Nationalisation Without Compensation 1600


When slavery was abolished in the British Empire, taxpayers paid huge sums in compensation to slave owners for the loss of their “property”. No compensation was ever paid to the slaves for the loss of their freedom.

The problem with that approach is, of course, that the state did not take into account that the “property” of which it was relieving the landowners was acquired as part of an inhuman and immoral situation.

I was considering the same question in relation to the constitutional moves of South Africa to redistribute land without compensation. It seems to me this is plainly morally justified. The only question marks I can see are of practicality, in terms of making sure those taking over the land are trained to keep it properly in production, and that redistribution is not corrupt. Those are not insuperable problems, and I support the South African government in its endeavours.

But I wish to apply the same principle, of the state acting to right historic injustice on behalf of the people, much more widely and in the UK.

I apply precisely the same argument to the great landed estates, particularly but not only in Scotland. I believe the fundamental answer to land reform is confiscation by the state of large estates, and that social justice can never be redressed by the taxpayer simply handing over money to the ultra-wealthy. We have already been doing far too much of that through the bankers’ bailouts.

I have no moral qualms at all about simply taking back the land, whether it be from the Dukes of Sutherland, Buccleuch and Atholl, from a Dutch businessman or from a sheikh. In England the Grosvenor estate, the lands of the Duchy of Cornwall, and similar holdings could be confiscated. I do not see this as harm to the “owners”. Let them work for a living, or try their luck with the benefits claim system. Residential properties in large estates might become council homes, while tenants of commercial properties might pay rents to the council rather than to the Duke of Westminster, and the council use a large portion of that money for homebuilding.

Agricultural land from vast estates might perhaps best be given to the tenant farmers who have rented it. In the Highland glens, there are vast tracts which were once cattle rearing and arable. We have been lied to for generations that these are only fit for moorland for grouse and deer hunting – despite the fact that they are studded with the croft foundations of the cleared populations they once supported, who reared cattle and grew crops. These unfarmed lands should be given free to communities to develop; with assistance for the expensive task of bringing them back into production. That assistance would be a better use of state money than paying “compensation” to the ultra-wealthy.

But it is not only land. I favour nationalisation without compensation of all PFI projects, and of all railways and utilities. The owners have milked the public and the taxpayer far too long. Any business investment carries risk, including political risk. If you misjudge the political risk, your business fails. These businesses have made a misjudgement of political risk in the view they could profiteer, that it is possible to rip off the people forever without blowback. That is a business miscalculation, and such businesses deserve to fail.

The Labour Party’s renationalisation proposals have been carefully calculated within the existing framework of “legitimate” property rights. Therefore John McDonnell has framed rail nationalisation in terms of the expiration of franchises, and talked of PFI projects in terms of buyouts. I reject this approach in favour of the more radical approach of confiscation.

Yes, I realise that some percentage of the investments removed will belong to pension funds and insurance companies and even foreign states, and to small investors. Still more will belong to hedge funds and plutocrats, and the stake of ordinary people in wealth through pension funds had been – deliberately – tumbling for two decades. The less wealthy individuals with a stake in pension funds will lose a little, but gain from the wider public good, and for them there might be a compensation mechanism.

I also realise the markets will not like confiscation, and there will be an increase in bond yields; but this will pass. There is no measure to redress social injustice the markets will like. The City of London is our enemy and will naturally attempt to resist or punish any attack on its continued ability to be the conduit for the hoovering dry of the national wealth.

The fact is, that the extreme injustice and inequalities of society have now become so very glaring that there is no way to make any impression on wealth disparity without changes that may be rightly considered revolutionary. Either we are content to live in a society where the wealthiest one per cent will within two decades own ninety per cent of all wealth in the UK and the rest of us be helots, or we make changes to the fabric of the economy and government which are truly radical.

The economic system has tilted beyond correction by tinkering.

What is immorally owned ought not to be compensated on expropriation by the community.

As with the owners of slaves, the owners of “property” would be likely to attempt to defend their riches through the courts. This is where the doctrine of the sovereignty of parliament might for once be put to good rather than evil use, in passing law making such state confiscation unequivocally legal. Both the UK and Scotland appear set for at least a period outside the EU; I cannot think of a better use for any window of legal autonomy.

I am fully aware that I am proposing very radical measures very unlikely to be adopted by the current political Establishment. But the most telling fact of recent western society, itself a natural and predictable result of that galloping wealth inequality, is that the political Establishment has its coat on a very shoogly peg.


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1,600 thoughts on “Nationalisation Without Compensation

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  • N_

    A man aged 69 has failed in his attempt to persuade a Dutch court that he should be allowed to change his age to 49, because that is what he “feels”.

    The Netherlands is the country which pioneered the practice of men walking each other up the aisle and saying they are “married”, in 2001.

    For full comic effect, this Dutch guy should have applied to be recognised as a combination of two different people and a horse. I mean everything is a choice, right, so let’s not be square!

    Clearly someone at the court is a thinker for our time, because they said in a statement that “amending his date of birth would cause 20 years of records to vanish from the register of births, deaths, marriages and registered partnerships.This would have a variety of undesirable legal and societal implications.”

    Watch out for societal implications, especially when they group together, are various in nature, and gang up with legal implications to bite you on the bottom, thereby undermining the state’s keeping of its records, which is the crime of crimes.

    The court added “There are other alternatives available for challenging age discrimination, rather than amending a person’s date of birth”.

    You can’t change your date of birth, moron! Clearly, as is common in the white collar world, this person does not understand the difference between a fact and a record.

    • Tony_0pmoc

      N_,

      LOL

      Yeh but he looks 69.

      I look 45 on a good day, and 85 on a bad day after a very heavy night.

      I thought you would like to know, its Ozzy Osbourne’s 70th birthday today, and I have read his autobiography which a friend gave me, which is completely hilarious – far better than Alan Sugar’s (which is also very good but not quite as funny) – he gave me that too.

      If Roger Daltrey’s is any good, which I bought today – £10 on Amazon in hardback, I will return the compliment, and give it to him, and he is even older than me.

      Life in us old dogs yet.

      Tony

      • Ian

        It’s a spoof, as was the Dutch scam – by a ‘self-help guru’ seeking more dates on Tinder by lowering his age, and thus raising his profile. What is even funnier is the spluttered outrage of the right who took it seriously as the latest politically correct outrage. lol

        • Andyoldlabour

          @Ian,

          The Blogmire article is a send up of a real story (the picture of the cyclists on the podium), which involved the UCI World Track Championships, held in the US in October, when a “transwoman” (born as a man) won the gold medal in the Masters 35 to 39 age group sprint race for women. It has rightly caused an outcry amongst women competitors because it could have an incredibly negative effect on women’s sport.

          https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/rachel-mckinnon-becomes-first-transgender-woman-win-track-world-title-397473

          There is a 52 year old Canadian guy, who now identifies as a 6 year old girl, has left his family and has been adopted by another family – the World has become a very strange place.

          https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/transgender-dad-leaves-wife-seven-7001642

          • Ian

            Nearly all of these tabloid stories are aimed at undermining real TG issues, giving publicity to attention seekers and provocateurs in order to feed prejudices and circulate false stories which are repeated endlessly.

