Buzz Lightyear confused about Fisheries Protection

Presumably there are defence stories so soiled in mendacity that even Con Coughlin won't touch them. Such is the piece in this morning's Telegraph (open) on the new Batch 2 OPVs, and their launch by Defence Secretary Buzz Lightyear Gavin Williamson as Fisheries Protection vessels - even though HMS Forth, the ostensible cause of Williamson's self-publicity event, is shortly leaving for the Falklands. 

Whoever wrote the Telegraph piece knows even less than do I and readers of this blog about changes to the fisheries protection squadron. In fact, it's unlikely that any of the five batch 2s coming into commission between now and 2020 will undertake FP duties, at least until new frigates come into commission that can cover the Falklands, Gibraltar, Bahrain and the Caribbean.

That didn't stop the intern journo who probably penned the piece repeating Williamson's porkies;

"The Royal Navy has a proud tradition of protecting the UK’s coastline and keeping a close eye on our fishing waters. With these state-of-the-art, vastly capable ships we stand ready to protect our fisheries once Britain leaves the EU."

What's needed is a commitment to maintain the Batch 1s as the heart of the FP squadron - those in the know advise that these vessels have at least another 15 years of sea life, and are only destined for the scrapyard because the Navy can't afford to crew them. 

We only flagged on Saturday that this was likely to happen - force multiplication doesn't mean that HMS Forth can be both berthed in Port Stanley and on patrol in the North Sea at the same time, whatever they've told Buzz.

HMS Tyne - a batch 1 OPV good for another 15 years

Tees for the 'Patriotic nativist Identitarian movement'

Not my style, but readers may be interested in a line of clothing and accessories from Phalanx Europa aimed at the 'patriotic nativist Identitarian movement' which the uninformed and unhip incorrectly still call the Euro right wing. 

It looks quite cool and well designed, if not my own old-fashioned style (I wear nothing bearing writing or other people's names) and not at all skinhead nazi - more, erm, cappuccino Identitarian. And that's the problem with niche fashion stuff; I predict that before the Summer is out, cheap Chinese knock-offs of some of these lines will appear on market stalls across Europe, neither the makers nor the vendors having a clue as to the meaning or symbolism or the words. 

And on the streets of Southall or Spitalfields the local yoof, never bright at the best of times, might think the Lambda symbol quite a cool thing to have on a tee ... 

Pressure building on EU27 fault lines

At a time when the perception in the UK is of unity amongst the EU27, Mark Rutte, the Netherlands PM, gives a useful interview to Der Spiegel. On the surface it's the usual 'we all stand together' PR piece, but increasingly with the EU27 these days the more they protest their unity, the deeper the fissures are breaking. 

Firstly, there is the split between Jean-Claude Juncker's Commission and the member nations of the EU27. Juncker wants far greater powers for the EU, an army, a finance ministry, EU embassies replacing national embassies, a political Commission with a permanent appointed President and so on. The nations of the EU27, including France and Germany, do not. The fissure has come to a head most recently over two matters too late for the Spiegel interview - the corrupt appointment of Martin Selmayr, Juncker's former gofer, as head of the EU bureaucracy, and Juncker's fawning anilingual congratulations to Putin. Guy Verhofstadt and the EP are genuinely furious about the first, and yesterday Verhofstadt upbraided Juncker for his message to Putin being at odds with the response of individual EU27 leaders. Rutte makes clear he stands with national, and not EU, sovereignty - "Europe must be built upon the foundation of its nation-states, and not imposed upon us by Brussels" he said, and "The Commission should serve the EU members, not the other way around". He is also unhappy that Juncker thinks he has power to break the EU's rules for 'political' reasons - i.e. the solidarity of the EU.

"Juncker is an outstanding Commission president, but when he repeatedly insists that the Commission is political, I have to object. The moment the Commission gives the impression that it strictly ensures that small countries respect the stability pact but does not apply the same oversight to Italy and France, it undermines the rules that we have agreed upon together."

Again, one can only speculate that the commonly heard mantra  "Juncker is an outstanding Commission president but ..." actually means "Juncker is a blundering drunken old fool who's fucked up again". 

Rutte is equally scornful of Franco-German stitchups;

SPIEGEL "..it was primarily Germany and France that were the driving forces: Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac agreed to suspend the stability pact for their two countries ..."
RUTTE: " ... and then came the sequel a few years later when Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy took their famous beach stroll in Deauville during the euro crisis. Both events sparked a great deal of suspicion and mistrust. When not only Germany and France are in agreement, but also the Commission, then the other EU countries have to be extremely careful."

 Again, events have over-run the print scale; Sarkozy was arrested yesterday for fraud, joining Christine Lagarde and Juncker himself as leading EU figures who have to answer charges of fraud, corruption and criminality. 

