LATEST NEWS : IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO HAVE FRIENDS

 PRINCE CHARLES IN SWORDIE ARABIA

Watch them twirl, swing and prance
All together in the Dervish Dance!

Looking at these photos of the heir to the British throne doing his little, very definitely men only Dervish Dance, sword in hand and all dolled up to the nines in Swordie Arabia it just makes you wonder! Clearly everyone’s enjoying themselves but then you’ve just got to ask, was the sword that Charles was waving around purely ceremonial or had it been previously used for chopping someone’s hand or arm off for stealing a bottle of water or nicking a loaf of bread as is the customary punishment there under Islamic Sharia Law. I mean, did he ask himself that question or was he given to understand that the thing he was holding was kosher. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Clearly the good Prince himself looks to be in his element. Or was he? Did he ever think for a moment that he just might look plain ridiculous. There seems to be a certain small indication to that effect on his face but then he just decides to do his best to get into the swing of it all because basically that’s what he’s there for! Sent there on the approval of David Cameron to give the Royal seal of approval to a major arms deal with the Swordie Government to supply billions of pounds worth of modern Euro-jet fighters. The deal announced at just about same time as he was doing his twirl.

This charming little dance, featuring most of the members of the very extended Swordie Royal Family, is as undoubtedly traditional as British arms deals with these dervishes so sending Charles to participate in the ceremonial joy was simply an extension of mutual blessings. Yes, he was certainly doing his bit for Britain only how much I wonder did this fundamentally kind hearted, good and inwardly very private man actually appreciate the bitter irony of it all. That someone with his basic democratic instincts should be publically participating in jollities with people who still believe in stoning women for adultery and think that the basic purpose of most of their female subjects is for little more than breeding, added to which is their unshakeable certainly that their rule in Swordie Arabia is absolute. Yet he’s sent there as an intelligent man, Royalty to Royalty, to be the glitzy end of a trade deal! I mean, where does this put him as a human being, or does he only exist as a creature of ceremony. Someone to be taken out of his Palatial Box on occasion for political use.

Has anyone told you what they say in the Mafia? That you pay the price for the life you choose, so just how far do you go? You’ve been seen monkeying around with a bunch of fat overfed scoundrels who don’t give a shit about their own populace? The curved sword is the national symbol of their rule and these swords chop people’s heads off, so do you actually think it’s a good idea to go waving them around with people like these?

 

TONY, REBECCA, JAMES AND RUPERT

So now it’s all starting to come out. Such tough luck for Tony Blair. His good friend Rebekah Brooks telling the Court during her Old Bailey trial how six days before she was arrested by the police, Tony had contacted her to offer his services in the capacity of unofficial adviser in respect of the legal difficulties she faced, all on behalf of their good mutual friend James Murdoch. Rebekah as Chief Executive of News International was alleged to have been implicated in the phone hacking scandal engulfing the News of the World. Oh dear! Made public at last! This was the first revelation of the former New Labour Prime Minister’s intervention in the great media scandal. What an enormous surprise! Tony Blair, Rebekah Brooks and James Murdoch! All very good friends and a toxic combination if ever there was one. Very much like another mutual friendship between Rebekah Brooks, James and a later Prime Minister David Cameron! Two British Prime Ministers and two top newspaper executives, Rebekah herself facing court action for seriously illegal behaviour. Talk about a media circus macabre, you couldn’t have made up a story like that up if you’d tried. Media Executives and prime ministers, with phone hacking stinking the mixture. Quite frankly all you needed was the bloody Titanic!  

Rebekah emails James to tell him about what Tony said on the phone and how he solicitous he was… pardon the pun!

“Keep strong and definitely sleeping pills. Need to have clear heads and remember no rash short term solutions as they only give you long term headaches…

It will pass. Tough up.

He is available for you, KRM (Rupert Murdoch) and me as an unofficial adviser but needs to be between us. He is sending more notes later.”

And why not? Their good mutual friend was media magnate Rupert Murdoch, father of James and one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest political allies throughout her career. A man Tony Blair purposefully sought out to help him win the General Election of 1997.

In response to these revelations Blair’s office maintains he was, “simply giving informal advice over the phone.” However the photograph of Tony and Rebekah together, published in the Times of Thursday February 20^th and the expression on Tony’s face says it all. His fawning admiration best describes the sickening scene with Rebekah holding a drink at a party. Yes, they were the best of times! A Labour Prime Minister and the Chief Executive of a newspaper group belonging to one of the most reactionary media tycoons of modern times and inveterate enemy of the whole labour movement. While Tony Blair was definitely no friend at all to British working people, Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers regarded them with contempt and it’s hard to separate out which of the two is more disgusting.

Key here though is the serious matter of this former Labour Prime Minister, knowing that Rebekah Brooks was implicated in the criminal matter of a phone hacking scandal, phoning to offer her his advice along with the services of Ken Macdonald QC, “a great and good type,” and former director of Public Prosecutions. Revealing is hardly the word for this kind of thing. In short, isn’t it just so nice to know who your friends are?

 

THE BBC AND THE UKRAINE

For more years than most people can remember, BBC Television has served as an active agent on behalf of British Governments for disseminating reactionary news stories and fomenting reactionary politics round the globe. In recent times, throughout the territories of the former Soviet Union. Earlier, in the late forties and fifties it supported former Nazi activists in the Baltic States campaigning for national separatism. Today it supports right wing extremists and those who are openly fascist conducting a brutal campaign of violence against the democratically elected President of the Ukraine whose political party has an overwhelming majority in the Ukrainian Parliament. To those presently observing the conduct of the BBC it’s more than clear that it has adopted a politically activist role in the Ukraine rather simply conducting itself as a news reporting service, essentially its public remit.

The British general public, who are required by law to pay the BBC for a Television License, should not be funding this organisation as a political campaigning group on behalf of the British Government to promote and disseminate the political views and activities of extremists and fascists but in recent weeks it is clearly the case that this is the work it’s been doing. Destabilizing the democratically elected Government of that country on behalf of the governments of Britain and the United States along with that of the European Union! Lending support to right wing extremists with a very definite political agenda.

However that’s only the surface agenda! There’s something far deeper going on here. At the end of the twentieth century, the Crimean Peninsula, formerly a province of the Soviet Union, was handed over to the Ukraine by the Russian Federation. The importance of this territory cannot be overestimated. Positioned at the southern tip of Ukrainian territory it borders the Black Sea and has for many years been home port to the Russian Black Sea Fleet as a main naval base. The current President of the Ukraine and largest political party in the Ukrainian Parliament is pro-Russian, reflecting the demographic and economic division of the country into its small pro-Western side facing Poland and major eastern portion facing Russia with the vast majority of its overall population in the east. If the reactionary proto-fascists in Kiev campaigning to overthrow the Ukraine’s legitimate pro-Russian Government with the help of Britain and the United States gain power, one of their first acts will be to take control of and close the Russian Naval Base in the Crimea, naturally on behalf of Britain who, let it not be forgotten, fought a Crimean War there against Russia in the 1850’s and of course, for the United States.

This is precisely what the current Ukrainian Crisis is all about. The British and Americans want to force the Russian Navy out of the Black Sea and put their own military bases close to southern Russia. And this precisely is what the BBC is conducting its propaganda campaign for.

DOING ITS BEST TO DECEIVE BRITISH PEOPLE WHO PAY THEM FOR A TELEVISION LICENCE WITH LIES IN FURTHERANCE OF A SERIOUSLY DIRTY POLITICAL AGENDA

Yes, if you’re a Ukrainian fascist it’s good to have friends like BBC Television.

 

BBC TELEVISION AND THE SOCHI OLYMPICS  

Well I have to say… Isn’t it so nice to know… That with one poxy gold medal, one silver and two miserable bronzes, listening to the BBC television team stationed in Sochi led by burly mistress of ceremonies Claire Balding, you’d think that with all their triumphalist bullshit about the successes of the British team, that Britain’s made hay with the whole Winter Olympics Festival of Sport let alone the medals table! Yes, the British Team has achieved its best ever result, winning just about jack over the last couple of weeks. Never mind that it’s placed 19^th out of the twenty-six competing nations, ten places behind Belarus with its five gold medals, and never mind that Belarus is a land-locked territory with a population close to 11 million without any snow or ice! No, according to the BBC television jockeys, making excuses time after time for all the abysmal British failures and hyping to heaven the less than a handful of British success, the whole British team were quite simply fabulous!

