comment | Steve Woods

Cat educates thick rich man

10/08/2024 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

The social media account of Larry the Cat, Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, is no stranger to this blog (posts passim).

Larry has now taken to his keyboard yet again to educate an ignorant, insulting rich man who owns a social media platform to educate the latter on the letter of the law in connection with the recent fascist riots in the Untied Kingdom*.

In recent days Elon Musk, (yes, him! Ed.) has waded into the debate about rioting thugs, claiming the disturbances to be a matter of free speech, not violence and racism against vulnerable people who have sought asylum in the country.

Amongst the many replies to Musk came one from the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, a canny political operator who has so far survived the premierships of six prime ministers – David ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron, Theresa May, disgraced former alleged party-time PM Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, one Mary Elizabeth Truss and Rishi Sunak.

Although he started out life as a stray, Larry quickly became acclimatised to the political climate in Whitehall, famously being one of those resignations which led to the downfall of Johnson, a man unfit to clean a public lavatory, let alone occupy the highest elected public office in the land (posts passim).

Larry has posted the following response to Musk’s bland and blissfully ignorant exhortation.

Ouch!

* = Mis-spelling is deliberate.
Bristol says no to hate

08/08/2024 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

It was a tense day in Bristol yesterday. There were reports that fascist thugs were planning to ‘demonstrate’ against a legal practice specialising in immigration cases in the Old Market area. Lots of local businesses saw no alternative but to shut up shop early and board up their windows.

Fortunately, things turned out differently: 2,000 lovely Bristolians packed West and Old Market Streets; the fascists stayed away and a party atmosphere prevailed.

Even away from the focus of the demonstration there was some tension in the air, particularly where your ‘umble scribe lives in Easton, one of Bristol’s most diverse (in all senses) areas. Local shops in St Mark’s Road and the local community centre shut up early in anticipation of possible trouble, particularly as it was suspected the fascists were planning to march along Stapleton Road.

As it happened, no march occurred either. Even if it had, there were lots of small knots of local residents keeping an eye out for trouble on the streets, especially in the vicinity of the mosque in St Mark’s Road.

Also outside the mosque, your correspondent spotted two elderly white people sitting quietly on chairs, one holding a placard reading Bristol says no to hate. By the manner of their protest, your correspondent reckons they might have been Quakers.

When they left, they abandoned their placard on the women’s entrance to the mosque.

Bristol, you should be proud of your citizens today,
The continuing menace of driverless vehicles

01/08/2024 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

All over the country, every day driverless vehicles are colliding with other vehicles and/or structures according to the local press.

Here’s a typical example from today’s Bristol Live/Post to accompany the screenshot below.

Nowhere in the entire report is there any mention of a driver, i.e. someone who might have been able to avoid the vehicle in question deciding to crash into the railway bridge of its own volition.

Furthermore, the byline shows that someone is unfamiliar with basic English language. It reads:

Services are at a stand.

The byline is in fact quoted from Inrix, a US-based traffic data company which now operates in the Untied Kingdom, but seems to be unfamiliar with the word standstill. If any illiterate Inrix employees happen to be passing, it is defined as a condition in which all movement or activity has stopped.
The phrase at a stand does exist, but its meaning – in a state of confusion or uncertainty; undecided what to do next – is subtly different from standstill.
Auntie aids fascist rioters

31/07/2024 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Social Media

On Monday an horrific attack took place in Southport at a children’s dance class in which three young girls were deprived of life.

The victims had been attending a Taylor Swift-themed dance and yoga class for children aged up to 11. Taylor Swift herself responded as follows to the news.

A seventeen year-old youth was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, although his motives remain unclear.

The BBC went to the trouble of reporting the suspect’s ethnicity.

The BBC can report that the teenage suspect, whose parents are from Rwanda, was born in Cardiff and moved to the Southport area in 2013.

It is at this point that questions arise as to why did the BBC point out that although the suspect is a British citizen, he is of African heritage, a fact that was sure to inflame the extreme right.

A vigil was planned near the scene of the attack on Tuesday evening. At about 19.45 hrs, it was followed by violent disorder in which those involved set alight cars, threw bricks at a local mosque, damaged a local convenience store and set wheelie bins on fire. The rioters are believed to have been members of the English Defence League (EDL).

After the riot, questions were asked including the one below by tax campaigner and top-flight accountant Richard Murphy.

Meanwhile in Scotland, The National reports that SNP leader Hamza Yousef has written to the Home Secretary demanding that the EDL be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, as well as posting the following on X/Twitter this morning.

Violence targeting police officers, the public, and mosques, all to drive forward the far-right’s hateful ideology.

Rhetoric is not enough.

We need to take action against the far-right. I have asked the Home Secretary to use her powers to proscribe the English Defence League.
Newspaper gives fascist geography lesson

22/07/2024 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media
An interesting mini-drama has played out on social media this morning in the wake of incumbent US president Joe Biden’s decision to step down from the impending campaign in that country’s presidential election.

The dramatis personae are as follows:
- Johannes Huber, a member of the far-right AfD party who serves as a member of the Federal Parliament (MdB); and
- The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of Germany’s major newspapers.
In common with the characteristics of the species homo politicus, i.e. approaching each and every subject with an open mouth, Huber took one look at the news of Joe Biden’s decision to step down from the forthcoming US presidential election (called a general election in the USA. Ed.), got straight on to X/Twitter to post the words ‘Biden is not my President!’.

Note the exclamation mark. 😀

This enabled the FAZ to reply sarcastically to the MdB in question ‘Dear Johannes Huber MP, correct, your president is Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Best wishes‘, giving him both a timely geography lesson reminding him not so subtly that he is in fact a German citizen.

