politics | the brilliantly leaping gazelle

July 4, 2025

33:64 presents “Harold Wilson.”

For quite a while I used to feel almost sorry for Boris’s Johnson. Everything he’d ever done in his life was in the ruthless pursuit of one day becoming PM. The irony was so blatant it was absurd. For someone who loved dropping Latin phrases into conversation, his story was a tragedy worth of Seneca. When, after all the years of philandering, lying, resignations, treachery and backstabbings, he finally achieved his goal, it was at the worst time in post war British political history.

The Brexit deal was yet to be done and the EU were being all EU about it. The angry divisions in Parliament were matched only by those in the country. Everyone felt betrayed. The press was hostile. The Supreme Court got involved. And to cap it off, he lied to the Queen.

Yet somehow, he still managed to win the 2019 general election with an 80 seat majority. Brexit hadn’t been done yet but there was renewed vigour, a feeling of a corner having been turned. It was all going to be alright. Phew! It was getting all a bit squeaky-bum time there for, but onward and upwards towards those sunny uplands and….COVID?

What the fuck is COVID? Why has does some ‘flu in China mean we have to stay indoors? A year of this? Are you insane?And then when we think it’s all over, we’ll have to do it all over again? This time in the winter? And it’ll push us to near bankruptcy as well?

That why I almost felt sorry for him. He’d imagined being PM as one thing and it turned out not to be that thing at all. But whilst Brexit was a uniquely British thing, COVID very quickly became a global thing and for all the rights and wrongs regarding the government’s response to COVID, no-one said that it was their fault that COVID had happened in the first place.

So whilst I used to feel sorry for Boris’s Johnson, it is as nothing when compared to the nothing I feel for Stymied. The one year anniversary of his general election triumph must be tainted by the knowledge of what that year held in store. Because if the oft-quoted dictum is indeed true, and a week really is a long time in politics, then how much longer must a year feel? Especially given how, at the start of that year, Stymied was seen as all things to all men. Remember that? When the press and the public were united in their adoration of him. An adoration he earned by doing the bare minimum, which basically involved not saying or doing anything that might upset people and most importantly, not being Boris. That was it. Keep your head down and not be Boris.

Unfortunately, when he did eventually have to raise his head during the election campaign, he neglected to raise his game as well. Or maybe he did, maybe that was him trying his level best, trying to be all dynamic, and not like the boring technocrat he really was. His performance during a live televised debate between himself and Prada was a shambles. Labour strategists must’ve been in tears. Stymied had the record of fourteen Tory years to throw at Prada, but unbelievably, he floundered and spluttered his way through it. The watching public must’ve thought, “Well at least he wasn’t lying, his dad really was a toolmaker.”

The election campaign itself was basically one gigantic waste of time. The day it was announced, they could’ve held it and there’d have been no discernible difference in the outcome. Apart that is, from Reform UK springing up out of nowhere and having the audacity to win over 14% of the votes cast. That got them five MP’s. Even more outrageously, Labour got a smidge over 33% of the vote which somehow got them 411 MP’s. But the important thing was that the grown-ups were finally back in the room. That seriously minded people were going to do seriously minded things and that Britain would be the better for it.

But then things started to wrong very quickly indeed, and as is the way with politics, when things go wrong they invariably create a domino effect, causing more things to go wrong. Whilst politicians can only ever react to events – and in the case of Stockport, it was the mass stabbing and murder of three children at a dance class and the subsequent rioting that escalated throughout the England – it is up to politicians how they react to them. As I wrote at the time, no matter how distasteful the motivations, opinions and the sometimes violent means of expressing them the rioters used were to the new government, simply dismissing the rioters as ‘far-right’ negated any sensible discussion of any underlying causes.

Then the law got involved. The speed and severity with which rioters were treated was seen as disproportionate to their crimes, not least when compared to the more lenient sentences handed by the courts to arguably more violent offenders. Then problems with prison overcrowding meant that prisoners who were more of a threat to public safety were released early to make room for them. It emerged that one prisoner released early under the scheme was charged with sexual assault relating to an alleged offence against a woman on the same day he was freed. This in turn highlighted flaws in the probation service, whose job it was to monitor them.

Quite aside from the most alarming and unexpected events that any politician has to deal with, it was the domestic events that seem to blindside him, even though these were of his own making. Having made much in the election campaign about how he wasn’t going to tax working people, he did what all new governments do, and blamed the last one for leaving the country finances in such a bad way that he had no choice but to.

No matter the country had had a year of COVID, of a furlough scheme which meant no tax venue to pay for it and thus massive borrowing, the way Stymied would have us believe it, Boris’s Johnson had basically Johnson’d the money away. This had created a £21.9 billion “black hole”, and because of this, certain winter fuel payments would be scrapped for around 10 million pensioners. The farmers inheritance tax protests and employers increase in National Insurance tax storms followed. More scandals engulfed him.

