Shabbat Shalom!

 Hi All,

Open thread as usual.

Happy Christmas, Merry  Chrismukkah and Seasons greetings!

Chrismukkah/Winterville and Happy Holidays

 Hi All, 

How much 'Wokery' can I squeeze out of this?  😎

What are you reading during Chrismukkah?

 Hi All,

Right now I have three books on my reading list and a summary of each: 

1. Crashed - a reasonably highbrow book written by Adam Tooze about the financial crisis of 2008 and how it also caused the European crisis, Trump and Brexit. This is the one I'm reading now and it is fascinating to pick up on the fact that no matter how much Germany and especially France bash 'anglo -saxon' banking, they were in the trough of greed and stupidity as much as anyone else and were in fact bailed out by the same 'anglo-saxons' they like to publicly criticise. 

2. Billion Dollar Whale- this focuses on the actions of Jho Low, who became a billionaire by helping himself to the cookie jar of a Malaysian Wealth Fund and who is currently on the run from the FBI.

3. Trump Revealed - got this at the bargain price of £1 from WH Smith's 'clearance' shelf. It focuses on Trump up to the point of him becoming President. I haven't read it yet, but it will be interesting to read because of the lack of retrospect that taints some biography,  to see how people thought of him before his term of office started and finished. 

But what are you reading this festive season? 

G20 love island

 Hi All,

LOL!

Shabbat Shalom!

Hi all, 

Open thread as usual.

New Reichskanzler und Fuhrer For Europa live from the Volkshalle (Brussels)

 Hi All,

Great News you  Europa VOLK ! Europe has a new Reichskanzler und Fuhrer after the wonderful Merkel has finally gone (tearful guardian types - if Merkel had been in Britain you'd have hated her as a vile Tory,given her own 'austerity' and balanced budget ideology  but a she's not British, but  European, so let's make her into a sainted figure!).

Ban Fags but legalise other drugs : New Zealand's socialist hypocritical madness

 Hi All, 

News from the Colonies  and it is grave  : New Zealand's bonkers socialist regime has gone full middle class native, ban fags, but allow recreational and hitherto illegal drugs, i.e. champagne socialist middle class acceptance of drugs, but dislike of having a good old fag:   New Zealand has decided to ban fags, but is easing laws on illegal 'recreational' drugs. 

Ridiculous socialist control freek  nonsense!

Prohibition will only give the trade to criminals and mafia types...

Poor old New Zealand. 

The Bling of The Old Lady

 Hi All,

WOW!  Despite the fact that arch-moron Gordon Brown flogged off a lot of our gold at rock bottom prices in the late 1990s, we've still got billions worth of Gold in the secret vaults and labyrinths of the Bank of England, 

Here's a  look at the Bank of England's vaults of Gold Bricks and Bars  - interesting about how the New York Fed has a different shape of gold bar because of the Fed is on 'bedrock' vs our clay and that Canada served as a deposit for gold during the war .  : 

Well cool!

UK divided

 Hi All, 

There are many different dimensions, parallel and alternative universes. This is just one of them

1st August  2020

After 4 years it was all done : the UK was out of the EU and the UK was out of the UK, one nation indivisible was now 3: Gweriniaeth Cymru, The Kingdom of England, The Republic of Scotland. Northern Ireland had been absorbed into the Irish Southern Republic.

There was a refugee crisis brewing on the Cymru-English border, as thousands of English people fled Wales and its new language law and police, pouring out into the Herefordshire and Shropshire counties with nothing other than their vans and cars. Cymru itself was facing decades of austerity after joining the Euro, which put an end to any dreams of a socialist revolution and the mass exodus of the English resident in Wales, which didn’t bother nationalists, although it did bother those who had to make a living by other means than fanning faux nationalist sentiment.

In Northern Ireland, the Southern leadership cursed the day that the voters in that province had voted to join with them: it was one thing to use Irish nationalist romantic  propaganda especially in the EU or in New York, but when it actually came to it, Northern Ireland need so much, too much money, there was talk of another IMF bailout.  Violence had already broken out in the North and the UN- peacekeeping force led by the Peruvians were dismissed as a ‘Papal Legion’ and the ‘Pope’s Jackboots’  by the Province’s now minority Protestants, even though the Peruvian Brigadier in charge  was in fact of Japanese -Mormon heritage.