          • Andyoldlabour

            @Ian,
            What are real transgender issues?
            Are they the facts that there are males identifying as females who are in women’s prisons, and who have attacked female prisoners?

            https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison

            Or maybe a 26 year old man identifying as a woman, who had bragged about assaulting feminists and then attacked a 60 year old woman at a rally.

            https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-attacker-tara-wolf-is-a-thug-says-feminist-maria-maclachlan-pq0bwvthv

          • N_

            Wow – that story about the Canadian guy!

            “Tabloid stories” indeed. Stories throughout the mainstream media, both “quality” and “tabloid”, have referred to a woman who wants to be called a man and who then gave birth to a baby as if she actually is a “man”. “First man to give birth”, they say, just to let us know they’ve got more of this insane shit coming; to makes us hear the avalanche they think they’re riding on; to make timid souls too scared to speak out.

            Guess what. Men can’t give birth. Anybody who gives birth is a woman. XX means female, XY means male. Some people have a chromosomal abormality, in which case if they’ve got a “Y” in there they are male and if they haven’t they are female. And homosexuality is abnormal and not evolutionarily adaptive. (Any attempt to argue that it is evolutionarily adaptive is likely to be advanced by an idiot who has never actually had the brainpower to ask the question before.) In a healthy human society there would be positive feedback between on one side, the psychology of male and female individuals and, on the other, the biological determinations of our species. Recognising these facts doesn’t make a person akin to Hitler, and only a moron would think it does.

            That woman who says she is a man who gave birth may possibly be only a liar but more probably she is mentally ill. And she has her crazy self-conception accepted as if it’s true by almost all opinion-channellers, which doesn’t help her and it doesn’t help the rest of us either. That’s as the bullsh*tters smirk off-stage, because every sane person – and there are still some of us left, even among the cynics in the media who don’t have to believe all of the sh*t they shovel – know full well that she is a woman. “Woman” and “man” aren’t choices that a person makes. And people do NOT have the right to have their mental illnesses described as not being illnesses at all.

            It really pisses me off that the so-called “left” has taken over fields such as literary studies, where for example the analysis of something like a play by Shakespeare always has to be done in terms of “race”, “class” and “gender” and practically nothing else – as if that kind of analysis or critique of a literary “text” has anything whatsoever to do with real Marxist critique – whereas the left has allowed fields such as evolutionary psychology to be utterly dominated by the right, who REALLY ARE pushing racism and sexism and the relationship which underlies both of those, which is the dictatorship of capital.

          • Andyoldlabour

            @_N,

            We live in confusing and dangerous times, when here in the UK, respected academics are being hounded out of their jobs, by an ignorant rabble of immature fantasists who are pushing a cult.
            Wordpress has removed all articles which challenge this new cult of transgender politics, whilst Twitter has banned people for saying that men can never be women, and men are being transferred to women’s prisons simply because they identify as a woman.
            There are men and there are women, and it is impossible to change sex.

      • Andyoldlabour

        @John Welch,

        Thanks for asking that question, because I had given up?
        That is a genuine thankyou, because sometimes I feel that the World has turned upside down.

        What would happen if Usain Bolt came back and indentified as a woman and then ran 9.85 seconds for the 100 Metres?

        • SA

          The subject is a very difficult one and has to be dealt with great sensitivity. It is a clash between physical unalterable reality: possessing XX vs YX chromosomes with all that this entails include outward physical manifestations, and a mental one, the perception that you are trapped in the wrong body. There would obviously be two ways of tackling this issue one as a mental health issue or as a medical and surgical one.
          Unfortunately what has happened is that this has all become embroiled with other gender issues including gender equality and then became politicised and also some people have taken advantage of this for nefarious purposes.

          • Andyoldlabour

            @SA,

            I have no objection to anyone choosing which way they want to live their life – until it impacts negatively on me or people I know.
            It would seem that a lot of transgender people, particularly transwomen who are in a distinct minority compared to the general population, wish to dictate to the rest of us how we should live our lives, and what we should have to put up with.
            They are not biological women, so why should they be able to dictate that they wish to use women’s facilities – toilets, changing rooms, women’s prisons, women’s refuges, joining the girl guides etc?
            I totally agree that some have done this for their own nefarious reasons, and that is why I believe a lot of caution should be used.
            Most violent crimes against women are carried out by men, and women – who make up 50% of the population – do not want men present in spaces where they want privacy and where they wish to feel safe.

  • Dungroanin

    OT – AG Cox in parliament earlier.
    Did anyone see that performance – he would have convinced a jury, with his ever so humble, tear jerking, bombastic promise to answer the MP’s questions while meticulosly failing to do so.

    CM may need to enlighten us about ‘national interest’. Wtf it is? Who has decided what it is? Why there is no discussing what it is exactly? Where is the list of national interests?

    The Attorney General says he is in contempt of a binding parliamentry vote to release his advice to the government in full. He claimed that he alone has decided that it would be against ‘our’ national interest. He pretty much admited ( by failing to deny) that he had made his intention not to release his advice, before the uncontested vote took place, although he didn’t do it ‘directly’ with the chief whip.

    Bercow has said he will decide and let parliameny know betore rising tonight if he will allow the combined opposition letter calling it a contempt. Tick tock.

    The points of order at the end were even more interesting – energy minister caught in a direct lie about meeting with fracking firms earlier in the year; Foreign minister caught in another lie and failure to respond weeks after asked to; the PM may have also lied today… that was as impressive a opposition performance as i’ve seen – they are powering towards government.

    • Deb O'Nair

      The national interest is to the government what the public interest is to the police; mealy mouthed and meaningless words trotted out when there is a cover-up taking place.

    • Jo1

      “Did anyone see that performance?”

      Performance is right! I think he must have been rehearsing it plenty. The arrogance of the man. Breathtaking.

  • Courtenay Barnett

    Craig,

    To endorse what you have stated – I add – that the legal principles you are urging are not new to British jurisprudence.

    I am presently involved in a matter in a large estate where the government of the Turks and Caicos Islands encroached on land which then became part of an airport. They went about it the wrong way and now owe the estate a large sum.

    You may be aware of the concept of ‘Eminent Domain’ and that doctrine in point of law refers to the power of the government to take private property and convert it into public use. The general good of the community is enshrined in the law. Only difference is that in such a situation then ( as with my current estate case) the owner is actually compensated at market value.

    The historical point, with the Atlantic African Slave Trade and ‘involuntarily imported labour’ into the Caribbean is that Britain has already collected for centuries and thus there has been a mass accumulation of wealth in consequence over in Europe. Nothing wrong thus in obtaining some ‘reparations’ for such historical injustice.

    Ah – brings to mind the Mau Mau case and the recent ‘Empire Windrush’ cases.

    Did someone say – JUSTICE?

  • Sharp Ears

    The DWP Secretary is an unpleasant woman. Doesn’t like hearing the truth either.

    Putin’s puppet’: Tory minister hits out at Corbynite MP for highlighting child poverty on RT

    Amber Rudd has hit out at Labour MP Chris Williamson, labelling him one of “Putin’s puppets” after his appearance on RT where he blamed the UK govt for creating a child poverty crisis this Christmas.

    Dec 3, 2018

    https://www.rt.com/uk/445444-rudd-putin-poverty-williamson/

    • Ken Kenn

      Williamson asked the best question of the AG.

      Are you prepared to sacrifice your reputation to save a government and be expelled from the House and thereby as an MP to save May’s terrible deal?

      Yet another sacrificial goat.

      Apparently he said yes.

      Bercow has ordered a debate on the suspension issue tomorrow.

      Oh and just in passing there are rumours of a GE by the end of January.

