What Game Were Corbyn And Milne Playing?
To sabotage the Labour party’s support for Remain, as I detailed in For The Female Of The Species Is More Deadly Than The Male, seems to me a very strange thing for Seamus Milne and Jeremy Corbyn to do.
Most commentators felt that by voting Leave, it would put the country into a recession. Other commentators have stated that the EU needs the UK as a balance to Germany.
My father old me about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin , which he felt was two equally bad regimes supping together. To him, there was no difference between the extreme left and the extreme right and let’s face it Stalin’s Russia was as bad at killing people as Hitler’s Germany.
So in some ways to me, this seems like two of the hard left , have deliberately aided those to the right to remove the UK from the EU.
Perhaps, they are hoping that this will cause the EU to collapse!
And who would benefit from that?
Vladimir Putin.
I hope I’m wrong.
Certainly the pair of them have destroyed any credibility the Labour Party had left!
For The Female Of The Species Is More Deadly Than The Male
This report in the Telegraph is entitled Labour supporters boo and hiss at BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg during Jeremy Corbyn’s EU speech. This is an extract.
Labour supporters booed and hissed when the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg was called for a question during a Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on the EU.
Earlier this week it emerged Mr Corbyn had criticised the Corporation’s coverage of his leadership during a behind-the-scenes documentary by Vice News.
Perhaps because I’m sometimes a man of manners, booing somebody just because they’re reporting the news, isn’t on.
But today ths report by Laura has appeared on the BBC web site, which is entitled Corbyn office ‘sabotaged’ EU Remain campaign – sources.
This is an extract.
And documents passed to the BBC suggest Jeremy Corbyn’s office sought to delay and water down the Labour Remain campaign. Sources suggest that they are evidence of “deliberate sabotage”.
One email from the leader’s office suggests that Mr Corbyn’s director of strategy and communications, Seumas Milne, was behind Mr Corbyn’s reluctance to take a prominent role in Labour’s campaign to keep the UK in the EU. One email, discussing one of the leader’s speeches, said it was because of the “hand of Seumas. If he can’t kill it, he will water it down so much to hope nobody notices it”.
A series of messages dating back to December seen by the BBC shows correspondence between the party leader’s office, the Labour Remain campaign and Labour HQ, discussing the European campaign. It shows how a sentence talking about immigration was removed on one occasion and how Mr Milne refused to sign off a letter signed by 200 MPs after it had already been approved.
Read the whole article and see how Laura knows how to get her own back!
As if that wasn’t enough Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey have called for a vote of confidence in the Labour Leader.
|Does Jeremy Corbyn have a problem with the female of the species?
At least we now know a couple of idiots, who were partly responsible for the Brexit vote! A bit of support for Labour Remain supporters, might just have swung the vote.
It was like fighting Muhammed Ali, with one hand tied behind your back!
I Will Just Carry On
I feel this morning, just like I did on the 2nd May 1997, which was the day Tony Blair became Prime Minister.
I was slightly apprehensive then as to what is going to happen, as after John Major’s government had fallen, I wondered what a left-wing Government would do to the economy.
But I feel that just as John Major and Kenneth Clarke left Blair an economy that worked, I believe that David Cameron and especially George Osborne have left the country in a state to live with or without the EU.
I was very much for staying in, but since the vote only one large company has expressed regrets as this article in the Daily Post, which is entitled EU Referendum: Airbus assessing impact of ‘disappointing’ Brexit vote, details.
But I am an Englishman and especially a London mongrel, with genes stolen from all the best parts of Europe.
I grew up with stories from my parents and others of the Blitz, in the midst of some of the worst air pollution, any child has ever had to endure.
Since then, I lived through the bombings of the Irish troubles and although I wasn’t in London for the bombings of the 7th July 2005, I know many who were. Perhaps the biggest terrible event, that happened near me was the Moorgate Tube Crash of 1975, which was less than 200 metres from where I lived in the Barbican.
Londoners will do what they always do in times of troubles and that is just carry on! It’s in their genes.
