Seen at the massive anti-lockdown demo in London today…
As they say on the internetz: LOL.
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Best political sign of the year?June 26th, 2021 |
 28 comments to Best political sign of the year? |
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Perfect 😁
In spite of all British flaws, we cannot do without British humour.
(Best appreciated from a safe distance, in my opinion.)
Brilliant! Gave me the biggest laugh I’ve had all day.
Personally, I’m glad that Handcock [sic] is gone. Shame that it took a personal scandal to get rid of him rather than his many individual acts of tyranny upon the nation (incompetent though they were).
It was obvious that BoJo was only holding onto him to make sure there was a scapegoat for COVID when the public enquiry came around. Still, I guess he continues to serve that purpose now that he is an ex-minister.
Hopefully the swine gets deselected.
BoJo is probably mightily relieved to have avoided the utter absurdity of the shagger-in-chief sacking a comparative neophyte for the sin of shagging. OK, I know there are other considerations but that’s how it would have been framed by the media and even by our inept opposition.
The new Health Secretary Sajid Javid was willing to cross swords with the PM in the relatively recent past. Passing the supposed poison chalice to a capable operator with a point to prove could easily backfire.
Yes, that would be a bit hypocritical of BoJo to sack Hancock for an offence for which he is a serial defiler. When I heard that BoJo had offered Hancock his support as PM, I thought to myself “That ain’t gonna last”. Personally, I thought it was weak, cynical and insincere of BoJo, but then again those are almost defining characteristics of the man…and he’s STILL not as cretinous as David Cameron.
Hancock tried to front it on the news round, but he’s not got the bluffer’s wit that BoJo has, he just came across as the obnoxious and slimy toad that he is.
Still. He’s gone, thankfully. Maybe Sajid can inject a bit of reality and common sense into the role. At the very least it allows the opportunity to bury some of the more obnoxious, hypocritical and stupid stuff as “Hancock’s mess” even if it’s not entirely his fault.
John Galt: “Hopefully the swine gets deselected.”
Seconded.
Watch this, it is pure genius 🤣
Sadly the latest “bonking” scandal is being used to divert attention from the fact that the POLICY is wrong.
Neither Mr Hancock or Mr Johnson woke up one morning and said to themselves “I know – I will smear Early Treatment of Covid 19, so that lots of people die who could have been saved” – they did NOT decide that.
Nor did Mr Hancock or Mr Johnson come up with the idea of a “lockdown” which has done so much harm. Just PLEASE think about it – does anyone here really think that Alexander “Boris” Johnson thought up the “lockdowns” or anything else?
While people continue to cling to the myth that policy is made by politicians the decline of the Western World will continue.
Politicians (at all levels of government) receive endless briefing and are “invited” to endless conferences, training secession and policy briefings and-so-on. Please note this is where politicians are told what policy is – NOT where they make policy.
Policy on such matters is made by officials and experts – often at an international level, it then goes down to politicians.
“But they could say NO” – yes they could, but it is very hard in the circumstances.
People who have never held elected office do not understand how hard it is to reject the “group think” – if you stand up and say to officials who are giving policy information, “this is all wrong – I reject this”, then you may well face a charge of “bullying” officials.
Also you own elected colleagues (regardless of party) will think you INSANE – after all they get the same e.mails (policy briefings) and go on the same “zoom” training secession and-so-on.
The officials and experts come to politicians with what policy is. There are indeed choices for politicians (yes indeed there are) – but they are presented within a very limited context.
All this a bit LESS true in the United States – where it is easier (or rather – less incredibly difficult) for, say, a strong minded State Governor to break with international POLICY.
This is partly due to fact that a State Governor is, once elected, not really dependent on a party system – can not just be removed (as the leader of a council – or even a Prime Minister can).
British people should remember what happened to Margaret Thatcher – the lady won three landslide General Election victories, but was suddenly forced out.
And this was BEFORE John Major (and George Herbert Walker Bush and so on) rubber stamped Agenda 21 in 1992.
Yes (a thousand times yes) it is POSSIBLE to go against Policy – but it is incredibly difficult (and often politically fatal for the politician who does go against Policy).
Mr Hancock may be a bad man, I do not know, Mr Johnson may be a bad man – again, I have never met him, I do not know.
But the assumption that these people CREATE policy is wrong – indeed it is absurd.
They could go against policy – but that would take a very strong and independent mind indeed. And they might face the end of their time in public life if they went against policy.
