Boris, lorries and food…

If Boris cannot match drivers to the necessary requirements of an adequate operating capacity for this countrys food needs then what the heck is he doing managing this country?

Can he be trusted or can he even comprehend the necessary fine detail and sophistication of fiscal policy, the control of money supply and inflation, of effective financial management, of international relations, ie complicated stuff ad infinitum etc etc all bound up with understanding nomenclature and terms that I cannot comprehend? The last few days we have had daily re-runs of ‘crisis what crisis’ when in fact the first requirement to solving anything is to realising there actually IS a problem.

Increasingly when I see and hear Boris I cannot help but recall some bumbling inept middle or higher rank military man.

The highly toxic and disadvantageous mix of Brexit and shunning of all European hired hands is an absolute recipe for disaster but yes we certainly walked into it eyes wide open. Farage and any other brexiteer you can think of have certainly landed us into a complete mess, setting the clock back fifty years.

The Tories talk of ‘levelling up’ but as every day ticks by there is nothing other than an increasing inequality, a blind halfwit would surely be able to ascertain of this. A case in point has been the withdrawl of the £20 regular covid payment, being withdrawn we are told ‘to save money’ but this so-called reason is complete nonsense, the hardship, anxiety and fear engendered by this measly withdrawl of an assistance payment will result in far more than any twenty quid per person in future spending to help the poor and needy. Yet it is only now that furlough payments are to cease, an expense that could have stopped even months ago. A bit of a joke considering present day mobility, there must be many people back to working full time and pocketing the furlough money. Another state sponsored scam…..

To compound Tory stupidity as well as announcing stopping the £20 covid payment Boris and team announce ‘new measures’ to help the poor ie another form of payment to look for. Surely if all is ticking over why the heck introduce yet another with set of hurdles with all the attendant stress and admin costs of starting all over again from scratch! Loony is the only term for Boris & Co. Madness. All of this when we are staring into the prospect of inflation of the likes we have never seen for many decades even for the simplest things as food and heating.

Why is practical wisdom and the foresight of experience so unfashionable?

Another quite blind and stupid idea from Boris and his team of which Rishi Sunak the Chancellor seems adamantly keen are the cuts in Overseas Aid, this again is madness. Imagine in your mind projects and programmes that would be abandoned, food, medicine, healthcare, schools, assistance to self sufficiency, birth control, education, equal rights …. all scuppered by the ‘levelling up’ Tories. I’m sure China would be delighted to step-in, if we in the West are so stupid then good luck to them. Very much a case of out of sight out of mind with Boris and the team I think, this could in fact suit them admirably as a campaign slogan.

If I were in charge the first thing I would do is hunt down those big corporations that are so skilfull at tax evasion, the Amazons that are destroying the multivarious web of stockist to end user network that has existed for a long time, their relentless market capture.

Additionally here in the UK we have an epidemic of individuals operating for tax purposes as Limited Companies, this I think is as obscene as any tax avoidance by say Amazon. Already this typical individual IR35 is on ‘big money’ and somehow pleads themselves as a special case somehow not needing to contribute as all the rest of us…. quite sickening. Yet still expect a legal system, Police, education, healthcare whenever it suits them! IR35 hypocrites I think is the correct term.

The worst PM in a long time …

We have walked eyes wide open into one self inflicted disaster after another, not only exiting Europe but the double whammy of hindering or stopping free exchange of workers. Its usual in life when huge (a Boris word if ever …. ) changes are implemented to taper and slide as much as possible, to ease the pain. After all, this is not wartime, we should strive to allow light and clarity and an exchange of good will to predominate in our lives. It was not a secret that European drivers, European fruit and produce pickers and European process workers were fundamental to the UK food and distribution industry. The big joke has been that a ballerina is permitted to work in the UK from Europe (yet live performance has barely started theres no real need for them surely… ) but that drivers, pickers, process workers are not!

The latest news is that some trivial amount at 10k people are allowed in short-term only until Christmas Eve …. a most stupid cut-off date imaginable as we know fine well they will want to travel to be back with their families!

Question: wheres the brains in this UK Government?

Another big self inflicted disaster and for decades has been the often pointless tweaking at state school education and curriculum. many kids are barely literate, they cannot sketch or explain themselves or grasp a sense of community or of how to living inclusively.