Tell me, am I missing something here? True, British sporting agencies traditionally give close to nothing to support British Winter Olympic teams and their sportsmen and women. True, Wayne Rooney will shortly earn three hundred thousand quid a week for ninety minutes’ work on a football field, the kind of weekly earning that would support TEN OLYMPIC COMPETITORS FOR A WHOLE YEAR’S TRAINING. That’s one week’s pay for a footballer to finance ten British Olympic hopefuls to train in their sport! Now just consider this and reflect on where people’s priorities are. Actually it’s almost obscene.

It’s not a lack of ability or talent that young British hopefuls suffer from, nor is it simply a lack of facilities or tradition in their various sports that makes them unable to compete or challenge the best. In this country it’s simply a matter of priorities. The public simply don’t care about the sporting interests of most of our youth outside of football. Traditionally their sporting interests are team centered. Tribalised mainly in football, less so in rugby and cricket, in all of which let it be said, England does poorly at best on the international stage! Apart from these just about everything else is way down the list and right at the bottom is the challenge of winter sport for which most British people don’t give a monkeys!

There’s nothing wrong with our youth. They’re not simply incapable. It’s just that there’s no real political encouragement with finance or enthusiasm. Those who ought to know better and help provide financial support through political channels simply don’t care, yet it’s these very same people who put themselves about to bask in the glory of British gold medal success whenever it comes, like parasites sucking up the triumph of youth in someone else’s sunlight.

For footballers like Wayne Rooney, everything. For the hundreds of thousands of British sporting youth, nothing. Isn’t it simply a reflection of the wider British society. For a few dozen bankers, everything. For all our hardworking nurses, teachers, firemen, policemen, ambulance men and paramedics, social carers and workers, little to nothing. So for our British Winter Olympic Team in Sochi, for the few who’ve been competing, there must be thousands of our youth who wished they were there doing the same but can’t because back home there’s simply no framework around to back them up. At nine, ten or eleven when they might in theory begin, there’s no structure there to encourage. At twelve to fourteen, nothing there likewise so in the end they wind up watching people from other countries ski-jumping or snowboarding on television with the BBC mouthing off its phony patriotic deception and the steely-eyed Claire Balding mechanically drumming up a shabby enthusiasm.

Yes, enthusiasm’s the thing. Let’s get all worked up and enthusiastic about one of our people getting into the quarter finals before crashing out and excuse it all by saying he had an injury five years ago that affected his performance or that some book he’d been reading about angels and fairies had affected him! But as it’s the BBC we’ll make it okay if we keep slipping in something nasty about the Russians! Just remember if you will, David Cameron and the British Government boycotted these Games same as Obama and his crew. All of it supposedly on behalf of the gay community, a marvellous joke if ever there was one! No, truth was that both these boys were busy making plans for the Ukraine and quite frankly David Cameron doesn’t give a shit about the British performance at the Winter Olympics.

As for the viewing public there must be many who feel genuinely ashamed of the BBC endlessly hyping up every crumb of British success while endlessly making excuses for failure. With the pathetic haul of medals the British Team had to show it was simply no good saying over and over that it was the best Britain had ever done when in absolute terms it was RUBBISH. In fact bordering on shameful. That was the real truth of it, a truth that couldn’t be said. For one of the world’s major industrial nations where football is a multi-billion pound industry the fact that little to no money is put into dozens or more winter sports is shameful. But then I suppose it’s what millions of working men want. To watch hundreds of pathetic semi-skilled men kick a ball round once a week then go to the pub, get drunk, come home and eat pie and chips while their wives and children suck up the meat fat and sugar-drinks. That’s today’s Britain. Boozed up, fat and uncouth, a nation of people without any pride let alone beauty or grace.

And the news? A few days ago a young Russian girl of 17 won the Winter Olympics Ladies Figure Skating Championship with a performance straight out of heaven. Quite wonderful to watch, bringing back memories of Torvill and Dean.    

 

AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS?

It would surely be very remiss of me to end this Post about having good friends to omit mentioning two very Good Friends of the Liberal Democrats who having donated money to the worthy cause have just  been arrested by the Serious Fraud Squad! Oh dear, they were so generous, giving the Lib-Dems a million and a half quid before going down the plug hole for dirty dealing. Paying bribes it is said. But never mind, the two very worthy Asian gentlemen may find solace in knowing that the political party of their choice and its leaders, facing certain death in coming elections, are willing to find new friends in Labour! In fact, their leader the good Nick Clegg has already begun putting out feelers.  

Wait a minute though. I somehow forget to tell you about the card I recently saw in a shop window. The one with bright yellow borders!

                     LADIES OF EASY VIRTUE SEEK NEW GENTLEMEN FRIENDS

                                     PREFERABLY WITH  PLENTY OF MONEY

SHAMELESS IS AS SHAMELESS DOES - THE BARCLAYS BANK JERK-OFFS AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Barclays Bank? Why, isn’t that one of our great, one of our most respected British financial institutions? Well with all the voluminous dirty tricks they’ve been up to recently you’d hardly think so, what with their financial executives acting as accomplices with other banks to illegally fix the world-wide interbank lending rates, something that affects just about everyone with an overdraft or borrows money for whatever reason such as business or mortgage. The Libor Rate fix is just one example from the shit bag of irregularity they’ve been involved in recently so respectable they’re not any more. In fact their banking activities in recent years have been so suspect that mighty figures in the Liberal Democrat Party have vowed, on their own lives and those of their mothers to BREAK THE BANKS UP. This means separating their activities between financial CASINO operations, (in other words gambling with the deposits and savings of their investors, ALONG WITH THOSE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS) and their customer based activities conducted on a daily basis in their branches. However, having sworn to curtail the Casino activities of the banks, before and after the last General Election when they became Coalition partners with the Tories, these senior Liberal Democrat figures have been strangely silent and the regular gambling activities of all the banks continues to flourish.

The tell-tale sign of this state of affairs is their simply amazing bonus culture in which speculators employed within the financial division of banks like Barclays receive staggering awards in bonus payments for their activities. Taking Barclays as a specific example, in the current round of awards these financial wheelers and dealers are due to be receive a 10% increase over last year’s payments and that’s on top of their fabulous salaries and this is at a time when the overall activities of the Bank resulted in a big financial loss. In short, while the Bank lost money across the board it gave those it employs at the top end in its financial service activities a handsome payout of TWO BILLION POUNDS PLUS IN BONUSES!

In a recent statement the Bank’s Chief Executive justified this, saying it was needed to retain the services of those who might otherwise take their financial skills elsewhere! Such statements might well enrage large sections of the public who’ve suffered grievously in recent years from the activities of these people and illicit the simple response, well they can fuck off if they like because we don’t need them! This new Chief Executive also made it clear that the people they cared about most were the Bank’s shareholders, the people who he said owned the bank. Never once during his interview did he mention the word CUSTOMER, the millions of people who have their wages and salaries paid into the bank on a regular basis and have current and savings accounts with it. Naturally he didn’t mention the fact that Barclays pays many of its savers around half of one percent interest for the money they keep there while charging borrowers rates varying between ten and twenty times that amount!

Little wonder that it can afford to pay staggering bonuses to their finance operators when it is so grossly exploiting ordinary savers. However that’s only the half of it! In other announcements, as though to demonstrate their uncontrolled arrogance, which is only to be expected from those whose commercial activities are entirely unregulated thanks to the unregulated arrogance of Gordon Brown, they’ve stated their intention to make thousands of their staff redundant, particularly those working at the customer end of the business as tellers and clerks in the High Street. What this means is simple enough. The speculative side of Barclays activities will continue to flourish at the expense of the day to day running of its customer arm of the business which will be run down. In other words the bank will operate primarily for interest of its shareholders.

Sounds fine only there’s a serious problem with this. In recent years there’s been little evidence that the Bank’s Executives and Board of Directors have run it for the benefit of its shareholders because the value of its shares has collapsed leaving its shareholders seriously out of pocket with no sign whatsoever of its value increasing! Indeed the only people who have benefitted from the activities of the Bank in the last five years have been its directors and top end financial services staff all of whom have received huge salary increases on top of those already paid along with gigantic bonuses in the face of serious banking losses.

This raises the question as to who actually owns Barclays? Who is actually running the Bank and  for whose benefit? Well it’s certainly not being run for the benefit of its shareholders, nor can it be for that of its tens of thousands of lower end employees many of whom will soon lose their jobs. And it’s certainly not being run for the benefit of its customers who get little to nothing for their savings and deposits. So looking at it simply and clearly, Barclays Bank seems to operate only for the benefit of its senior management and financial wheeler-dealers, people who seem to have effected a kind of take-over of its function and purpose which is now clearly to make money for themselves. That’s how things stand. The executives who have taken over the bank are entirely contemptuous of just about everyone, from their day to day customers and shareholders to the politicians who made promises to control their activities but turned out to be lily-livered, pathetic and useless!