My genes from the Tailor of Bexley, did for a few hours about running, but my solid Devonian genes, told the others to wait and let’s see what happens first.
I said that David Cameron and George Osborne have left the country in a good state for the future.
For years, this country has been too centralised, so giving power to the regions and big cities will become Osborne’s legacy.
If Manchester wants to develop its trams or city centre, or build offices, housing and factories, that should be Manhester’s decision and should not be decided by the dead hand of London.
Scotland’s new bid for independence, is a good thing, and it is a consequence of devolved government.
I can for instance envisage a time in say a hundred years, where London becomes a powerful independent city-state. In the nineteenth century we had several of those; Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, London, Manchester and Sheffield.
That model for the UK will return.
If you look at the most powerful country in Europe; Germany already has that model with Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, the Ruhr cities and Stuttgart dominating.
But look at France! What Paris and the elite want, they impose!
Perhaps the biggest consequence of Brexit, will be a desire for the people of Europe to have more independence from their own Central Government.
Boris And Trump
I like this poster.
Boris And Trump
Let’s face it, if you’re stupid enough to vote for Trump as United States President, you’re probably stupid enough to vote for Brexit in the UK.
Trump and Brexit together would be a perfect storm!
The BHS Collapse Turns Nasty
The top story on the BBC web site today is entitled BHS collapse: Sir Philip Green demands ‘biased’ MP Frank Field resigns.
I don’t think I would get on well with either Sir Philip Green or Frank Field, but as I don’t have to, it’s very much irrelevant.
Reading Green’s Wikipedia entry, says to me that we have too many differences and a friend once had a serious difference of opinion with Field, which makes me feel that I wouldn’t get on with him either.
My personal view on BHS was expressed in How Many Shoppers Will Mourn The Death of BHS?
I think for a start, it has to be asked, how BHS got into the sorry state they were before the collapse!
I shall be taking strong interest in when Green and Field meet next week.
If the meeting ever takes place!
We All Go Round In Circles
I am a Control Engineer by training and I have extensively modelled dynamic systems and constantly changing projects, which are updated regularly, if not daily.
My experience tells me that because we are a rich and innovative nation, that we will attract migrants because they know if they work hard here, they will earn enough to look after their families. Which patently many can’t do in the war-ravaged countries they’ve come from.
Most migrants will bring skills and muscle to fuel our growth, whether we like it or not.
So we get richer as a nation and more and more migrants are attracted to come.
One way to stop the migrants is to say, that we will not let them in and stop them coming.
But then the NHS and other industries wouldn’t have the labour they need, as many migrants settled here would move on to places that valued their skills.
An alternative would be to close down our economy, so that migrants are no longer attracted. Control Engineering says you must balance your production to the need and the resources you have available.
I believe that because of the maths, we either accept migrants or reduce our standard of living dramatically. Our Victorian forefathers brought in the migrants and the rest as they say is history!
This evening, the bookies have it that it’s six to one on, that we stay.
I once had a horse start a race at odds of twenty-two-to-one on. The horse came home by almost the length of the straight at Ayr.
The bookies were right as they generally are!
TTIP Is Known About In Germany
If you were on the Clapham Omnibus or in my case the Dalston Omnibus and you did a straw poll of what TTIP was about, you probably wouldn’t find anybody who knew.
But obviously they do in Germany.
TTIP Stoppen!
Or at least they want to stoppen it!
The Leicester Effect On The Elections
Don’t forget that the Tories also play in blue!
My Father Has Been Proved Right!
My father described himself as a left-wing Tory. Today, he would probably have approved of the views of the likes of Michael Hesseltine or Kenneth Clarke.
I’m not sure what he actually did in politics, but I do know that he once worked at the League of Nations in Geneva before the Second World War. During the war, he was for some time a Civil Servant, but apart from one or two clues, I don’t know much. I should have a look at Kew and the web site.
I also know that I never heard him say anything racist and when someone questioned why he actually printed letterheads and wedding stationery for the local black community in Wood Green, he rebuked them by saying that as long as their money had the Queen’s head on it, he’d do business with everyone.