One point on which Rutte will find universal agreement with the UK is over the EU's protectionist labour laws. Just as protectionist trade tariffs make EU manufacturing sclerotic and glacial in responding to modernisation - they're years behind in AI, for example - so protectionist EU trade qualification laws prevent Europe's service sector responding to market needs. No English ski instructor can get a job in France, no English hairdresser can style hair in Austria and no English car mechanic change a wheel in Italy. 

Rather than the EU's net contributors paying even more post-Brexit, Rutte wants to see more market deregulation;

"What Europe is missing is not billions more in funding, but rather overdue structural reforms -- including in the service industry. There are currently nearly 5,000 protected professions in the EU and in Germany. This hinders growth, as any economist will tell you."

It also hinders innovation. Hairdressers here must serve a three-year apprenticeship and the result is standardised women's hairstyles that would not be out of place in Soviet east Germany. Girls in their twenties wear the hair of women in their fifties. In the UK any girl of sixteen can pick up a comb and scissors and the result - the disasters aside - is a fashion, music and culture industry of a strength and vibrancy that poor protected EU27ers can only dream about. We really are better off out. 

Tommy Robinson

Regular readers will know that I've long been at odds with campaigners whose targets are Muslims in general rather than Islamists, or whose targets are Muslims rather than the absurdity of the Islamic faith. All British citizens conforming to law, who can pass Cameron's test, are entitled to peaceful enjoyment of their lives, homes and streets without threat, harassment or violence, irrespective of their faith. 

Robinson now has an extensive entry on Wikipedia that details his past extreme right wing activities, and his damascene moment with Quilliam that apparently changed him from bigoted street thug to campaigner for democracy. I'm not questioning or belittling this - just stating it as a fact. It's the reason that until now he's never been mentioned on this blog - he's been outside my interest.

However, I did watch the events yesterday at Speakers Corner with interest. It was rightly understood as a free speech event. It was very well attended, and tens of thousands more followed it on live feeds or on Twitter. It was peaceful. It was a protest against what seems to be a concerted silencing of right wing voices by both the State and social media - culminating in the refusal of entry to the UK by three European right-wingers. Robinson read a speech by Martin Sellner, one of the excluded activists. It was not a good speech, certainly not worth quoting. Brits are motivated more by 1688 and the Chartists than fantasies of being Aryan knights. It didn't matter; very few heard it, either live or on the feeds. The speech wasn't the point. 

I'm still not a fan of Mr Robinson. But free speech is under serious threat, and groups such as Martin Scriblerus are important because they offer individual bloggers who may be suddenly silenced a resilience. What has been happening with increasing frequency on You Tube and Twitter may soon come to Blogger, and even innocent and peace-affirming voices such as mine are under threat, perhaps just for mentioning Tommy Robinson's name. I'm still not a fan of Mr Robinson, but if yesterday was a case of a bad man doing a good thing, then so be it. In defence of free speech our enemy's enemy is our friend.  

Fisheries protection

This is really a post that would be far better written by Richard North; I happily admit the complexities of defence procurement strategies are somewhat beyond me. But perhaps commentors with experience can add some light or correct any howlers. 

It seems we are to get our 200 mile economic waters back in a year's time, and with them the right to decide who fishes them and what and how much is caught there. It's also pretty obvious that the UK fishing fleet has been decimated, and it will take time to build new boats and above all to skill new crew in a highly hazardous industry, to upgrade shore facilities including freezing and processing and establish market and inland transport capacity. So it's pretty obvious that we're going to continue to licence, for a suitable fee I hope, at least for some time, both EU and and any other boats to take fish from our waters after 2019. 

The question arises as to how we are to patrol this - and to stop unlicenced boats from poaching our fish. This is traditionally the job of the Fisheries Protection Squadron; and here my first quote from the UK AF commentary blog:

The Fishery Protection Squadron is constantly out at sea around the UK, and has very little, if any time to wander far away from home. A 42 strong crew is embarked to work to a three watches mechanism. Each ship has an additional allocation of personnel used to rotate members of the crew to meet harmony rules. Personnel on the Rivers could be indicatively expected to spend four weeks at sea and two weeks on land, pretty much all year long. The River batch 1 ships each spend a minimum of 275 days out at sea, with maintenance to the vessels intended to ensure the capability of spending up to 320 days at sea. Normally there is a 9 days maintenance period and a longer one of 16 days, each year. 
  Combined, the three ships have to deliver at least 700 days of activity at sea, and Hunt minesweepers are used to complement the Rivers in fishery protection patrol task, but with no fixed target. Back in 2004, some three Hunt vessels could be routinely expected to be involved in supporting Fishery Protection.