All of which culminated in a weird kind of buyers remorse. People felt cheated. This wasn’t what they’d voted for. Although as Labour only got 33% of the vote, meaning that more people didn’t bother to vote in the first place, it was difficult to feel much sympathy for their nonsense. But now, how people feel is a big thing in our society, and because of this, we live in age where if you feel unhappy about something you start a petition and if you tell people about it on social media, hopefully enough people sign it and something will be done about whatever it was that made people sign it in the first place.

Over three million fuckwits signed one demanding that a new election was held, and in so doing, highlighted one of the inherent problems with a functioning democracy. Namely, in order to be considered as such, its electorate should some level of basic understanding of how it works. And how a government is elected is about as fucking basic as it comes. Its not complicated.

But thats where Britain was at the end of 2024. With a public who thought our government was like a crisp manufacturer and that by signing a petition calling for a new election was no different to one demanding that prawn cocktail Wotsits to be brought back. But this is a public addicted to social media, so used to sharing their thoughts and opinions, that they delude themselves into thinking that how they think or feel has greater worth than others who don’t think the same way.

So it can’t have been too much of a surprise then for Stymied to discover that Corblimey had a special anniversary present for him. A parliamentary expression of the same way of thinking, as equally blinkered and dogmatic, of the most performative virtue of the age, the least virtuous of all the virtues that have infected peoples minds, opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza. Yes, he and co-leader Raisin might’ve thrown in the odd references about socialism, to benefit cuts, poverty and the disabled but it was all just blah, a smokescreen to conceal their true intent.

Which is to pile on yet more troubles for Stymied, to weaken his position still further and to hasten the calls for him to go. With the year he’s had, one could hardly blame him if he did.

Leave a comment

July 1, 2025

34:63 presents “Oscar Wilde”

The best kind of virtue signalling is of course the kind that has minimal adverse consequences for whoever it is that’s signalling their imagined virtue, but will conversely only accrue them a multitude of positive ones. And no virtue is more worthy to be signalled these days than support for the Palestinian people, which is essentially little more than some cunning media strategy. It demands no actual obligation upon the signaller other than to loudly and with as much fanfare as possible to announce it. So, with all of this in mind, what am I to make of the news that the Co-Op, is banning all Israeli products as part of doing something it hopes will appease it members?

Those would be same members who voted overwhelmingly at its AGM last month in support of a motion which urged the board to demonstrate “moral courage and leadership” by removing Israeli goods from the shelves. To no-ones surprise the board issued a statement at the time of about it reviewing its sourcing policies, to “ensure that they reflect both our values and principles and the views of our members, which they have made clear today”.

Talk about delusions of grandeur and an over-inflated sense of self-importance coupled with a breathtaking moral superiority. Bear in mind that the The Co-Op is a supermarket. It sells things. That’s it. It has no business other than being in the retail business. It has no obligation to anyone other than its shareholders and only then to maximise the profits it makes for them. Remember when times were simpler, when business’s were solely involved in the business of making and selling things things? A nice transactional arrangement that suited everyone and more importantly, one in which everyone understood the role they they played in it. Nobody was confused, mainly because there was nothing to be confused about.

When exactly did business’s become so obsessed with not only how they were perceived by their customers, but also if that perception was a negative one, one that potential customers found off-putting, to change it to a more favourable one? Or have they always been and I just didn’t notice? But certainly, its got out of hand now, so much so that one could be forgiven for thinking that the actual business of some business’s was nothing more than an embarrassing hobby, a distraction from fulfilling their true purpose, that of being social justice warriors,?

The only values its members should be concerned about is getting value for money. Principles are fine and everything but until their customers stop using Apple products because their made in sweatshops in China, its all for show, a prop in service to the bolstering of their self-righteous smugness. By pandering so cravenly to the childish posturing of its members, the Co-Op has demonstrated that it isn’t a case of lions led by donkeys, as more donkeys led by asses.

I’ve tried to find out exactly how much the trade of Israeli goods is worth to the Co-op as a percentage of its profits, but to no avail. This invariably causes me to suspect that the sums involved are relatively small, because if they were significant, then the Co-Op would be parading that fact with gusto. Nevertheless, the internet positively abounds with articles praising the Co-Op. Because as always with anything to do with Israel, the internet mistakes pandering for principles.

Of course, this adverse consequence free ‘virtue’ signalling nonsense has infected our politics and anything that can be presented as a robust something against Israel is guaranteed to garner approving headlines and positive social media posts. The appearance of doing something, irrespective of what that something is or even if that something has any practical impact in achieving that something, is far less important than being seen to do something. The government knows this only too well. As its recent announcement of more sanctions against Israel amply demonstrated.

