Sunday 25 September 2022

The Sunday Ishmael; 25/09/2022

What fun to be part of an Economics Experiment! Out of the text books and into Life as We Know it.  Unelected Prime Minster Truss and Handsome-but-Dim Kwasi, have decided to gamble the nation's future on a fairly debatable concept - give rich people more money and they will spend it on making us all rich. As if. 
Madam Truss, in her hustings pronouncements, dressed up her nonsense by telling us that letting people keep more of the money they earn would be the best way to lift ordinary Britons out of the fucking mire that Boris inflicted by closing down business, retail, catering  and leisure, destroying jobs, shovelling huge slabs of cash at Covid profiteers, then topping off his success as a Covid leader by taking us into war in support of the Dwarf Zelensky, provoking Russia into fighting back by starving Europe of fuel. (Who'd have thought Russia would do a dastardly thing like that? It's not part of the Rules Of War - which state, as every fule knos, we can do what we want and the enemy must just suck it up and then turn up to the War Crimes Tribunal to take their punishment.)
Trussian Economics, however, seems to have ignored the fact that in order to keep more of the money they earn, Britons need to be earning enough money in the first place to be paying much tax.  Under the measures announced by Pretty-but-Dim Kwasi, to derive any benefit, you'd need to be earning £155,000 per year. I suspect that the game plan is not that which Kwasi stammeringly unfolded under close questioning this morning by Laura the Nose on the Kuenssberg Show. 
She had to shout a bit. 
Nope, what is really going on is that Truss knows they have only two years left in government, so those two years should be employed in stuffing money at those best placed to reward them handsomely during the wilderness years. The economic theory is Self-Interested Short Termism, or doing what Tories do.
Go, Kwasi!
 
Seems that the Russians, or at least those with a bob or two, are fucking off out of it, rather than be called up to fight Mother Russia's war. Miserable lot. Mind, I’d be miserable if I’d been born in Russia. It always was a horrid place. Just nasty. Nastier than Western European countries, which were pretty damn nasty. The western bits of Russia considered themselves genetically and culturally superior to the eastern bits. Until the Russian Revolution, the Tsars fancied themselves to be European, indulged their every lavish and expensive whim, lived in luxury and didn’t even speak Russian. They derived their wealth from draining every rouble from their vast farms in the countryside, so they could live in St Petersburg or Moscow. The people of Russia were serfs. Minimal education, often literally starving, no health care, inadequate clothing and housing. No freedom - couldn't leave the farm, let alone the Cherry Orchard. Just a big mess of a country. The final straw was the requirement to fight the European First World War for their rulers, who were, of course, related to  Queen Victoria the Fertile. Since the Revolution and the execution of their Royal Family, they have been trying to build a country that is a decent place to live, much hampered by the rest of Europe, who didn't think they should be allowed to make a go of it, having offed their God-appointed Tsar and aristocracy. It really is a very new country – only a hundred years old – nothing in the time span of nations. And it is huge, disparate, multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-religious, despite the best efforts of the Communist regime to abolish religion, which is, as we know, the opium of the masses, whilst the patriarchal structures of religion are bloated predatory spiders sucking up the energy and spare cash of the people they allegedly serve.

So the westernised intellectual classes are off, rather than stay and build a nation. It’ll be down to the peasant army to unseat the current controlling group in Moscow, just as in the Russian Revolution. And, in the meantime, European countries must host melancholy, dispossessed, self-exiled Russians, just as they hosted the White Russians after the Russian Revolution.

The  First Russian Revolution started on 22nd January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest throughout vast areas of the Russian Empire, directed against Tsar Nicholas II, the nobility and ruling class, and included worker strikes, peasant unrest and military mutinies. Seven years later, the Russian Revolution completed the work begun in 1905. Over the ensuing bloody six years, Russia abolished its monarchy and adopted a socialist form of government.