This is a good point to introduce the Rivers - River class offshore patrol vessels, built in two variants; the Batch 1, which cost about £60m each, and the Batch 2, at a cost of £120m each, which are currently coming off the slipway. The difference is down to the fact that Batch 2s are being built to warship standards - with systems, magazines etc that can sustain damage and punishment from other warships, whereas the Batch 1s are pure 'constabulary duties'  vessels. More on the Batch 2s from Think Defence HERE. 

Now this is where the lying, double dealing and manipulation come in. These new Batch 2 vessels are also just about suitable as substitutes for the frigates and corvettes that we don't have, to maintain a global presence. But because of their reduced at-sea capacity, they would need to be forward-based - permanently stationed - in the Caribbean, Gibraltar, Falklands or Bahrain - meaning they would not be available for UK fisheries protection. Yet the MoD seems to be pretending that they could do both tasks at the same time. It's pretty obvious they can't. 

In summary, from next year we'll need a far greater fisheries protection capacity but are building vessels grossly overspecified for FPVs because we need to send them out of the UK. We will not have enough vessels even to maintain our existing FP capacity next year, never mind enhance it. To my simple mind we need more £60m Batch 1s, with a build time of less than a year, that can fly-off UAVs and watch large areas of sea. But we need to place orders now.

Batch 2 River class OPV HMS Forth - just launched and soon to leave for the Falklands ...

It's time to update the Birkenhead Drill

I can still recall the pages of the Annual from which, as a child, I lay on my stomach on the living room floor reading and re-reading 'The Birkenhead Drill'.  This was the story of the formalisation of 'women and children first' back in the 1850s. A troop transport going aground on a dangerous coast, not enough lifeboats, so the regiment drew up on the sinking deck in parade order and watched as their wives and children abandoned ship, facing death and sharks with courage and fortitude. It was one of those youthful lifelong lessons, like never pointing a shotgun at anyone unless you intended to kill them, or saying farewell to a dying pet. I mentally filed this one away; here was my role and duty when I became a man, an English man - to die selflessly with dignity and honour, if required. And certainly not to behave like some cowardly dago or frog. Oh yes I'm serious - this is how we absorbed enduring moral values back then.  

Of course it's now completely out of date. Our priorities today are very different. Today's Birkenhead drill would be something like:-

ORDER OF EVACUATION

1. Persons with protected characteristics in the following order

- LBGT BAME female
- LBGT BAME male
- BAME children
- LBGT differently abled
- BAME females
- BAME males
- Other LBGT
- Other female
- Other differently abled
- Other persons who identify as females or gender fluid, multi genders

2. Non-BAME males in the following order

- Graduates, those that work in the media, academia, public sector workers except Armed Forces
- Cyclists
- Those under 25 and the children of the above
- Remainder of white males, inc. armed forces

3. Non BAME children

-  Children of unprotected-characteristic non-BAME or non-LBGT parents enjoy no protection and the lowest possible priority in evacuation.  

We'll have to change the name of course; how about the Rotherham Drill, or perhaps the Telford Drill?

Russia must be taught its limits

At the risk of sounding like a weary headmaster whose rogue prodigy has yet again let him down, I'm very disappointed with Russia. I've defended Russia (whilst happily admitting that Putin really is just a ruthless thug) and still believe that Russia is Europe's natural ally in a global alignment  of Enlightened North against primitive barbarous South. Personally, I was even prepared to forgive Litvenenko's murder. But this latest affront is an outrage too far.

It's easy to understand why we are the target. The UK is an attractive destination for Russian defectors, ex-spies and refugees from Russomafia thuggery; we have one of the world's best intelligence capabilities, a capable anti-terrorist capacity, a legal system largely free from bribery and corruption and easy access to Europe's best shops. If Russia can make defectors feel insecure in Britain, Putin must think, they will not feel safe anywhere.  

Economic sanctions against Russia are merely cosmetic whilst Europe is dependent on Russian gas. Russia's breach is not so grave as to demand military retaliation. Something in between, I think, would suit; perhaps a cyber attack shutting down Russian transport, broadcasting or banking for 72 hours would make the message clear. Something of that sort. Without any direct link to the UK yet clear to Putin from whom the retaliation came.  

Let's wait and see. 

Update
=======
Wise comments and Tillerson's sacking have led me to believe I've made a right arse of this, and that Russia's guilt is very much more remote than I've assumed above.

Mea Culpa. 

In the UK, hating Islam is quite legal. It's protected by law.

Brendan O'Neill in Spiked has quite properly analysed popular newspaper reports that Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding were imprisoned for 'hating Islam'. It's not true of course - but it's exactly what the police and the establishment want us to believe is true.  