According to a report in ‘The Independent’ last month,“Britain has issued fresh sanctions against Israel over its “morally unjustifiable” escalation of violence in Gaza, and demanded an end to its “cruel and indefensible” 11-week block on humanitarian aid.”

And what, exactly, did these sanctions consist of? Suspending trade talks with Israel, basically. Which of course leads one to ask exactly how much trade Britain does with Israel and then, how does this compare with other countries?

According to the governments own figures, ‘Total trade in goods and services (exports plus imports) between the UK and Israel was £5.8 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q4 2024.’ This made Israel our 44th largest trading partner. The 1st was of course the US, with a total value of over £314 billion.

There was more of this performative politics earlier this month when the BBC reported that “The UK has sanctioned two far-right Israeli ministers over “repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities” in the occupied West Bank.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will both be banned from entering the UK and will have any assets in the UK frozen as part of the measures announced by the foreign secretary.

It is part of a joint move with Australia, Norway, Canada and New Zealand announced on Tuesday.”

Which is yet more something, although when one looks at the governments website, which most people won’t, we find that the something amounts some big talk but very little action. Freezing assets held in the UK is going to have little more than zero impact, however If Switzerland had joined in that’d be another matter. There’s also a similarity pointless travel ban. Boo-fucking-hoo. They can’t visit the UK or Norway. That’s bound to hurt.

So suspending trade talks, not the trade itself mind, or imposing functionally meaningless sanctions, might give the appearance of Britain taking a principled stance, because that is precisely what it is meant to do, give the appearance of principle. Although if that principle boils down to minimising the threat of yet more candidates winning largely Muslim populated constituencies by standing on as a pro-Gaza platform and maximising positive media coverage, then that principle isn’t that all that principled, is it?

*****************************************

Amid all the furore about a nonentity capitalising on the faux ‘free thinkers’ of the Glastonbury crowd and seizing his opportunity to say something designed to raise his bands profile and create demand for tickets sales to their shows, the bleeding obvious truisms have been missed.

All of the headlines, all of the media agonising about various this and that’s, overlooks three things.

Firstly, there is no such thing as bad publicity, Pop music thrives on notoriety, especially if it positions itself as not being pop music, as being radical, apart from the mainstream. Worked a treat for the Sex Pistols.

Secondly, what did people expect? Yes what he said was crass, but it was the logical continuation of madness that has infected our politicians, hijacked the BBC, most of the press and which we see played out on the streets of London on a weekly basis.

Thirdly, the irony of him encouraging a crowd at Glastonbury of all places was to join him in wishing yet more Jews to be killed was as staggering as it was offensive. He knew what he was doing.

He’d have known that less than three years ago, people at the Nova festival in Israel doing exactly the same thing as the Glastonbury crowd were doing and were raped, slaughtered and kidnapped by Hamas terrorists for it.

He’d have also known that no-one at Glastonbury would even realise the hypocrisy.

Leave a comment

June 23, 2025

33:64 presents “Kemi Badenoch.”

We are indeed living in strange times. Times made all the stranger by things happening, that up until quite recently would’ve seemed by turns ridiculous, outlandish or farcical, but now seem to be another indicator of just how strange the strangeness is. And nothing seems to perfectly encapsulate the strangeness of these times more than the demonstrations against the bombing of Iran that took place in London last weekend.

Had one no knowledge of the well documented brutality of the Iranian regime, one might be forgiven that rather than being an unspeakably strict theocratic regime, it was a much maligned innocent in world affairs, one that had been unfairly cast as a villain by others in their pursuit of some unfathomably evil plan.

One might also be forgiven for thinking that because of the presence of women in the photographs that accompanied these demonstrations, that Iran was an implacable defender of female rights, and that these women doing nothing more than showing solidarity with their Iranian sisters.

Seeing such photographs and having read accounts of these demonstrations online, as so much news is accessed nowadays, one might also imagine that Iran was a bastion of press freedom, where internet access is as ubiquitous as it is unfettered.

To say nothing of the fact that these demonstrations, whilst heavily policed, were nonetheless allowed to take place and as such were part of the same freedoms as enjoyed by the citizens of Tehran.

The reason why you’d never think any of these things is possibly because you’d been aware of Irans previous abominations long before last weekend. The numerous reports on its human rights violations. It’s medieval treatment of women. It’s censorship of the internet. And that would mean that you didn’t rely on social media for your news and most importantly, weren’t infected by the current plague for interpreting every act through an incredibly subjective and highly reductive prism of anti-Israelism.