Whilst these great events were happening in Russia, over in Britain the King, Edward VII,  was very angry about the loss of his jewelry. He had intended to wear the jewels of the Most Illustrious Order of St. Patrick  to an  event at the 1907 Irish International Exhibition but had to cancel the ceremony when the theft was discovered.  A member of the royal household staff later recalled that he had "never seen King Edward so angry. His rage was something terrible and fearful... I am sure the officials he lectured never forgot his words."

You see where King Charles the Unpleasant gets it from?

Edward VII and Queen Alexandra

The Irish Crown Jewels, originally created from 394 precious stones taken from the English Crown Jewels, and with an estimated modern value of £4.3 million, had been stored in a safe in the library of the Bedford Tower in Dublin Castle, under the custodianship of Sir Arthur Vicars, Ulster King of Arms.

A notorious party animal, Vicars enjoyed showing off the jewels and regularly misplaced the keys to the safe. Once, his chum, Lord Haddo, took the keys from the drunken Vicars, stole the jewels and later returned them by post - as a bit of a jape. On the 6th July 1907, when a repaired gold collar was returned to the safe, officials realised that the jewels were again missing. The thief had used a key to enter the safe.
The subsequent investigation by Scotland Yard sparked theories that the jewels were stolen by political activists who smuggled them to the USA, that Vicars' mistress had stolen them and taken them to Paris, that Unionist criminals had stolen them, or that they had been stolen in a plot to embarrass the Liberal Government and that they were secretly returned to the Royal Family. Whatever, they were never seen again by officialdom and were likely broken up and the jewels sold piecemeal. Maybe there's one of them in your engagement ring.
Vicars maintained his innocence, refused to resign, and claimed that the thief was Frank Shackleton, brother of Ernest, the Antarctic explorer. Frank also had a key to the Tower, was perennially in debt, and was a homosexual - thus being a target for blackmail as homosexual acts were not legalised in Britain until 1967. It is plausible that Frank and his lover, Captain Richard Gorges, got Vicars drunk - not difficult, given his predilections in that line, and helped themselves to the safe keys and its contents. Frank was clearly a wrong 'un - he was imprisoned in 1914 for handling a stolen cheque, but was never prosecuted for the jewel theft.
 
In 1908 King Edward Lack-Jewel VII dismissed Vicars, who moved to County Kerry and married. In May, 1920, up to a hundred armed men broke into their home, Kilmorna House, holding Vicars at gunpoint while they attempted to break into the house's strongroom.  The following year, he was taken from Kilmorna House, which was set alight, and shot dead in front of his wife. According to the communiqué issued from Dublin Castle, thirty armed men took him from his bed and shot him, leaving a placard around his neck denouncing him as an informer
On 27 April 1921, as an official reprisal, four shops were destroyed by British Forces in the town of Listowel. The proclamation given under Martial Law and ordering their demolition stated:

"For any outrage carried out in future against the lives or property of loyalist officials, reprisals will be taken against selected persons known to have rebel sympathies, although their implication has not been proved".

 

The last will and testament of Sir Arthur Vicars accused "the real culprit" Shackleton and criticised the Irish government and King Edward for making him a scapegoat.

The following little piece by stanislav was addressed to blog commentator, mr. forty red, white and blue shoestrings, presumably a man of Irish origin, who appears to have committed a grammatical solecism. 

 

Knock, Knock, Knockin' on Heaven's Door

 

forty red white and blue shoestrings said…

 

“Hopefully the platform change blah blah blah”

 