As Brendan points out "The judge’s actual words were that Fransen and Golding had ‘demonstrated hostility’ to ‘people of the Muslim faith’ in their harassing, obsessive campaign around that Kent rape case. That is, to Muslims." And yes, intimidating, harassing, assaulting, abusing people of Islamic faith or people of no faith is a crime and yes they were rightly convicted. What they were explicitly NOT convicted of, because it is not a crime in Britain, was 'hating Islam'. 

In fact, 'hating Islam' is protected by law - specifically by Section 29J of the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act:-

29J    Protection of freedom of expression

Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents, or of any other belief system or the beliefs or practices of its adherents, or proselytising or urging adherents of a different religion or belief system to cease practising their religion or belief system.

However, in questioning whether crimes should be punished more harshly because they were religiously, or racially, or sexually motivated, Brendan O'Neill raises a cogent and compelling point - has the law got this wrong? If I get the shit kicked out of me because some thug thinks I'm an arse, should he be treated more leniently than if he was triggered because I was a white arse, or a Catholic arse? My injuries are no different, but the law says that if I have no protected characteristic, my body, my safety, my protection is less worthy than another citizen - how can this possibly be right?

What is of equal concern is that police, councils, schools, MPs and journalists are misrepresenting the law in order to convince the public that hating Islam is thoughtcrime. It really isn't. Personally, I regard the Muslim faith as an empty, primitive and worthless belief system, with no redeeming features, that hinders people from progress and from betterment. I think the world would be a better place without it. And I can say all that quite, quite legally. And since British law on these things had to be made in line with all relevant European rights legislation, I can say it quite legally anywhere in Europe. So there.  

Election Fraud - Yes to ID

I freely admit that when national ID cards were mooted some years ago, I was at the forefront in opposing the idea. I still believe that freedom in the UK to walk about without carrying compulsory ID and to live where you wish without the requirement of registering your address with the police are fundamental British freedoms.

I have also long deprecated the degradation of the probity of our electoral system to a state that Michael Pinto-Duschinsky described to a select committee as 'third world'. Three million were on the roll who should not have been, and three million missing who should have been. Our Electoral Quotient - the number of voters per MP - was beyond all first world standards. We can't even achieve the second-rate standard of  + / - 5% let alone the + / - 3% achieved by advanced democracies such as New Zealand. Postal votes, Blair's corruption of democratic integrity, remain a joke mired in fraud and personation. The dilettante fool Cameron failed to correct the EQ issue when he had a chance - sold out no doubt to Clegg's self interest. Liberals will always put party before country. 

However, all credit to Theresa May in acting now, with a wafer thin margin in Parliament, to correct our constituency boundaries. And all credit for the electoral reform that has introduced IVR - individual voter registration. The hurdle that now remains is electoral fraud and personation. 

Electoral fraud is not confined to the Labour Party. Remember Bob Spink. But it is stories like that below that one meets most frequently; they are not myth, even though they may not be as widespread as supposed. 

It is also not confined to lowly fraud in the constituencies; The Telegraph reports how Corbyn's head of social media, Marsha-Jane Thompson, has been convicted of a mass voter registration fraud.  

So, albeit reluctantly, I now support the requirement for secure photo ID at our polling stations before voting papers are given. This system is already in place in Northern Ireland, where free photo ID cards are made available to those without other secure ID. It is an erosion of part of our national congruence, part of the trust that used to prevail when the vast majority in these isles gave great respect to the notion of 'fairness'. That has now passed. Fairness can only now be assured by ID.

Martin Selmayr: Corruption at the heart of Europe

That the EU is institutionally corrupt is not news. The organisation has been known for many years to be riddled with fraud, peculation, dishonesty, misuse of funds, nepotism and an utterly obscure, secret and bent system of chumocracy appointments. Auditors cannot close its accounts, financial records are so incriminating and so embarrassing that they are kept in locked rooms with no public access. Parliamentary expenses are no more than a thin cover for naked theft and fraud, and all this crooked, bent, corrupt filth is hidden from press and public by common consent between the Council, the Parliament and the Commission. The midden stench from the Berlaymont chokes honest breath, and each and every Eurocrat is mired in the putrescent feculence that flows from Brussels. 

So it is simply astonishing that even these slime-dwelling creatures of the eighth Malbolge should find an act so corrupt, so blatantly devoid of any shred of probity, that it evinces a protest. But such is the appointment of Martin Selmayr to the Secretary-General's job - running all 33,000 of the EU's officials. 

Politico.Eu carries the detailed story - the French are fuming because it is alleged the Germans have bribed widely to secure their man in post, a man without any senior Brussels civil service experience. It's as though Jeremy Corbyn appointed Owen Jones as Cabinet Secretary. It also appears that Selmayr was aware he'd got the job before the selection process even started. 