Little wonder that their share value is around two pounds sixty and the shares of a fashion house like NEXT worth thirty times more. Nobody trusts the banks anymore. They think the people who run them are conniving and dirty. Only in it for themselves, as Barclays Bonus Culture clearly demonstrates.

As for the Liberal Democrats who promised to control them, there are simply no words for these people. It’s hard to guess who are the more dirty. The bankers who don’t give a shit and give everyone the finger or the Liberal Democrats who lied without shame just to get into Government. Lied to students, lied to me and lied to you.

AND THE WINNERS ARE… WAIT FOR IT…      

THE SHAMELESS LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

SHAMELESS BECAUSE THEY’LL ASK YOU TO VOTE FOR THEM AGAIN SOON!     

HOWEVER IN YESTERDAY’S PARLIAMENTARY BY-ELECTION IN WYTHENSHAW THEIR CANDIDATE CAME LAST AND LOST THEIR DEPOSIT.

AT LONG BLOODY LAST, PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP TO THESE RASCALS! AND NOW IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP TO THE BANKS!

DIRTY DANES

So what comes into our heads when we think of Denmark? I mean, what comes to mind? For some it’s the seriously dark and violent Danish dramas serialized on television alongside which there’s the country’s reputation for a lively soft porn industry. Then there are the products of a thriving agrarian sector supplying us with Lurpak butter and miles of cheap tasteless bacon found in supermarkets just about everywhere. Others may think of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s Danish Prince in an endless tizz over his dysfunctional family. And then there’s Lego, Denmark’s chief claim to fame and major export to children the world over. Recently however, any pleasant thoughts we may have had about this country with its lovely ladies and skinny blonde men with wispy beards have been distracted by something seriously nasty. So nasty in fact that in a supermarket a few days ago I put back on the shelf the Lurpak butter I always buy and thought fuck it, I’m not buying anything Danish any more. It was the first time I’d ever done such a thing, tying my eating habit to conscience and while there are undoubtedly people who make the choice regularly it was a first time for me!

So why? In the last few days there was a news item on television that caught my attention. Copenhagen Zoo had a giraffe that they claimed was surplus to their requirements. Not because they couldn’t afford to keep it but because it didn’t fit in with their breeding program. Many of us must have seen this giraffe. A handsome young fellow with the endearing name of Marius, in perfect health and with bags of absolute charm. A most splendid and delightful creature. Now I’m not an animal lover who goes on demos but the young of many have a very definite way with them and more often than not evoke our delight and affability. They are what they are and if we’re not talking about rattlesnakes, scorpions and black widow spiders they’re more often friendly than not. However young Marius in Copenhagen Zoo was a definite charmer and when I heard that they planned to put him down for scientific reasons i.e. in the name of science, I was astonished. Yes, they announced, without any seeming remorse, Marius was surplus to a well-controlled scientific breeding program and had to go. Like the life of this affable giraffe was surplus to science. Quite clearly, from the way it came out, its life came a very clear second to a technological requirement along with some unknown European Community regulation and after a quick death from a bolt gun it would be butchered and fed to the lions.

No problem. The Danes of the Zoo’s breeding program were all men of science! If a young beast was surplus to the requirements of their scientific breeding program then they might as well stuff it in a tin. Well given examples from recent history, the logic of curtailing life because it’s deemed unnecessary or surplus isn’t that far removed from killing on equally questionable ideological grounds… killing, removing, or mass murder when science is mustered up to prove such things as racial inferiority. The real nastiness in this case was that with the wide publicity given to the zoo’s intention, many offers were made to rehouse the animal somewhere safe where it would be cared for such as other zoos or animal parks. These offers were all rejected by the scientists responsible for the breeding program on the grounds of EC Regulations and the giraffe killed not long after. I use the word killed here but actually it’s murder. Its transport elsewhere would have been free and could have easily been arranged. Instead, the authorities at Copenhagen Zoo refused to permit it. The giraffe was theirs and the giraffe had to die. Not that it was sick or ill or anything! No, the giraffe was theirs and its existence theirs to determine! WE DECIDE WHO’S GOING TO LIVE AND WHO’S GOING TO DIE!... and if we say the giraffe must die then it MUST die!

However before the killing these kindly people fed it a last meal of tasty black bread, one of its favorites, then minutes later put the gun to its head. Sorry but I really felt sickened. Making the beast think you were its friend and then doing that! Maybe I’m just a softy but I think that it’s shameful. Maybe we British just have a naturally protective instinct towards those who are dumb and helpless and weak. Those who regard us with trust and think that if we are kind to them we’ll be that way in the future and not do anything so vile as to harm them. What went on in the heads of these bloody zoo-keepers and animal breeding program operators so that they thought that taking its life might be mitigated by giving it a moment of pleasure with a tasty snack? Actually come to think of it what kind of people are these to think like this and be put in charge of the life and death of living things? Where oh where is your common compassion? Quite frankly you dirty the name of medical science with your cold heartless rationality and in the name of humanity I say that science doesn’t need people like you. By killing this young giraffe you did it a serious disservice and that you Danes are doubly dirty.    

So a reputable zoo in Yorkshire never got a charming young male giraffe that never did any harm to anyone, which is a lot more then you can say about the wretched zoologists of Copenhagen with their twitchy little neurotic concerns for perfect breeding! Sounds a bit like Eugenics to me. You know, the warped scientific rationalization for mass murder used by the Nazis in their quest to create a so called perfect species! A practice which was, by the way, alive and well in Sweden long into the 1980’s! However, now having been abolished there we know that it’s thriving in Denmark as part of their oh so compassionate animal welfare program.

And now there’s even worse on the horizon! Another zoo in Denmark has a giraffe that’s surplus to their breeding requirements and despite the mass protests that followed the killing in Copenhagen, are planning to do exactly the same! Danes in authority it seems simply don’t listen to anyone. Inglorious bastards it seems who need to be taught a serious lesson.

AND GUESS WHAT THE POLITICIANS ARE PLANNING IN BELGIUM, CENTRE OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY? WAIT FOR IT NOW… IT’S EUTHANASIA FOR CHILDREN.

Let it be a warning to all of us… There are many disguises for murder.

NEWS OF THE WEEK

YOUNG BRITISH ISLAMIC TERRORISTS

Only recently the Metropolitan Police have said they will arrest and question young British Muslim jihadists returning from Syria where they have participated in terrorist training and combat against the Syrian Government. The stated aim of these deeply misguided and potentially dangerous youths, dangerous that is to the general public over here, is to wage war against those who are fighting their Islamic brothers whoever they may be. In Syria itself they’ve joined up with various hard line fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups all of which have been declared violent and illegal by most governments around the world, particularly those in Europe and the United States.

It is not simply a question of who these young British terrorist exports are but more important perhaps their personal backgrounds and how they’ve tied themselves to a cause that really has nothing to do with them as British citizens except in terms of an immature rationalization based on religious zeal that borders on lunacy. These questions apart one must consider those who’ve given them support in this country along with publicity.  

Young British converts to jihad, for which read Islamic terrorism, are more often than not the British born children of African and Asian Muslim immigrants to Britain in the 1980’s and 90’s. They may have attended school or university in Britain but culturally and emotionally they never fully integrated into British society. Most were outsiders seeking something different and ultimately found it in the religion of their parents but one that had been seriously radicalized for their youthful ardor by fundamentalist preachers allowed into this country and permitted if not encouraged to spread their racist and violent teaching among the children of these immigrants. This indoctrination can be traced back to the beginning of Labour Government under Tony Blair from the end of the 1990’s. Within this time of mass Muslim immigration from Asia and the Middle East came dozens of extreme fundamentalists welcomed into Britain by Labour Home Secretaries who knew exactly what they were about from police and intelligence reports and despite which facilitated their sermonizing outside mosques to large crowds of youths by giving them full police protection.