Hopefully is an adverb, so it is. But then what do pretend Paddies know about speaking English, bog-trotting, spud-gulping, Guinness-swigging, melancholy, red-faced, mummy-loving crybaby arsebandits all married-up because the Pope tells them to breed more wee red-faced superstitious saint-worshiping lunatics all called fucking Seamus or Bridget, the girls all dancing around like electrified cripples smirking that wee I’m-a-focking-virgin-so-I-am-and-only-Jesus-can-fock-me-so-he-can-and-you-can-keep-your-big-stinking-willy-to-yourself-so-you-can smirk and banging their big fucking shoes on the floor like sledgehammers, and the big hulking men who can always come over to England and live on the dole or go and dig holes in the road in the pouring rain and eat potato sandwiches for lunch and whistle Val fucking Doonican babytunes to themselves, “Delaney had a donkey, de dum de dum de dum…” and cry homesick tears down their red faces for the Ould Country which they never should have left if it was all that good, that’s when they’re not blowing themselves up or smearing one another with shit for the struggle in an English prison and singing their stupid heads off about Kevin Barry and the bold Fenian ladymen and how everybody should lay down his life for this Godforsaken shithole full of hairy-arse dildo-wielding nuns and noncing fucking priests and bogs and bits of holy fucking rock where not only did the blessed virgin Mary appear but she came down off the fucking mountain and did break-dancing so she did as God is my witness and can you put a few euro in the tin, for the orphans, so it is, and haven’t we built a whole tourist and leisure complex here on the blessed site where the pilgrims can come and get their leukemia healed and their withered fucked-up limbs made whole again and if they don’t well sure it’s because they didn’t believe hard enough in the blessed Virgin and her son Jesus Christ and his miracles and all the saints and the Holy Nazi Father over there in Rome so they didn’t and sure all they need to be doing is saving up their money and coming back next year into this blessed green shithole that God has made His very own, so it is and a few more euro in the tin for the blessed sisters of Clare or wherever the fuck they do all that praying, so it is and no, it isn’t a shame to rob these superstitious fucking eejits of their hard-earned money so it isn’t, doesn’t God move in mysterious ways, so He does especially now as we celebrate the birth of His only son, Gordon and the joy he has brought to the whole world, even the protestantbastards but not beJaysus to anybody that isn’t signed up to His Party and His project for mankind, so it is, and isn’t it better, anyway, that the gullible cripplebastards give their money to Holy Mother Church and His Holiness Pope Nazi of the Forests than spend it on drink and child pornography when there’s a whole global army of us to be getting on with that part of God’s plan for mankind? Amen. Forty shades of green, y’know?

 

Note: "On the evening of the 21st August 1879, a heavenly apparition occurred at the gable wall of the Parish Church, when Our Lady appeared, in the company of St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist. Unique to the Knock Apparition was the presence of the Eucharistic Lamb in front of a Cross, standing upon an Altar and surrounded by Angels." extract from "The Story of Knock".

The village of Knock, in County Mayo, Ireland, possesses an international airport, which facilitates the pilgrimages of  believers.
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Look, we're through, over, I've met someone new. We've all met someone new.




 

32 comments:

Mike said...

Mrs I: your hypothesis that Trussonomics is about trashing the economy thereby handing Labour the poisoned chalice is entirely rational. Borrowing and printing on that scale at a time of rising inflation and interest rates is a recipe for disaster on an epic scale. Flooding the economy with unearned money, and cutting taxes, will certainly stimulate demand - but the problem is not lack of demand it is shortage of supply (and this is outside the Govt's control). This will be highly inflationary, and thus the BoE will have to raise interest rates thus compounding the spiral. I have just read a Deutch Bank report saying an emergency rate rise will be needed - and they don't mean half a percent.

But, I think Truss has a different plan. As the funny money floods the economy she will call a snap election whilst the plebs are on the sugar high. Like all politicians she dreams of another 5 years safe in the knowledge that she is immune from the coming economic disaster.

mongoose said...

We really do need the world to be run by engineers and not bankers.

We talked about this fourteen fucking years ago while the work of my entire life - up until then anyway - was vapourised. Apart from the house, that is. Money was destroyed back in 2008-09 as a meaningful refuge of value. The banks - all of them - were, are zombies. Nothing that has happened since has changed that. I stand and sleep in my value and I own two javelins and many cricket bats to repel invaders.

Balancing the national books, mr mike, and I bow to your superior expertise, is beyond reach. The debt has to be destroyed by inflation. That this beggars a whole generation of the less well-off is an invisible side effect that TPTB do not care about. The covid money BTW is also invisible. Only Sweden benefits and who cares about them?