"(Liberation journalist) Quatremer led the charge on Monday as the midday briefing turned into a veritable uprising, with reporters demanding that Selmayr himself come to the podium to answer questions about how he got his new job, whether the vacant positions were properly advertised and if other procedures were followed according to EU regulations.

“These institutions don’t belong to you,” Quatremer snapped at (Margaritis) Schinas in response to his assertion that all questions on the matter had already been asked and answered. “They belong to the European citizens, and it is our perfect right to ask you questions, to repeat the questions as often as we want, without you giving us lessons in morality,” Quatremer said before asking yet more questions.

“You say it was legal; the rules were respected,” he told Schinas. “It doesn’t look legal to me, and as a representative of French public opinion, I tell you there’s a problem here."

Right now they're all flinging enough ordure to ensure widespread coating. Well done, chaps.   

Update 17.27
============
Details of the German bribes are now beginning to leak ...

 

US steel tariffs might mean UK CO2 emissions fall ...

One of the great construction cons, as I've posted previously, is the way in which we account for CO2. This isn't an argument about AGW or the effects of CO2, it's a matter of crooked accounting. Bloomberg's new 'eco' building in London actually cost something like 250,000 tonnes of CO2, but if the steel was made in China and the cement in Thailand (as is very common) only a fraction of that CO2 cost will appear on the UK's national CO2 total.  CO2 is accounted for at place of production rather than consumption.

The result of increased steel tariffs imposed by President Trump will doubtless be Chinese steel producers with a surplus of steel, which they'll seek to dump on world markets, including the EU. The more steel the Chinese dump on Europe, the lower Europe's CO2 emissions under the crooked accounting system.

Every cloud has a silver lining - that Mr Trump will allow us to claim a significant reduction in CO2 emissions will no doubt be of great pleasure to those who believe such measures have any worth at all.

Brexit: No deal, No money.

It was always going to come down to this - a trade deal in exchange for danegeld. Mrs May's speech has done all it could - in uniting public and political opinion at home, as far as is possible. The zealots and bigots of the EU will be stone deaf to suggestions of a pragmatic outcome; they would still rather destroy all Europe than concede favoured access for a single British wiper blade. It's easy for the Brussels bigots to have principles - they don't have national parliaments or voters to bother about, just denunciation for heresy by their fellow unelected officials. 

So to me Mrs May's speech was also what I term a 'Court speech'. In a construction dispute, once it's clear that you're headed to some sort of tribunal settlement, correspondence between the parties is always written for the benefit of the adjudicator / arbitrator  rather than the enlightenment of the other party. So this speech was eminently reasonable, offered real concessions, restated red lines and reminded the EU that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. One can imagine counsel for the United Kingdom quoting from it extensively before the judges at the International Court in the Hague.

The only thing of which we can be absolutely certain is that the EU bigots will spew May's offer out next week, with insults, sarcasm and barbed invective - all of which will sound nicely absurd, deeply unreasonable and plainly wrong when read-out in the calm of a Hague court in three years time. One of the purposes of Mrs May's speech was to invoke just this sort of idiotic reaction - and idiots such as Verhofstadt, a gobby man who simply can't keep his gob shut, have already started piling up the evidence. 

With the only uncontested payment being £10bn a year or so for the two year transition period (if it happens) everything else in the outline settlement - including the EU's insistence that we can't offset the UK's share of asset values in the EU - is noncontractual, an ex-gratia settlement. It's on the table to pay for a bespoke trade agreement. No deal, no pay. 

Sunday's election in Italy may offer the EU an additional headache, and now Mr Rutte from the Netherlands is also pushing back against the Federasts as the Visegrad group grow in confidence. Now where are the fools who used to lecture us all that 'the British simply aren't interested in the EU'?

Ice giants and snow trolls

Another intermission post whilst we wait for Mrs May, so those of you who want a choc ice or a smoke please slink away now. 

Ice giants
It's a short filler piece at the end of the news here - how Britain can't cope with 5cm of snow. Well, to a point, Lord Copper. Here we can expect snow up to 2m deep in winter, though it's not been over 60cm since I've lived here, and dawn temperatures of -20­­° are not unusual. We all cope and things carry on as normal; the postman ploughs his little van through snowbanks, the refuse vehicle wears snowchains and folk always wear hats and coats inside the car. Plus we have winter tyres and anyone owning a decent tractor or loading shovel can bid to be a snow clearance contractor. The trains don't miss a beat and most of the time the schools stay open. 