This Labour protection of Islamic fundamentalist preachers was all the more extraordinary given their comprehensively racist sermons which were not only anti-white but grossly anti-Semitic and anti-black African and Caribbean. The term applied by these preachers to all those not Muslim was dhimmi, a grossly insulting term connoting religious and racial inferiority. Protected by the law and the police during the time of a Labour Government these people could say whatever they pleased without sanction and their effect on young Muslims was substantial. Thus were the seeds of extremism sown among the Muslim youth which have today ripened into a thirst for terrorist Jihad. Not only in Syria but anywhere! They are a consequence of New Labour’s comprehensively permissive attitude towards Islamic extremism for an entire decade after they were elected to govern. A time during which, it should be said, British foreign policy under Jack Straw was highly favorable towards the grossly anti-Semitic Islamic Republic of Iran, and Straw himself friendly to a regime that had openly denied the Holocaust!

Just as the scuzzy financial creeps running the City of London today are Thatcher’s children, so are these young British jihadists the sons of New Labour. Both spawned their own creepy-crawlies. One set responsible for mass financial swindling and an economic collapse that has impoverished millions, the other responsible for a home grown Muslim terrorist movement that could easily bring Middle East violence onto the shores of our island. As to why so many of these youths, educated in Britain, have opted to identify with such an fundamentally non-British cultural milieu, perhaps it’s because of the religion and culture of their parents. It’s faith that is primary to their existence not the culture of their new environment. They may be a minority within the Muslim community but they’re fast growing and sad to relate seem to have considerable support not to say sponsorship from various organizations within British society.

Let’s take a look at those who seem to be friendly. To individuals, movements and organizations that may loosely be termed up and coming there’s nothing like a bit of publicity.  The Oxygen of Publicity as the phrase is known… and oxygen to the needy it is! And there is no media organisation that gives as much publicity to British fundamentalist jihadists busy fighting in Syria or anywhere else for that matter than Channel Four Television. Their news service seems to have a regular connection with Islamic terrorists busy firing machine guns and other weapons just about anywhere in the world where there is conflict and the same is the case with British Muslim youths engaged in jihad. Channel Four News is popular with Muslim youths throughout Britain, not simply because it is comprehensively hostile towards the Jewish State of Israel but because it provides jihadists with neutral if not favorable publicity. At times it seems as though the Channel acts as an information center for would be recruits.

Second in any publicity list for jihadists is undoubtedly BBC television and its various news programs. The organisation has always had a very mixed attitude to Israel at best and that’s putting it kindly. Far more honest would be to say that it’s slimily hostile. Like Channel Four it refers to Islamic terrorists as jihadists or fighters for Holy War rather than what they actually are… religious terrorists, a section of British Muslim youth so beloved of Britain’s political and cultural left. But wait a moment, is it not true to say that the Islamic fundamentalism these youths espouse is utterly hostile towards socialism, trades unions, women’s rights, gays of whatever gender and many other democratic values and basic human rights besides? Many of their views wouldn’t come amiss in a fascist state so why, one wonders, are they so beloved of the British left and draw no criticism from BBC television.

Unfortunately, it now seems, the British police who had in the past given Islamic hate preachers so much protection on the streets of Britain under New Labour will be called upon to arrest their young disciples returning from doing what they were inspired to do a decade earlier! Maybe we’ll even have the delicious coincidence of an arresting officer today being a former protecting officer of yesterday.

FLOODING   

Oh dear, Oh dear… Fresh from his involvement in the Great Horsemeat Scandal earlier this year,  Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has been caught with his pants down again in the Great Flood Crisis to hit Britain and then came the news that the head of the Environment Agency, now run by former Labour Ministerial jerk-off, Lord Chris Smith, would be visiting the Somerset Levels! Oh happy day! With its staff cut massively in recent times the Agency had clearly been at sixes and sevens when it came to doing a bit of flood prevention and drainage there in the past. Yes it’s another oh dear for farmers boy Paterson. Though not quite as full of blustering bullshit as Boris Johnson he’s clearly first class in making it up as he goes along! If there was ever a member of a Tory Government in recent times who sounded so much at sea then it’s Mister Horsemeat himself! Talk about monkey on a stick. He seems to pop up everywhere there’s some rural crisis like a jack-in-the-box who’s only got one line of chatter. Namely that he’s ready and able to sort everything out! Yes he’s the Jonny-on-the-Spot for horsemeat and floods, farmers and damage limitation. He’s got it all at his fingertips and knows exactly what’s what… only he doesn’t and what he’s actually full of is rushed up civil service briefings and what he actually knows from first-hand experience is jack! One look at him and you know he’s not exactly a man who inspires confidence, to put it mildly!

No, it’s going to rain for forty days and forty nights and the man to help us out and see us through is Mister Horsemeat himself who to date has been in charge of sorting out a criminal scandal for which no-one as yet has been prosecuted! Now I ask you, is that something that makes you feel inspired, and that now he has overall responsibility for sorting out flooding of large parts of Britain he’ll sort that out too! That when he promises to see what he can do about switching on the sun sometime soon there’ll be no more rain and it will be so hot that all the water in Somerset will simply evaporate just because he’s told everybody he’s looking into it! Why, if you listen carefully you can even hear the sheep laughing!

But that’s nothing compared to the visit of Chris Smith to the Somerset Levels yesterday. He arrived to reassure all the angry farmers and residents of flooded out villages all dolled up in rural clothing and wellies but only after first visiting a nearby bird sanctuary, like that was the day’s priority. His appearance was therefore greeted with anger and contempt and he was strongly advised to resign by some of those present to which he replied that he wouldn’t as there was much important work he had to do! The standard and well known politicians reply for gross managerial failure, particularly in taking any responsibility for the failure of the Agency he supposedly runs. All in all, we have a case here of a plain disjuncture between disaster and crisis on the one hand and those with authority supposedly capable of dealing with it. It’s not so much a physical disjuncture but one that is temporal in character. People who always seem to turn up too late after everything’s happened and haven’t a clue! It’s not so much a matter of being out of touch as being out of time, like getting their feet wet when all the shit’s flowed under the bridge. And suddenly there they are, full of genuine concern and all primed for action. It’s like they expect us to think, oh thank the lord, everything will be alright now that we’re here!

I mean, exactly where do these people think that they’re from? Well, flooded out farmers and horsemeat burger eaters know… They’re from a big glass jar in a Tory cold storage locker who’ve been pulled out and defrosted. Not because they’ve been promoted and put on any fast track to glory but because they’re simply the next on the list.

So pity the poor flooded farmers and all those who bought houses in some seaside town on the front for their retirement that they thought they’d turn into Guest Houses and bring in a few quid. Yes, somewhere nice and quiet down on the coast next to all those other little Guest Houses. Shame they never understood the difference between Geology and Geography when they were at school or ever considered what might happen if there was global warming and the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, in which case most of England would be under water along with all those little seaside hostelries and pubs, and those silly people who chose to farm on the Somerset Levels close to a great estuary with the world’s second largest tidal range sweeping in and out daily. No problem! Land flat as a pancake at sea level with a great Atlantic surge coming in on a regular basis so all it takes is a few weeks of rain and they’re stuffed! Very clever that! Farming so close to serious water without ensuring any serious drainage of rivers. No, we’re farmers and Tory Governments love farmers! Only they don’t and not only that, they don’t give a fuck and won’t spend any real money to help. Just pretend to love you and your Range Rovers and Wellington boots and let you think how important you are and what a fine job you’re doing for Britain when they really don’t give a shit and all they want is your vote! On the Somerset Levels there’s been no serious drainage of the rivers for years and they’re all silted up so farmers you can all go drown if you want. You were stupid to farm there in the first place and we’re only spending loose change because we’ve first got to refinance the banks so we suggest you get real! You’re the last people we need to think about now with all those lovely Romanians coming in!

So with all those Somerset villages cut off from Tesco and your world and your living room knee deep in mud guess what’s happening now? Yes you lucky people, you’ve got Horsemeat Boy Owen Paterson and the Birdman of Flooding Lord Chris Smith on the case so watch out for those promises! They’ll get with it all right away… which means sometime next year when its dry, and as for any compensation, well that kind of thing can take years! If it’s tough down in Somerset you can always go try elsewhere! It’s not the fault of the Environment Agency when your farm gets a bit wet!

No, farmers and politicians don’t mix. That’s because bankers always come first.

MY TAKE SO FAR ON SOCHI

So the Russians spent 30 billion on the Winter Olympics at Sochi. As much as was spent on all the previous Winter Olympic Games put together so it’s as much as a publicity advert for the wealth of the supposedly New Russia under Putin as it is for a great festival of sport. But then having said this, why not? The facilities provided for all the snow and ice jockeys are fabulous indeed and in the face of endless threats of disruption and violence from Islamic terrorists and sheer sour grapes and alarmist warnings from the United States Government, all seems to be going well.