The image that people have in their minds – is that the Prime Minister creates policy with the agreement of the Cabinet, and that it is then passed after debate in Parliament. With officials just filling in the paperwork in line with instructions from the Prime Minister and Ministers.
That is how things used to work – in say the time of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, but that was in the 1840s. The system has changed massively since then – for example with the creation of the Civil Service by that lunatic Charles Trevelyan. Indeed it has changed dramatically since 1990 when Mrs Thatcher fell.
“But we got out of the European Union – in defiance of policy”.
True that was a victory – nothing much has come of it (the regulations remain in force), but it was a victory against policy.
“If I was only elected then I could do ……” – that is how a friend of mine used to think, he got elected and resigned within a year. Because he found that is not how things work – even when your party is in the majority.
In reality things are not pointless – there are some opportunities to defeat policy sometimes, but they are rare opportunities.
“The system” exists – it is very real. And anyone actively involved in politics (who holds elective office) knows that. To work within the system means waiting for those rare (very rare) opportunities where you can influence things a bit.
In the American system…..
The Federal bureaucracy is dominated by the establishment left.
It is not true that a President is powerless – the Civil Service rules are not that bad (although they are very bad), but it is true that unless a President has a detailed knowledge of government and gets a grip very fast, he becomes a prisoner in his own government – pulling leavers that are NOT CONNECTED TO ANYTHING.
President Trump did not want half a million people to die of Covid 19 – he wanted them to get the Early Treatment that would have saved most of them. But he DID NOT CONTROL HIS OWN GOVERNMENT
President Trump never even controlled the “Justice” Department – where the Attorney General was a RINO (an establishment waste of space) who President Trump did not even know before he was “asked” to appoint him.
The Attorney General should be the shield and the sword of a President – it is vital know the Attorney General very well indeed (long before appointing him), and President Trump did not know William Barr at all. William Barr was never loyal to the President (still less to the Constitution – no one in the American establishment cares about the Constitution) – he was loyal to “The System” (which exists in America – just as it exists here). William Barr could not care less that Donald John Trump had been smeared by the government bureaucracy (“Steel Dossier” onwards) – because he, Barr, was loyal to that bureaucracy. Nor did Mr Barr care about the crimes of the Biden family – Joseph Biden could have eaten babies for breakfast and Mr Barr would still have done NOTHING. And to expect a waste of space like William Barr to do anything about the Election Fraud of November 2020 was hopeless – he was never going to do anything, on the contrary he was going to pretend that the fraud did not exist (and go have fun with his Establishment pals from the “Atlantic”).
I said many cruel things about then candidate Donald John Trump in 2016 – and I regret (and apologise for) the things I said – but one thing I do NOT regret saying.
Donald John Trump had no idea how the Federal Government works (none) – he was like my friend D…. down the road, who was elected to a body and then resigned when he found out he could not do the things he wanted to do.
President Trump ended up a prisoner in his own government (pulling levers that were not attached to anything – because the administrative structure was actively against him, not under his control) – helpless as hundreds of thousands died who could have been saved.
It is possible (possible) to defeat Sustainable Development (Agenda 21 – Agenda 2030) and Stakeholder Capitalism (the Corporate State that Klaus Schwab, and so many others, have been working to create – for so many decades).
But NOT if you think that “bonking Hancock” or “bonking Johnson” create policy out of their own heads – they DO NOT.
Policy on many matters, tends to come from experts and officials (often international – if you trace it back) not from “bonking Hancock” or “bonking Johnson”. Their behaviour is more of a distraction than anything else – to entertain “the masses” and stop them thinking about policy itself.
That is why policy (on a whole range of things – not just Covid 19) is much the same in OTHER COUNTRIES.
All the Western countries have much the same ideas dominating their education system, media, and Corporate and Government bureaucracy.
And the ideas are WRONG – about just about every political and cultural matter.
Just for fun:
https://babylonbee.com/news/is-your-teenager-secretly-a-libertarian-9-signs-to-look-for
Well, i don’t often read Paul’s longest comments to the end, but his latest is compelling reading.
Related: an argument that DeSantis would make a better President than Trump.
But i tend to think that the best that could happen would be for Trump to win in 2024, with DeSantis as VP (taking an active role in personnel choices); and then DeSantis as POTUS for 2 terms. The only question is, what are the chances of that?
