Hall Of Shame: Week ending 5th February 2023

 

It's time for the miscreants, mountebanks and maniacs, the irrepressible and the irredeemable. It's not totally serious, it's not totally silly, but it is this week entries into the Live & Direct Hall Of Shame!

A Dishonourable Mention to Bill Cash, Tory MP for Brexit. He's accused the BBC of lying about the reasons why we haven't seen any Brexit benefits. Instead he chose to blame Covid and the War In Ukraine as to why. Bill, when you see one of these supposed Brexit benefits, can you please point it out to the rest of us? At the moment, we're looking for flying pigs, unicorns and dragons!!!

The Bronze goes to our current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Talk TV's Piers Morgan. Sunak gave an interview to Piers, where he claimed he wasn't rich, but “Financially fortunate”. This is what happens when rich people talk about their own wealth, they don't know just how wealthy they actually are. Why is Piers Morgan on here though? Well during that interview he apparently wasn't having a good time of it, as his microphone went wrong. We could still hear him though, worse luck!!!

The Silver to Andrew Tate, who is still languishing in a Romanian jail cell after being denied his appeal to be released from detention, again. You know, I always thought that Alpha Males never whined and complained about anything, they just got on with it. Andrew on the other hand seems to do nothing but complain.

But our Fool's Gold award winner this week is former Prime Minister Liz Truss, the one who was outlasted by a lettuce. She gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph, where she claimed that she believed she was “brought down by the left wing economic establishment”. Liz, I hate to break this to you, but the economic establishment isn't exactly left wing. It leans to the right, towards maintaining the status quo, and your mini budget wasn't maintaining the status quo, it was radical and full of things that gave the economic establishment a certifiable case of the jitters. “Left wing economic establishment”!!! Mind you, when you're that far out on the extreme right, I suppose even centre right looks like left wing!!!

Liz “left wing economic establishment” Truss, now and forever inducted into the not totally serious Live & Direct, Hall Of Shame!

Viewpoint: Politicians trying to return to centre stage

 

So Rishi Sunak has managed to survive over 100 days in office. Now by itself, that doesn't seem like anything worth talking about, but let's remember that his predecessor, Liz Truss, didn't even make it to 50 days in office.

However, the longer his tenure in number 10 goes on, the more it looks like the same kind of shenanigans that we saw during Boris Johnson's time in office, and considering that Rishi Sunak has been talking up restoring trust in British Politics, his current situation with scandals are making those sound like empty, hollow words.

The whole situation with Nadhim Zawahi's taxes shot a rather nasty hole in his rhetoric, but the current bullying accusations against Deputy PM Dominic Raab is making the whole situation worse, and with both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss looking to return to centre stage of the political theatre, it's getting harder and harder to see just how long Sunak will be able to withstand the kind of pressure that caused both Johnson and Truss to be forced from centre stage by the long hook of political Vaudeville. You know the ones. When some variety act was out on stage too long in the old Vaudeville days, an incredibly long hook would suddenly appear from off stage, hook around the performer, and they'd be pulled off stage to bring their act to an early and ignominious end.

But now we have both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, both of whom were pulled off stage by politics's own version, now trying to return to centre stage and reclaim some spotlight for themselves. At one time, if you were pulled off stage by the long hook of political theatre, you retired from centre stage gracefully, and those that avoided it saw it coming and made their own exit before they got pulled.

Now it seems the hook has a new target. Rishi Sunak, and it seems that both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are trying to use it to force Sunak off stage, whilst at the same time making it seem like they are the best choices to replace him.

The thing is though, we're all fed up of this ongoing mess of political theatre shenanigans and would prefer a general election to be held, rather than having to watch the Tories go through yet another leadership election, and to be fair, I think there are plenty of Tories within the rank and file who would prefer a general election to the continued shambles that is the Tory party currently.

It's way past time that this political theatre production was shut down, and this current crop of hacks put out to pasture, to make way for a different production that just might be more popular than this one.

Viewpoint Special: Boris Johnson's Resignation.

 

So, this is finally it. After 59 resignations from government, leaving it in absolute tatters and unable to do it's work, after countless lies and denials, and playing the incompetence card, by claiming he forgot, or he didn't know, Boris Johnson is finally set to depart Number 10 Downing Street, probably in the autumn, once the Tory Party has spent a few months trying to find someone willing to take on the severely poisoned chalice that is governing a UK that is falling apart after Boris Johnson's tenure, and while Boris Johnson takes the wallpaper down that he had put up in the flat.

And it all started when Chris Pincher, had to resign as Deputy Chief Whip, because he had groped 2 men in a private members club, the Carlton Club, a known Tory watering hole. He then lost the party whip the next day, despite the fact that hours earlier, the party claimed it would not be removing the whip from him because he had done the right thing in stepping down. Then Johnson's spokesman, a man who gave Comical Ali a run for his money, told journalists that Johnson hadn't been aware of any specific allegations against Pincher before appointing him in February.