Sadly, the Governments of Britain and America failed to attend the Opening Ceremony at the highest level. Their feeble and pretty wretched excuse being that the Russians have passed what they term anti-gay laws which, when all’s said and done simply make it illegal to teach or publicize gay practices at schools. This has been blown up out of all proportion and manufactured into an accusation by Western politicians that the Russian Government actively promotes homophobia and in this they’ve been busy marshalling the voices of gay rights campaigners to their cause. It has been fascinating to witness this carefully contrived alliance between the sour grapes hostility of Western Governments and the gay rights movement along with busy activity in the media! Anything to damage all the hard work that went into creating this Winter Olympics at Sochi which was also how the International Winter Olympics Committee saw it because they refused to lend their voice to any support for all the rushed up complaint!

So no President Obama, David Cameron, Harry or Wills. The latter was out shooting wild boar on a private hunting estate in Spain, David was swanning around the Somerset Levels making promises and Harry? Well your guess is as good as mine but just about anything’s possible. I mean they might have sent Princess Anne if they’d had horses doing some skiing but alas no such luck. Instead we’ve got the treat of seeing the Iranian leadership freezing their balls off and countries definitely without any ice or snow ever sending teams to participate in the splendid and colourful Opening Ceremony. So where do their athletes train all the year round? Well they don’t! The big teams however have got more than enough, from Norway, Canada and Russia to Austria and Italy, Finland, Korea and China. China? Where’s all the snow in China? They must have it somewhere. Yet places with snow twenty-four seven like Iceland and Greenland do zilch. Clearly, the countries that send large teams of athletes have a lengthy tradition of snow and ice sport. It’s part of their culture as much as noodles, cream cakes, chianti and reindeer steak. And here forgive me but I can’t think of anything to say about Canada! I mean the Chinese, Koreans and Italians have noodles, the Austrians have cheesecake and the Swiss, strudel, but the Canadians? It’s what you might call a Canada question!

What we’ve seen so far to delight the eye are the young British guys doing amazing somersaults on snowboards. Marvellous stuff, but then these kids have been doing it for years. In fact there are schools you can go to in Britain with professional coaches and instructors where you can learn to do it, and there are places that make seriously expensive kit for the sport. Many aspects of snowboarding are a fairly new with a huge variety of skills.

All in all, Winter Olympics sport comes down to enthusiasts, participants and watchers on television, the latter mainly dirty old men who can’t wait to watch those lithe long legged girls on skates taking a tumble. Full marks for the legs and all but the acrobatics and skills are just incidental, so it’s either being out and participating or getting your pleasure in an armchair with your wife in the kitchen. As for the sport itself, its enthusiasts and competitors, well it’s all very serious and so much of it a home for the brave. We should salute them all, express our gratitude and thanks and wish them the best.

As for all the political sour grapes that surrounded the Sochi Winter Olympics, well it only shows its detractors up for what they are. No regard for the sport, no regard for the athletes and no regard for the internationalism of the occasion. Just sour grapes politics to which I say thank you very much BUT NO THANKS! A toast instead to the Russians for putting it on and all the athletes there who amaze us with their dedication and skill.       

BENEFITS MEWS – CHELSEA

Benefits Mews, Chelsea of course, is a far cry from that vile, run down rat hole of a street in Birmingham that’s full of working and underclass loafers and benefit scroungers featured in the Channel Four documentary series for the wrath of Daily Mail readers. Oh no, Benefits Mews Chelsea let me tell you is a very different kind of place altogether. Full of splendid bijoux style cottages each with its own garage and the entrance naturally gated. Not really the place to have outsiders wandering in. And the people who live here are decent. Hardworking. Not the kind who’d scrounge off the State. People you might call the best of British not the worst! I know what they’re like because I live among them. Let me introduce you then to some of my friends.

Living at Number Three are Lord and Lady Mungo and their son Giles. His title and estates in Berkshire go back five hundred years! Gerry chairs a private equity company based in the City though for tax purposes it’s registered in the Bahamas, courtesy of advice from the Inland Revenue that is. Friends at the top and all that. Only pays tuppence in the pound on all those billions he makes but even then he’s still doing his best for the economy in these rather tough times. I mean, all those billions of tuppences really add up, but then he’s a bit of a dog on the quiet. Stops by the Lords every day on his way to the City, signs in and out for ten minutes and picks up three hundred each day. That’s fifteen hundred a week! Most of the money I hear goes into an Education Trust Fund for Giles, now at Eton. Even that’s tax deductible of course and helps pay for the fees. Oxford too when he gets there.

Lady Mungo of course does her bit, lending her name to various charities, so naturally no unemployment benefit for her. Can you just imagine! Someone like that, having to go down to the dole office on a regular basis… Being offered work as a chambermaid or doing the washing up in some restaurant on a minimum wage. It’s just too dreadful to contemplate. People like that would rather die!

Next door at Five there are the Porkinoffs, Boris and Olga. He’s one of those émigré oligarchs with banks and oil in Siberia. Lives all over the place thanks to his permanent British residency status, courtesy of the Foreign Office. Helps with the Child Benefits they pull in for their kids. True, they shouldn’t get it at all with all the millions he makes but then it’s all in his grandmother’s name, only she’s long dead and buried  in Moscow! So it’s all straight and above board you see. Kind of! I mean, you can’t call it scrounging. Getting a bit extra a week was his right as an Englishman I remember him joking last Christmas at the champagne party they gave. Why, they were just as needy as anyone else he gave me a wink! Got it paid straight into his bank. I mean, he owned the bank after all!

Two doors down at Number Eight are the Sinclairs. The Major, ex Scots Guards, owns a mobile phone company registered in Ireland. Operates big time in Britain but pays his tax over there. A fraction of what he might have done here but then they give people work in the Call Centres. Zero hours contracts and minimum wage and all that but at least they’re employed and ought to be grateful. He’s a major benefactor to the Conservative Party. Always reliable for a generous contribution to Party finances at Election time so the Treasury leaves him alone! Besides, he knows a whole lot of people from way back. Old friends at Oxford you know. George and David went into politics while Maxwell went into mobiles!

Splendid couple, the Sinclairs. Their eldest boy doing wonderfully well. After finishing business studies in London his father got him a job at one of the big investment banks in the City. An Internship with one of his friends. Bit like an apprenticeship in industry only this one’s in finance. Listening and learning how deals are fixed up and how to get along with all the right people. First rate opportunity for someone young. None of this wretched applying for jobs stuff, writing CVs or filling out forms. That’s for the Benefit Street kids. I mean if your father can get your feet on the ladder you’d be stupid to turn down fifty thousand per annum and driving a Porsche.

Across from the Sinclair’s there are the excellent Cardews. Roger’s just got himself knighted. Services to banking and all that. Designs Investment Portfolios at one of the biggest. A most remarkable fellow. They kind of lost ten billion last year but never mind that. It’s publicly owned so the taxpayer picks up the tab! As for Roger, with all that hard work of his he picked up a serious bonus. Two million or more for helping organise the ten billion loss. Of course it was only a fraction. He’ll need to work harder losing more next time round. And yes, there are people who always complain. All those millions out there on zero hours contracts or getting the minimum wage let alone teachers or NHS types getting their annual one percent.  What do they contribute to the economy? No, Roger’s part of the Financial Services Sector, not one of those benefit scroungers out there. The type who phone up the Payday Loan Companies needing a fix because they’ve squandered their money on a Premier League Season instead of putting it by for the rent. I mean talk about benefits! You’ve got to earn it before you can spend it and people in banking know all about that! A nice little earner that bonus of his.

Yes, people in Benefits Mews Chelsea know all about earning money, not like the scroungers on television.  Birmingham? They must all be having a laugh. Doing their drugs then down to the social with their hands out for taxpayers’ money. Better if they got up before twelve and got on their bikes, and furthermore stopped permanently claiming a Sickie. The Tories thank heaven are putting a stop to all that. If they’re not dead or dying they won’t give them a penny. Not anymore!

It’s not me alone that’s saying it but just about everyone else in Benefits Mews. Good, decent, hardworking people like Arabella Dalrymple . Spends all her time in charity work raising money for good causes all over the place. Heaven only knows how she manages to live here… but we do!

They have sheriffs and bailiffs calling round Benefits Street

And here in the Mews we all love to watch
them taking the telly and cooker, the beds and the sofa.
While we put some fizz in our mid-morning Scotch!  