      As usual the clock is ticking.

    • BrianFujisan

      Aye Sharp Ears.

      And they are all Merry smiles, when they visit Food Banks, and collection points for food banks, like tory loving tesco –

      Conservative politicians in Scotland have faced a backlash today after a Foodbank publicity stunt backfired –

      https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/tory-mps-face-backlash-for-foodbank-publicity-stunt/03/12/?fbclid=IwAR338aO9hZAwSVfaQWKMnkQmEbGLmGIK-p6U5ujKb9IAbvT1vtYlxDutDT8

      On Another note.. Re your post on nutron bombs used in Iraq. Once they started in Iraq, seems they kept it up, Libya, Syria, and now Yemen, I read somewhere That they try to mask Tactical nukes with Huge coventional bombs.. Anyhow, in the most recent case in Yemen –

      GR Editor’s note

      The report below is unconfirmed. The evidence is scanty. The analysis of this event requires further examination. There is no proof that it was an Israeli IDF undertaking (M. Ch, GR Editor)

      * * *

      Analysis by Jeff Smith who is a nuclear physicist and former IAEA inspector:

      A video received from Yemen, believed to be taken May 20, 2015, of an explosion, when analyzed by nuclear weapons experts is, by very high probability, a neutron bomb that could only have been an Israeli attack.

      The analysis:

      A. Its not a conventional 2k lb bomb. It’s much bigger.

      B. Its either a very large MOAB bigger than 4,000 lbs. or; ???? Max weight for an F-15 / 16 is about 2,000 lb payload per bomb rack making the deployment of a MOAB impossible.

      Lightning effect and duration of the fire ball being suspended in mid air and the very large mushroom cloud is the main give away, that is because it is being hit by neutrons from the nuclear fireball blast. It overloads the ccd’s electronic circuit producing white flashes. If the radiation is too high it will burn out the chip. They had big problems with this in Japan with the Fukushima robots cameras failing due to very high radiation counts.

      D. Delivery is most likely by an IDF F-16 with a Saudi paint job on the plane. They are not even hiding their use anymore, they just don’t publicly admit it and the IAEA does nothing or says nothing. That is the true war crime. The UN just ignores it unless the US, France or GB complain…

      Russia and China say nothing.

      Post Script:
      A. The range of the camera is calculated to be about 4 to 5 miles from ground zero based on shock wave timing.

      B. Saudi has no F-16’s. The aircraft reported to be used to droop the bomb in Yemen were F-16’s. Photos and acoustic signature confirms that the jet engines noise is from a single engine jet fighter of the F-16 type.

      https://www.globalresearch.ca/possible-tactical-nuclear-strike-neutron-bomb-in-yemen/5452876

      • J

        The explosion is much closer to one mile from the viewer unless the speed of sound is five times slower in Yemen. Horrible.

      • Deb O'Nair

        It’s amazing the frenzy of “terror” reporting which occurred in this country when a man put a plastic bucket containing hair bleach (in a Lidl bag) on the tube whilst these forms of mass terror, fully supported by the Tories, do not get a mention.

    • N_

      Tories love associating recognising and combating poverty with obeying orders from the Kremlin. “You think nobody should be homeless or hungry? Get back to Russia!”

      Tesco’s have started a big promotion for their “support” for “food banks”. Staff are standing just inside the doors dressed as if they are charity collectors, handing out shopping lists and encouraging people to BUY LOTS OF ITEMS AT TESCO and then put one or two in a trolley so that the company can give them to a foodbank. It wouldn’t surprise me if some get put straight back on the shelves once the store has closed, i.e. they are sold twice, without the Trussell Trust knowing about it. Store managers at Tesco’s tend to be obnoxious c***s. They don’t tend to care about the disadvantaged and poor. BMWs, yes.

      The fact that supermarkets throw out a huge amount of food every day has been removed from the list of what’s admitted. Sometimes the lie is told that it all goes to feed animals nowadays. Like f***!

  • Paul Barbara

    Another good idea, from India this time: ‘India plans to tax millionaires leaving the country permanently’:
    https://www.rt.com/business/423820-india-exit-tax-millionaires/
    So all the 1% threatening to leave the UK, with their millions or billions, if Brexit comes about, can kiss bye bye to a big chunk of their ill-gotten gains. About time the Tax Havens were sorted out as well.
    Come on Jeremy, give ’em ‘ell’!
    Also, Nabibia plans to follow South Africa: ‘Namibia follows South Africa with pledge to expropriate white-owned land’:
    https://www.rt.com/business/440206-namibia-land-reform-sa/
    ‘…According to AFP news agency, two former presidents of Namibia, Sam Nujoma and Hifikepunye Pohamba, said the government should only pay “for things like equipment on the farm and not the land.”
    The Namibian government plans to transfer nearly half of its arable agricultural land, about 15 million hectares (58,000 square miles), to disadvantaged black citizens. Statistics from the Namibia Agriculture Union showed that 27 percent of land had been redistributed by the end of 2015.
    Thousands of black Namibians were driven off their land during Germany’s colonization of Namibia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of them were either killed or forced to resettle in barren areas.’
    I for one wish them ‘more power to their elbows’.

    • Mistress Pliddy

      Paul Barbara, your excerpt from RT “…Thousands of black Namibians were driven off their land during Germany’s colonisation of Namibia in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of them were either killed or forced to resettle in barren areas….’” makes it sound like run-of-the-mill random colonist expansionism, rather than a policy of obliteration. It was in fact far worse.

      The German actions in the first decade of the 20th century in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) are now widely acknowledged as genocide (by accepted definitions). The German “king” Wilhelm’s appointed commander of German forces in SWA, General Lothar von Trotha, declared (of the Herero) “A humane war cannot be waged against those who are not human.” and “It is my intention to destroy the rebellious tribes with streams of blood and money. Only from this seed something new will emerge, which will remain.”
      About 80% of the Herero population and 50% of the Nama population were killed by German actions. Many of the officers serving among the German forces at the time were, in fact, Afrikaner “contractors” from the neighbouring Cape Colony and the two Boer Republics (newly defeated in the Anglo-Boer Wars).

    • Mistress Pliddy

      Everyone knows about the shameful actions of the British colonial power during the mau-mau rebellion in British East Africa in the 1940s-50s. But less-discussed is the earler maji-maji rebellion in German East Africa (Tanganyika), where, exactly at the same time as the German forces were slaying Hereros and Namas in SWA, East African tribal nations were being decimated.

      “…The areas affected by the Maji Maji Rebellion were utterly destroyed in the aftermath of the war. Southern Usagara was …depopulated. The Uvidunda lost half of its total population… over three-quarters of the Pwanga died in the war…. Anywhere from 200,000 to 300,000 Africans, or about one third of the area’s total population, perished throughout the course of the war…” [John Iliffe. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge UP 1979.]

      “…The German colonial institutional preference was to win the war with “total, unlimited force”….The German military’s tendency was to gravitate towards final solutions, rather than continue with lesser, more diplomatic operations, and was firmly ingrained in the psyche of the military’s hierarchy…” [Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan. The Spectre of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective. Cambridge UP 2003.]