In Cabinet and at the helm we are supposed to have the best and brightest, this not now looking to be the case. Why do we seem to be so keen on rich Asians to to take up as many posts as possible, these rich people cannot understand the blind sightedness and cruelty of stopping a twenty quid note to the poor and the needy; or of the fear and uncertainty all compounded by the travails of covid. I cannot be impressed by Rishi Sumac, nor Priti Patel, the latter making it a prisonable offence to enter the UK. We also live in a more unfair society as from I think Thatcher onward the Local Authority house building programme pretty well dried up, very soon people were dependant on private landlords, the worst possible situation.

Heres the bombshell, its my opinion theres too many people on the planet, if we could halve the population then we might be holding each other in better regard, more able to survive on the food this limited and compromised earth can supply. People knock the Chinese but for most of the twentieth century they proceeded around on bicycles and consumed little…. and had a one child policy. Surely these are things we should all aim for, but hubris, ambition, consumerism will undo any fine objectives.

And we are all of one species, this encroaching Nationalism from any part of the world is unethical, immoral, free exchange of peoples surely is how humanity needs to proceed.

Well done Mr Blair.

I only post and blog when it is something that matters to me. I don’t think i mentioned the name Obama once, because I thought the country was in good hands in those far off days.

I had hoped better than this from Biden, a great big whopping disappointment I’m afraid. Tony Blair is quite justified in the term ‘imbecilic’ as to the mad immoral and just plain nuts move to exit Afghanistan, throwing away a most useful platform to help encourage a positive view toward the West and our sense of democracy and equal rights, and of course its use for intelligence gathering. How utterly stupid, never mind in the manner that it has been done and the grief and fear it has so quickly engendered among most Afghanis.

Heres a well written apparaisal of Mr Blairs use of imbecilic… https://www.mail.com/int/news/uk/11053854-imbecilic-ex-uk-leader-tony-blair-slams-afghan-wit.html#.1272-stage-rightcolumn1-1

Tony Blair learnt hard lessons twenty years ago, its in his face. I have a lot of time for him and applaud his present day work. Heres the essay he wrote re ‘imbecilic’ from his own website …. https://institute.global/tony-blair/tony-blair-why-we-must-not-abandon-people-afghanistan-their-sakes-and-ours

I particularly applaud his focus on the absurdity of slogans, as to their shallowness and leading to a ‘non-thinking’ environment, to hook the easily led. I would think the 1930’s were full of slogans.

What the hell did you think would happen?

Just listening to Diane Abbott a few seconds ago on bbc r4 ‘Any Questions’ and I’ve had to turn off.

At first shot at spouting forth Diane keeps it all very vague, in broad brushstrokes but at second pitch a few minutes later she states categorically that we we failed at nation building. This is incorrect.

In my opinion we succeeded at nation building with the western presence in Afghanistan; we certainly did, amply demonstrated by everyones dismay, fear and real horror at now being stuck (alone) with a Taliban master. I would think an entire half of the population ie female will be shaking at the loss of western freedoms (ie this is what is called nation building Diane). Also a great proportion of Afghan males will equally be horrified that now with Taliban masters ethnicity and regional and tribal origin will once again shape ones life/ or death. All these negative points were chipped away at and rendered paltry by twenty years of western nation building, Diane.

How is it words and views can become so deranged and inapplicable, I’m thinking of the wonky brain of Diane Abbott. She needs to work with texts, printed material and perhaps a writing course to gain the idea of inferences and real intended meaning from the written word… methinks so. Diane!

It looks that the trump administration (if ever a ‘trump administration’ could ever warrant such a term, I mean a bunch of opportunistic lackeys and self interested on-the-make fascists and petty fraudsters) …. did their utmost to speed the takeup of power by the Taliban, this is tantamount to aiding the enemy. This is so elementary as if a childrens flashcard session, but after all, this is how ‘Intelligence’ was indeed presented to trump, by childrens flashcards. Look again to Putin, trumps puppet master.

We’ve released a basket of vipers, what the hell did you think would happen?

Keeping on top of Afghanistan I assume seemed do-able, I assume also quite do-able for many years to come, certainly strategically immensely useful to us, and also useful to them, the ordinary people, we provided a looser more accepting society, western values generally diminish fear. Yet, the mere hint of retreat and the Taliban rush in at great speed. Question is, quite what did the trump administration tie down with the Taliban, what did their ‘secret negotiations’ contain?

