such ‘scruples’ for them. They’re just attacked, rounded up and locked away for a while! And for actually what? Yes, the police are busy again. Deciding on who may protest, how and why.

That’s the Liberal Democrats in Coalition Government for you. Betray their promises to students first then turn a blind eye to their protest after which put them in the hands of the police.

Some news from overseas that isn’t Mandela! It’s deep winter over parts of the Middle East. In Syria and the Lebanon the plight of refugees spilling out from the Civil War in Syria has been worsened by snow and sub-zero temperatures. In response, the Government of Israel has opened its northern border to accommodate and give refuge to many thousands of desperate people, supplying them with food, shelter and medical aid. And that is with both Syria and the Lebanon still technically at war with the Jewish State. So how has this great humanitarian gesture been reported by the television news channels, by the BBC, Sky and Channel Four. Answer, not a mention! Let’s be clear. Saudi Arabia and Dubai, two of the richest nations in the world with their territories close to the crisis HAVEN’T CONTRIBUTED A PENNY OR LIFTED A FINGER, but the Israelis have opened their border to help. But please don’t be critical of the BBC or Channel Four for keeping quiet. Friendly to the Jewish State they’re most definitely not and never have been!

The situation in the Ukraine is hotting up. Just consider recent events if you will. The Foreign Minister of the European Community, Baroness Ashton, went to Kiev the capital last week, met the leaders of anti-Government demonstrations in the streets and commended them for their actions! These actions, let it be said, are against the democratically elected President, Government and Parliament of the Ukraine for refusing to sign a trade treaty with the European Community!

So what does the EC do? It sends its Foreign Minister to that country to join the protesters and stir up as much trouble as possible with British and other Western news media all there in advance primed up ready and waiting! Talk about damnable cheek! This is such a flagrant example of interfering with the internal affairs of a sovereign state that it surely has the hands of United States Government agencies all over it, but then so what when most of its security apparatus, along with that of the United Kingdom, is busy spying on the population of Western Europe and not least its politicians like Angela Merkel. It’s actually quite fascinating. In recent years, British, American and European Community politicians have been getting up to some quite extraordinary mischief. Many, like David Cameron, seem to have entirely lost the plot being caught smiling a ‘selfie’ at the memorial ceremony of Nelson Mandela, added to which was his coming out in support of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson in the little matter of cocaine addiction. And Cameron such a Pepsi man and all.

Finally, hearty congratulations to China for successfully landing a spacecraft on the Moon, and then rolling  a Lunar rover called Jade Rabbit onto its surface. A really great achievement, made possible not only by its scientific community but all the many hundreds of millions of people round the world, particularly in the United States and Western Europe who avidly buy Chinese made products and other crap to give that country a fantastic financial trading surplus enabling it to afford such splendid ventures while leaving everyone in serious debt to mainland China. Particularly the United States whose economy is currently bankrolled by that country! Well done China for being so canny!