So let’s get it clear. We in Benefits Mews are respectable people. Putting our money into the economy not leeching it out, so no 50 pence tax rate, thank you very much! How dare the mob up in Birmingham criticize us for paying less tax when they don’t have to pay a penny themselves. If they don’t want to work then it’s their choice so naturally they don’t have to pay. Just live a life on the hob courtesy of the taxes Yours Truly fork out for them in Benefits Mews!

And finally I forgot to tell you about the great retailer Harry Devenish who lives across the cobbles from me. A billionaire he may be but he’s being bankrupted by all the taxes he has to pay in handouts for the millions living in Benefit Streets up and down the country so he put all his money into a bank in Monte Carlo under his wife’s name. That way he pays no tax at all but now he’s set up a soup kitchen in London for the poor and the homeless. What he’s saving in tax he’s giving back to the needy so he’s a really splendid fellow you see.

So if you’ve read this post, please don’t cry for them on Benefits Street. Time you started crying for us! 

 

THIS POST IS SPONSORED BY THE GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALL THOSE WHO LIVE IN BENEFITS MEWS ALONG WITH THOSE WE’VE RECEIVED FROM DAILY MAIL, EXPRESS AND SUN NEWSPAPER READERS.

SEX AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS : LET’S TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Recently the talk in the media has been about the unfortunate Liberal Democrat Peer Lord Rennard. I say unfortunate because no-one knows, as yet, the precise nature of most of the historical allegations made against him by a number of women, added to which is the fact that the police have investigated these and  see no reason to recommend prosecution. Right now then he is innocent. Never mind that his otherwise good name has been blackened in the press and on television on a regular basis. How must that feel for him and his family? Especially if he did nothing wrong! So on the basis of unproven innuendo and unknown allegation it seems all too easy to destroy a person’s reputation and character these days. And it seems all  too easy to form an opinion based on speculation and gossip without having any hard fact.

There was a time not so long back when making a pass if that’s what he did was simply just that. A man chatting to a woman and expressing his interest, or a woman doing the same to a man. Now such interest is interpreted in a different and highly negative manner. It is viewed as coming onto that person. Let’s consider the phrase. In today’s parlance it means that the person expressing interest is imposing himself or herself on the other and that furthermore such imposition is always unwarranted.  A man however might chat to a woman or a woman to a man simply because they like them or find them interesting and intelligent. They might find themselves attracted and this may be harmless enough. They might even find themselves sexually attracted, and this in itself is neither unpleasant nor nasty, nor is it a crime. It’s just an attribute of the human condition, but to generally infer from any such conversation or interest a purely sexual intention is both perverse and injudiciously judgmental. Ultimately it becomes a barrier to normal human relations and is a part of the dogmatic moralizing that has come to characterize a new kind of morality. One that broadly seeks to stamp itself on personal relationships by ideologues seeking to load their own personality deficiencies onto others.

Making accusations or allegations has become easy these days in a judgmental climate of gutter press morality inspired by narrow intellectual value judgment by those with their own ideological axes to grind all of which are only too enthusiastically propelled forwards by politicians whose fundamental interest is control. The times we live in are indeed judgmental and dangerous, Yet it is the conduct of many of these politicians that is itself irresponsible, indiscreet and a thoroughly bad example from those who seek to govern us and set an example.    

And it with this in mind it seems to me that some more than others have failed to show us the way. The Liberal Democrats in this respect have had much to answer for in recent years most of which has now quietly dropped from public view. The reputation of this Party has always been susceptible to one kind of naughtiness or another. Well quite frankly you might say, what would you expect of a political party that jumps into bed with the Tories on a promise. Did I hear the word tarts? Well that’s how the British people now see them though there are those who might be less gracious with their language! But for the Lib Dems alas there are far more things in the background than this. Indeed the whole Party seems to have been uncommonly prone to sexual indiscretion. Perhaps failing to keep things quiet and under wraps might be an alternative way of looking at it.

Let’s take a look. Years back before the Liberal Democrats there was the matter of Jeremy Thorpe, leader  of the Liberal Party and his relationship with naughty male model Norman Scott. Oh dear, it involved the death of a favourite dog among other things for the media and was a notable political sex scandal of the time, causing his resignation and departure from politics. It was a long way for a political leader to fall. More recently however one of the first leaders of the Liberal Democrat Party, the worthy Paddy Ashdown, gave cause for a bold front page headline in the Sun Newspaper, PADDY PANTS DOWN after being revealed having an affair with a respectable lady. Never mind, both he and the Lib Dems toughed it out for a while but the little indiscretion stuck and he was replaced.

Another considerably worse oh dear was to come. Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Energy now in a Coalition Government with the Conservatives was having a secret affair that once uncovered most displeased his wife Vicky Pryce who according to a recent claim in the press gave him a black eye and chucked him through a plate glass window because he’d left her for his bisexual publicist Carina Trimingham who she’d described as a man and said he’d done it because he was a closet homosexual and had “been engaging in that activity again.” The whole thing had gone hand in hand with Huhne asking his wife to take penalty points he’d incurred for a motoring offence and she, confronted with one betrayal after another blew her top and let it all out. Consequences, jail time for both and an acrimonious bust up in public. So there it all was. Another top Liberal Democrat who couldn’t keep his flies buttoned up.

And speaking of flies, hidden pleasures seem to accompany Liberal Democrats wherever they go. Immediately prior to Chris Huhne there was the worthy David Laws, Lib Dem political high flier who for reasons best known to himself, claimed Parliamentary expenses on behalf of a gentleman lover whose existence might otherwise have never been known. Oh dear! The Parliamentary high flier not only outed as gay, not a crime in itself, but wrongly if not naughtily claiming expenses for someone he shouldn’t. Why do it for a few hundred quid one might ask if you wanted to keep your love life a secret? Wasn’t he earning enough? If he wanted to keep his relationship secret for whatever reason why take the risk? Result… put to the sword in the media and made to look like the arse that he was for the appreciation of the general public. Time though has passed and all been forgiven. He’s back in high office as a Junior Minister so there is political life after a scandal!

More recently however, even post Rennard, there’s been another Liberal Democrat sex splash. Another oh dear! This time just an ordinary Member of Parliament, Mike Hancock, allegedly being seriously indiscreet with a lady constituent and a damning Report on the matter just released. Dear, dear… And this is a Party that wants us to trust them running the country! That claims to be a model for sobriety and discretion! I mean, betraying the public who voted for you is one thing but as a politician, betraying the personal standards you set for yourself, something quite different.

And so back to Lord Rennard? The Daily Mail has called him a ‘groper’ on a front page recently and Liberal Democrat Party Leader Nick Clegg has demanded that he apologize for what is supposed he had done which he’s refused, claiming that he’s done nothing wrong and has nothing to apologize for. This seems to have caused a general furor among countless numbers of ambitious women who all now claim to have been abused at one time or another by male senior colleagues in work situations. What all this actually means is that we are witnessing the birth of an entirely new culture. What I would term The Abuse Culture, in which just about any man or woman may be liable to be accused of ‘abuse’. This extension of the increasingly neurotic character of the society we live in with its out of control bike riders and dogs being used as love objects or attack weapons and protest against just about anything being stifled by extraordinary police powers, is psychologically symptomatic of the manner in which economic depression impinges itself on otherwise rational judgment and brings out in people a whole number of demons all of which are a prey to those with emotional and ideological axes to grind.

And indeed, there are many decent individuals who, in the coming years are likely to be ground up in the process at the hands of the psychologically disturbed. We are living in an increasingly divided society. Fortunate for those who seek to govern and control us who are undoubtedly glad of such divisions in our national life. The lower middle class of the Daily Mail and the Sun against the unemployed, the poor and the benefit claimers; the indigenous white British poor against a tide of mass immigration; the police against public protest, especially that of students (at times it actually seems like the police against everyone who isn’t lower middle class) and, increasingly as it seems, a calculated and devastating division between the sexes. Turn people against each other. Divide and rule. It’s simple enough.

The prognosis is bad and there are dark days ahead. 

NOSTRADAMUS : THE HIDDEN PROPHESIES

Nostradamus, or more accurately Michel de Nostredame, was born in France in December 1503 and died there in July 1566. He was therefore a contemporary of Henry 8^th although it was two French monarchs of that name with whom he was actually associated. Firstly Henry 2^nd whose death he predicted and which led to his fame and more sensationally perhaps, predicting the ascent of a boy at the French Court to eventually become Henry 4^th.