A huge number of people were marching through London calling for the heads of Hancock (& Johnson) not because he was bonking some bint, but because millions of people know this is all bollocks. You’re hardly the only one who gets it, mate, us great unwashed out here bearing the brunt of this shit know it all too well.
Don’t know about you, but I am completely surrounded by people who know more about Beyonce than they know about Covid, who know only that the government experts tell us to mask up always and seek treatment only as we die. People who don’t get it. But still vote.
Snorri and Bobby. The 2020 election was in all probability not decided by actual votes legally cast by actual people. The machinations which allowed this to happen are still in place and will surely be extended as neither the uniparty Republicans or the timorous “Conservatives” on the Supreme Court will do anything to stop them.
The so-called moderate Meyrick Garland stating that he now intends to use the power of the DOJ to challenge and reverse legislation passed in Georgia to safeguard (albeit 8 months too late) their elections has not received the attention it merits.
Snorri,
I’m not sure I want Trump to run again. I think there might well be an “accident” if he won.
There are ways of guarding against that, Roué. Richard Nixon, for instance, had Spiro Agnew as vice president. Trump would be relatively safe as president with DeSantis as veep. And vice versa.
Wasn’t that the whole point about having Pence as Veep? That he was someone actually worse than Trump by some measures (as far as the left was concerned).
Personally, I quite liked Pence, I thought he did a reasonable job as Veep, which is to hang about doing nothing much at all and occasionally go abroad to dead presidents funerals instead of the POTUS.
The office of Veep is often maligned as “…not being worth a bucket of cold piss / spit”, but it can be a stepping stone to POTUS for some (like George Bush the elder) or a sudden rise through death of the POTUS (like Truman and Johnson), but mostly it’s a nice little bump for some dead end senator or congressman (like Pedo Joe Biden)
I doubt Trump will succeed with the nomination in 2024 because his primary characteristic in 2016 was “not being Hillary Clinton”, that won’t be a factor in 2024 (at least I bloody well hope not). I reckon that DeSantis could do well, but so could many if they can successfully wield the Trumpian banner of populism without the similar gaffes that come from being Donald Trump.
Quite how any Republican nominee beats a path to the Whitehouse given the prevelence (even preference) for voter fraud of the Democrats is a bit of an unknown though. The shamelessness of Democrat voter fraud is pretty shocking to non-Americans.
Why on earth would anyone with a conservative or libertarian outlook want the useless President Trump back?
He had four years, including two with a Republican Congress. He kept NO promise and accomplished NO significant change.
And he lost to Joe Biden! And he’d be 80!
Talk about a second Trump run is (and makes us look) stupid and is counterproductive.
Point is, he never had a Trumpian Congress. He had a Never-Trump Congress.
Trump’s value lies in how he awakened sectors of US society to the idea that we don’t have to meekly accept that Pol Pot was a good anti-racist.
I agree that we’d be better off if he didn’t run again in 2024. He ought to stand off as a very vocal kingmaker, giving his support to whoever gets the nomination – so long as that new nominee continues Trump’s efforts. He’s a rallying point now, not a President. But for the time he was, he woke us up to what we could do.
Yes bobby b – the “Republican Congress” never even funded the border wall.
Senator Majority Leader McConnell knew that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged – but he did not care, he was out with his friend William Barr and their “Atlantic” magazine pals – the same people who pretended that President Trump called American soldiers who died on D. Day “losers”.
They are not all wastes of space – for example Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin tried to save the lives of the HALF A MILLION Americans who died of Covid 19 by publicising Early Treatment.
But how much support did he get?
Think about it – these RINOs do not care about HALF A MILLION dead Americans, they only care about their Corporate donors.
The most “paranoid” “conspiracy theorist” needs to be be told the following…..
“You were horribly innocent – the establishment has turned out to be much much WORSE than you ever thought it was”.
And not just in the United States – because this is international.
Snorri – the “good” news is that there is going to be economic collapse. True “there is a lot of ruin in a great nation” and the economy has lasted many years longer than I thought it would – but now it is finally going to go.
It would take election rigging on a truly epic scale for K.Harris to be elected President in 2024 – it is going to be a Republican President.
The question is who?
I think President Trump will too old to be elected to be elected for his third term in 2024 (although it would be constitutional as the establishment pretend he was not reelected in 2024 – so it would, officially, only be his second term) – so who?
Presently the favourite for the Republican nomination in 2024 is Governor DeSantis of Florida.