I fear that the energy nonsense is about to release horror.

In other news, an cricketer cheated in plain sight on the TV yesterday and not a single person - steeped in the honour and integrity which is cricket - could find a single word to denounce it. I'll do it. Deepti Sharma cheated yesterday and supported by her captain, neither should be allowed to play God's own game ever again.

In other news2, the women of Tehran rose up against the patriarchy as embodied in the religious police and are burning their scarves in the street. If I had a scarf, I'd burn it right here in Bandit Country in solidarity. All is not lost while a single one of us stands up.

Mike said...

PS I forgot to mention the falling exchange rate for sterling - makes imports (ie most stuff) more expensive, further adding to inflation and balance of payments issues.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the worst financial position for the UK in my lifetime. If this were a Company the directors would be in goal for trading whilst insolvent, falsifying accounts, and fraud.

ultrapox said...

the unfortunate consequence of raising taxes, mrs ishmael, is that the big or small businesspersons duly affected will - in order to maintain living-standards - reflexively increase the charges they make for their goods or services, and thus, once imposed, such cunning wealth-taxes can have a rather nasty habit of trickling straight down to the cash-strapped consumer, who - in order to pay for the goods, services, plus taxes of such fiscally targeted businesspeople - will immediately demand an inflation-stoking wage-rise from his or her employer...

nevertheless, whilst we continue to fight biden and johnson's desperate, corrupt, and completely unaffordable vanity-war against the angry russian bear - and as a result refuse to avail ourselves of the comparatively cheap russian energy supplied by mr ursus putinus - it sadly follows that any proposed liberal slashing of tax-rates will, of course, have bugger-all effect on our nation's precarious economic position...

and moreover, whilst basic tax-thresholds are not yet lifted, any such seemingly generous tax-breaks will likewise make little difference to the de rigueur devastation of our personal budgets which - according to the nato-cocksuckers in our neo-imperwialist western establishment - the ideological defence of true democracy now strictly demands.

you see, it's inflation upon which queasy quasi quantum is financially focused, however in a politically pathetic attempt to protect the all-sacred, but ultimately doomed, house-price bubble, he has still failed to whip out his biggest monetary tool - the bank of england's inflation-busting base-rate - and therefore, recognizing how the chancellor has tragically dragged his feet with regard to raising this inflation-harnessing interest-rate, the smart money has flown over to the united states, where currency-speculators are now enjoying the bank-balance-boosting benefit of a hugely interest-rate-enhanced dollar - and letting the pound plummet to historically low levels.

now, a decimated pound may be good for british exports - and hence for british business in general - but due to the increased cost of imports, including fuel, it is also highly inflationary, and will necessarily have to be rescued, fast - leaving the housing-market, along with the conservative's election-prospects, to crash in the most horrible and irretrievable manner.

oh yes, it's the ukrainian government which is dictating uk economic policy - and actually charging us for the privilege of doing so, the cheeky charlies - yet have no fear, for whilst some notorious nay-sayers may consider the ukrainian government to be a nasty neo-imperialist nest of neo-nazi nepotism, it remains my profound and unerring belief, given the persistent political presence in ukraine of an ethnically jewish president, that any far right nationalists recruited by the country's rather anti-russian reich, must simply be progressive nazis.

ultrapox said...

brexit may or may not have been done, but given that boris jerksperm:


1) killed at least 200000 people by locking the doors of the health-service and throwing extremely sick patients out of hospital

2) literally scared people to death by releasing fraudulently inflated sars-cov-2 mortality-rates

3) drained the life-blood of the economy by banning regular commerce

4) irreparably damaged the health of the nation by bullying citizens into submitting to unprecedentedly dangerous and ultimately ineffective vaccines - the testing of which was not only inadequate, but decidedly bent

5) allowed the criminal financiers, who had robbed their own banks, to refill their boots - under cover of the coronavirus-scam - with £450 billion worth of quantitative easing

