Emrys
Emrys's JournalThe UK has been directionless for a long time.
The post-Thatcher/Blair consensus under Cameron and Osborne consisted of an obsession with the national debt and deficit in the aftermath of the entirely predictable 2008 crash, and the imposition of endless "austerity" while still allowing the rich to feather their cushy nests.
Both major parties turned in on each other. Labour's still working through that, the Tories have temporarily patched themselves up with the biggest, most nationally self-destructive, most pointless adventure this country's ever embarked on.
Imagine the continued lack of vision and direction if the Brexit vote had gone to Remain.
Now, to cover up the fact that none of our large-party politicians have any idea about a positive course for the future of the UK, Brexit or no Brexit, they've invented a major crisis that's going to overshadow everything else for the foreseeable future. It's a very useful distraction.
Meanwhile, barely remarked upon, awful inhumane legislation is being enacted almost daily - the third-child "rape clause" for receipt of tax credits, cuts in payments to bereaved families, to name just two recent examples - and this before the bonfire of rights after the passage of the Great Repeal Bill that will enable the government to cherrypick and reshape the country's constitution in whatever way it wants with scant if any parliamentary scrutiny. And the government will have a great excuse for any continued austerity measures it wants to enact - get used to being told "we all have to tighten our belts" in the National Cause while the rich figure out ways to capitalize on the situation and grow even richer and it's all the fault of that horrible EU and furriners at home and abroad.
I'm lucky. I live in Scotland. I've no idea how things will pan out here, whether we'll leave the UK, rejoin the EU, whatever. But we at least have a little hope and some options and potentially some say in what will happen, and some politicians who are representing an alternative approach.
At a UK level, unless you're a Brexit supporter, you are now utterly disenfranchised. What you think and want doesn't matter, and you're wrong and an un-British traitor to think and want it, as May and her cronies and the Brexit fans will not hesitate to remind you in no uncertain terms as they parrot "the will of the people".
We'll have to wait and see whether people will continue to put up with all this.
BBC to announce that the UK is to withdraw from Eurovision
PinkNews understands that the withdrawal will come into effect in the first few months of 2019, meaning the UK will have just two more shots at the trophy.
Eurovision will also not be shown on the BBC past next year, after months of tempestuous negotiations broke down last night.
A source close to BBC director-general Tony Hall said the Prime Minister had forced his hand by instructing the corporation this week to make at least £350,000 in annual cuts.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/04/01/bbc-set-to-announce-that-uk-is-to-withdraw-from-eurovision/
May's Article 50 letter in full (Trigger Warning)
Earlier this month, the United Kingdom Parliament confirmed the result of the referendum by voting with clear and convincing majorities in both of its Houses for the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill. The Bill was passed by Parliament on 13 March and it received Royal Assent from Her Majesty The Queen and became an Act of Parliament on 16 March.
Today, therefore, I am writing to give effect to the democratic decision of the people of the United Kingdom. I hereby notify the European Council in accordance with Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Union. In addition, in accordance with the same Article 50(2) as applied by Article 106a of the Treaty Establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, I hereby notify the European Council of the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the European Atomic Energy Community. References in this letter to the European Union should therefore be taken to include a reference to the European Atomic Energy Community.
This letter sets out the approach of Her Majesty’s Government to the discussions we will have about the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union and about the deep and special partnership we hope to enjoy – as your closest friend and neighbour – with the European Union once we leave. We believe that these objectives are in the interests not only of the United Kingdom but of the European Union and the wider world too.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50
T_i_B's already answered with some of what I would have said.
The Mail is owned by the 4th Viscount Rothermere, an old-money billionaire registered as non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes. Possibly more significant is the stance of its editor, Paul Dacre, an arch-eurosceptic who's a millionaire because he makes about £1.5 million a year from his post (he also relies on European agricultural subsidies to support his numerous major landholdings in the UK, but that's just one of the ironies in the whole situation).
Murdoch owns the Sun, Sun on Sunday, The Times and The Sunday Times, and part-owns the Press Association.
The Express is owned by porn millionaire Richard Desmond, who runs a really trashy tabloid and is as rabid a supporter of Brexit (and UKIP) as you'll find.
The Telegraph is owned by the weird reclusive twins the Barclay brothers, who're very rightwing, and split their time between Monaco and the private island of Brecqhou, just off the small Channel Island of Sark. They deny being tax exiles, and have claimed they live abroad for "health reasons".
Of the rest of the media, the BBC's supposed impartiality has been stretched over the years. It would be unfair to label it "Eurosceptic", but it's given loads of airtime to Nigel Farage and the crackpot ideas he spouts, out of all proportion to UKIP's political support in the country. The other broadcast media have played a similar role.