So wearily I have to explain for the fifth time that ice and snow events are rare enough in the UK not to maintain a standing provision for them - it's easier to take a minor economic hit from snow disruption every ten years than pay for kit and provision that will be redundant most winters. Austrians aren't ice giants - in fact they're less cold tolerant than most Brits, the houses and pubs here being without exception grossly overheated and actually uncomfortable for an Englishman used to Anglian country houses maintained at an equable 16° in winter except for the spaces immediately in front of the open fireplaces. 

Only the main road through the valley here is salted - all the rest of the steep little single lane ways up the sides are gritted. Salt only works to -15°, and the grit is surprisingly effective once cemented into the ice, a bit like driving on worn sandpaper. 

Snow trolls

In addition to the comments to previous posts I've now had two emails asking me to exclude a commentator whom many contributors find disruptive. I have to say he doesn't upset me and I'm sometimes quite grateful for a sharp puncturing of any hubristic posturing into which I stray. He was also quick to defend Mr Spalton's undoubted very high standards of expertise, erudition and wisdom when this was challenged. I'm also dyed to the core in my commitment to free speech and against censorship, and have warned previously against a real danger of social media becoming an echo chamber, so I embrace dissent as healthy.

On the other hand I am deeply conscious of the offence taken by several loyal and long standing readers, and aware that the person concerned quite naturally can't resist so easily provoking a reaction from many. 

So for now a plea, please, to not get either entrenched or go into full combat mode on this.

Brexit battle lines drawn

In what can only be a co-ordinated campaign by Ultra Remainers, their forces are all on the same battlefield at the same time. Ultra Remainer serving and ex-civil servants, two ex prime ministers, both delusional (one who imagines the ERM and one who imagines the Iraq War were good things), Corbyn's public conversion to a Customs Union, the launch of the EU draft agreement, Barnier, and rude mechanicals and noises off as Andrew Adonis, AC Grayling and the other establishment PTSD casualties set up a louder than usual whine. Blair of course will be spreading his poison from Brussels today - so loathed is he by all sections of the British public there can be few platforms for him here. 

It's instructive that the Telegraph has now adopted the 'Ultra Remainers' term to describe all those establishment figures who have staked their wealth and careers on the EU bandwagon to the extent that they can't let go. With just over a year to Freedom Day, and backed by Soros billions, they will throw everything into the battle. 

Of course I don't mean anything as vulgar as Brexiteers and Ultra Remainers battling on the street. Ultra Remainers don't really do streets and no ordinary Remainer I know could be arsed actually to fight for it, unlike a good proportion of Brexiteers who are rearing to go. No, Ultra Remainers slink along the corridors of power, loiter in mahogany clubs, whisper at black tie events, rat-gnaw at Euro chicken at glittering tables. They thought they governed Britain and are still smarting from the slap they got on 23rd June 2016. They are not prepared to give up power so easily. 

That they are now prepared to so nakedly reveal themselves, from civil servants to their EU handlers, means either desperation or a confidence that they will not be exposed as having conspired against an elected government, will never face sanctions for their actions, will never face a stripping of their honours or a degradation of their estate. If we win this battle, I pray we prove their confidence misplaced. If we lose, I seriously fear the extent of civil disorder that will result. 

  

Whitewater ride for Brexit

There can be no-one left in Britain today, bar the poor 'Grayling' sods who have lost all reason, who imagines that the EU is a benign organisation. After fomenting conflict and death in the Balkans and Ukraine, they're now using the tensions in Northern Ireland to threaten the UK with a border war. Sadly the current Irish PM, Varadker, is a preening queen more at home in the darkness of Dublin's sleazy gay nightlife than in the halls of statesmen. He is a creature of Brussels and will do exactly as he is told, whatever the cost to peace and to the people of Ireland.

If anyone doubted that a fight against the EU is a fight against evil, this surely should convince the doubters.  

Brussels is said to be preparing tomorrow to destroy the progress we all imagined had been secured over Christmas. They will insist we impose a hard border in Northern Ireland, and we will refuse. Their driving the UK towards either a hard exit or a Labour government, a new referendum and a reversal of Brexit is deliberate and inescapable. This is not a negotiating process designed to ensure an amicable future, but unsheathed hostility and territorial aggrandisement, meddling by power-struck fools and amateurs in Brussels with an undistinguished record of failure, conflict, death and disaster in everything they've ventured. They're gambling, and playing with peace in Northern Ireland.

Corbyn is as big a fool as Varadker. His Customs Union stance neither endeared him to Labour remainers not cemented the Labour allegiance of Labour Brexiteers. It has, perhaps, turned the first cog of the ratchet that will lay a trail of 'reason' as to why the UK should not leave the EU, and a reversal of Labour's manifesto position. 

