From the latest Private Eye:
That's how corruption works: it makes things look other than they are in exchange for a little (and sometimes a lot) of cash.
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I don’t know whether there’s Russian money involved but it concerns me a lot more that the right wing press – all foreign owned – have such a disproportionate say in what gets reported as ‘news’ and the fact that the BBC seems to have been wholly captured by the Tory Party.
@ Rod White
“I don’t know whether there’s Russian money involved … ”
I don’t think there’s any doubt – https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/revealed-russian-donors-have-stepped-tory-funding.
Note the statement : “Downing Street has claimed that there was not sufficient time for the report “sign off process” before the election.”
But it goes deeper than just election funding – https://badboysofbrexit.com/the-russia-connection.
The $64,000 question is – will anything be done about it? My educated guess is no.
And the fact was that there was ample time to clear this
Rod White.says:
“I don’t know whether there’s Russian money involved…..”
I don’t think there is much doubt about that. What remains unclear to me is how much of the interference in UK politics is actually orchestrated by Mr Putin.
If he was a true Russian patriot he’d be hoovering up the thieving bastards who eloped with all the country’s wealth after the wall came down and the big Goldman Sachs divvy up took place. It remains unclear to me just where Vladimir Putin stands in all this.
In my view Putin is what you get when rather than helping Russia into the capitalist fold, the West (led by America) throw them to the wolves and instead of gradual change, you get over-night change that just completely ruins the country.
So, whilst believing that they now had a society based on freedom that the West had, it was instead debased by the most extreme forms of capitalism that led to Russia swapping one oligarchy (the Communists) for quite a few capitalist oligarchs.
What happened to post Gorbachev Russia was absolutely shameful as far as the West was concerned. The country collapsed – a country that was more than responsible for defeating the Nazis – a huge country beyond our understanding – with rich resources that should have been welcomed and helped. And the West really fucked it up.
I don’t approve of Putin; but I understand him and his motivations. As ex-KGB he will not have been impressed with North American style capitalism laying Russia so low. He is also keenly aware of how the U.S. is so good at destabilizing countries that do not like the Washington consensus hence the manipulation of the domestic agenda.
If I were the Prime Minister one of the first things I would do would be to apologise and show contrition towards Russia. And I would build formal bridges with Putin. He might think me naive but that is what we should do. You have close friends – but you keep your enemies and potential enemies closer. Putin’s objective is to somehow make Russia great again – he predates Trump. Putin needs to be brought in from the cold. His behaviour is his way of getting the message across that he wants acceptance for him and his country. He wants to sit at the international big boys table. And given the brats that already sit at it, why not? Are any of them any better? No. And Putin knows this too.
But the bottom line is, the West has a lot ot answer for, for Russia. Putin? You reap what you sow fellas, you reap what you sow.
War, sanctions, espionage and the like are a symptoms of failing to do politics. Remember that, because it is true. Politics needs to remember what it is about. Politics is ultimately about peace and harmony.
Tell that to a Tory
It astounds me even before the polling stations open how many people are going to grimly vote Tory today in the belief that they are doing something really positive (win or lose).
Even though the Tories have proven that they are only good and destroying things for all of us and improving things for a small minority.
It is best to remember that these are exceptional times – exceptional levels of discontent, exceptional levels of criminality and corruption, exceptional levels of disinformation and lying – in fact exceptional levels of all sorts of bad things that should not be in our politics.
Agreed
Also an exceptional media coverage of the whole circus!
From the usual gutter press coverage to the mighty BBC, we’ve had months, years, of misinformation, cover-ups, and disinformation.
Senior so-called serious political reporters relaying lies, phrasing reports in such a way as to bash Corbyn (I’m no fan) but show the buffoon in a positive light.
I’ll go back to Private Eye, was reading it just now, at least I get a few laughs to mix with my swearing.
But Goebbels would be so proud though, wouldn’t he just.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there is even more American money involved from right wing think tanks to Cambridge Analytica.