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Mistress Pliddy December 4, 2018 at 15:57
        Thanks for added info. I am not familiar with that period in history, but I am aware of what the dastardly King Leopold II did in the Congo, which continued with Ike (Lumumba has to go), successive US Administrations, the UN, and virtually all State actors up to the present (there were a few African nations that supported Lumumba, and even some of their UN ‘Peacekeepers’). That must be the most traumatised area in the world, given the time the trauma has continued, and it’s extent.
        And why? The huge natural resources, coveted by one and all.
        ‘THE EIGHT BEATITUDES OF JESUS
        “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
        for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

        Blessed are they who mourn,
        for they shall be comforted.

        Blessed are the meek,
        for they shall inherit the earth.

        Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
        for they shall be satisfied.

        Blessed are the merciful,
        for they shall obtain mercy.

        Blessed are the pure of heart,
        for they shall see God.

        Blessed are the peacemakers,
        for they shall be called children of God.

        Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
        for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

        Gospel of St. Matthew 5:3-10 ‘

        The US can spurn the ICC; let them spurn the Day of Judgement, if they can. And that goes for all the ‘Exceptionals’.

  • J

    The manufactured consensus taking shape out of the Guardian courtesy of Ms Carole Cadwalladr, winner of the Orwell prize for irony:

    “The government has admitted there’s no evidence of ‘successful’ interference by Russia. So now we are in the position of acknowledging they tried.”

    https://politicalquarterly.blog/2018/11/27/it-honestly-feels-like-were-in-the-middle-of-a-government-cover-up-interview-with-carole-cadwalladr/

    Casual readers might be bamboozled by this dizzying, almost acrobatic gibberish. And judging by the open mouthed credulity of BTL commentators on her twitter, they appear to be. “Your so perspective Cazzer, it’s a guvment conspiracy to conceal the Russian threat the guvment’ve been grating on about.”

    But are they real readers? Is Carole Cadwalladr a real journalist? Will we discover she’s actually an android controlled from a secret laboratory deep beneath a London PR factory? Can the aliens who built her airbrush themselves out of history? Could the late switch of genre to sixties spy thriller (complete with poorly sketched soviet threat) be ill advised? Woven in at the last minute, deus ex machina, could this plot twist veer off into a crib of mid sixties Kubrick?

    boggles > mind

    • Ian

      The Russia connection is one part of a much bigger picture. Whatever thet truth of that or not, the far more important network she is uncovering is between the British and brexit right wing, US dirty money and tech firms. Russian money may be part of it too, thought it is just as likely coming from oligarchs and crime syndicates than directly from government. Whatever, she is doing far more right than wrong – the answer is more transparency and investigation, not the lazy sneers at her efforts. Most people still don’t understand the use of data for manipulative ends, or the injection of foreign money (illegal) which she has uncovered, and which the government has sought to stifle and ignore. Never mind the Russian stuff, that alone is worthy of her award.

    • sc

      What I still find odd about Carole Cadwalladr is that her impressive investigation that exposed SCL and Cambridge Analytica seemed to show fake news, election manipulation abroad and so on from British and American companies with establishment links. But since then she seems to be fixated on Russians. I found the SCL stuff quite shocking.

      • Ian

        i don’t think she is ‘fixated’ on it, but certainly believes it is part of the Farage and Banks axis. And certainly Banks was involved with some very dubious Russian get rich quick schemes. But it seems likely that there are connections between Russian big money, gangster kleptocrats etc and Western networks of the same, both of which are involved in political chicanery and manipulation of democracies and elections. US kleptocrats will be more than happy to scapegoat Russia. it is pretty hard to disentangle, which is the point.
        She has also been active in exposing the BBC as stooges, been attacked by Neil for her efforts and has exposed the fraudulent claims of the Taxpayers Alliance and the IEA to be independent think tanks. Both of them refuse to divulge where their money comes from, both are accepted as valid commentators in the mainstream media.
        So all in all, I don’t expect her to get everything right, but at least she is going where others refuse or fear to. And that is quite rare. And very necessary.

        • sc

          yes, maybe fixated in unfair. I was impressed by the investigation and followed her on Twitter for a while and there was an awful lot about Russian money. But I was more interested in our own UK and American money since the Russian accusations are everywhere already.

      • Dungroanin

        She has led the hunt away from the fox’s lair.

        She has ignored SCL and its aristo/MI grandees.

        She has completely ignored Dominc Cummings and Vote Leave and THEIR ilegal brexit campaign.

        She ignores the Murdoch/Farage/Fox connection accidently revealed after the referendum and just before Farage suddenly deployed to the Trump campaign.

        She is pushing anti Russian, anti- Assange, Pro-mossad zionist agenda, gate keeping and damage limitation functions. ?

    • Deb O'Nair

      “The government has admitted there’s no evidence of ‘successful’ interference by Russia.”

      Which simply means there is no evidence of any interference whatsoever. Even evidence of an ‘unsuccessful’ attempt of interference would be evidence of interference. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence that Russian oligarchs and gangsters have ‘interfered’ with the Tory party by paying them huge sums of money.

      • Molloy

        .

        Deb—

        Thank you.

        The devil’s spawn of Goebbels and $Thatcher – the usual neoNastzi criminal innuendo.

        .

  • Tony

    I thought the ‘fix’ was going to come through parliament voting down the deliberately crappy deal. Looks like it’s going to come sooner:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46435128

    Globalist gimp Keir Starmer (who was parachuted into the Parliamentary Labour Party to stop it from assisting brexit) is having political orgasms over this.

  • mark golding

    Eliminating extreme injustice and inequalities of society starts at a very fundamental level – the preservation of life…

    The late US President George H.W. Bush, a luminary of America’s most powerful family, was the personification of a nation addicted to oil, obsessed with secrecy and war, and self-assured of its exceptional qualities.

    Exceptional can be imagined as ‘irregular’ much like an ‘exception’ in programming code that interrupts the normal flow of instructions. Yet exceptional can also mean superior; the excellence that is observed in the tribute to the life of George H.W. Bush the quintessential American leader, confident and insistent on an American without equal, now that is a potent example.

    The inhumation of H.W. Bush will interrupt the normal flow of life when open minds and scarred threads relive an American exceptional foreign policy of the time that refused to apologise for the annihilation of two major cities in Japan, of US sponsored state terror in South America and beyond that tortured and killed so many prisoners, the laying waste of Iraq in ‘Desert Storm’ and the H.W. Bush axiom “I will never apologize for the United States,” that embittered the Iranian families whose children died on Air Flight 655 shot down by the U.S. Navy.

    Beyond apology is a quintessential element of a twisted perception, a consciousness kept alive by the eulogy of exceptionalism.

    • Cynicus

      “…that embittered the Iranian families whose children died on Air Flight 655 shot down by the U.S. Navy.”

      According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) it did rather more than that. The Iranian mullahs have their own version of the LEX TALIONIS :”an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…” .

      And a plane for a plane.

      The DIA analysis concluded that Tehran commissioned the downing of PA 103 over Lockerbie.

      • J

        At least Iran behaved proportionally, despicable as Lockerbie was. USA has arguably killed more than two and a half million in retaliation for 9/11 (against uninvolved states) while shielding those most responsible for 9/11, such as KSA.

      • Andyoldlabour

        @Cynicus,

        I feel that I should add that the West supported Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons against Iran, the US provided logistics which helped target the Iranian troops, and there were between 50,000 and 100,000 casualties.

      • mark golding

        Senior officers in the Dumfries and Galloway police force knew CIA officers landed in Lockerbie by helicopter intent on recovering dollars and drugs, the allurements to exhort and coerce for the release of high value plants amid the hostages in Lebanon. The DIA once again were miffed at CIA interference, undermining their own legit hostage recovery plans. While British and US Establishment intelligence discussed the way-points for the demise of Iran, PM Thatcher turned towards Libya and the cover-up.