The Sunday papers called him out on that lie and as Sunday became Monday, it became clearer that the question wasn't did Boris Johnson know, it was more how much did he know, and when did he stop knowing it?

Tuesday saw the bomb being dropped, when Lord MacDonald, the former permanent under secretary at the Foreign Office, and the EIEIO, published a letter revealing that a complaint was made against Pincher, back when he was at the Foreign Office in 2019, and that Johnson was personally informed about it. Downing Street had to admit that Lord MacDonald's recollection of events was correct, but that Boris had actually forgotten about it when appointing Pincher in February.

Tory MPs, who had already been mutineering in large numbers due to Partygate, were now in open revolt. Letters of no-confidence began flooding in to the 1922 committee. Tuesday evening's 6 O Clock News on BBC1 had to open up with breaking news about the resignations of Savid Javid and Rishi Sunak. Almost a dozen other junior ministers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries, a trade envoy, and even the Solicitor General, resigned their posts with immediate effect. Boris Johnson was on borrowed time at this point, it was just a case of how long he was going to try and hang on.

The Night Of The Long Knives, became a Night and Day of the Long Knives, as Wednesday saw many more Tory MPs, over 30 all told, junior ministers, ministerial aides and trade envoys all quit their government posts with immediate effect. By 10 O'Clock that night, the Tory whip's office had calculated that Boris could only get support from 65 Tory MPs, out of almost 360. The maths were simply against him. Yet Boris vowed to fight on, even sacking Michael Gove in an act that was of pure desperation, as much as it was out of revenge. Michael Gove had told him earlier in the day it was time to go, and a ministerial delegation, including his new Chancellor, who he'd appointed Tuesday Night to replace Rishi Sunak, told him his time was up. And more letters of no confidence arrived at the 1922 committee.

More resignations came on Thursday, bringing the total to 59. The government couldn't even function properly. Finally, Boris came to realise what we had all known. His time in number 10 was up. 2 years and 348 days. That was the entirety of his time as Prime Minister. Theresa May had made it to 3 years and 12 days. Boris Johnson had fallen short. But, them's the breaks.

And yet, the after effects of his time in office will be felt long after he is gone. His departure is without any dignity, just desperation and delusion, clinging on to power even though his own cabinet was trying to oust him in a political coup. What brought him down was his constant lying, trying almost to out-Trump Donald Trump during his tenure as US President. His tenure in office could best be described as a Shakespearian tragedy, written by monkeys on typewriters. He piled lies, on top of lies, on top of lies, and when that failed, he pulled out the incompetence card, claiming to have forgotten, or not known, or not understood. He prefered being thought of as incompetent, rather than admitting his own mistakes.

And despite all the protestations of enough is enough and Boris had gone one step too far, Boris Johnson was a known entity when he entered 10 Downing Street, he was known to be a liar and the same people who were crying out over Boris's lies, were the ones who put him there. The Tory party elected him to replace Theresa May in the first place. Surely, they must have known what they were letting themselves in for. If they did, their protestations this past week ring incredibly hypocritical. If they didn't, then they are as incompetent as Boris is.

They sat idly by and watched him take a flamethrower to the unwritten British constitution, to standards in public life, to their own party, and just let it happen. The Tory party is unfit to govern this country, or a local council, or even a school. Trust and integrity meant nothing to them, so why are they so up in arms about it now? Could it be that they are just protecting their own behinds, because they are seeing the possibility of losing their seats at the next general election, whenever that happens to be?

Trust in politics now is the lowest its ever been and its not hard to see why. Everything from the “oven-ready” Brexit deal that even Boris had to admit was unworkable, through to his painfully slow and inept response to Covid and beyond, have eroded trust in politics as quickly as a heatwave in the Arctic would erode the polar ice cap.

Boris Johnson won a 80 seat majority at 2019's general election, and he basically rendered it moot and useless, through a mixture of hubris, ambition, lies and incompetence. The damage that Brexit has done will take many many years to undo, and that will only begin to happen when someone decides to undo it, something Sir Keir Starmer this past week indicated he wasn't going to do. Scotland is in all likelihood going to break away from the UK, and who knows when Wales will follow suit and leave because it'll be easier to take your own chances than trust in Westminster and a system of governence that has been forever broken by Boris Johnson. And then there's Cornwall and Yorkshire and other areas outside of London and the Home Counties, who have seriously gotta consider whether it's worth staying in a broken system that cannot be repaired or take your chances on the world stage on your own.

Nothing about life after Boris Johnson's premiership looks good. Even the opposition themselves don't look that good. They talked about ousting Boris Johnson as Caretaker PM through a vote of no-confidence in the House. I mean, talk about opening the stable door, after the horse has already bolted and jumped it.