Biden looks super-bad in all this; I’m so sad he has turned out to be quite useless and in fact a danger to world peace and strategic thinking. Its ironic the newly presented ‘gloss and spin’ from the Taliban is so like the gloss and spin that trump has used so much throughout his life ie saying one thing but actually doing another. I can see the influence of trump in this, exhorting the phoney tv and media image, merely a game of smoke and mirrors; media and tv to be ‘used’ and spoonfed whatever angle someone such as trump wished to world to see, this signals zero respect to the outer world, the viewers.

Checks and balances I wonder? Where was NATO? Likewise British Cabinet and Foreign Office appear woefully ineffectual, again, top-brass military, where were all the brains and experience in allowing any of this to happen? Afghanistan was an ideal place to gather Intel, a windfall to influence and propagate western values, now all thrown to the wind. We hear also today Saturday 21st that callers to bbc r4 ‘Any Questions’ are pleading for the Home Office, Foreign Office etc to get more joined up and realise how to fast-track applications and procedure. Maybe Dominic Cummings was correct in there needing to be a big shake-up.

Factual testimony today Saturday informs us the Taliban are as cruel as ever, again on bbc r4 ‘Any answers’ of the brother of a man that worked for the British, and therefore his brother a qualified surgeon had a hand cut off merely because the brother had worked for the Brits and following from this other family members have been murdered these last few days, murdered by the Taliban because of this Brit connection, as another caller told us, his life will be measured in hours, not days or weeks.

So we can see, the Taliban are using western style media to in fact bullshit the west, whilst meantime pursuing their unenlightened backward mindset; amputation, torture, murder.

trump did his best to denigrate and diminish NATO for his friend in the Kremlin, strange how Biden let this utterly catastrophic and easily avoided go through. Biden and the Americans can now never be trusted.

It is also cruel and mindless to set the final date for withdrawl as 9/11 … this should have been realised and avoided at all cost, it helps no-one.

I hope and pray we can insist the window for bringing back all those that helped western forces can be extended, maybe in exchange for aid and not sanction. But also ‘to mop up’ all those feared and cowering that cannot physically reach the airport nor have all the documents required.

I am keen to sponsor an Afghan family. I need now to find how to do this, I know what it is like to be without help, to stand alone, ignored.

The tragedy of Aid cuts by the UK…

… this vexes and saddens me greatly, established programmes and hard won connections and systems of delivery are being thrown to the wind and rendered useless. Stability and continuity I would think are vital.

There is no need for this trivial so-called cost cutting in the name of ‘saving money’ and with the covid response I’m sure huge vast amounts of money have gone down the plug-hole (the scandal of track and trace Dido Harding etc) at zero positive effect for the intended purpose. Witness the Government sending me ten thousand pounds which I do not need nor ever wanted (certainly not at this stage of my life, forty or even twenty years ago I would have been desperate for such munificence to help my workshop facilities) just one of about four schemes the self employed could ‘benefit’ from during covid in the UK, thrown to the recipient with no means testing, no follow up, no scrutiny of application or examination of real need. I gave the people a quick call at County Hall, intending to say no thanks and in fact laughing at the silliness of it all but to be told everyone is accepting the money, but I’m okay, I don’t need it! Its the only hand-out I secured in this long turgid covid crapathon and initially turning it down but Mr Greed took over and I was egged on by the ex girlfriend. I’ve not touched a penny of it, maybe I’ll return it. I pay full tax and willingly as a sole trader, deliberately as not a small company, it annoys me so many people vaguely eligible as small company status (which appear to be short term individuals with zero establishment or operating costs) revel in not paying their fair share of tax. Something like 98% of self employed / small business were grabbing for this £10k handout I was told; how not to run a country Mr Sunac.

Anyway, they shower me with money but other people really do need it ie the helpless, those lacking resources; therefore networks, aid programmes and hardworking folk with insight and expertise finding their umbilical is cut. UNICEF etc. cut, cut, cut ….. the lamentable Mr Sunak. A slick kid, well adulated on bbc r4 but I am very sceptical.

UN agencies warn of ‘serious consequences’ for children as UK cuts funding | World News | Sky News

UK’s aid cuts hit vital coronavirus research around world | Aid | The Guardian

Children will ‘suffer the consequences’ of Unicef cut as Govt also plans to reduce polio funding by 95% (thelondoneconomic.com)

These cuts are tragic, short sighted, silly and reprehensible.

Considering how Britain exploited the less developed world in times past its baffling we can be so mean.