    • Tony_0pmoc

      mark golding,

      Blimey did you have a Commodore VIC 20 too, or was it a Sinclair ZX80?

      “much like an ‘exception’ in programming code that interrupts the normal flow of instructions.”

      I have always had massive respect for you. And I have only known you, so far as I know, from the words that you have written on this blog.

      Thank You, I hope you are well. You are a good man. I know this in my soul, and I’m not religious.

      When you write, you shine like a light.

      God Bless,

      Tony

      • mark golding

        Whatever happened to Gary Gildall my hero from Digital Research? I poo-poo the ‘Basic’ shell that created the monster of monopoly called ‘Windows’ Ha – the curtains are closing William! Rise again Gary – we love you. Thanks Tony x

  • Cynicus

    Sorry, Craig, this is bonkers. You, effectively, argue for the creation of a command economy. Have you really learned nothing from the collapse of such in the 20th century and the aftermath, including massive corruption, mafia states and grinding poverty of the intended beneficiaries?

    • J

      Maybe, but how would many people tell the difference? The stratospheric earners at the top distort the often quoted ‘average wage’ of around £27k, far more than most actually earn.

      Even GQ can be useful in this regard:

      “Topping the charts were brokers, who earned £133,677 on average, followed by chief executives and senior officials (£107,703), aircraft pilots and flight engineers (£90,146) and marketing and sales directors (£82,962). At the other end of the scale are retail assistants (£10,296), hairdressers and barbers (£10,019), cleaners (£7,919), waitresses (£7,554) and bar staff (£7,404).”

      https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/average-uk-salary

      At the bottom of the scale a worker would need at least five full time jobs to reach the supposed average. Zero hours contracts are presumably not even in the calculation, 1 hour per fortnight of paid work is considered ’employment’ by the ONS.

      • Andyoldlabour

        @J,

        Great post which shows the reality of the gulf between rich and poor and makes a mockery of the perceived avergae wage.
        My wife is a scientist, and there are degree educated staff in her company earning around £15K per year.

    • Radar O'Reilly

      yes, the current UKUSA states learned a massive amount from the failed command economies, not in economics – but in internal security & repression, covertly, squirrels. Trying to do better with modern tools, perhaps this was the wrong take-home message. . .

      more for informational purposes only at http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2018/12/truth-is-what-we-hide-self-serving.html
      The fact that lies and cover stories are now the official norm only makes us love our servitude with greater devotion.
      We can summarize the current era in one sentence: truth is what we hide, self-serving cover stories are what we sell.

  • Sharp Ears

    An excellent taking down of May by Corbyn. She had been wittering on about her perceived successes at the G20. Corbyn gave the reality.

    https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-12-03/debates/032685E1-CAB8-4802-90C1-E4C04EC627F7/G20Summit
    (57 minutes duration)

    This exchange was a precursor to the debate on the Withdrawal Agreement which lasted for 2hrs 20mins.
    https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-12-03/debates/67B4BC40-0578-417D-9467-F737BDD5079C/WithdrawalAgreementLegalPosition

    Followed by Points of Order when Bercow was asked about the non publication of the AG’s legal advice. The matter of the non- registration by Claire Perry (motormouth and Clean Energy Minister) of her meeting with the frackers was also raised. Bryant also had a gripe about Hunt and the FCO ignoring his request for a reply to his question ‘why the Magnitsky provisions of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 had not yet been implemented.’ He also feels he is has been misinformed (lied to).
    https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-12-03/debates/B1F7987C-2159-419B-9605-BF444A6343FC/PointsOfOrder

    After two other business matters, there followed an interesting adjournment debate moved by Stephen Gethins NE Fife SNP on Scotland’s Foreign Policy Footprint and responded to by the puffed up by the Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan). He’s had more jobs than I have had hot dinners.
    https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2018-12-03/debates/4CFC0895-872F-403C-9C68-AE94ABD39226/Scotland’SForeignPolicyFootprint

    Then they all pushed off to the bars.

    • Andyoldlabour

      @Sharp Ears, absolutely stunning, I cannot remember seeing it quite as vivid as that.

  • MaryPau!

    As Mr Paul points out, if on Monday you gave a group including his father 5 acres each to farm, by Wednesday someone else in the group would have 10 acres and his father would off spending the proceeds.

    • SA

      MP
      That’s what happened in Yeltsin’s Russia and very quickly 13 oligarchs owned most of Russia’s wealth.

      • craig Post author

        No, that was because nothing was fairly distributed in the first place. The gangsters just seized stuff. Under American supervision.

        • Mistress Pliddy

          No, back to history class with you, Murray, and please be so kind as to take a front seat this time, the better to concentrate.

          Actually, I think you know this already. You conveniently erase “voucher privatisation” from your story. But sometimes a half-truth is more effective than a lie, hey?

          The vouchers, each representing a share in the state’s assets, were distributed equally among the entire population, including children. Almost 98 per cent of Russians participated in the programme, but most people were either duped (through being ill-informed and unready) or forced (by circumstance of sudden penury or outright threats and lies) into forfeiting their shares for a pittance (the word does not do justice to the iniquity). The raking in of the vouchers and accrual of wealth in a tiny few’s hands was no accidental or incidental consequence of chaotic times (far less, of a fast-receding command economy legacy), but of a well-organised, orchestrated and highly efficiency clandestine operation of extortion and bluff. From 1992 to 1994, 15,000 firms was transferred from state control via the voucher programme to private hands. This period has been described as “the most cataclysmic peacetime economic collapse of an industrial country in history.”

          • Tatyana

            I agree, Mistress Piddy, I remember vouchers very well. I’m not sure what year it was, something near my finishing school in 1995. Ordinary people were ‘financially ignorant’. Vouchers were sold to buy food, it was very hard time in my country.
            Mr. Murray is correct also. Privatisation – I could probably tell a story of my friend, who was collecting different types of old paper sheets and buying different pens – to write false agreements on passing vouchers. This is to privataze a company in my region.
            Wild capitalism broke out like hell!

            —-
            Btw, I’ve just brought new details on Kerch Strait incident for those who is still interested.
            https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/12/azov-again/comment-page-4/#comment-807236

          • Ian

            And that is exactly how Roman Abramovich accrued his vast wealth – through the coercion of very poor and desperate ordinary Russians. As no doubt the rest of the oligarchs.

          • fwl

            Mistress Piddy

            Is there a reliable academic study into voucher privatisation and what went wrong?

          • Ken Kenn

            I was going to say that but you summed the situation up eruditely.

            ” Tell Sid”

            Buying something you already owned.

            Probably the greatest capitalist trick ever pulled off and as good as the Russian one -if not better
            as the British didn’t even get a voucher to look at – nevermind cash.
            More to come if May’s lot remain in power.

          • Molloy

            .

            fwl—

            You may not have realised that MP in fact. . . is the reliable study.

            Anyway, re reliable studies in general, please provide all of us with details (of obviously very few) studies which are reliable.

            Will be appreciated.

            Sláinte

            .

  • Sharp Ears

    Labour Land Campaign
    Who owns Britain’s land?