6) handed out billions to buddies in bogus-coronavirus-contracts

7) deliberately provoked a war against russia which we in europe just cannot afford

8) armed and trained notorious nazi-battalions in ukraine - at absolutely phenomenal expense

9) wasted hundreds of billions on pointless vanity-projects - such as a redundant nuclear deterrent, a gratuitous hs2 railway-line, and dodgy chinko-froggy nuclear power-plants


we certainly were [done]...

and that's not the-half-of-it...

because following a deluge of dollar-buying - which has precipitated the collapse of the euro and sterling - interest-rates will now have to be hiked to the high heavens in order to attract currency-investors back to the pound and control runaway inflation...

unfortunately, however, this huge rise in interest-rates is of course set to decimate the uk housing-market, indefinitely.

never mind tho'...

because, looking on the bright side of life, the motherfucker-of-all-depressions will now also leave the middle-classes so damned skint they'll be forced to eat home-produced dog-burgers - all organically reared, naturellement...

and if hinkley point c goes critical, and blows a fuse, we'll never have to worry about anything ever again.

mrs ishmael said...

Masterly, gentlemen. I particularly enjoyed mr ultrapox' 9-point critique of the Johnson government.
Interestingly, Scotland, although still a significant part of the United Kingdom, at least for the time being, can do what it likes about taxes. Taxation and stamp duty, known here, more accurately as land and buildings tax, is part of the devolved settlement granted by former Conservative governments for some entirely undecipherable reason. One effect of the Trussonomic tax changes is to give an additional £630 million to Scotland via the Barnett Formula. Gnasher can simply squirrel this away - she does not have to use it to follow England's lead on tax cuts. This will mean that the Scottish tax-payer, already worse off than the English tax-payer, will be paying significantly more. We have five income tax bands (19, 20, 21, 41 and 46 per cent) and currently someone earning £50,000 per year is taxed roughly £1,500 more than they would be in England. There aren't too many of those chaps around, average salary being £31,672 - slightly higher than that in England. (Statista figures) If Sturgeon does not implement Kwarteng's cuts, your whoreson Scot will pay almost £1,900 more than your English fellow on his £50 grand. Currently, a Scot begins paying more tax than his English equivalent once he earns £27,850. After yesterday’s changes, he will start paying more when he reaches £14,732.
On the land and buildings tax, Scots pay 2 per cent when they sell their homes for more than £145,000 but less than £250,000, 5 per cent between £250,000 and £325,000, 10 per cent from £325,000 to £750,000 and 12 per cent on anything over that. The average house price in Scotland is £193,000, in Orkney £202,385, so the progressive tax bands have been referred to as a punitive tax on the property-rich.
God knows where all this will take us - back to England, unless Sturgeon either imposes the Kwarteng changes, or spins her contrarian position into something desirable under her nationalist socialist ideology. Seems odd that, in such a Utopia, where there are no prescription charges and personal care is free, Scotland has the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe, the highest drug and alcohol death rate, the lowest educational attainment and the most moribund health service.

verge said...

I've watched the replay a few times just now, mr mongoose, and it seems to me the England player moved out of her crease because the bowler was into her action, which was then abandoned to enable the run-out; so if I understand it right the bowler has cheated by tricking the batswoman into taking a step down the pitch - it's not as though she was starting to run before the bowler arrived at the crease. India have now been accused of lying, to boot, so the scandal continues to boil.

mongoose said...

You have it, mr v. A further point is that the bowler never had any intention of bowling the ball. The ball was therefore not live and a run-out could not be effected. It is just cheating but the dicks have got themselves into such a mess that they are unable to be nasty to the indians because, IPL money, waycism etc. They must know that they are now pariahs or the protective lie - which has been called out - would otherwise not be necessary. It's just simple cheating but nobody but a few is brave enough to say so.

The way to work out if this is acceptable or not is to imagine that it was your kid doing it when they were U11 or U12. What would we have said in the car on the way home?

verge said...