So whilst Iran may be bad, the US is far worse, there aren’t words sufficiently descriptive enough to describe just how bad Israel is. Despite Israel being the only country in that part of the world where most Britons – especially women and gays – would choose to live, it has attained a place in some peoples minds as the embodiment of evil. Which is utterly insane, factually unsustainable and morally repugnant.

Kemi Badenoch found herself engulfed in a media brouhaha a while ago after she made the claim that not all cultures were equal. Quite why is a mystery. It is undeniable fact. Life in Britain is better than life in Iran and only a fuckwit would suggest otherwise. But to users of the same reductive prism that absolves Iran for any complicity in the situation it now finds itself in and who happily march in support of it, it also allows them to denounce Britain as somehow being a jackboot away from being fascist.

There are protests to be had, causes deserving of media attention, injustices to be highlighted, action to be demanded. Iran however, isn’t one of them and for proof of that, I’d suggest that those protesting support for Iran in London, try protesting support for Britain on the streets of Tehran and see where that gets them.

Leave a comment

May 20, 2025

34:63 presents “Judas Iscariot.”

Much as it pains me to write this, I suspect that Farrago might be only honest politician in Britain. This bold assertion comes with add a few important caveats. The foremost one of these is that the usual standard of honesty as most people understand it, does’t seem to apply to to the world of politics. Boris’s Johnson’s entire political career bears this out. As his former Home Secretary Amber Rudd once put it “Boris well he’s the life and soul of the party, but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”

But at least Boris tried to implement the will of the British people after they voted for Brexit. This was despite the entire cultural and media elite being fervently opposed any expression of democracy that didn’t advance their interests, the judicial and parliamentary attempts to thwart it, and the relentless besmirching of those who’d dared to do make the elites nightmare a reality. The deal he got wasn’t perhaps the best deal he could’ve got, but it wasn’t as if the EU were minded to offer him one. They wanted to signal to other EU member states – the ones who had a high degree of Euro-scepticism among their electorate and were closely looking at how Britain fared – France, Italy Austria, and The Netherlands – exactly how steep the price for leaving would be.

Fast forward two elections and five PM’s to yesterday and Plonkers so called ‘reset’ deal with the EU. I’m not going to discuss it in any great detail and not just because I’m holiday as I write this, looking out at the sea and luxuriating in the good weather, but more importantly because it was’t a surprise, him never exactly being a massive supporter of Brexit.

After all, he campaigned for a second referendum, happy to ignore the democratic wishes of the majority of UK citizens when it suited him and his increasingly metropolitan outlook. By that I mean an outlook that wasn’t predicated upon prioritising the needs of the many, but instead the minority of people unhappy about the whole Brexit enterprise, people who thought of themselves as Europeans and not British.The ‘Youth Mobility Scheme’ bit of the deal amply demonstrates this.

Ostensibly a scheme to allow UK youth to work and study in Europe, in reality it serves as an encapsulation of his betrayal of Brexit. Firstly, it is because only those children that have not just the necessary skills and qualifications needed to make that even a possibility, but also parents rich enough to make that possibility a reality. Parents who not only have encouraged their children learn a European language, but have inculcated in them a sense that this is but the restoration of an entitlement. So not the kind of parents who work in care homes, as mechanics or teaching assistants.

Secondly, we have a population of around 60 millions, as compared to Europes total of nearer 450 millions. Can anyone see the problem here? In Britain we have a welfare system, one that’s struggling cope as it is, without even more demands placed upon it from EU citizens with a legal rights to it.

All this at a time when net migration is at historic highs, when the public is palpably crying out for control, when Reform UK gave Plonker fair warning as to the levels of discontent brewing in the country at the recent mayoral and council elections and he responded by seeming to take heed of their concerns, when in reality all he has done is make it worse.

Thats why, much as I am am loathe to, I think that Farrago might be the most honest politician in Britain today. Don’t be thinking I’m in any way a fan of Farrago. I think he’s nothing more than a snake oil salesman, all smarm and the kind of bluster that most people mistake as plain speaking. But if you were to ask any British voter at anytime within the last 15 years or so what two things sprang to mind when they thought of him, those two things would be the EU and immigration (although to be fair, that’s because they were the only things he ever seemed to talk about.) So he hasn’t shifted so much as the electorate have moved closer to him, in part because the other political parties have have moved further away from them.

So with that in mind, I’m going to rename Plonker ‘Stymied’ because that’s what he’s done to Brexit and as always, when I write about Brexit, I feel the need that to point out that I voted to remain

Leave a comment

May 18, 2025

34:63 presents “Yuval Raphael.”

If there’s one act that perfectly encapsulates the moral obscenity of the pro-palestinian ideology, then yesterdays attempt by two protesters to storm the stage during Israels performance in the Eurovision Song Contest is going to take some beating.