There has been more chaos in Westminster over the last 6 years, than we've seen in all the previous administrations since WW2 ended, and frankly, the country is sick of it. Politics is thought of as boring, but the last 6 years have been anything but boring. We could do with at least a few years boring old politics as usual, so the country can recover from 6 years of chaos that was started by a prime minister who couldn't face what he had done, so he left. 6 years later, the mess is still there, it's getting worse, and nobody seems ready to face the prospect of cleaning it up.

Sanctioning Roman Abramovich only hurts Chelsea FC

Roman Abramovich is one of seven Russian oligarchs to be added to the list of those sanctioned by the UK Government, which compared to other governments around the world, still falls way short of what is expected of them.  

However, the sanctions against him have hit a target that really doesn't deserve to be punished as it is, and that is Chelsea Football Club.  

The club can no longer sell tickets or merchandise, and it's banned from any player transfers.  It has been granted a special licence which will allow fixtures to be played, staff to be paid, and existing ticket holders, mostly season ticket holders, will be allowed to attend matches.

These measures aren't targetting or affecting Roman Abramovich, they're punishing Chelsea for being owned by him, despite the fact that he has already handed off day to day operations of the club to the trustees, and he has committed to sell the club, for which he could well be granted a special licence to do so, on the condition that he himself doesn't benefit in any way from it.

The sad part is that because of these sanctions, the club cannot get any new money into the business, and how long can that realistically continue?  Football clubs are not run on goodwill alone.

Without ticket and merchandise sales, the club cannot continue to run long term, and unless something changes very soon, this season could end up being Chelsea Football Club's last one in existence, and all because of the necessity of punishing Vladimir Putin for a war that didn't even need to happen.

Viewpoint: A Dark Day in American Democracy

 I never expected that I would need to have to write this.

 Wednesday January 6^th 2021 will go down in history as one of the darkest days in the history of American Democracy.

A group of domestic terrorists invaded the Capitol building in Washington DC. How they got in there is almost irrelevant at this point, though it will not be irrelevant later, there will have to be an investigation into just how that happened. For now, there are more important things to be dealt with.

This is act of terrorism, and as much as I hate using that word, it is truly what it was, an act of terrorism, and it was committed by a bunch of criminals, who called themselves “Proud Boys”. They have nothing to be “proud” of. They just committed treason and sedition. They all need to be rounded up, tried for these crimes, and then locked up for the rest of their natural lives, without any hope of parole.

Those that fomented this, ranging from the Conservative commentators and media organisations that allowed these commentators to spread their traitorous comments, to the very congressmen that encouraged it, and even the “President” himself who practically ordered this sedition to happen, also need to tried for these crimes, and also locked up for the rest of their natural lives, without any chance of parole.

Even now, Conservative media commentators have been trying to put the blame elsewhere, some of them even going so far as to try to blame some mystical “Antifa” organisation, for what happened. No evidence has been presented that there were any anti-fascist infiltrators, just like there has been no evidence for any of Trump's baseless claims about the election being rigged against him. These organisations and commentators need to be deplatformed immediately. They have no business being part of public discourse on the airwaves, whether those airwaves are delivered by a satellite, a cable or a transmitter.

And what of the politicians who actively encouraged this to happen? They need to barred from politics for life. If they are sitting congressmen and women, they need to removed from congress immediately. The “President” needs to be impeached, and convicted, and removed from office. It doesn't matter that he will no longer be President come the 20^th January 2021. He has just demonstrated in the clearest terms possible, that he no longer has any business leading a school board, never mind a nation like the United States. But because the process of impeachment and conviction can take quite a long time, then the Vice President has to seriously consider using the 25^th Amendment to remove Donald John Trump from office. Whether he can do that though, will depend on just how many members of Trump's cabinet he can get to agree to it. Nonetheless, those discussions need to be happening, if they aren't already.

I already said they need to be tried and locked up for these crimes, but first we need to remove them off the political stage.

Democracy in any country, be it the United States, or indeed our own, depends not on how dark these kinds of days are, but in how we as a people respond to them. We must be willing to draw a line in the sand, and say “No, this was wrong”, and we must never allow ourselves to go back to these dark places ever again. And we must make sure that those who could take us there, are never allowed the power to do that again.

Worst Person Of The Day: "Boss Limburger" Rush Limbaugh.

Today's Worst Person Of The Day is Rush Limbaugh, who has managed to once again say something utterly stupid on his own radio show.  This one was so stupid however, that I thought Alex Jones had accidentally been substituted for him on his radio show.

He was talking about as USA Today op-ed on America's greatness myths.  Society is built upon so many myths and falacies, it's actually shocking that it functions as well as it does.  Well, apparently, Rush doesn't like that idea so he came up with an idea of his own.