Thanks, mr mongoose, knew I could count on Ishmaelia's cricket department (that would be you & mr Mike) for further clarification on the matter.

Mrs ishmael will, no doubt, now be primed to work an allegorical "Mankad" reference into a Sunday political-tragical-comical-historical synopsis of the near future.

the westminster wanker said...

[bottom photo]

will a handjob make you feel any better, mr jobsgone?

bbc sausagefinder-general said...

[2nd photo]



oooh....i really miss boris's suçuk and two falafel

diane arsebutt said...

[top photo]

the smile that cracked the cash-register

Mike said...

The best course of action for Orkney now would be to hold a referendum to join the Russian Federation. Its demokracy, innit? And could fish face object to a referendum?

ultrapox said...

i feel you have been somewhat remiss, mrs ishmael, in failing to inform us of our king's whereabouts in the highlands: he is holed up in birkhall, apparently, and has no great desire to return to duties in the smoke.

mrs ishmael said...

What a lovely photo, mr ultrapox, of an elderly couple relaxing with their dogs on their rural hols. Is it an advert for Saga Holidays?
How could I have informed you of events in the Highlands? I live in Orkney - the Highlands are for driving through, footie to the floorboards, knuckles white on the steering wheel, en route to low-tax-England.

mrs ishmael said...

It wasn't intended as a Caption Contest, but it is now - thank you for your inspired submissions, mr ultrapox. I particularly liked "the smile that cracked the cash register"

mrs ishmael said...

"Anywhere but here," mr mike?
The preferred allegiance in Orkney is Norway - on account of ancient memories of being vassals of the King of Norway. And they send us a big tree for free every Christmas. And they have an Embassy down by the harbour.
I suppose it would be but a stepping stone to inclusion in the Greater Russian Empire, as Norway is probably on Putin's wish list.

mrs ishmael said...

Taking the piss, mr verge? Or setting a challenge? We don't do cricket, nah. I'm still shaking my head at the ghastly development in the only sport I know anything about (and that's not much). There I was, idly scrolling through the TV menu, and thought - ah - that'll do to entertain me whilst eating my dinner off a tray. Snooker Totties! Wearing uniforms with team colours! Ronnie O'Sullivan paired up with a gel! Having to wear a white shirt, when he knows how cool he looks in his customary blick!
Mixed Doubles, forsooth!

ultrapox said...

the photo should indeed be an ad for saga-hols, mrs ishmael...

but did you also happen to notice the handy implement standing in the left foreground of the picture? now, the tatler-article promotes a theory as to the precise use of this tool...

however i have it on the very best authority - from the horse's mouth so-to-speak - that the gadget in question - and i repeat this information strictly off the record of course - is actually deployed by his majesty to clear out nesting ferrets before consorting with camzilla.

yes, every snap tells a story, so they say, and having perused the windsor family-album, i cannot disagree - what a saga:


https://www.insider.com/photos-prince-charles-is-self-isolating-with-coronavirus-in-balmoral-2020-3

https://thecrownchronicles.co.uk/royal-residences/summer-holiday-royal-family-balmoral-birkhall/

https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/royals/prince-charles-coronavirus-quarantine-birkhall-balmoral-a4397191.html

https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1628428/prince-charles-photos-harry-william

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/news/a7805/queen-elizabeth-drove-middleton-family/

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/03/25/charles-and-camillas-beloved-birkhall-hideaway/


worth every fucking penny, i'd reckon

ultrapox said...

the photo should indeed be an ad for saga-hols, mrs ishmael...

but did you also happen to notice the handy implement standing in the left foreground of the picture? now, the tatler-article promotes a theory as to the precise use of this tool...

however i have it on the very best authority - from the horse's mouth so-to-speak - that the gadget in question - and i repeat this information strictly off the record of course - is actually deployed by his majesty to clear out nesting ferrets before consorting with camzilla.

yes, every snap tells a story, so they say, and having perused the windsor family-album, i cannot disagree - what a saga:


https://www.insider.com/photos-prince-charles-is-self-isolating-with-coronavirus-in-balmoral-2020-3

https://thecrownchronicles.co.uk/royal-residences/summer-holiday-royal-family-balmoral-birkhall/

https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/royals/prince-charles-coronavirus-quarantine-birkhall-balmoral-a4397191.html

https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1628428/prince-charles-photos-harry-william

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/news/a7805/queen-elizabeth-drove-middleton-family/

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2020/03/25/charles-and-camillas-beloved-birkhall-hideaway/


worth every fucking penny, i'd reckon


[ps: i formulated all the links, mrs ishmael, but your spam-detector didn't like them]

mongoose said...