Yuval Raphael survived the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen at the Nova music festival. She hid under a pile of dead bodies for eight hours until she was rescued. But apparently her trauma wasn’t sufficiently traumatic. So despite having survived one act of unimaginable horror by having to commit another, her ordeal continues.

The two protesters will ever know how that day changed her life, and how much bravery it takes for a Jew to stand on a stage outside of Israel and represent Israel. Because they don’t care, their warped ideology doesn’t allow for there being any Jewish victims. In their world, the only victims are the Palestinian ones and the only ‘genocide’ being committed is the one by Israel. The fact that Hamas’ founding charter explicitly and repeatedly calls for the killing of all Jews, with the ultimate aim being the eradification of Israel itself, is something else.

What that something else is, however, doesn’t much matter really. When one’s world-view is shaped by social media posts, reinforced by their friends groupthink and bolstered by dubious ‘facts’ and biased ‘news’, when the concept of ‘my truth’ becomes a thing, it does so at the expense of objective truth.

Of course, this means that the Chinese State Circus can perform around the world with impunity, despite widespread evidence of human rights abuses by the Chinese government and allegations of a genocide of the Uyghur population. Perish the thought that because Beijing has takes a hard line with protesters – even outside China – that this informs peoples thinking.

And as a result of which, we get two protesters thinking their deranged understanding of things trumps Yuval Raphael’s lived reality. Because of course, when it comes to Israel, it is only a Palestinians lived reality that has any value.

Leave a comment

May 6, 2025

34:63 presents “Graham Linehan”

**********************************************************************

I saw in ‘The Guardian’ the other day that ‘More than 400 actors and film industry professionals have signed an open letter pledging “solidarity” with the trans, non-binary and intersex communities who have been affected by the recent supreme court ruling.’

Of course they did.

Why is it a such a uniquely actorly thing to do, to imagine that just because their success in one field of human endeavour has afforded them some measure of celebrity, it somehow confers upon them some kind of greater a moral authority, one that the rest of us should take heed of?

The letter is quoted as saying,“We must now urgently work to ensure that our trans, non-binary, and intersex colleagues, collaborators and audiences are protected from discrimination and harassment in all areas of the industry – whether on set, in a production office, or at a cinema.”

A few things immediately spring to mind.

The first is that actors are by quite a wide margin the one group of people I’d expect to show solidarity with trans-women, for the simple reason that their entire working life is essentially pretending to be someone else. So the idea that by simply by saying they’re someone else, they they become that someone else, isn’t that outlandish to them as it might be to a say, a mechanic.

Additionally actors – pronounced as if John Gielgud was hamming up the word for all it was worth – are on a ceaseless quest for validation, and not just from themselves either. Those big awards ceremonies are nothing more than a giant narcissism circus with frocks and because the media fawn all over them – to be granted a red carpet interview or some other content clickbait – it perpetuates their sense of overblown entitlement.

Actors are forever banging on about the research they do before embarking on a role, often living the life of the character they are going to play, sometimes even undergoing bodily modification to better achieve ‘authenticity’.

Robert de Niro is a good example of this – for his portrayal of Jake la Motta in ‘Raging Bull’, he trained for, and then fought in three professional matches. He then gained over 60 pounds – nearly 9 stones – to play the ageing La Motta. To better play Travis Bickle in ‘Taxi Driver’, he drove a taxi around New York for two weeks. We know this because de Niro himself told everyone. It’s become a benchmark for other actors to emulate. Thankfully, he has ever played a serial killer.

Actors just love going all ‘method’, often staying in character for the duration of a films shoot, even when the cameras aren’t rolling, because of some ridiculous idea of ‘honesty’, ‘of needing to fully embrace the character’. How is this anything other than a very diluted version of a trans woman and his ‘lived reality’?

So whilst the letter loftily proclaims ‘We believe the ruling undermines the lived reality and threatens the safety of trans, non-binary, and intersex people living in the UK.’, it ignores the ‘lived reality’ of actual women, their safety, their rights and freedoms. They can just shut up and quit their yapping about single-sex spaces. Female rights are all well and good, it seems, right up until men with delusions are adversely affected by women not wanting to share those rights. Then the rights of the majority of the UK population must be eroded to satisfy the nonsense of a minority of a minority.

That is the key here. This isn’t some great civil rights movement, similar to the ones fought by African Americas in in 1960’s or by lesbians and gays in Britain in the 1980’s.Those battles were about gaining the rights enjoyed by everyone else, not about taking rights by reducing other peoples.

But then actors enjoy a privileged position in an increasingly celebrity obsessed world. And just like the trans activists who expect their every whim to be unquestioningly granted, and get more than a bit stroppy when they’re not, so too actors imagine that their concerns should be everyone concerns.