In Scotland it was a time of merriment, not just because it was late December, but because they were in the EU, with the Euro as a safe haven currency, lots of funding, and looking elsewhere a chance to gloat: especially against the English Sassenachs ,although nationalists had no idea what to do with the “48ters” who still opposed the creation of their republic, the austerity budget that Brussels had given the Scottish finance Ministry and the problem that Scotland was now responsible for 2 banks whose balance sheet was as big as America’s GDP: the government hadn’t told its anti-war, pro woke -and if it had still existed- anti-NATO membership that it had been forced to agree to give to the Europeans, numerous military bases including Faslane, where the French intended to base their 3^rd fleet of nuclear submarines, which was strange as when it was British subs over there…. There was no public comment on the plans by Brussels that would mean conscription into a Euro-Defence Force.

What then of Merry olde England? England was facing threats on numerous fronts: at the UN there were calls for her to loose her permanent seat at the top table, Spain and Argentina were beating the drums of war over Gibraltar and the Falklands. The English were more or less at war with the French, who were letting refugees across the channel and arming their fishing trawlers.  The Defence forces, what was left of them,  had lost all of their bases in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which was especially a problem for the nuclear missile armed submarines. Whilst England had held the space colonies, they too were being threatened by a coalition of vultures when seemingly wanted to pick on the bones of a now third rate power.

 The economy was doing badly as well : to balance the budget and reduce the national debt to under 100% of GDP came at a cost of an austerity bill that made Greece look like they’d saved a couple of pence. With the Pound linked to the liquidium standard, to maintain the peg,  interest rates remained incredibly high at 35%, which meant that unemployment was 50% of the workforce and rising.

Politically the country had seem 5 Prime Ministers come and go over 5 years, with the Conservatives and Labour forming a ‘grand coalition’, that sometimes included the liberals and greens. Those on the Brexit right and left, who’d gone off to form multiple parties, were kept out of power, which galvanised them to form ‘the English Way’ party, which predicably was decried as ‘fascist, alt right, xenophobic’ etc. It was assumed that in the election being held today, Labour would win, especially since it had finally managed to find a ‘moderate’ soft left  leader that the BBC and Guardian could rally behind.  For their part, the conservative party was split and divided and in all honesty couldn’t have formed a coherent government if it had won.

The results therefore came as a stock to the Metropolitan elite, especially in London. The exit poll had predicted a narrow Labour win, but when the first results came in from the North East, The English Way party took Sunderland South from Labour. By the end of the night they’d stormed the ‘red wall’ of the Labour North, did well in the Midlands and blown a gap in the Tories Southern ‘Blue barns’, but London was the nut they couldn’t crack, only wining 1 MP there. The final result was tallied at English Way 267, Labour 139, Conservative 117, Liberal Democrat 9 and Green 1.  Whilst this was a majority of only 1 seat, the English Way had done what no other political party had ever done and that was to smash up the two party system and become a governing party within 1 general election.

The English Way was of course instantly dismissed by the left as ‘not my government’ on social media with the predictable  ‘racist, homophobic, xenophobic, fascist, Nazis like nativists who are also colonialist  Zionists’. However of its 267 MPs, 67 were BAME, 22 were gay or Lesbian and there were 11 non-human British citizens: religiously its caucus contained 176 Christians, 25 Jews, 20 Hindus, 10 Muslims, 4 Buddhists, 8 atheists, 2 Mormons and 22 ‘other’.  Exactly what it wanted to do was vague, other than ‘no to economic welfare leeches, end austerity, get England back to work’, but the country would soon find out.

A-team/Trek Crossover

 Hi All,

LOL!

Oh What a Fight!

 Hi All,

A parody song of the famous Kirk-Gorn fight of Star Trek the Original Series. Whilst the Gorn only appeared in this episode and one other, in the 'extended universe' they are recurring villains and allies in Star Trek.