This is a whitewater ride for Britain. Either we find the courage in our hearts to come together to stand against the might of Brussels, or we surrender our wealth and our democracy, abase ourselves on our bellies and beg the unelected officials of Brussels for mercy. And yes, they seriously do believe the latter option is now possible.

Crooked Phil Shiner still a shit

The Telegraph carries the story this morning of how crooked lawyer Phil Shiner, now struck-off, hid his assets to avoid paying for the costs of his campaign of dishonest and utterly morally corrupt  false and manufactured allegations against members of HM Armed Forces, devised as part of a crooked plan to deceive justice and get rich.

"The Insolvency Service discovered a trail that included transferring ownership of his £300,000 house in Birmingham and two guitars he valued at £3,500, to a family trust in December 2016. The terms of the trust allowed him to live in the property. He also sold two commercial buildings for a total of £550,000, transferring the money to his now defunct law firm Public interest lawyers. According to the Insolvency Service, he then took at least £170,000 out of the law firm to top up his pension by almost £95,000, putting the rest into a family trust.

Justin Dionne, Official Receiver from the Insolvency Service, said: “Mr Shiner thought he could be clever by giving away his assets to his family members so that when he declared himself bankrupt there wasn’t anything to pay his creditors with."

The man is an utter shit with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. What concerns me are the number of  Phil Shiners amongst the neolib Metropolitan elite still exercising their crooked avarice.  

I'll post again after the Corbyn speech - which could well prove a watershed for us all

The stench of filth at the heart of government

Over my career I've been offered just about every reward and inducement you can imagine. As the bloke leading the contract award team and the bloke signing-off contractors claims and stage payments, and a lot of the time the bloke leading the design team as well, I am a natural target. Apart from end-of-job boozeups (at which I always contribute to the pot) I've turned them all down. One poor sod charged by his board with 'grooming' me grew desperate after I'd turned down Wimbledon, a hired superyacht, a table at the Cafe Royal and a tank driving weekend and asked me outright what it would take. "Your firm making the most advantageous bid to my principal" was my frustrating answer. I'm not a Puritan, it's just far easier to sleep at night if you're dead straight. Plus you get a reputation, and employers know they can trust you with their millions. 

I guess many of you feel fine about both taking advantage of such offers and properly representing your own side; I've been told many times that such things are just part of the mutual perks of business, just oiling the relationship. For others working in the private sector this may be true - I can only say I can't work with it. 

When of course those gifts, inducements and rewards are made to planners, government officials, elected ministers and those charged with stewardship of the public purse, I'm sure my view should prevail; there should be a zero tolerance of such things. This is not now the case. All that's required is that the recipient of such largesse declare it on a public register. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian exposes the threat to national probity of such corruption;

" ... the hospitality showered on (Westminster Council's Planning) committee’s chairman for 16 years, the amiable Robert Davis, was breathtaking. Five-hundred freebies, including 10 foreign trips, in just three years. At least 150 of these were from a who’s who list of property industry figures. Even Harvey Weinstein is on the list. Entertaining Davis was clearly a Westminster cottage industry. He can hardly have had time to down one glass of champagne before raising another.

The NHS is awash in inducements to doctors to prescribe branded medicines. Arms company boards are stuffed with generals. The banks that fund private finance initiatives keep the Whitehall doors revolving. Declarations of interest by members of the House of Lords read like a lobbyists’ congregation. It clearly pays companies to lobby. The irony is that it was David Cameron who made great play of curbing this in his Lobbying Act. It was, he said, “the next big scandal waiting to happen”. Yet the only scandal was how the act was watered down, and how Cameron’s transparency register for lobbyists was lobbied to oblivion."

Yep for the dilettante Eton-boy Cameron his chums always came first and controlling lobbying went the same way as Localism and all the rest of his early lies. If Blair is the father of fake news and unjust war, Cameron is the father of nepotism, cronyism and corruption. An honour for his hairdresser was a final finger thrust in the air at the rest of us. 

Lobbying carries the stench of filth into the heart of our democratic processes, feeding on the avarice, rapacity and vanity of weak and credulous people in public office. It leaves both the giver and taker beshitten. It must be ended. 

Ignore fake Gouta 'outrage' - it's a smokescreen

With Agent COB revelations bubbling away as a foretaste of more news of Corbyn's past stupidity to come, as the deep establishment has now decided it's time to cut him off at the knees, it's a good time to take a look over to Syria. 