Conversely, actors are only too happy to criticise others who don’t share their same ‘moral’ worldview, feeling it not only their right but their duty to tell us how they feel and therefore, we should take heed of this and act accordingly. Robert de Niro was one of the many US actors who very vocally gushed glowing tributes to Mr Magoo when he retired from the 2024 presidential campaign and with nary a heartbeat transferred their support to Kabbalah Vibe.

Did her campaign the world of good did that.

So frequently are actors given to this method of visible virtue are they that one can’t help but wonder if She Who Must Not Be Named has a point when she suggests that it is more to do with career prospects than anything else that motivates them to sign these sort of things.

Because I’ve yet to learn of a newsagent having her marriage collapse on her because of the constant harassment she was getting from other newsagents, the boycott of her shop by customers, refusal of suppliers to sell to her, for crisp, chocolate and sweet makers to publicly denounce her as someone they wanted no associate with, simply for expressing an opinion that others disagreed with.

Leave a comment

May 3, 2025

34:63 presents “Asterix”

I must confess to feeling slightly disappointed upon waking this morning to discover that the sky hadn’t fallen in. Because yesterday, the media were full of either grim pronouncements or jubilant celebrations about exactly what Reforms UK’s performance in Thursdays elections meant for the future of British politics.

Brexit, as it is for most things nowadays, was involved, being the catalyst that lay behind this wholly predictable, and indeed, widely predicted drubbing. Indeed, in all the coverage I’ve read, what is striking is just how much opinions are shaped by Brexit. In a tangential yet unremarked way, Brexit was but a symptom of a greater, more fundamental problem confronting democracy, not just in the UK, but elsewhere. One that moreover, has the capacity to fatally undermine it by using its own inherent flaws to achieve this, voter turnout, or more accurately, voter absence.

In all of the mayoral elections contested on Thursday, not one of them had a voter turnout of more than 34% and neither of the ones that elected Reform UK mayors managed even 30%. Why no media attention is being given to this problem is beyond me, especially as a little over a year ago the dangers were revealed to exist.

Remember George Galloway’s campaign in the Rochdale by-election last year? Where he made it clear from the outset that he was targeting the Muslim community in Rochdale – 30% of its population – and instead of focusing on local or even national issues, but rather on Israel/Gaza? It was an act of effectively strategic masterstroke, resulting him getting 40% of all the votes cast, which sounds impressive, until you realise only 39.7% of voters actually bothered to. And then suddenly that 40% seems even less impressive, especially when you realise that that once impressive 40% translates into 12,335 actual votes.

This trick – targeting a specific community and focusing on an issue not directly related to their daily lives – was repeated a few months later at the 2024 general election. Whilst George Galloway wasn’t re-elected, five candidates were, all pandering to concerns of a minority but crucially, a minority who turned out to vote. Together with Jeremy Corblimey, they formed the Independent Alliance and their ranks could easily have been increased to nine, because three candidates, standing on a similar platform were narrowly defeated.

It isn’t that surprising that Labour is so quiet on this issue – low voter turnout – because it suited them very well at the 2024 general election. Despite the fact there was a load of guff in some of the media about how constituency boundary changes and the need for voter I.D would work against Labour, like so much political speculation, that didn’t happen. Voter turnout was about 60%, and despite Labour getting a lower share of that, 34%, somehow they got 412 seats or 63% of them.

Some awfully clever people have worked out that the you take into account the number that did vote for them, the number that didn’t and the number of people who could have voted but chose not to, combine all of that and only 20% of the UK electorate did so. Of course the media are predicting all manner of things, because that’s what the media do. Political forecasting is as good at predicting the future as reading tea-leaves, checking ones horoscope or listening to a clairvoyant.

Its much easier than them questioning why this keeps happening, why political parties have consistently failed to engage with voters the way seem all to happy to do with lobbyists. And by not doing this, they’re not only perpetuating the problem, they’re failing to do their job. Nearly as much as the politicians.

Leave a comment

May 2, 2025

34:63 presents “Mari Wilson.”

As with all things, the devil is in the detail, and there is a lot of detail for Farrago to dwell on, following the overnight constituency, local council and mayoral elections. It is now Friday afternoon and more grim tidings are expected to be heading Plonkers way. But the results are just as troubling for Farrago, albeit in a different way, one replete with potentially longer term damage.

First of all, a quick shufti at the actual results. The Reform UK candidate, Sarah Poitin, won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes, overturning a majority that rights, shouldn’t have been vulnerable. However, as stunning – and widely predicted – as her victory undoubtedly was, she only got 38.7% of the votes cast and only 42.6% of the voters actually bothered to vote. And even that was lower than the turnout less than a year ago. at the general election.It’s not like there hadn’t been any publicity, media interest and speculation about it or anything.