Whilst the security report has been withheld, the DCMS report has not. It does cover the topic, obviously not in the same level of detail.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmcumeds/1791/1791.pdf
What this – and similar manoeuvres with big US cash – has achieved, would appear to be that the Conservative Party has sold the ‘U’K’s politics, future and – who knows – security, to the combined interests of Putin and Trump. Generations of well-intentioned Conservative voters have been flung under the wheels of the two most malign influences on both our international order and on their beloved, if ramshackle, constitutional system. I’ve never agreed with them on their politics – but the scale on which they have been betrayed is truly awesome.
From Baldwin to Borisovitch! If I gape in shock, what on earth do many, many decent past Tory voters feel? In truth, there are very many for whom this is a defining moment. In the Borders, we’ve received detailed and staunch endorsements for the SNP and its candidate from prominent former Tories – a former MP and former MEP, a former adviser – and on the doorstep, and privately, lifelong Conservatives are recoiling in pain and disgust from what the extremist/ERG/Brexiteers have done to their party. There is decency out there in all corners of our democracy and folk of principle will find and are finding that, in these besmiched and debased, times there are reasons for working together. Whatever happens today, let’s not forget that the ‘good guys’ can find ways to each other and ways to have effect for our futures.
The late Peter Jenkins wrote in November 1972 one of the finest Guardian political articles of my lifetime. Then, his annus horibilis was the prospect of the re-election of Richard Nixon. He called it “The Sour Stink of Success” and so many of its lines vibrate, eerily, in our present dystopia – and require just the mildest of tweaks to be fitted to our times. …….
“Only a stroke of divine providence or a devilish curse upon all opinion polls now can save the” ‘U’K “and the world from” five “more years of” PM Johnson. Mr Johnson “succeeds by bringing out the worst in people and the margin of his re-election on” Thursday “will be the measure of his success.”
“Now that the moment of choice is so close, it is time to stop carping at the inadequacies and errors of” Jeremy Corbyn “and to do him honour for his endeavour to bring a basic sense of decency to the conduct of public affairs, to revive a withering sense of justice and compassion in a society deformed by callousness, brutality and greed, and to gain recognition for the fact that” starving and sanctioning “people – even when they are “underpaid, unemployed, disabled or refugees – “is wrong.”
…….
“An insecure nation frightened by” immigration, “crime and violence and … abandoned” to hallucinations of its history “feels more secure under the firm hand of a mean man. The psychologist Erich Fromm observed the Germans electing Hitler and called the phenomenon the ‘flight from freedom’. I am not going so far as to compare” Mr Johnson “with Hitler. However, I do seriously contend that his re-election should be viewed with repugnance and deep foreboding.”
…….
(There is much, much more in that article which echoes today – including warnings on violent ‘war’ rhetoric, subversion of the rule of law and of the courts, assaults on individual rights and liberties – “even the primitive right to food, shelter and care in sickness” – the treatment of welfare recipients, education, taxation, state spending, regulation of business – but Jenkins, whose heroes were Senators George McGovern and Eugene McCarthy, unforgettably, ended thus – )
…….
“The” PM “deals in mendacious over-simplifications which encourage people to believe that the only practical politics are those based upon a morbid view.”
“With luck, the” country “will survive another” five “years under Mr Johnson’s malevolent sway and then find a” Prime Minister “who can bring some inspiration of humanity, decency and understanding to his difficult task.” Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon are “ten times better” people than “Boris Johnson and let” them “be remembered when the stains of” Johnson’s premiership “have been scrubbed out from” their countries’ ” heritage.”
Obviously, I will be hoping and working for Scotland’s freedom to pursue a better future as an independent member of the EU, but we all need to remember that there are fellow well-intentioned and betrayed folk to be found across a political landscape which we used to regard as a fixed spectrum. In the end, the ‘good guys’ (no gender intended) may yet prove the to be the “many” – even to the oligarchic “few”.