Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

It's the lies I can't take. About a hundred people up to (and I mean, up to) Victoria Derbyshire have told me recently that Frank Hester advocated the killing of Diane Abbott. I say to all of them, "Drop dead." Another hundred people--many in the first hundred-- have told me that Diane Abbott is currently suspended for anti-Semitism. She isn't. She's suspended for being a Corbynite. Actually (tell Frank) one of Jeremy's ex's. It doesn't take the Labour Party a year to decide whether "Jews don't get it half as bad as us blacks" is anti-Semitic. Much longer than that given who provides the money. Hip hop moguls.

We now turn to the Speaker's reason for not calling Diane in the Great Debate. It was for 'reasons of timing'. Actually that's true. Sir Keith Stamper told him it's never a good time to call Ms Abbott (tell Frank).

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

I have been diatribing about crummy business reporting in the MSM in the telly thread but it reached new peaks on Newsnight. The talking heads, egged on by the BBC's supposedly economics expert, Faizal Islam, were wondering whether Russian official reserves held in the west should be mulcted to pay for Ukrainian this and that. Everyone agreed doing so would set a terrible precedent that would cause various shocks and horrors echoing through the world and down the centuries.

Nobody thought to mention that we've just done it. We had it away on our toes with the entire Afghan official reserve. And they weren't at war with anyone. I don't remember any agonising about it at the time. I may be wrong but I don't think it echoed round the Newsnight studio even.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Probably because the accounts were frozen by the American courts which were determining whether families of victims of 9/11 could claim damages from the $ 7 Billion dollar assets. (It's mainly aid money from the west that was going to go to help Afghanistan). Biden wanted to give $3.5 Billion of this to Afghanistan now to help immediate reconstruction, whilst holding $ 3.5 back just in case the families of the victims were successful. The courts ruled that Biden's solution was not lawful. How this is "we" have had it away with "their" reserve........I fail to see.

[Mick Harper]

How is any of this relevant to the principle of national reserves being sacrosanct? What you do with it after you've decided they aren't is irrelevant.

[Wile E. Coyote]

If it's a principle that national reserves are sacro(sanct), then presumably they should not be frozen either. The west should totally abandon financial sanctions including freezing.

You appear to be holding onto an idea that national states have no powers of confiscation, whereas most modern folks (since 19th century) believe they have temporary powers of confiscation during conflicts, ie freezing.

Wiley says the stronger should always use total powers of confiscation when facing a serious extistential threat. If not, you run the risk of being seen as weak.

Which is why Putin has seized the assets of western companies stupid enough to remain in Russia.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The question you have to ask yourself is whether
(a) the Scottish parliament spends its time debating these bizarre sexual orientation matters because it's not independent and can't debate anything weightier or
(b) wants to show it is independent by debating bizarre matters that nobody else would dream of debating.

We can only find out when Scotland is actually independent so we must grant it forthwith and without further debate (especially not in Scotland obviously).

[Mick Harper]

Angela Rayner Under the Spotlight

Question: How can a home care worker end up owning a home
Answer: It was in Manchester
Question: Is she free and clear over this capital gains business
Answer: No. It was obvious from her repeated and stereotyped answers that there is something mildly embarrassing to do with who was living where and when
Question: What is wrong about her devolving power proposals
Answer: It means 'taking into public ownership' things that shouldn't be and definitely not at the local government level
Question: So you don't believe this means lower bus fares in Manchester as Ms Rayner claims
Answer: On the contrary, it guarantees it. How much this will cost non-bus users is going to be a wonder to behold.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Blasphemy has always been geographic, in modern cities where there are now combinations of athiests, agnostics, as well as multi faiths, blasphemy has had to be reinvented, as anti hate laws, to ensure these fragile new artificial, all inclusive communities' are safe behind their walls.

Its adherents call it progress.

Of course eventually it will go the way of the older Blasphemy laws......it will just take a lot of folks locked up, fined, humiliated, carears' ruined in the meantime.....

[Mick Harper]

Yes, I loved it back in the days when the courts had ruled (I seem to remember because of my hero, Stewart Lee) that the blasphemy laws were no longer operable. Now, anything that offends against the canons of the Victim Culture religion is punishable to the max. For example, I will have to be taken out and shot just for saying this!

[Wile E. Coyote]

On balance, Wiley is in favour of this type of thing......being trialled in Scotland.

We did something similar with the "Poll Tax", but this time the Scots are claiming all the credit for the innovation themselves.

It's an improvement of process.

Of course we won't learn from their experience, and will crack on anyway under Starmer, with our own improved English/Welsh anti-hate version.

It's just they, the Scots, won't spend two generations blaming us for coming up with these new Blasphemy laws, when J K Rowling is imprisoned.

That's a postive.