bbc r4 Saturday afternoon after the one o’clock lunchtime news treats us to ‘Any Questions’ followed by ‘Any Answers’ where old people ring in to ramble on. Yet here I am also participating as listener audience and as yet do not want to be lumped together with batty old … etc.
One of the half dozen questions was regarding trumps recently announced visit to Britain for the D-day memorial events; trump whether we like it or not is President of the USA our closest ally at that time.
What no-one mentioned is that post-Brexit we will do trade deals with anyone and everyone that will shake hands and agree to do so. Its called ‘backs against the wall’ Britain and therefore we will do trade deals with all and sundry just to glean a semblance of hope. You can wave goodbye to any form of UK motor industry and the multivarious supply chain. Which side of a 100k jobs in that industry alone?
What no one mentioned despite the endless ‘worthy’ hot air was that Pres Bone Spurs couldn’t even get his backside out of a hotel room, unglue himself from the tv / twitter and attend a pre-planned ceremony at a cemetary of American war dead a few months ago. Drizzle or a little bit of wet would seem to scupper his attendance; if perhaps Pres Bone Spurs did not have so contrived a ‘hairdo’ he could do what other men would have found to be no problem whatsoever.
What no one mentioned is the disgust we feel in the Free World that trump has deliberately taken such a regressive dark turn to dismantle and wreck all that was built up as ‘good’ for his country. Maybe that needs qualification, he resides in the USA and has endeavoured to pay as little tax as possible ie falsification, schemes, inflated values contrasting reduced values to grossly inflated when it suited him, etc etc. Yet one wonders what is his real country of residence … Russia?
…and what no-one mentioned is that trump is merely a short term fly in the ointment of what is otherwise a close cordial relationship that will continue far beyond any memory of things Trumpian.
What no-one mentioned when citing the past visit of Xi Jin Ping 习近平 (tones 2,4,2 something even the bbc is clueless about) … is that the Xi2 is endeavouring to modernise, to reach forward to universal world values, to do better, is doing better when viewed in modern Chinese history whereas trump is hell bent at going in a backwards direction and inciting unease, anxiety, hatred and polarising any and all caste, creed, religion. His moslem ban is stupid beyond belief, stupid beyond belief sort of sums him up. Remember trumps obscene tax handbacks to the already super-wealthy. In trumps world the bigot reigns supreme! So any comparison with X2i jin4 ping2 and trump is not clear cut, one aims higher, the other wrecks and regresses endlessly, of poor intention; therefore the latter is undesirable, toxic, unwelcome.
trumps manner is to never allow anything other than the glibbest shallowest platitudes with other World Leaders or the Free Press apart of course from in depth briefing sessions from his Master ie two hours unscripted with Putin in Helsinki, no minutes taken or even allowed, no other person of western heritage or US Official allowed. Wow – you cannot get creepier than that, it is what it looks like, it is treason and only trump himself so brass-faced and thinking himself above any law whatsoever would have had the gall to attempt such a shameful exhibition of treachery. Hence a fifteen minute walk-out with Kju and a huge banquet gone to waste, as all scripted by his Master so that Putin can sweep in, wipe up and gain influence.
So therefore I consider the bbc r4 ‘Any Questions’ invited panel to have made serious omissions in regarding trump and the dreaded visit. Lots of pontificating but they didn’t get to the main moral and ethical arguament. Basically the baseline is that trump is repulsive.
It baffled me later in the day on extended news when we had a few words from a pundit telling us how popular trump is, how great his base in America, this I doubt; bbc r4 news bias always endeavours to bend any objective truth to trumps advantage, luckily ‘The World Tonight’ programme at 10pm is a little bit more realistic.
worthwhile wiki entry below, even this does not realise the essential nature of tone marking for anything Mandarin, without tone markings meaning is lost, is unreadable and cannot be spoken as intended, its basic stuff! …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping
climate-change-briefing 