Which means a few things, none of them good for her glittering parliamentary career, which may or may not happen or for Reform UK’s positioning of itself as a viable electoral proposition. Firstly, with a majority that is the very definition of ‘by the skin of their teeth’, and with such a low turnout to boot, a better result for her would’ve been to have lost by six instead. Because you can bet that the local Labour Party will scrutinise her parliamentary attendance record, forensically examine her expenses claims, flood her constituency surgery with labyrinthine constituent problems, all designed to portray her as bad MP at the next election. They’ll also be all over her social media content – especially in her youthful postings – for any damaging content, and trying to unearth anything in her past that might be used against her. So basically what every political party handed such opportunity would do.

The situation in Greater Lincolnshire, where Dame Angela Jenkins became Reform UK’s first mayor, is if anything, potentially even worse. Yes, she’s a former Conservative MP so she knows how the game is played and yes, as mayor of newly formed super council, essentially overseeing three smaller councils each represented two senior councillors each, – given as how all of whom are Conservative,- this in theory doesn’t pose as much of a problem as if they were Labour. I didn’t know this, but prior to last night, over 65% of Reform UK’s local councillors were defectors from the Conservatives. But be that as it may, Ange got her gold chain with a vote share of 42.2% – good -, a majority of nearly 40,000 – double good -, on a voter turnout of, er, 29.9%.

So her election has succeeded in highlighting the flaws in our voting system and nothing else. As the mayor of a new super council, she needs the support of six others to ratify any policies she wants to introduce. They in turn are at the mercy of local officials, in town halls and council departments to make those policies real. And successful implementation of her policies will, even if they succeed in permeating down through the layers in bureaucracy, rely on council staff and contractors, who might be instinctively opposed to Reform UK. They won’t want her mayoralty to become a shining example of good governance should Farrago enter No.10.

And this is why the greater the electoral success that Reform UK has, the greater the threat to Reform UK has of suffering irreperable reputational damage. It can only present themselves as the change Britain needs for so long. At some point, they’ll have to deliver that change, and whilst bemoaning the structural unfairness of the first-past-the-post voting system chimes with people who care about such things, if potholes are left unrepaired, schools face staff shortages, or social care is pared back even further, nobody will much care.

They won’t care that central government has cut the councils budget, but they will care the their council tax bill goes up or that they have to buy a residents parking permit. They won’t care that the council is barely meeting its statutory obligations but they will care when those statuary obligations are perceived to be applied discriminatorily. They won’t care when council run things that they never use are closed, but they will care when things that they do use close. Then they’ll care, then they’ll care a lot.

And it won’t just be Farrago regretting getting the thing he always wanted.

Leave a comment

April 30, 2025

34:63 presents “The Corporal Jones guide to politics.”

In recent days there has been a lot of speculation in the press concerning what exactly Plonker will do in order to nullify the threat of a Reform UK rout of Labour at the upcoming local elections tomorrow. They have pretty much conceded the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby, which voting also place tomorrow, which on paper they should win, given as how the former MP Mike Amesbury won it with a majority of nearly 15,000 at the General Election barely a year ago.

But then having a by-election forced upon you because the sitting MP had to resign after recieving a 10-week suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to punching a constituent last year, is not a good look. But neither is it a good look for a politician to carefully finesse his public image so that him saying little about actual policy in the general election campaign – so that everyone can fill in their own hopes onto him – works only so far. Which in his case, turned out – to no-ones surprise – to be until he was elected and soon thereafter revealed himself to be as slippery as most other politicians.

Anything less than a resounding victory for Labour- an increased majority, an increased voter turnout from the general election and the other parties being thoroughly rejected by the electorate – will be a defeat. It remains to be see if its a crushing one or not. The local elections pose more of a threat, because most people will vote based on how competent or not they judge central government to be. Sad but true. Its politics. Just like when in February Local Government Secretary Angela Ratner announced that local elections in East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey would be delayed for one year to allow major reorganisations to take place. It may well be true, maybe there’s a compelling rationale behind her decision. But in order to prevent the taint of political chicanery being levelled and gaining traction, making the announcement less than three months before they’re happening, again, isn’t a good look.

But this government seems to be constantly bedevilled by events, responding to them, and being in constant firefighting mode, rather than shaping them and exuding calm. The postponement of the aforementioned is but one example of this. Another is sudden flurry of headlines this week suggesting that Plonker will take a stronger line on immigration in order to try and mitigate the threat from Reform UK. Its not because of something as old fashioned as its the right thing to do and that doing such – reducing the numbers of people being granted asylum – might have a beneficial effect on already overstretched public services. That Plonker seems unwilling to grasp this obvious political calculation is one reason why Reform UK is polling so well and why all Plonker has are desperate last minute throws of the dice. His default position on immigration is to label anyone who thinks that immigration needs tougher action as racist or bigoted or far right extremists, effectively attempting to shut down any sensible discussion on this topic.