With his military intelligence background and his time as Governor (fighting people within the administrative structure who have tried to sabotage everything he has done) Governor DeSantis might have a better grasp of the vital need to personally control-the-government-machine than President Trump did.
Civil Service rules can be overridden by Emergency Actions of the President – and January 2025 will see the United States in a truly terrible state.
With the country close to total collapse – the public will not tolerant “woke” court actions and so on.
By the way – I used to know a libertarian who actually believed the lies of officials who DeSantis had to fight in Florida.
And the same libertarian believed that the Wuhan lab virus just emerged naturally at a “wet market”.
And the same libertarian believed “TINET” (there-is-no-early-treatment).
And he believed many other utterly absurd things as well.
Why?
Because he believed the mainstream media – his opinions were based on the mainstream media.
Some people must still believe the mainstream media – otherwise it would have already have collapsed, and I actually knew such a person.
[…] Saturday a mate of mine dropped by to see me, having just been at the Covid demo mentioned here earlier. My mate brought photos with him. You can see most of those he gave me here and […]
Paul:
You are quite right in saying that politicians do not actually make policies.
One example from my experience is that of British gun control legislation. The original 1920 Act was passed to deprive citizens of rifles and pistols, lest they turn Bolshevik and overthrow the state.
Little happened thereafter until 1968, when a form of control of shotguns was brought in. Now the mindset of the Home Office is that “controls are good”, so it soon came up with a plan to tidy things up and place shotguns under the same controls as pistols and rifles. Naturally, this was not discussed with people who actually owned or used shotguns, it was purely a policy of the security elite.
Their plans were published as a Green Paper in 1973, whereupon to the surprise of the security elite, the shit hit the fan. At the time over a million people owned shotguns, and they did not want any extra controls on them. The Conservatives lost a by-election in rural Cambridgeshire on this issue to the Liberals.
Now, politicians know little of such policy matters, and care less, but elections they do understand. The Green Paper became a political liability, and it was dropped.
But it did not go away. Of course not. As you say Paul, that’s not how it works. In 1987 a madman with a rifle and a pistol went crazy in Hungerford and killed many people. The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, needed to DO SOMETHING NOW!
What he “did” was ask his civil servants to come forward with a policy. What a surprise, they had one ready for him. They had had it since 1973. Welcome back, Green Paper.
Now the Hungerford massacre had been done by a man with a rifle and a pistol, the weapons “controlled” since 1920. No matter. The 1988 Firearms Act, as it became, was mostly concerned with imposing the 1973 controls on shotguns. Because. Just because.
And it worked, and the extra control drove about half the owners of shotguns out of gun ownership, which was the plan all along.
A Home Secretary like Douglas Hurd does not formulate policy. He is given it by the civil service, and then he gets on his hind legs in the House of Commons as if he has given this policy his deepest consideration. He has not. A trained parrot could do his job, which is to present the policy developed by the civil service as if it has come about after deep debate and consideration.
Boris Johnson could not care less about petrol cars or gas boilers. He has been given a policy: Net Zero by 2050! Where did it come from? Not him. If anything, his extensive writings before he entered politics show that he considers these policies to be ridiculous. But now he is prime minister, in theory able to do something about them, instead he goes along with them, mouthing pathetic platitudes about building back better in a gender neutral yet feminine way.
Boris Johnson is a particular disgrace, but as you say, Paul, he is only the most egregious example. Any politician who, like President Trump, actually tries to change things against the wishes of the permanent administrative state, finds they are at war with him. Boris Johnson hasn’t even tried. None of them do. So we are stuck with garbage like “Net Zero by 2050”.
As you say, when the whole house of cards comes down, then and only then might there be change. Until then, we have to endure Boris Johnson blithering on about building back better as if he really understands what it means, or gives a toss.
Johnk – this is indeed how it works.
Politicians are generally given policies – given policies, they do not create them. They may create some policies – but not the main ones.
But you miss out one factor. The endless “training”.
It is not enough to be given a script and told to read it out – no.
There are endless meetings, training secessions, conferences with “experts”, and so on – the time of politicians is almost entirely taken up by such things. Politicians, of all parties, are told what to think – or at least what to pretend to think (and if you pretend to be something long enough – you become it).
There as two allowed responses to all this – and dissent is NOT one of them.
One can make supportive noises – or one can be silent.
I fear that at some point silence will no longer be allowed.