    ‘Information on land ownership in Britain is not easy to come by. Kevin Cahill discovered this when researching for his book, Who Owns Britain (Canongate, 2001), from which much of the information contained here is drawn. Thus, the Land Registry, in existence since 1925, has managed to register not much more than half – and what’s missing is the land owned by the rich.’
    [..]
    ‘He found that just 189,000 families own two-thirds of the UK’s 60 million acres, of which nearly three-quarters is owned by the top 40,000. The biggest individual landowner turned out to be the Duke of Buccleuch with 277,000 acres, and the wealthiest was the Duke of Westminster with 140,000 acres, including 100 acres in London’s Mayfair – which alone, in 2001, was valued at £3.35 billion – as well as 200 acres in Belgravia, its even more expensive neighbour.

    Land owned and controlled by Britain’s Royal Family, comprising the Crown Estates, the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, and private land, amounted to some 677,000 acres. Meanwhile, Britain’s 16.8 million homeowners accounted for barely 4 per cent of the land, about the same as that owned by the Forestry Commission, the top institutional landowner. But Cahill still could not account for some 5.6 million acres, or nearly 10 per cent of Britain’s land area.’

    http://www.labourland.org/downloads/papers/WhoOwnsPaper.pdf 2 pages

  • certa certi

    From a progressive paper in SA-

    ‘Assuming most rational people agree that expropriation without compensation is a bad idea…’

    ‘The wording of the constitutional amendment will indicate which faction of the ANC has the upper hand. If the Ramaphosa wing is dominant, the state will not become the owner of expropriated land, which it will if the EFF-leaning faction comes out on top’

    ‘A descent into tyranny is then a very real possibility. To avoid this unpleasant scenario, the ANC will need to split with the breakaway rational constitutionalists, forming a coalition with the DA and other like-minded smaller parties’

    https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-11-29-a-coalition-between-anc-moderates-and-the-da-will-stave-off-tyranny/

    • Paul Barbara

      @ certa certi December 4, 2018 at 11:07
      ‘…‘Assuming most rational people agree that expropriation without compensation is a bad idea…’…’
      Presumably these same ‘rational people’ would agree to compensation, with compound interest, for the original ‘expropriations’, and of course compensation plus interest for deaths caused to natives who had resisted, to be paid to the general local native people, as the descendants of the original victims are unable to be traced?

      • certa certi

        In the context of my country, Oz, expropriation/nationalisation without compensation is precisely what the far right [and not so far right] would like to rewind Indigenous Land Rights. So we build layers of protection, including International law, into domestic law. In our context, most theft of land from indigenous owners was perpetrated by Australian Colonies under the Brit Crown – Australia became a country in 1901. Theft is theft. There are many ways to compensate for damages, restorative justice is one but not always the best option.

  • Squeeth

    Non-redistributive nationalisation is a sham, hence Liarbour’s record as a bourgeois partei with a working-class base (cancelled between 1965 and 1996).

    • Geoffrey

      If Scotland’s share of the UK National Debt is 10% that equals £200 billion odd. If that debt were transferred to Scotland ( Is that the plan ?) then each 1% rise in bond yields would cost Scotland £2 billion a year.
      If Scotland, or the UK for that matter, took up Craig’s plan interest rates ,as Craig acknowledges,would almost certainly rise significantly.
      Even seriously discussing the possibility of mass nationalisation would cause rates to rise !
      The UK economy would grind to a halt if interest rates increased by 2 or 3 %

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Geoffrey December 4, 2018 at 11:52
        Time for a new ‘Bradbury Pound’ when Jeremy gets in; the government would print British government money, backed by the infrastructure they would hopefully buy back, at a fraction of the real value (as the present ‘owners’ had purchased them so cheaply) and also backed by Britains natural resources and future labour.
        I’m no economist, but that is a rough idea of how I understand attempts by more knowledgeable people who propose such a course, much to the chagrin of the Banksters and their private banks printing money then charging the government interest to borrow it.
        F*ck the unnecessary ‘Middle Men’,
        See ‘The Creature From Jekyll Island (by G. Edward Griffin)’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu_VqX6J93k

      • Republicofscotland

        Scotland at around 8.4% of the UK population won’t have any share of the national debt after independence, not because the Scottish government didn’t offer to pay its fair share, but because the British government (2014 still Tory) decided that the debt would remain British.

        Of course the whopping national debt, was amassed under consecutive incompetent British governments.

        • Paul Barbara

          @ Republicofscotland December 4, 2018 at 16:17
          Not nearly so ‘whopping’ as the US debt.
          ‘Today the Federal Debt is about $21,850,093,880,675.80.
          https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/
          The amount is the gross outstanding debt issued by the United States Department of the Treasury since 1790 and reported here.

          But, it doesn’t include state and local debt.
          And, it doesn’t include so-called “agency debt.”
          And, it doesn’t include the so-called unfunded liabilities of entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
          Federal Debt per person is about $66,963…’

          Does anyone reckon they intend to pay it? They just build it up exponentially day by day, year by year, and spend vast amounts of it on arms.
          Want your money back? What ya gonna do about it?

    • Paul Barbara

      @ Squeeth December 4, 2018 at 11:21
      It is ‘Privatisation’ (‘Piratisation’) that is the most gigantic scam. National assets paid for by decades of working people’s taxes, sold off for a fraction of their real value, then the new owners are ‘bailed out’ by more taxpayers money when the new owners rake off huge salaries and shareholder payouts instead of investing in proper upkeep and repairs and replacement of old buildings/infrastructure, and things go ‘pear-shaped’.

      • N_

        Yes, and let’s not forget the huge fees paid by the government to financial services firms in the City such as Cazenove for advice on how to commit the robbery in the most lucrative way for themselves, for whoever in the government and civil service they’re paying off, and for whatever other billionaire interest may be getting a piece of the action. A classic case was the railways. The government is just like a local council on a higher level – a bunch of totally corrupt arseholes.

    • N_

      Squeeth – If you spent less time trying to communicate critique by spelling words wrong, you’d have more time to look at nuances and contradictions. I don’t understand what you mean by those dates. The nationalisation of the coalmines in Britain brought about an improvement in miners’ conditions. There was a Dutch council communist I knew who denied this, but he was wrong about it. He was reasoning from ideology. He should have asked some miners.

      If a left social-democratic government were to nationalise the banks, exercise the assets they hold called “mortgages”, and let the properties out at subsidised rents to the occupiers, on secure tenancies, that could bring about a big improvement in many working class people’s conditions too. Of course that’s not socialism. Socialism requires the abolition of money, wage-labour, private property, commodity economy. But an improvement in wages or working conditions isn’t socialism either.

    • Republicofscotland

      Or will the nasty Nigel Farage, come back to UKIP (Really the BNP lite) to oust Gerard Batten, and his admiration for Tommy Robinson, or whatever he’s calling himself these days.

      Lets hope UKIP tear themselves apart just like their big brother the Tory party.

      • N_

        Lord Pearson of Brexit had Tommy Robinson to lunch in the House of Lords, which I think is highly significant given Pearson’s background in the Brexit show going back a long time.

        Will UKIP branches be sending a lot of coaches to next Sunday’s pro-Leave demonstration in London, or will it be a flop?

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    20th anniversary of German student at Yale, Suzanne Jovin, whose senior thesis apparently predicted renewed air attacks on the WTC, and whose unsolved murder was Osama bin Laden biggest coup.

    • Ian

      I wonder how you can imply, without any evidence, that a student thesis on how anybody can access the knowledge for terror acts from the internet, constitutes a prediction, and what her tragic murder had to do with OSL, which seems utterly absurd.