Meanwhile in the actual presidential campaign itself, Biden has formally endorsed his vice-president Kamala Harris to be the Democrats’ candidate; and Harris looks like she’s relishing the prospect of putting victim-playing egomaniac and disgraced former president Donald John Trump in his place.

Ouch!

The next few months promise to be interesting times indeed.
Auntie prefers football to politics

17/07/2024 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

Yesterday’s The Jouker column in The National highlights a prime example of a colonial attitude in the media of the Untied Kingdom.

There were two two significant resignations on Tuesday, but as The Jouker points out, football – and English football at that – was prioritised on the BBC News website ahead of a major political development in Caerdydd, capital of England’s oldest colony.

That resignation was of the disgraced First Minister of Cymru, Vaughan Gething, who amongst other things, had refused to step down after, inter alia, losing a vote of confidence and accepting a £200,000 “donation” from a “businessman” convicted of environmental crimes. Gething’s hand was forced by a mass outbreak of ministerial resignations similar to that which ended the premiership of disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Although he’d only been First Minister since March, when the BBC did finally send its political editor down the M4/Great Western railway line to Caerdydd, Chris Mason did helpfully point pout that Gething’s term of office was 2.4 times longer than that of another British premier, one Mary Elizabeth Truss, the ultimate free marketeer whose polices were roundly rejected by the, er, market.

The resignation story which took precedence yesterday was that of England football manager Gareth Southgate who managed to get his team to two consecutive European Football Championship finals, yet still disappointed the jingoistic English media by failing (yet again) to win a chunk of international silverware like his predecessor in 1966, Alf Ramsey.

Why should football take priority over politics? Critics on social media were not slow to notice the choice of priorities made in London, i.e. that only England matters and Wales is a lesser concern, as has been the case ever since Henry VIII’s 16th century Acts of Union.

There is however precedence for this attitude and it comes from another footballer; and one that is one of Scotland’s greatest football exports, Bill Shankly, who was manager of Liverpool FC from 1959 to 1974, a length of tenure of office which modern football managers can only dream of.

Shankly is famously on record as rating the importance of football as follows:

Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.

The above quote from Shankly can be found here with plenty of others from the sage of Anfield.
Scamming the scammer

12/07/2024 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Tech

Behind its paywall, the Daily Telegraph carries a story about a scam to con the already gullible, Reform UK Party Ltd ‘members’. A non-paywalled version of the article can be read here.

The pretend political party (it’s actually a limited company in which dodgy former MEP Nigel Farage is the majority shareholder. Ed.) issued an emergency email on Thursday evening after a fraudulent Telegram account bearing Mr Farage’s name told members to donate £200 to it to become a “VIP member” of the party.
A spokesperson for the ~~party~~ company has said the following:
At present we are only aware that this scammer is working on Telegram, however we are acutely aware that they could be operating on various other social media and messaging platforms.

And.

This is a criminal fraudulent endeavour and we are getting in touch with Telegram and the police to have it shut down.

Your ‘umble scribe would add that anyone foolish enough to have handed money to a charlatan like Farage has already been scammed.
Bristol Live exclusive: man given dog’s face

08/07/2024 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

Cross-species organ transplants – a technique also known as xenotransplantation – are becoming more common in modern medicine.

Such transplants usually involve pig or cow organs, but a new species has now entered the list of donor transplant species, according to today’s Bristol Live/(Evening) Post.

However, judging from the headline the means by which the victim’s rebuilt face was provided sounds brutal, almost as if it was performed with malicious intent and without the use of anaesthetics, unless of course the author didn’t proof-read his piece adequately and failed to notice the absence of a simple two-letter preposition. 😀
The new enemy within

06/07/2024 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher infamously branded the leaders of the 1984–85 miners’ strike “the enemy within”.

In the wake of last weeks’ general election, there is a new enemy within; and one far more dangerous to the country than Arthur Scargill and his NUM colleagues.

There’s now an enemy within the walls of the House of Commons.

Step forward Nigel Farage and his four fellow MPs elected for pretend political party Reform UK, which is actually constituted as a limited liability company with Farage as the person with significant control and financed by perma-tanned “businessman” Richard Tice.

Disgraced former MEP Farage, who once famously had his MEP’s salary docked for misuse of EU funds, has finally become a member of the Westminster parliament at the eighth attempt. Your ‘umble scribe hopes that parliamentary watchdog IPSA keeps a beady eye on the new dishonourable member for Clacton given his past behaviour in Strasbourg and Brussels.

As is usual, social media has been awash the reactions to the general election result, including the following exchange.

No more needs to be said. Farage has been known to harbour extreme right wind views for decades, dating back to his schooldays at reassuringly expensive Dulwich College.
Trolled by donkeys

30/06/2024 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics

The Columbine Centre in the Essex coastal town of Walton-on-the-Naze has not been renowned as a venue with a history of political drama.

Until now.

Yesterday the good folk from Led By Donkeys – in their own words – “dropped in on Farage’s election rally with a beaming picture of Putin. Nigel was not pleased“.

Farage is on record as far back as 2014 in expressing his admiration for Vladimir Vladimirovich and his gangster regime in the Kremlin. Moreover, Farage has faced criticism in recent weeks for his outrageous statement that the western democracies are responsible for provoking Russia to invade Ukraine.

In addition, Farage has also vehemently denied any Russian interference or involvement in the divisive 2016 Brexit referendum, a fact helped by British establishment reluctance to investigate such claims.

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