Mixed doubles snooker, mrs i. That's v risque for Orkney. Is it on the big screen in the Parish Hall? As any fule now, in these take-it-turns games one's stronger player goes after their weaker player and before their stronger. And thusly is the game rigged from the start.

Nasty and cold down here too. Much too nasty to be a flanneled fool.

Mr and Mrs Royal Codger? Don't get me started. How many fecking houses do they need?

Mike said...

It seems I was overly optimistic in describing the UK's economic prospects as "a disaster on an epic scale".

Blowing up NS1 and NS2 changes all that. Germany is kaput, as is Europe. The UK imports gas from Europe, which is/was actually gas from Russia.

All bets are now off.

mongoose said...

"Cui bono?", as the clever people ask. Given that Rooskies control their end of the lines and can turn them off and on at will, it would seem strange - at first sight - that they would damage costly infrastructure. Though I might guess that in these tempestuous days, it is more profitable to flog gas when liquified and chucked into tankers. The spot market being many times the price of any european contracted deal. Perhaps they have decided to sell their lovely gas to the Chinese in future. Or perhaps they're keeping it to see Mother Russia through the coming ice age.

But who else might do such a thing? The Yanks... nah. The Brits... nah. The Germans... absolutely not. The Frogs? Now in days of old, I'd have seen the Frogs sinking the Hun with such an underhand trick but not in these Macromoronic times. The Chinese... Well, maybe. Greenpeace or one of their planet-saving colleagues? Well, a few cows are farting in the Baltic, and they surely have not the expertise.

It is a rum do and no mistake. I think we should get fracking yesterday. And open up some coal mines too.

mongoose said...

Word is leaking out blaming the Yanks, mr mike. Do I believe that? Why would they do that? I think that I may have become naive.

Mike said...

Its the Yanks, mr mongoose. What we are seeing is a fracture in the US Govt. The State Dept and the neocons who want war with Russia, and the Pentagon (who know they will loose) do not. Unfortunately the EU and the UK has backed the wrong horse and has become collateral damage. This will not end well. Russia has held back 90% of its forces in reserve waiting for this moment. The next week will be interesting.

mrs ishmael said...

You are scaring me,mr mike.You are suggesting that the US is bat-shit crazy, and that suggestion seems fairly credible - but where's the advantage in rupturing a gas pipe line that is part of an infrastructure that Europe and Britain - all NATO allies, rely on? If it becomes established that this was the work of the US, then surely that will work to their disadvantage?

mongoose said...

The world is indeed turning its gaze on the yanks, mr mike. Silly boys! But I guess that this is what happens when you start fiddling with the fundamentals and consequently have a President with almost zero authority. Has there ever been a more idiotic figure than Joe Biden?

Mike said...

There were demonstrations in recent days in Germany for the opening of NS2 and resumption of NS1. Industry and the people can see that the country is finished otherwise. The prosperity, myth if you wish, of German industrial strength since WW2 was built on reliable and cheap Russian energy.

Its always been the US's fear that Germany would become close to Russia - hence the tens of thousands of US troops and military bases in Germany. The old cliche about the US and NATO - keep America in, Russia out, and Germany down. The US has for years been against NS1, never mind NS2.

There were in recent days rumours that Saudi Arabia was negotiating a ceasefire (surrender) of Ukraine with Russia. Removal of sanctions and reopening of the pipelines would have been part of the deal. The US just killed that.

mongoose said...

