HARBINGER

To quote that haunting line,one of many,from  Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon   ,there's nothing more to say. There really isn't and Peter Hitchens has said what needed saying on brexit  better,more succinctly and incisively than just about any journalist /commentator anywhere. So, gleaned from his  Mail on Sunday  blog of 20 October 2018 :- "  Negotiation is a test of strength. And Britain is far weaker than the giant German empire that is the EU. Sooner or later, if we truly want to get out of that empire, we are going to have to grasp this. Poor, hopeless Theresa May hasn’t a chance, not least because she has never really wanted to leave. So she flounders between wild fake militancy, adopted to protect her right flank, and pathetic weakness – her actual position. But I have even less time for the posturing braggarts, on all sides of the question, who now pretend that their positions are so pure and wonderful that they cannot give an inch. The Europ

It's only a couple of blog posts or so ago that I opined that no-one really gives a shit about investigative journalists. That was in the wake of the news of Marinova's murder in Bulgaria.She was the third investigative journalists murdered in a EU member state in the past 12 months. Galizia in Malta and Kuciak in Slovakia being the other two martyred for the truth and public accountability. But  " news " corporate MSM news has now moved on to Khashoggi. A sworn opponent of the ruling Saudi Royal family and of its quasi-medieval politics and practices. A writer and polemicist in exile in the USA and habitue of the Washington Post he popped into the Saudi embassy in Ankara to sort out some bureaucratic paperwork. He was consequently tortured,murdered,cut up into pieces and buried. Even in Erdogan's Turkey,where some 250 professional Turkish journalists are languishing in prison,this act of barbaric impunity was more than one step way too far to shrug off or e

The following appeared a couple of days ago on  Belfast Telegraph Digital :- DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said that Brexit has turned into a " battle for the Union itself ", with the EU and UK government no closer to agreeing a withdrawal deal.  It's okay,you can skip the next bit since in retrospect it seems highly implausible that such a portmanteau of eventualities could occur or are ever likely to occur in such a fashion ever again. Tories decide to add a commitment to holding an " In-Out" referendum on EU membership to their manifesto for GE2015. They do it,in what their leadership assumes is a countervailing and pre-emptive manouevre to stop further votes being lost to UKIP. Against the odds,Cameron leads his Party to an outright victory with a 20-odd seats overall majority. Parliament approves with virtually no dissenting votes against that a binding In-Out referendum will be held on June 23 2016. As polling booths closed on June

Truth is most people probably don't a give a shit about investigative journalists.Or what happens to them or doesn't happen to them.Perhaps the only time when some random spark ignites the public's interest in investigative journalism is when a scandal is uncovered and wrong doing is exposed to the bright daylight of public scrutiny. Not all journalists are investigators but it goes with the profession's territory.Born to snoop,to pry,to ask the really awkward questions,to dig, to get their goddamn head blown off if they dig too deep and wind up annoying the wrong people at the wrong moment. But when all the sums get added up at the close of business,not too many give a damn one way or the other;unless and until,of course events start to impinge too often and bodies start to pile up in plain sight of the civilians who would,if they could choose,rather not know,rather not confront the mire and the blood of Realpolitik as it gets played in real time with real conseque

There comes a point, and in any event we are in fact way,way past it, where reiterating the same arguments,exposing the same facts,re-heating the same revelations that had once initially shocked us just becomes tedious. It is axiomatic that within the European Union the further east and south east that you go,the greater the increase in fraud and corruption there is in any given member state. However, even before the annexation,sorry accession, in 2004 and 2007 of the virtual entirety of the economically moribund and socially sclerotic former post-1945 communist states - institutionalised fraud and corruption abounded in stalwart EU member states such as Portugal,Spain,Greece and Italy. The litany of antiquated,clapped out rustbelt national economies includes those of the former baltic Soviet republics - Estonia,Latvia,Lithuania, parts of the Yugoslav federation -Croatia ,Slovenia alongside Poland,Hungary,Czechia,Slovakia,Romania and Bulgaria. Many of these never came close to pa

There's something vitally important taking place in England today.Only I can't remember what it is or where it's being held or even what it's supposed to be about that makes it seem so terribly important to some people. And that ladies and gentlemen is a concise a report on the proceedings of the Conservative Party Conference 2018 in Birmingham as it is possible render. Oh. go on then, herewith some further musings on this sad and tragic event. Had the insufferably patronising,self-entitlement flaneurs of the Tory hierarchy that came out in support of Leave, even at least half-heartedly put together as broad a based political coalition for Leave leadership team, then quite possibly we might all be many miles down the road from  Stalag Luft IV by now instead of arguing about who should go first through the escape tunnel's exit and into the forest which the tunnel fell fifty feet short of due to planning miscalculations. The EU's funded #PeoplesVote aka #