But as Reforms growing threat, and Labours craven reaction to it amply demonstrate, while such a strategy might work in posh metropolitan circles, out in the wild, out where most of the electorate live, out where the very real consequences of immigration are being felt, that strategy isn’t working.

Don’t be thinking I’m in any way a fan of Farrago. I think he’s nothing more than a snake oil salesman, all smarm and the kind of bluster that most people mistake as plain speaking. Like a lot of people flirting with Reform UK, its only because of the lack of any other viable political alternative And like a lot of people who are considering voting Reform UK, my values and principles, my fundamental conception of what the state should do – and what it shouldn’t – and what obligations the state owed to the citizen – and vice-versa – haven’t really changed. Its the political parties who have changed out of all recognition.

Despite the many horrors that the Grocers Daughter visited on the UK, she at least had ideological underpinnings to them. There was a logic, twisted and serving the interests of a minority, yes, but a logic. The most socialist thing about Plonker is his first name, and the only thing he stands for is a piss.

Leave a comment

April 21, 2025

34:63 presents ‘Emotional inflation.’

In my last post I referred to Eddie Izzard as Eddie Izzard. I’d ‘deadnamed’ him – the notion that referring to someone by their birth name, as opposed to using a name that better suited their new identity – is as akin a ‘hate crime’ But I think I’m on safe ground here. According to his wikipedia page, he does’t much care.

Others do, though, and that’s a problem because we now live in an age where how someone feels about something can be land one in hot water. Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI’s) have been in the news recently because of the arrest last year of Daily Telegraph journalist Alison Pearson over a tweet she sent a couple of years earlier in which she mistook some British Pakistani protesters for pro-Hamas protesters and railed against ‘Jew haters’. That Pearson promptly deleted it soon after posting apparently made no difference.

Someone saw that tweet – and for reasons best known to them, waited two years before complaining to the police – and in so doing, set in motion the sort of over-reaction that I thought only happened in former Communist states. It took the combined investigative abilities of three different police forces, including one of them setting up a ‘gold group’– normally reserved for major or terrorist crimes – before concluding that no crime had taken place.

Introduced in 2014, more than 130,000 NCHI’s have been issued. And if you don’t remember a a huge debate about them raging in the press, interminable parliamentary wrangling, all manner of public protest, don’t worry. It was’t like you weren’t paying attention. There wasn’t anything to pay attention to. Because as befits something as nebulous as a NCHI, its very passage into British law is opaque at best and Kafkaesque at worst.

As a result of his inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, Sir William MacPherson recommended that the that Police should record both hate crimes and non-criminal “hate incidents”. Exactly how something that is a non crime somehow requires the police to get involved is beyond me. But nonetheless, the result was that without any sort of anything, eventually in 2014, the College of Policing released its Hate Crime Operational Guidance that encouraged reporting non-crime hate incidents. As far as I can make out that’s basically what happened. The police decided it would be handy thing to have should they need it and everyone just went along with it. It was only in 2023 it got any sort of parliamentary attention and that was only limited as to how NCHI’s were recorded and stored, rather than their possible effect on free speech or potential for misuse.

And the threshold for something to be classed as NCHI is worrying low. All someone has to think is that because they possess a particular characteristic – their race, religion, sexuality disability or transgender identity – and that an incident occurred occurred wholly or partially because they perceive it to have been motivated by a prejudice because of that protected characteristic, then that’s enough. Even a third party a third party, who may have just have overheard or seen what it was – as in Alison Pearsons case – can report it.

This gives rise to what I call emotional inflation, the exaggeration of harm or to be more exact, the deliberate and maliciously inflated perception of their own feelings. Someone being a bit brusque or tetchy, terse or just a bit off with you doesn’t leave you feeling irked, miffed, vexed, or slightly irritated, possibly out of sorts for a few minutes or even in a bad mood. With NCHI’s these feelings transform into being triggered, anxious, threatened, fearful, distressed, certainly at risk of self harming, possibly suicidal and many other unprovable, yet sufficiently now conditions that help reinforce victimhood and prove that something needs to be done.

But in so doing, NCHI’s help create the very problem they ostensibly seek to solve. Because as soon as you elevate how someone feels about something above some else’s right to free speech, one legitimizes subjectivity, fosters a grievance culture and allows the law ever more power to police of personal actions. Because as we’ve see over the last few years, some trans-activists have become increasingly aware of the malicious potential that NCHI’s offer and have quite deliberately sought to amplify their feelings into something warranting police intervention.

Why the police simply don’t tell them to ‘man up’ I’m not sure, but then they’re men that want to be women, aren’t they?

Leave a comment

Tag: politics