"This -- none of this could be happening of its own. It couldn't -- this is not happening because a majority of the American people want this. That’s what makes this so outrageous. We are being ruled and governed here by a really small minority who are using the power of fear and intimidation and economic destruction — that is key.  Once you take people’s money away from them, you own them. Once you take people’s ability to earn a living and you become the provider, you own them. That’s the first thing they did, was shut down this nation’s economy. Now they’re trying to get it shut down again under bogus COVID-19 numbers... ...But at the end of the day, everybody needed America. Every nation on Earth’s economy needs America. But our economy has been shut down. We got 44 million people out of work. We’ve got in Chicago alone 4,400 businesses which have been shut down and are said never to reopen again. And that’s one city. In Rome and throughout Italy, they’re losing $115 million a day via tourism. There isn’t any. They miss the United States.  The world depends on it. This is another thing that is by design in all of this. You take out the United States of America and you take out the United States economy, and you have set up your precious globalism and world government because you are creating worldwide poverty and thus worldwide need. And when you, the global government or whoever you are, become the provider to those in need, guess who you own?  But none of this could be happening if it weren’t for the fact that the United States is under assault and being taken down on the basis of a pack of lies. That our great history is nothing but a bunch of lies, that our history is nothing but a bunch of myths. How in the world can anyone with any kind of intellect at all look at the United States, see its role that it played in the establishment of human liberty and freedom, and want no part of it?  Well, obviously people to whom human liberty and freedom are a problem. To communists and socialists, human liberty and freedom, free choice, that’s a problem. The state becomes the repository of all freedom. The state determines who can do what, when, where, why. The state determines who has what. The state determines who gets what.
But how in the world can this -- I ask myself how in the world can otherwise intellectually qualified people not value the concept of individual liberty and freedom? And yet people who are leading this anti-American movement are of exactly that frame of mind, that somehow individual liberty and freedom pose the threat, pose the problem to the ongoing future."

That's just a small sample of a over 10 minute rant that spews out of the consciousness that is Rush Limbaugh.  Media Matters has the entire transcript if you want to read it, and the video of the rant if you want to hear and see it.

The main thing wrong with it is that it is the very embodiment of the myths that the writer was talking about.  The idea that somehow America is better than any other country in the world.  Where as in fact it's just one of over 200 countries and territories in the world today.  It's not even the largest by population.  Both India and China are way ahead on that count.  There's nothing inherently superior about the United States, just like there's nothing inherently superior about the UK, or any other country in the world.  The conflation of the old Russian "Communist" model with socialism is quite deliberate.  Socialism isn't about controling distribution of goods.  It's about making sure those goods reach market in a condition that isn't going to kill the consumer, even accidentally.  It's about making sure the water is clean, the food isn't going to kill you, the services are at a fair price.  It's all about all that and more.  It's got nothing to do with controlling everything, despite what the right wants you to believe.

Rush Limbaugh, The Worst Person Of The Day.

Not Top Plays: 23rd July 2020

So I didn't have enough material today for a Worst Person Of The Day, so instead, we do something different, the Not Top Plays Of The Day.  I have 2 for you today, and I'm not going to rank them, cos the jury's still out on one of these.

The one the jury's not out on is Gemma Collins, who made a political play on her Radio 1 podcast, and made her Essex Girl reputation seem all the more earned.  She made a play for becoming Prime Minister.  I think you need a political party in that case, and no, that's not the kind of party where you get steadily drunker throughout the night watching the election results as you drown your sorrows.  But in her manifesto, is apparently a magic money tree. 

She claimed that everybody should have a swimming pool, yeah, good luck fitting that into my studio flat!  She also thinks that 3 day work weeks and 4 day weekends should be a thing as wellas Ice Cream for free and sunshine every day.  Like politicians could do that!  They can't even control themselves, never mind the weather!  But for added je ne sais quois, she says she'll change Number 10's famous black door for a pink one!  At a guess, it'll either be Fuschia, or DayGlo Neon Pink!!!

The one the jury's still out on is Mike Tyson, who at 54 is coming out of boxing retirement, which is about as permanent as a pro-wrestling retirement, to take on Roy Jones Jr in a special 8 round exhibition match in Los Angeles in September.  He's kept in pretty good shape during his retirement, and it's not like it's any kind of title match, so, I'm okay with it, except for one thing.  It should be against Buster Douglas, rather than Roy Jones Jr.  You remember that Buster Douglas sensationally knocked out Mike Tyson in the 10th round of their 1990 contest at the Tokyo Dome for the Undisputed Heavyweight Championship.  So, there's a nice revenge storyline there, that could be used to... oh that's right, this is boxing, not pro wrestling...

Anyway, those are my Not Top Plays Of The Day.