I also know that he was firmly anti-fascist and was at the Battle of Cable Street, where as he said, all the East End stopped Mosley and his Blackshirt thugs, marching through.
Recently, I took a taxi, where the driver had had talks with his Jewish grandfather, who had also been at Cable Street. His grandfather, like my father was adamant that it was not just the communists who stopped Mosley, but a wide alliance of right-thinking people in the East End.
I use the term London Mongrel to describe myself and my father used it himself, in my presence a couple of times, which is where I picked it up. You have to remember that the Nazis referred to people who were part-Jewish as mischling, which roughly means mongrel or half-breed. My father wasn’t Jewish but his great-great-grandfather, who I refer to as the Tailor of Bexley, was probably a Prussian Jew, who had run away from Napoleon.
As the term dates from the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, it would very much have been a term of the time my father was on the fringe of politics, so it is no surprise that he used it.
Incidentally, I’m probably more of a mongrel than my father, as my mother’s father was a Huguenot engraver and her mother was a posh lady born in Dalston Junction from Devonian yeoman stock with the surname of Upcott. Cullompton Museum told me that the family were very much involved in the development of worsted serge and made a fortune from it. This section in the Cullumpton Wikipedia entry, says more about the cloth trade and the Upcotts.
I once asked my father, if he’d ever wanted to stand as an MP and he replied that he’d been asked to put his name forward as a candidate for a by-election, but a young Duncan Sandys was chosen instead, which my father thought was probably the right choice.
Searching Wikipedia says that this was the Norwood By-election of 1935. Wikipedia says this.
The by-election was held due to the resignation of the incumbent Conservative MP, Walter Greaves-Lord. It was won by the Conservative candidate Duncan Sandys.
An Independent Conservative candidate was fielded at the by-election by Randolph Churchill, who sponsored Richard Findlay, a member of the British Union of Fascists to stand. This got no support from the press or from any Members of Parliament, despite Randolph being the son of Winston Churchill. Ironically, in September that year, Duncan Sandys became son-in-law of Winston and brother-in-law of Randolph by marrying Diana, the former’s daughter.
Knowing my father’s strong anti-fascist views, it fits with his version of the tale. The other thing that fits, is that although my father had met and liked Winston Churchill, he had no time for his son, Randolph.
Indirectly, I think I benefited from my father’s political contacts, as after the war, when he rebuilt his printing business in Wood Green, his largest customer was Enfield Rolling Mills, whose Managing Director was John Grimston, the Earl of Veralem, who was eight years younger than my father and had been MP for St. Albans a couple of times.
When in the early sixties I needed a summer job to earn money and I couldn’t have my usual one in his print works, as my father’s business was bad, my father phoned the Earl and asked if he had something that would suit.
The Earl of Veralem said yes and I had a very good job in the Electronics Laboratory for two summers, where I learned an amazing amount about life and making things.
I have no idea of the Earl’s politics except that he was a Conservative MP and very much thought to be a good boss of the company, by those with whom I worked.
One view of my father’s though, was that as he hated the likes of Hitler and Stalin equally, he said several times to me, that the extreme left are no different to the extreme right.
Reading this article on the BBC entitled Livingstone Stands By Hitler Comments, I can only conclude that the Labour Party has proved my father to be right.
Will Manchester Get A Crossrail-Style Levy?
My Google Alert for Crossrail found this story in Planning Resource, which is entitled Crossrail levy model proposed for Greater Manchester mayoral CIL. This first paragraph sums it up.
A proposed city-regional mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) for Greater Manchester would operate in the same way as the existing pan-London charge to raise funds for the Crossrail project, with councils able to implement their own levies alongside the mayor’s charge, it has emerged.
Will Manchester’s council leaders and voters go for it?
From here in London, where if the Mayor wants to fund something sensible like Crossrail 2, all the Mayoral candidates and the Boroughs seem to back it, I can’t see all ten Manchester boroughs agreeing, as they seem to have a long record of doing things their own way!
The Anonymous Widower 