The manufactured horror in the Western media is peaking with 'humanitarian concern' over a rebel held pocket on the outskirts of Damascus. The press forgets that Russian-backed Syrian army re-taking of urban areas is brutal but thankfully rapid, with ground forces clearing house-to-house shortly after bone-numbing artillery and air attacks. Unlike US / Iraqi faffing about, with endless attritional bombardment including US White Phosphorus causing mass casualties because the ground forces won't risk themselves in combat. Not only is Syria's approach ultimately kinder, but the civilian population in the rebel area has already had every encouragement to move out into safety in the Assad-held areas but has chosen to remain. 

Media concern here is manufactured and is a smokescreen. Take a look at the current war map; ISIS have been all but vanquished, the Kurds have occupied territory from the Turkish border to the Euphrates, and the remaining US-backed Islamist rebel enclaves are shrinking. Assad must eliminate the rebel pockets around Damascus before a major offensive against the US / Turkish backed rebels holding land east of Latakia. We are now entering into the most dangerous stage of the war - in which Russian, Turkish, Iranian, Israeli and American ground and air forces are at high risk of direct conflict. 

 Der Spiegel has a good taste of the confusion now emerging on the ground;

What do a counterfeiter from Syria, an Iraqi-Afghan militia fighter under Iranian leadership and a Russian Cossack have in common? More than you might think. They all took part in a strange offensive involving around 300 men on Feb. 7 -- an attack force that was bombed by the U.S. as it crossed a pontoon bridge over the Euphrates River in an effort to capture one of largest natural gas fields in eastern Syria for the Assad regime. Located near the city of Deir ez-Zor, the so-called Conoco field had been wrested from Islamic State (IS) last September by Kurdish-led troops -- with the help of U.S. Special Forces who have been stationed in the area since then.

The Americans are using the Kurds to promote their own interests and the Turks, in addition to their own soldiers, are using anti-Assad rebels to fight on their behalf. Iran, meanwhile, has a diverse mixture of Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani recruits under its command, in addition to its own people. Since 2013, the tens of thousands of troops under Iranian control have been propping up the regime of Bashar Assad. They are commanded, trained and financed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which wants to keep its Syrian ally in power at any price. One of these multinational Shiite militias was also involved in the attack on the Conoco gas field -- a collection of fighters straight out of a dystopian catastrophe film. 

Two local tribal militias also took part in the attack, including one controlled by counterfeiter Torki Albo Hamad. Once wanted in Qatar for murder and document forgery in Saudi Arabia, he was known in Syria for being the leader of a gang of highway robbers. In 2013, Damascus offered him money and impunity if he and his men would place themselves at the service of the regime.

This is the real story; the big boys are now playing out the end game for land, gas and oil, and our sucker media is just too easily distracted by planted fake news intended to turn our focus away from the important stuff. With the BBC still soundly smarting from the spanking it got over its wholly fake White Helmets reporting from Aleppo (there weren't any) they've fallen straight into this one. Perhaps when Czech intelligence officers branded Agent COB 'stupid' they didn't know he was representative of a whole cabal of 'stupid' at the heart of the British establishment.

Give to charity, but don't buy from an OXFAM shop

I am very grateful to commenters on here who have described how to donate efficiently and get aid to the people that need it. Just to prove their point I've been through the accounts filed for 2017 by OXFAM to find possibly the least efficient way yet devised of giving aid - buying those cute 3rd world sofa throws, gourds or greetings cards from an OXFAM shop or OXFAM online. Here's what happens to every £1 you spend:-

You Spend	£1.00
Less 20% VAT*		£0.17
Sub total		£0.83
Less cost of trading		£0.66
Less OXFAM admin costs		£0.05
Sub total		£0.12
Less 5% political campaigning		£0.01
NET TO AID		£0.11
*VAT charged on gifts, cards, commissioned goods but not on donated items
Source: 2017 accounts submitted to Charity Commission

First point is that VAT is chargeable on all those commissioned gift items - but not on donated goods. So if you're buying an old frock rather than a new greetings card, the net will be bigger. Oxfam shops are really just PR - a subtle way of pretending that the charity gets most of its money from public gifts and donations rather than from central government aid. Once you take off the costs of running the shops and the website, and the costs of HQ staff and executives, you're left with just 12p of that £1.00. And then OXFAM skims off a further 5% for its domestic lobbying and anti-poverty campaigning - leaving just 11p to go on aid and development.

For anyone paying £3 a month by direct debit, your yield is a bit better. But be aware that OXFAM has 11 executives earning over £100k pa. Assuming they're all at the midpoint of the first £100k+ band, it takes 37,000 x £3 direct debits just to meet their salary bill each month. News that 1,000 folk have cancelled their DDs as a result of the sex scandal will hardly dent them - unless another 36,000 join them.

Looking at the figures really does bring the waste into sharp contrast. The lesson is, if you want your money to reach the people in need, follow the suggestions in the comments, and please, please, look at the accounts before you spend.