      • Paul Barbara

        @ Ian December 4, 2018 at 18:22
        Utterly absurd indeed, especially as the alleged murder instigator had sweet FA to do with the first, or second, crimes.

      • Trowbridge H. Ford

        No I haben’t read her draft thesis at Yale on Osama, as it is under lock and key at a Yale library, and it wiill only release it if Suzanne’s parents agree which they haven’t despite my efforts to reach them..

        I have posted a long article about it on web engines like google which can be read by using her name and Osama’s, web site flyingcutllefish pacayune and winner. and I have had a discussion thread about it on The Local in Sweden. There can be little doubt that she wasn;’t claimong that Osama was going to have underlings hit it with airliners acting as flying bombs.

        Just amazing how posters will not look for accounts and evidence of unsolved murders for themselves. They want to be spoon-fed by authorities, often the responsible culprits, what to think.

        • Ian

          i can’t see anything but conspiracy theories without a shred of evidence. A 21 year old student is a threat to OBL, or national security? Pull the other one. Or put something substantial on the table, instead of a lot of hot air speculation.

          • IrishU

            Ian,

            You are in for a long wait if you are looking for something substantial, rather than hot air and speculation!

      • Trowbridge H. Ford

        For posters slightly interested in the truth, read my article on flyingcuttlefishgpicsyune about how the unsolved murder of Yale student Suzanne Jovin was Osama Bin Laden’s biggest coup.

  • mickc

    But on your article about Azov you support the Rule of Law; here you rely on “morality “, a very subjective concept.

    • Trowbridge H. Ford

      Let’s face it, most people flip-flop on almost any concern: they are rrost interested in their somatic problems, e.,g., what they are eating, listening to, screwing, etc. It almost has no end.

  • Dungroanin

    Finally after a pointless debate – the division.
    DUP Didn’t flip!

    A final attempt at a kick into the long grass.

  • Sharp Ears

    On Luke Harding, The Guardian and Viner.

    The Guardian’s Reputation In Tatters After Forger Revealed To Have Co-Authored Assange Smear
    https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/12/the-guardians-reputation-in-tatters-after-forger-revealed-to-have-co-authored-assange-smear/

    ‘Successful Propaganda, Failed Journalism

    Craig Murray calls Harding an “MI6 tool“, but to this writer, Harding seems worse than an MI6 stooge: He’s a wannabe-spook, hanging from the coat-tails of anonymous intelligence officers and publishing their drivel as fact without so much as a skeptical blink. His lack of self-awareness and conflation of anecdote with evidence sets him apart as either one of the most blatant, fumbling propagandists of our era, or the most hapless hack journalist to stain the pages of printed news.’

  • Tony_0pmoc

    I wrote this on John Ward’s SLOG earlier today, and he published it. For many years, I was completely banned there. It was probably my fault…but I really like what he writes, and he is getting a lot better. We are occasionally in agreement. Must be old age. I always read him, even when I was banned. Much like here, and I am not a Grumpy Old Man (well a bit when I’ve got gout).

    tonyopmoc
    December 4, 2018 at 1:59 pm

    “.. The fact that May and several ministers now face a charge of contempt for Parliament, a leaked copy of the full Withdrawal Agreement shows the depths of May mendacity”

    So, the British Government (or those in the security services in control of it) have done the exact opposite of The BREXIT democratic decision. The have lied about absolutely everything they said they would do to implement this decision, and have done their utmost best to completely hide their lies, even from The British Parliament, and even now refuse to release any information, with regards to what they have agreed, with The EU unelected Dictatorship.

    I have no legal training, but it seems to me that these people, (if your further analysis is correct) are committing are far greater crime than the charge of contempt for Parliament. They should be facing The Criminal Charge of Treason. They would appear to be guilty of this “Treason definition is – the offence of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance”

    Tony

  • fwl

    Cost of 2007/2008 banking crisis bail out = £850B to £1.6T

    Cost of Hard Brexit as estimated by remainers = £80B

    Puts it in perspective

  • fwl

    The Gov’s negotiation stance with the EU was weaker than that employed by Greece.

    Greece employed Yanis Varufakis who put up a convincing fight of defiance. The EU still aid go on pull the trigger knowing that tho he would his PM would ensure he was firing blanks (and ignore the Greek referendum result).

    With Britain we didn’t even put up a Yanis or if we did to a lesser extent they were blatantly walked around and undermined by the PM and her team.

    It must’ve been blindingly obvious to the EU that when PM May said “No deal is better than a bad deal” she didn’t mean it and that they could without any real risk call her bluff. She didn’t even make any proper effort to put on a show of preparing for no deal. Even Chamberlain put on more of a show before WWII.

    Unless the Gov negotiator puts on an utterly convincing performance backed up by full preparation and argues, Trump like, that we can take it and suffer the pain because the EU will suffer too if there is no deal then the EU negotiators have it easy.

    That has to be reinforced by strong PR to the country that we can and are prepared to go down that road however uncomfortable.

    That is painful for the Gov, but if they don’t do it then they are just a waste of space or some sort of surrender monkey puppet.

    During the early years of WWII Joe Kennedy, US ambassador to the UK told Ivan Maisky, USSR ambassador to the UK that he saw the UK as stuffed and that it would be bombed into submission. Maisky thought otherwise that although the odds were clearly against the UK if it played a weak hand with intelligence and resolution the odds would increase.

    Hopefully the cabinet stayed up on Saturday night and watched Tyson Fury’s 12th round resurrection.

    I can hear some say this is not like a boxing fight or WWII, but a matter of recognising the reality and making the best of a bad deal. No, it is a negotiation and a very simple one in which peception is everything. So far UK has been caught out bluffing. That has to change. Wills need fortifying.

    • Ian

      More comic book blustering, fed by fantasies of the past. Side with Rees Moog, Davis and Boris if you like, but spare us the pretence that by grandstanding, the EU would somehow capitulate to us, is playground stuff.

      • fwl

        Not the past. It’s simple. If you are negotiating from a position of weakness one has to show that one is prepared to take a bigger risk than the other side. Yes grandstanding but it has to be more than grandstanding. It has to be plausible and in depth. Otherwise the negotiation is nothing other than “oh well we did our best but lost”. It has to be much more than that. Professionalism alone doesn’t do it. Gov has to pull out all the stops and do it properly. Otherwise they are just playing at leaving.

        • Ian

          Do what exactly? The thesis that we could have headed to hard brexit, as advocated by Mogg and Farage, and all of sudden the EU would roll over and offer us something is pure fantasy. There is nothing to suggest that would have worked as a strategy, though May tried it for a while. And what exactly would they have offered, or had the power to offer? You talk like this is a cowboy film, or a poker game and we just have to act like the tough guy. it is utterly implausible. And very Trumpian in that respect.

          • fwl

            It was a game of poker. They read May and knew she was bluffing.

            There were plenty of alternatives to offer. Canadian / Norway models and money and most importantly to show real preparation for a no deal, and that no deal = no money.

            We would have to have shown we are prepared and confident to leave with no deal if it came down to it. That was difficult because there are two audiences: domestic and EU. Anyway we have not done that and we played our hand poorly.

            I suspect now that we will be moving towards staying in.