The problem's been that the EU's been a handy scapegoat/distraction for all sorts of UK national ills over the years in just about all the media - lots of stupid myths have gained currency, from the infamous (non-existent) edict on the acceptable degree of straightness of bananas downward. That's one way our current Foreign Secretary (roughly equivalent to the US Secretary of State) Boris Johnson made his name when he was a journalist supposedly covering the EU. This was what an ex-colleague of his, Martin Fletcher, wrote when Johnson was on the Remain side (before he opportunistically turned coat because he saw that - and being on the heroically losing Leave side, as was expected at the time - as his best chance of becoming Prime Minister):
Johnson, sacked by The Times in 1988 for fabricating a quote, made his mark in Brussels not through fair and balanced reporting, but through extreme euro-scepticism. He seized every chance to mock or denigrate the EU, filing stories that were undoubtedly colourful but also grotesquely exaggerated or completely untrue.
The Telegraph loved it. So did the Tory Right. Johnson later confessed: 'Everything I wrote from Brussels, I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power.'
Johnson’s reports also had an amazing, explosive effect on the rest of Fleet Street. They were much more fun than the usual dry and rather complex Brussels fare. News editors on other papers, particularly but not exclusively the tabloids, started pressing their own correspondents to match them. By the time I arrived in Brussels editors only wanted stories about faceless Brussels eurocrats imposing absurd rules on Britain, or scheming Europeans ganging up on us, or British prime ministers fighting plucky rearguard actions against a hostile continent.
Much of Fleet Street seemed unable to view the EU through any other prism. It was the only narrative it was interested in. Stories that did not bash Brussels, stories that acknowledged the EU’s many achievements, stories that recognised that Britain had many natural allies in Europe and often won important arguments, almost invariably ended up on the spike.
https://www.indy100.com/article/a-journalist-has-shared-a-story-about-boris-johnson-that-completely-undermines-his-authority-on-the-eu--bkoHJPBuVZ
I've seen other reports that his colleagues in the European press lobby saw Johnson as a total buffoon, and competed with each other to feed him crazy (fictitious) scoops, which he duly reported without bothering to check, and then became firm urban myths.
European elections traditionally don't have great turnout in the UK, which opened the door to the likes of UKIP to build a power base of sorts there - one (along with a major source of funding, some of which it's currently facing major lawsuits about) it will lose on Brexit, which is another irony.
In the face of all this, a facile case for Leave wasn't hard to make, and the positive case (even realistically guarded - the EU's not perfect, of course) struggled to gain traction.
Couple that with the fact that it's evident that a lot of the Leave vote in certain areas was driven by anti-Establishment sentiments, plus there was little expectation that Leave would win, and the stage was set for a classic protest vote.
The last nail in the coffin was the stupidly simple-minded framing of the ballot paper and no setting of a threshold proportion of the vote for enactment (it was supposedly only an advisory referendum, though to scare voters with the importance of their vote, Cameron included a statement on the paper that the government would go along with whatever was decided). People could tick a bald Leave or Remain, that's it.
That's left it open for politicians on the Leave side to claim a mandate for whatever they want ("The people have spoken"
, including a hard Brexit (i.e. no trade deals with the EU, a complete severing), whereas the Leave pundits all along scoffed publicly at any idea that the UK would leave the Single Market and called it scaremongering.
And here we are.
Ukip's only MP Douglas Carswell quits party
...
“I will not be switching parties, nor crossing the floor to the Conservatives, so do not need to call a byelection, as I did when switching from the Conservatives to Ukip. I will simply be the member of parliament for Clacton, sitting as an independent.”
In a sign of the deep divisions within the party, however, Carswell immediately faced calls from the Ukip donor Arron Banks to trigger a byelection so the businessman could stand against him.
Andy Wigmore, a spokesman for Banks, said: “The net has been closing in. There is a Ukip national executive committee meeting on Monday and he [Carswell] knew he was for the chop, so jumped. He should call a byelection and Arron will stand against him.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/25/ukips-only-mp-douglas-carswell-quits-party
"This is the most failed first 100 days of any president."
Hey, Donny's finally got a YUUGE achievement to his name. Beautiful achievement. Historic. Greatest achievement ever.
...
Trump did not merely allege that former president Barack Obama ordered surveillance on Trump Tower, of course. He asserted it as fact, and then reasserted it, and then insisted that forthcoming evidence would prove him right.
...
Questions about Russia have hung over Trump for months, but the president always has dismissed them as “fake news.” That became much harder Monday after the FBI director proclaimed the Russia probe to be anything but fake.
“There’s a smell of treason in the air,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-
boggling event.”
Brinkley, who has published biographies of such presidents as Gerald Ford, Franklin Roosevelt and Theodore Roosevelt, said of Trump’s start, “This is the most failed first 100 days of any president.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/president-trump-faces-his-hardest-truth-he-was-wrong/2017/03/20/af9cabfc-0d83-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html
Sad.
UK to trigger article 50 on 29 March, but faces delay on start of talks
...
The president of the European council, Donald Tusk, responded quickly to say that he would distribute his response to the British government within 48 hours of next Wednesday. But sources made clear that it would take “four to six weeks” for the other 27 countries in the EU to reach consensus and start the more formal process.
...