Nostradamus! The name has an almost magical ring to it. Whether you’re a believer or skeptic, the very  mention of this astrologer, mystic, prophet or quack, whatever your persuasion… by his reputation alone quickens the pulse. In his early life he studied medicine and became a doctor who helped fight the plague, soon after which he claimed to have foresight and seriously turned to astrology, a hot topic of his day and one strongly bound up with two other big interests, that of astronomy and cosmology. Taken together they all served as a fascination for many, especially royalty and the nobility, for such things as horoscopes and predicting the future. In a way I suppose this was quite natural, both for monarchs with dynastic aspirations as well as dictators.

The first installment of his book, Les Propheties, was published in 1555. With its predictions and prophesies of world historical events it caused a sensation when it appeared and quickly became a bestseller. His services as astrologer were in immediate demand and he was summoned to Court by the French Queen Catherine de Medici to draw up horoscopes for all seven of the de Medici royal children. These prophesied that all her sons would be kings. Some might say that he was just an old smoothie, a bit like Disraeli and Queen Victoria; both men, coincidentally had Jewish backgrounds, but it certainly did Nostradamus no harm. Soon he was being consulted by a wide variety of powerful people who asked him for horoscopes, birth-charts and other astrological readings. He was definitely on the up and up with his influence at the French Court immense, especially after predicting the dramatic death of the King.

You can imagine the scene. Get it right once with superstitious febrile minds all hot to learn of their fate who believed that their future was bound up with mathematical calculation to predict planetary alignment and you were on a definite roll, and Nostradamus, though certainly no scientist like Galileo, certainly had a way with numbers. His second installment of prophesies was published in 1557 which appeared like the first in the form of four line verses or quatrains written in medieval French. The third appeared in 1558 and for some reason disappeared and was lost. However an Omnibus Edition of all his predictions appeared two years later, after his death in 1566.

All his predictions, with the patronage of royalty behind them, were a major hit of his time throughout Europe and have been in print ever since. He’s the greatest star in the astrological heavens with more written about him and his prophesies than the science of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton put together. Mysticism , prophesy and prediction have undeniable charm as modern mass media astrologers are only too well aware. Charm that is for certain categories of the emotional and spiritually needy.

His career as astrologer developed as a consequence of his interest in astronomy, particularly planetary alignment. Considering the event of 1524 he looked back to those of 1186 and 710 and consulting historical records noted that nothing major had occurred in those years and correctly predicted that nothing major would happen when the next alignment happened. In this he took his first step, hoping to predict and time future events by looking back to the past. The fact that in theory there should be no causal relationship between the two events cuts no ice for those needy enough to believe that there is!

Astrology was immensely popular in all the late medieval circles of wealth and power. It was a time prior to the emergence of science during the Renaissance, one where Catholic orthodoxy had reigned supreme in Christian Europe for centuries, and as a pseudo-science had a companion bedfellow in alchemy. Today astrology with its attendant tarot card companion is no longer the prerogative of royalty and the nobility but with the advent of industrialization, democracy and various personal rights has had its franchise of interest extended into the masses, today having a huge following! The predictions and prophesying of Nostradamus   hasn’t gone away. By no means! Predicting the future and prophesying events are of as much interest today as they ever were five hundred years back which is why millions of people the world over are interested in the man whose name has become synonymous with the power of prophesy. A man about whom thousands of books have been written along with tens of thousands of theories about what he actually prophesied and what has or has not come true.

There is today as much speculation about what he actually said as there is about what he didn’t say! It is actually possible to turn just about any one of the many hundreds of quatrains that he wrote into whatever way you want to see it. Interpretation of just about anything he said is so flexible that you can make it mean anything! That in writing about someone called Hister he prophesied Hitler and the Nazis… and there’s loads more of where that came from. Just about everyone and anyone connected with prophesy, futurology and interpretation gives themselves license to come up with something weird, wonderful and different so what we have now is a situation where thousands of people are making a living saying he meant this and didn’t mean that. In short, Nostradamus has become an industry for astrology junkies, even science fiction speculation specialists who say he was really an alien from the future who got left behind on some secret mission to planet Earth and having changed his appearance got on with life best as he could by pretending to make predictions when he knew about things all along! Oh, and if you think that I’m making it all up then please think again!

Some of his most important themes, however, are recurring and topical. A major one of his time was the relationship between Christianity and Islam, mainly due to endless military and religious conflict between the two warring faiths. Thus in his 1566 Almanac he predicted imminent major Muslim invasions of Europe. The theme was topical then and for good reason. Today there are many who might justifiably say that the man got it right with Muslim immigration into Western Europe over recent decades running at unparalleled levels and that population movement is only a precursor for something quite different. Of course, they will point out that Nostradamus said this 500 years back, but then it was just as big in his day as it is right now in ours! The fact that we in Europe have been living cheek by jowl with a seriously different culture with  dissimilar values for 1500 years now is nothing new and for the man to predict major future conflict between the two faiths is actually not a big deal. What is a big deal is that this conflict became subsumed for well over 400 years beneath British colonialism and empire. Beneath the rise of Imperial power, both British, French, Spanish and Portuguese as well as Russian, and with the collapse of this power, the conflict between the two faiths has reemerged with a vengeance. What Nostradamus didn’t do was provide any predictive analysis for the dynamics of the conflict. Something that cynics would point out that he was unable to do BECAUSE SUCH EVENTS HADN’T OCCURRED YET!

However, given the circumstances of the time in which he lived, with the rise of British, Spanish and Portuguese naval power in the first half of the 16^th century it wouldn’t have been such a big deal by such a clever astrological dick to have prophesied the rise of British and Spanish Empires in the New World and its possible consequences for checking any further Islamic incursion into Western Europe. Indeed one might have expected such a prediction from such a great prophet but alas no such luck. Not that I can see anyway!

My reason for writing about Nostradamus in this post however is something quite different than seeking to challenge, minimize or critically examine his prophetic power but to bring to the attention of both his supporters and detractors something quite new. Something altogether unexpected in our knowledge of the man’s life and work. Something indeed so unexpected to me that I can hardly believe my good fortune in making my remarkable discovery only recently, more by chance than anything else, not as a disciple in any way of the man’s thought. It all came about when I’d decided just a few months back to visit some relatives on my father’s side of the family living in Paris. It was at an in between time of some amicable conversation and my aunt’s marvellous cooking that I decided to take a vacation and after the usual tourist attractions made my way to the famous Bibliotheque National and using my British Museum Library Card sat in the Reference Library for a while running my eye over a folio of facsimile Vatican manuscripts which I’d summoned up from the basement.

The studious atmosphere around me was all most delightful and pleasant. Academics from all over the world  researching for papers or books. Much furious writing and working computer screens. I was clearly at the heart of so much scholarly research in the sciences and arts. Here I was at the very apex of Western scholarship and thought and what a privilege it was simply to be there! My mind returned from its wandering among my surroundings to concentrate on the folio placed on my desk, bound with a ribbon I noted and like the Essex lad I’d once been I’d had the immediate thought which I instantly sought to suppress… oh how fucking quaint… but found myself unable to do so despite my many years of scholarly study at some of our best Universities. Well notwithstanding the ribbon barring my way I undid it and began perusing the documents. These were a series of Vatican interdicts from the early 17^th century of materials deemed impermissible reading. Indeed unsuitable for contemplation or study, from the simply challenging to the plain nasty and damnably heretical. All hidden away under the clawing hand of the Inquisition with their authors gone to the stake.

Clearly some had escaped along with their works for I recognised certain names. However at the back of the file was another, somewhat smaller, though sealed, and like the larger marked with the obligatory large blood red cross at its front. I was instantly curious and looked for simple ways to open the file but was unable to do so, not without causing some damage. I referred the matter to one of the assistants present, presenting my credentials and asking where the original might be found. Quite naturally, as I learned, it had come up from somewhere deep in the basement.

I’d very much like to have a look at it, I said softly, speaking my best mediaeval French. I mean down there where it is… It would be so much more, well how should I put it, atmospheric you might say… Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. Why, I spoke the language she was doing her own part time research in… It was a most unusual request but then… Well perhaps it was possible…

Minutes later quickly following her through a kind of hidden doorway lined with books I made my way along a poorly lit passage then down a flight of wooden stairs clutching a railing for dear life. She seemed to know her way about I couldn’t help thinking. How many men had she had down there with her in the past I wondered and what were they doing? It was the Essex in me all over again! Cut it out, I silently said to myself, following close behind and now bending a little as the ceiling narrowed, all around me a thin layer of dust. At last, she came to a stop and turned to me. Well here was the place indicated in the records for the original folio, the facsimile of which I had up on my desk. I smiled at her graciously. She’d been altogether too kind. And there, true to the Library records it was, tucked neatly up on the shelf. May I, I asked, indicating my interest in taking it down for perusal.