Yes, that looks like it, mr mike. When all else fails blow something else up.

If anyone was at all concerned about - energy security, I mean - they might want to consider just how long all those lovely offshore windmills are going to last if there is even a small war. Where will we be then, eh? I don't know but we will be cold and hungry.

ultrapox - part one said...

thank you for your commendation, mrs ishmael, and it in fact makes me wonder whether - in search of the true reason for a crashing pound and stock-market - we mightn't both perhaps have arrived at the same conclusion - namely that the only factor which spooked the financial markets was the colour of our new chancellor's skin.

now, i've already written here at length on the subject of how ultra-conservative anti-communist elements - working from within the british and american security-services - deliberately encouraged, and actually aggravated, the irish republican insurgency which in the 1970s ultimately undermined harold wilson's socialist government...

and i've also previously opined upon how strikes hardly ever happen during labour terms in office...

well, history is repeating itself with a tedious and ominous vengeance, because in order to strategically undermine confidence in the uk's currency and stock markets, the good old negro-hating neo-colonial labour party is today complicit in dusting off, and then cynically employing, its favourite darwinian racial stereotype: the limited intelligence black.

oh dear, it was never going to take long for labour's british neo-liberals to emulate their american democrat mentors in the vicious racial abuse of black conservatives, yet somehow those shameless left-wing snakes slithering along parliament's opposition-benches seem to have achieved this dubious feat almost instantaneously - for you see, despite kwasi addo alfred kwarteng having:


1) won the harrow history prize at his independent preparatory school

2) secured a king's scholarship to study at eton college

3) been awarded the newcastle scholarship prize

4) gained a first class degree in classics and history at trinity college, cambridge

5) twice won the browne medal at cambridge university

6) attended harvard university on a kennedy scholarship

7) returned to earn a phd in economic history from cambridge university

8) worked as a financial analyst at jpmorgan chase

9) worked as a financial analyst at westlb

10) worked as a financial analyst at hedge-fund odey asset management

11) been blessed with an economist father


sir keir hardly and his kommandants - armed with a clenched fistful of bogus economics - still disingenuously insist on making the deeply disrespectful claim that our first african-british chancellor-of-the-exchequer cannot even do his sums correctly.

yes, not only is starmer's mob guilty of indulging in unadulterated victorian era racism, but also of talking-down the ever racism-receptive financial markets - along of course, with our nation's economy. wow, in my book, that's traitor-talk, frankly - and the feet of its disseminators should not touch the ground until their arses have hit the tower of london's cold unforgiving flagstones.

(continued in part two below)

ultrapox - part two said...

(continued from part one above)

unfortunately, labour is the demolisher of democracy - its uneducated and uneconomical criticism of the chancellor merely the braying of the ignorant. indeed, having observed the ultra-devious manner in which this so-called left-wing opposition-party sabotaged its own election-campaign - in order to rid itself of an anti-racist anti-war socialist as leader, and allow the installation of establishment-warmonger boris bioweapon as prime minister - i could easily suppose national sabotage to be labour's only suite - especially given its unqualified support of prime minister johnsnort when he locked britain into the genocide of its own elderly and vulnerable, then instigated a neo-imperialist nato war which will, at the very least, bring us to the very brink of economic destruction.

so is this the modern labour party's fundamental game-plan - to gain power by sabotaging the economy of its own country? or is this simply a subversion-tactic taken straight from the cia-playbook?

finally, i am sorry to have to disagree, mrs ishmael, however i believe that ms diane arsebutt should be thoroughly ashamed of her racially motivated attack upon the first african-british chancellor of the exchequer - was she committing a 'black-on-black', a 'white-on-black', or does the commie chamaeleon just flash conveniently from one colour to the other?

no, i'm afraid there's no saving sir keir niggerbasher and his aggregate of afro-allergic mps in the british labour party: they all think they're at a dog-whistle derby.

ultrapox said...

by-the-way, may we stop mourning her late majesty now, mrs ishmael?