          • Ian

            May tried the intransigent route. Meanwhile countries like Holland got on with making preparations for no deal, far more than we did. So their adoption of your strategy was far more successful, because they had far less to lose with no deal. It was never the threat you wanted it to be, except for us, which would have been disastrous.
            The EU offered us norway or Canada at the beginning, saying just tell us what you want. We didn’t, thanks to May’s incorrigible determination to face them down and curry favour with her lunatic right wing. She faileld utterly as a negotiator and politician, thus ending up with the belated botch she has tried to railroad through parliament.
            All this talk of no deal as both a threat to the EU at the same time as ‘oh, it’ll be fine’ is cognitive dissonance. Just the usual posturing rightwing claptrap, by people who will never have to be responsible for their clueless assertions – see Mogg, Gove, Boris, Fox, Davis and the right wing oligarch press.

  • fwl

    Or in other words, as trade unionist once said:

    “If you don’t look like you want a fight they won’t negotiate”

    For all his very many many many faults Trump has one enabling characteristic and that is his proven unpredictability and with that he has finally persuaded the Chinese government that he means business, the he will shoot his foot off if necessary.

    I am not wishing Trump on us, but the Gov needs some of that unpredictable maverick intent. Maybe risky, but times require a certain panache.

    • Paul Barbara

      @ fwl December 4, 2018 at 19:08
      What’s the problem? We pay all that dosh for Trident, why not put it to good use?
      Threaten the EU that if they try economic devastation on this country, it’s an act of war, and they’d better high-tail it to their nuke shelters.

  • Paul Barbara

    This is well O/T, but given Craig’s relationship with Uzbekistan, I’m sure it will be OK:
    ‘URGENT! Home Office: Don’t force my wife to miss her mother’s funeral!’:
    https://www.change.org/p/urgent-home-office-don-t-force-my-wife-to-miss-her-mother-s-funeral

    ‘I’m British Citizen who fell in love with and married my wonderful wife Mariya a decade ago. We have a beautiful nine year old daughter Anna, and live here as a family in South Wales.

    My wife has Uzbekistan citizenship and Russian nationality, meaning she has had to go through the Home Office to secure her right to stay here. After 2 years of refusing, setting an appeal and then withdrawing their claim against her, the Home Office have accepted in writing that she could have the visa. This was on 23rd of Oct – but they still haven’t given her the documents, despite saying it will only take a couple of weeks.

    During this battle, my wife’s mother fell ill with cancer. We pleaded with the Home Office to issue her visa and return her passport so that she could travel to see her for the last time.

    Yesterday, my wife’s mother died. Unless her visa and passport are returned she won’t be able to go to Uzbekistan to attend her mother’s funeral. We are now pleading with the Home Office to let her say a final goodbye. Our MP Owen Smith is also calling on the Home Office to help us.

    The body of my wife’s mother can only be held for seven days so the funeral will be on Saturday. We don’t have long left. She is the only relative and needs to be there for her mother.

    My wife is a trained nurse with over 25 years experience and is keen to start working here but without the documents, she can’t. We have built a life and home here. It’s hard enough that the Home Office were trying to separate us but now it is excruciating that she cannot go say goodbye to her mother.

    Please sign to call on the Home Office to urgently issue my wife’s visa and passport before Saturday.’

    • BrianFujisan

      Done Paul.. Going on 43.000 Signs.

      Good to see the architects to these Vile laws getting hammered today

      • Paul Barbara

        @ BrianFujisan December 4, 2018 at 22:11
        Cheers, Fuji, but the a**holes aren’t getting hammered a fraction of the extent they should be.
        But the MSM?
        WHEN are we going to get a decent UK Newspaper? We used to have them, but now we need an uncompromising, uncompromised people’s newspaper, not afraid to give us the truth about what is really going on.
        The Mirror and the Morning Star certainly don’t fit the bill.
        We need a Trade Union -supported newspaper, that doesn’t just address probs in worker/management local issues, but also world-wide issues not directly affecting workers, but affecting them indirectly insofar as they relate to human rights across the board, principally illegal War Crimes committed against the people of any country on earth.
        Telling it like it is, no ‘side’.

        • BrianFujisan

          Hi Paul

          Yes i Wanted to get back to a post from –

          Deb O’Nair
          December 4, 2018 at 12:06,

          – I was going to say to Deb, that these Horrors would not happen without bbC lies, and all msm Lies.. Msm Concealments.. I say concealment, because the evil bastards Know. They are too Smug to stop and think that.. We Know They Know..And the reasons we Know are Craig Murray, Chelsea Manning, Jullian.A, and many others. I wonder How much ££££$$$ May’s husband continues to earn ( Yemen Genocide ) whilst all this BullShit brexit goes on and on..

          Those of us here in Scotland that fight for Independence, have cried the tears of British corporate MsM Bias / Lies. At least we have ‘ The National ‘ on our side now, the ONLY Daily paper in Scotland to be Banned from Treeza’s press conference on her 3 hour stunt in Scotland last week

          They won’t win the next fight.. Even if they put all the secret intelligence Agencie’s into it.. And they Will, Because Scotland Sends £200 Billion a year to London.. and we get back £37 B… Our resources are the Only Reason London Keeps Lying about ” Equal Partnership ”

          Here is some more on the Secret Mob –

          Indyref2 should not be decided by the UK’s propaganda unit –

          https://www.thenational.scot/news/17270995.indyref2-should-not-be-decided-by-the-uks-propaganda-unit/

          The Independend Movement.. the Marches Ect, are ALWAYS Peaceful familiy events… But Just Somtimes the Blood Boils –

          SELLING SCOTS AS SLAVES IS FUNNY TO THE TORIES! –

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwuJPn8–go&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3WvGVE1AAUu46BFrkATOZPiFYdMMtTk2_cPZP3vVKIxvIA-sbLQkNxGDc

          P.S I was at the March Rally in Dumrfies when Craig gave a great Speech on Land reform,.. Got many of us tuned in to the issue.

        • Tatyana

          @Paul Barbara
          Any newspaper needs money. So, the point of pressure is inevitable.
          Did you know that Foreign Office spent 2 million pounds this year on Integrity Initiative?
          Seems like people don’t stand for integrity without money….

          Today we have an article in russian news, with scanned papers and screenshots.
          https://ria.ru/mediawars/20181124/1533430472.html

          Instruction on how to join and to fight russian desinformation.
          Financial info.
          List of persons involved.

          Not surprised to see in the list:
          William Brouder and Vadim Kleiner from Hermitage Capital.
          Igor Sutyagin, empoyee of Royal institute of military research.

          Oh! Surprise, surprise! Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director of Alexey Navalny.
          Another surprise – Ukraine – Eugene Fedchenko chief editor of Soros funded StopFake.org and director of journalistic school.
          Other names are unknown to me, except for Anne Applebaum and Ben Nimmo.

          “…important role in this matter is assigned to the political committee of NATO.
          The network is built through British embassies (a list of contacts — names, surnames, and email addresses — are attached). To become a participant in the project, you need to fill out a form … Approved candidates receive funding…”

        • Sc

          Mirror politics is pretty good, and why not morning star? There’s also the new media people trying something similar.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Not that I have been taking much notice of the news tonight, but that seems like a bit of a win to me….Resistance 1 Globalists 0

    From The Telegraph of all Places…

    “Theresa May losing control as ministers found in contempt of Parliament for the first time”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/#source=refresh

    Well done To All The MP’s in Westminster who tonight voted that Democracy is a much higher principle, than their own political view.

    You did well.

    Keep it up.

    I’m proud of you.

    Tony

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