The prime minister’s chosen date shortens an already tight timeframe in which the British government hopes to both agree on the terms of withdrawal, including its financial liabilities, and successfully negotiate a “comprehensive free trade deal” with the EU.
The EU had hoped to offer a substantive political response to Britain at a summit pencilled in for the 6-7 April, but the notification date announced by Downing Street does not now make that possible, EU sources said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/mar/20/theresa-may-to-trigger-article-50-on-29-march
Well, she's off to a flying start before she even pulls the trigger.
British banks handled vast sums of laundered Russian money
Source: The Guardian
Britain’s high street banks processed nearly $740m from a vast money-laundering operation run by Russian criminals with links to the Russian government and the KGB, the Guardian can reveal.
HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds, Barclays and Coutts are among 17 banks based in the UK, or with branches here, that are facing questions over what they knew about the international scheme and why they did not turn away suspicious money transfers.
Documents seen by the Guardian show that at least $20bn appears to have been moved out of Russia during a four-year period between 2010 and 2014. The true figure could be $80bn, detectives believe.
One senior figure involved in the inquiry said the money from Russia was “obviously either stolen or with criminal origin”.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/20/british-banks-handled-vast-sums-of-laundered-russian-money
It'd probably be worth more without the atrocious paintjob.
A light fisking:
"Relatively" is the key word here. If you bung a pound weight on the tailpiece, it'll hang straight.
Instruments previously produced in Japan during the 1960s.
The Decca trademark is a brand name used by U.S. importers Decca Records. Used electric solidbody models are typically found priced between $100 and $200.
http://www.bluebookofguitarvalues.com/Electric_Guitar_Values/Guitar_Manufacturer.aspx?id=DECCA
IOW, they were cheap imported guitars mass-produced by Teisco before Japan got good at this stuff, available from the likes of Sears Roebuck by mail order, suitable for beginners who didn't live near a music store and had nobody to give them better advice, sold by a company trying to cash in on the Decca record label brand.
Once upon a time it had a tobacco sunburst finish. Those days are now firmly behind it, unless you like looking at its unmarred back.
We won't mention the body wood because youdonwannaknow.
It was a cheap and nasty pickup even when new, and age hasn't been at all kind to it.
If you get fed up trying to get guitar sounds out of it, you can use it to scratch, yo.
It's a beater.
If you plug it into an amp, it makes a noise.
The action is an inch high at the 12th fret. It has to be, otherwise it buzzes like a sitar.
If you're going to buy it, plan on hanging it on your wall. Describing it as "a guitar" is like describing a decorative cheese slicer as "a harp."
But hey, it's for a good cause.
The major source for Trump's UK wiretap claims was Larry Johnson!
https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/842934284096864256
Oh my God. The reappearance of Larry Johnson.
In case you're lucky enough not to know who Larry (C.) Johnson is, he has a few claims to fame.
He didn't complete his PhD dissertation, instead going to work as a "community organizer" in Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
He then got Orrin Hatch to recommend him for a job at the CIA, which he joined in 1985, serving as an analyst on the Caribbean, then moved to the State Department Office of Counterterrorism in 1989, where he worked until 1993, when he went freelance, setting up BERG Associates.
I know about him because he was a rabid opponent of Obama during the 2008 election, turning his No Quarter blog into a revolting cesspool where any old racist clatrap and absurd conspiracy theory was tolerated, if not encouraged by the frontpagers.
His finest moment was championing "The Whitey Tape" (as mentioned in the tweet above), a mythical video of Michelle Obama supposedly making racially charged comments during a speech - a video which he kept insisting for months that shadowy "sources" told him was just about to be released, and when it was, would scupper Obama's chances of election even if he defeated Hillary Clinton in the primary race. The video has never appeared.
He's a member of the inaptly named Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which pops up from time to time, most recently dismissing the Russian election hacking allegations as "baseless" and demanding "proof".
He nowadays appears as a regular pundit on Russia Today.
Johnson told Fox News's Judge Napolitano that GCHQ had been tapping Trump, and Trump believes everything he reads and sees on TV as long as it's from one of his pet RW sources.
Needless to say, this revelation is not going down well among some of our favorite intelligence pundits and their associates:
https://twitter.com/20committee/status/843085550764593152
Larry Johnson is a flake and fabricator who regularly appears on RT. Way to go, "judge" -- and POTUS!
cc @FoxNews http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4326152/UK-spying-Trump-source-invented-Michelle-Obama-hoax.html …
https://twitter.com/20committee/status/843087156465799168
.@FoxNews Kremlin Larry is also the idiot who told everyone that terrorism was an imaginary threat -- 2 months before 9/11http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/opinion/the-declining-terrorist-threat.html …
John Schindler ✔ @20committee
.@FoxNews Kremlin Larry is RT's go-to guy for crackpot conspiracy theories about the IC and USG, here's one example of MANY:
…
https://twitter.com/EsotericCD/status/842938063236030466
Jeff B/DDHQ Retweeted John Podhoretz
I am just utterly fucking appalled that this famously insane person was Napolitano's source, which led to an international incident.
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