Moments later I had it in front of me, going through the original ancient pages, last seen no doubt by Inquisitional hands. I felt that I was actually staring at history as my eyes ran over the documents. Not only staring at it but actually part of it and the decisions men made to ban, burn or simply hide important works of the time they felt too dangerous or threatening to be seen. List after list of names, plays, poetry, scholarly consideration, literature. It was all there in front of me on the original folio parchment. And there at the back the other much smaller file with its symbolic red cross. My hands trembled as I lifted it out, only this time, to my astonishment, it was actually open!

I can barely describe my emotions, even now. I looked across at my young French companion. Waiting for her to say something as I recall. She looked at me with those wide eyes of hers and slowly nodding her head gave me a look as if to say, well what are you waiting for, you wanted to see the original file… This was all true but quite frankly nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see. It contained everything in the facsimile upstairs only here there was more. A solitary folio page inside another folder which bore the cryptic message on its front cover written in Latin. Translated I read it thus, Never to be Publically Known… and below was the Great Seal of the Inquisitor General of the time.

My feelings can be barely imagined. Never to be Publically Known… and here was I, a man of the 20^th century reaching back to what I wasn’t quite sure. I took it all in at a glance. A single sheet with four quatrain verses. In the blink of an eye there were names of planets set in strange cryptic verse which I read over and over. Nothing at first seemed to make any sense. The style was strange, almost predictive. Then suddenly I had it. Knew exactly what I was looking at even if I didn’t have any idea what it all meant. It was probably the handwriting more than anything else. I could only stare at the paper in wonder then turned to look at my companion, only a single word passing my lips…

Nostradamus, I said slowly, my intuition racing. These quatrains belong to Nostradamus! They were hidden by the Church. They were never to be seen by the public.

We looked at each other for a moment. I knew I was right. In the 1550’s and 60’s they allowed all his other predictions to be published but somehow not these. He’d died in 1566. They must have been written years earlier, possibly part of that final set of 1558 that had disappeared without trace. It was impossible to know for sure. Maybe they’d been studied by some Inquisitional Enquiry. A decision taken to have them all burned, yet for some reason they’d been removed, saved, hidden away. All these thoughts raced through my mind. Saved by whom? I could hardly imagine. My eyes ran to the top of the paper and I began reading, wanting answers. Wanting to understand more than anything…

Here they are, as I read them on that fateful sheet… Translated from the French,

Two dark nights will rise at dawn

devour the virgin and the corn
Saturn from east, Pluto north
when Luther over Rome comes forth

The old keep company with the new

as many first then late as few
With pestilence much gone to dust
our holy world then torn in two

Some say the glowing orb lies still

and all we are doth go around
While men of little worth grow great
proclaim new destiny and unholy fate

The blood and bread and wine betwixt

beginning and unknown end are mixed
And all eternal motion ruled by number
fixed… And faith itself now cast asunder

It was down there in that basement cellar with Madeleine that I felt my thoughts transfixed. Hers too I think as our eyes ran over the lines. I was still struggling to understand them, but where we were just wasn’t the place. It would be impossible to get them out of the building but that didn’t matter. The camera in my mobile would do it all. I quickly put it on flash, took the sheet twice then each quatrain separately. Seconds later I checked to see it was all there and that was it. Time to close everything up, put back and get the hell out. That we did and later that evening got to work in her flat.

Coffee on the table and the precious papers spread out under a powerful lamp we tried making sense of it all. These were four further prophesies. Clearly lost for hundreds of years. Hidden away as I’d already thought but the question was why? What was it that the Inquisition had read into them that made them so disturbing, so threatening? Guided by that as a clue we began going over them one at a time. The first quatrain, from its opening line as it seemed deliberately set out to be cryptic… Two dark nights will rise at dawn… Nights rising at dawn! Some joker! Devouring the virgin and the corn… It all gave a sense of turbulence and destruction. One figure of astrology coming from the East the other from the north both implied catastrophe. Finally Luther over Rome comes forth… This now made it all clear enough. There’d already been a sense of calamity but with the mention of Luther there was no longer any need for speculation. This was the Rome of Catholicism and the appearance of Luther from the north, one of the fathers of Protestantism, heralded religious conflict.  Seen as a whole these were not simply lines of prophesy but together pointed to a kind of  spiritual apocalypse!

Sitting there as we did we could see it all from our own historical time but for those reading the prophesy then it’s impact would have been frightful. A prediction of impending doom and more than enough to make them want to hide it away!

The second quatrain in a way seemed to run on from the first. The old keeping company with the new… Catholicism keeping company with the new faith… In a majority at first then losing ground to the new rival religion. All the chaos and destruction caused by the conflict between the two faiths with the unity of holy Christianity torn in two… Yes, this was now equally clear. The prediction of coming religious conflict and a world division within the Christian faith must have seemed terrifying to the fathers of the Inquisition who read it, especially then facing the challenge of Islam! It would have been regarded as outright heresy! Perhaps Nostradamus was too well established at the French Court for him to be questioned or worse so they covered it over with censorship. Hid it away like it never existed. Kept a serious eye on the prophet instead.

With our heads together over the table we concluded the same. Our interpretation seemed at once sensible and logical. The third quatrain however was the most interesting so far. Here, the glowing orb to which Nostradamus referred was clearly the sun! Some say the glowing orb lies still…  Of course, this was the notion that the sun was stationary and that the planets, particularly Earth, moved round it. This was something directly contrary to the teaching of the Church, namely that the Earth, along with God and the Church, were all at the center of the Universe and the Sun and its planets moved around it. To imply anything else was again outright heresy and it is not too difficult to guess who the men of little worth were. Indeed, the first men of experiment and science were those of astronomy like Galileo along with all the new thinkers and philosophers of the Renaissance with their new ideas about humanism, the value of personal thought and man’s place in the Universe. Such thinking was total anathema to the Catholic Church and the Inquisition of the time. Nothing less than damnable! The prediction of the coming triumph of such thinking was quite revolutionary. It could never be permitted to reach a wider public so there it was, down in some dusty old cellar hidden away in  a folder!

Madeleine and I stared at each other, both of the same mind. Not for too long if we could help it! The new great prediction could now be brought to the attention of the world! Yet there was also the fourth with its talk of the blood the bread and the wine… It all sounded very Catholic, but then between beginning and end, and all of it mixed… What on Earth did that mean? It seemed to place Christianity between a definite beginning and an unknown end in time. Just a kind of faith in an eternal scheme of things but here, having said that, Nostradamus gives us his last and perhaps greatest thought in these most heretical and radical of all his predictions. Namely that in the future, we would understand that such things as motion could be understood through science i.e. quantification by number rather than religious interpretation. As he said in his last line… And faith itself now cast asunder

This, perhaps, is probably the most extraordinary line of these four lost quatrains and in my opinion the most prophetic single line he ever wrote. It is entirely out of keeping with so much of his earlier thought and clearly demonstrates the personal distance he’d travelled . All eternal motion ruled by number fixed,  in other words quantifiable, and not just motion but implied here is so much more, even gravity if he’d gone any further. But then maybe he did. Maybe there was far more that was lost than we suppose. Newton perhaps, even Einstein! The names of these men of course could not have been known. Their ideas and thoughts perhaps, another thing altogether!

When we looked at all these considerations together they seemed to make wonderful sense and we congratulated ourselves on what we took to be our brilliant surmises. Everything seemed clear to us then. Our interpretations all seemed to fit. Not only had we discovered something new and amazing that day deep in the Library but with our minds on fire, had taken it forward. Taken the ideas of a man long dead to exciting new levels. What would he have said if he’d been with us, we wondered? Especially over a good cup of coffee or a bottle of wine. And in Paris of all places, one of the centers of revolutionary thought!

It had been a wonderful day and a wonderful evening. Two minds interacting together. Speculating, racing along new and exciting horizons after making discoveries. Conscious that they are the first. That they’ve been somewhere that no-one else has ever been! Maybe the old man found it too. Discovered the sense of being the first! That night we raised a glass to him and spoke his name well.

Today, not long after, I’m communicating our story to you. After ourselves you are the first to know, worldwide, over the web. To as many as we can free of charge. The way it should be.