#British Chancellor of the Exchequer

[gone2soon-rip]

ALISTAIR DARLING,BARON DARLING OF ROULANISH (1953-Died November 30th 2023,at 70.Cancer).British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2007 to 2010. A member of the Labour Party, he was a member of Parliament (MP) from 1987 to 2015, representing Edinburgh Central and Edinburgh South West.Alistair Darling - Wikipedia

[danteskygod]

Right, so it turns out that Nadhim Zahawi was just being careless with his income tax returns?

At the same time as being Chancellor of the Exchequer, in charge of The Treasury.

And whilst threatening to sue those accusing him of tax avoidance as there was no truth in it at all.

Well, that's alright then(!)

[saintartemis]

"The British Museum curators I have encountered in the course of my work – who do not include the man who has been named in connection with the alleged thefts – have been among the most diligent, generous and committed public servants I have ever met. They are also paid shockingly little given the qualifications and skills required for the work at the country’s most celebrated museum. (A highly specialised job as a curator focused on Roman-period Egypt, for example, is currently advertised at £32,000.) The case of alleged thefts is a terrible blow for those working on the ground in the museum, and the cause of fury and disbelief. And yet, no one seems to care very much for the curators, as the media become ever more frenzied, and the culture warriors sharpen their swords."

"The ultimate irony, the elephant in the room? The chair of this foundering museum is George Osborne, the ex-chancellor of the exchequer, now multimillionaire fund manager. When he took a job at BlackRock in 2017, he was paid a day-rate of £13,000 – yes, earning in three days more than that new British Museum curator will make in a year. As chancellor he was behind the “austerity” cuts to public services and cultural organisations of 2010 onwards. That was not a theft. What it was was a withholding – on a grand and unforgivable scale – of care."

[sophiamcdougall]

So I have this friend who lives in my building. She is a naturally gregarious type, a bit of a people-collector, so last year instead of having one birthday party, she decided to have four, one party a week, for a whole month, all in her flat. Don't know how she does it. And the other thing about my friend is that although we live in what is generally considered a rough area, she is/was actually posh enough to have been to St Paul's School For Girls. And if you know anything about British public schools, the entire (rotten) point of them is basically that you will grow up to be part of the in-group of influential people.

So I've got somewhat used to finding out every so often that she vaguely knows some celebrity or news pundit or whatever. I was, however, a little shocked to find out she had a mutual friend with Kwasi fucking Kwarteng, partner in crime to Liz Truss the Lettuce-Conquered, you know, the ones who crashed the British economy. But not as shocked as my friend was to run into him at a party, whereupon he said to her "oh, I'm sorry I didn't make it to any of your parties!"

As if he had been invited!! As if it was a given that he could just turn up in any private home in London and everyone would be pleased to see him!! As if it was to be expected that people were out there hosting parties and being disappointed that Kwasi Kwarteng didn't show up despite never even having fucking met the guy!!

And I was so shocked at the idea I had just barely escaped being at a party which Kwasi Kwarteng could potentially have crashed at any moment that I had to have this story repeated to me twice to believe I'd actually understood. Listen. My friends. I generally like it here. I do. There is a lot of green space nearby that was a godsend during lockdown. I have a large balcony and even though the council won't fix the fucking drainage, it is overflowing with flowers. The local cornershop put a "defend drag story hour" flyer in the window. I have multiple neighbours who will feed my cat if I am away. But you know. One time I booked a plumber in and at the last minute he refused to come because the last time he parked his van here all his stuff got stolen. Another neighbour has seen people pissing in the stairwells. There is that heroin addict on the floor below who every so often runs amok and threatens to stab people. He threatened to stab me once and this year he helped me get a book case up the stairs -- people contain multitudes. The very least I should be able to expect here is to be safe from running into the former Chancellor of the fucking Exchequer.

[justforbooks]

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher

LG, OM, DStJ, PC, FRS, HonFRSC (née Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman and Conservative politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to hold the position. As prime minister, she implemented economic policies known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.

Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist before becoming a barrister. She was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her secretary of state for education and science in his 1970–1974 government. In 1975, she defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become leader of the opposition, the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK.

On becoming prime minister after winning the 1979 general election, Thatcher introduced a series of economic policies intended to reverse high inflation and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an oncoming recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised greater individual liberty, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Her popularity in her first years in office waned amid recession and rising unemployment. Victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her landslide re-election in 1983. She survived an assassination attempt by the Provisional IRA in the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing and achieved a political victory against the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1984–85 miners' strike. In 1986, Thatcher oversaw the deregulation of UK financial markets, leading to an economic boom, in what came to be known as the Big Bang.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term with another landslide in 1987, but her subsequent support for the Community Charge (also known as the "poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her increasingly Eurosceptic views on the European Community were not shared by others in her cabinet. She resigned as prime minister and party leader in 1990, after a challenge was launched to her leadership, and was succeeded by John Major, her chancellor of the Exchequer. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher (of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire) which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. In 2013, she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel, London, at the age of 87.

A polarising figure in British politics, Thatcher is nonetheless viewed favourably in historical rankings and public opinion of British prime ministers. Her tenure constituted a realignment towards neoliberal policies in Britain; the complex legacy attributed to this shift continues to be debated into the 21st century.

Reputation

Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as British prime minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury in the late 19th century (13 years and 252 days, in three spells) and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th century (14 years and 305 days).

Having led the Conservative Party to victory in three consecutive general elections, twice in a landslide, she ranks among the most popular party leaders in British history regarding votes cast for the winning party; over 40 million ballots were cast in total for the party under her leadership. Her electoral successes were dubbed a "historic hat trick" by the British press in 1987.

Thatcher ranked highest among living persons in the 2002 BBC poll 100 Greatest Britons. In 1999, Time deemed Thatcher one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. In 2015 she topped a poll by Scottish Widows, a major financial services company, as the most influential woman of the past 200 years; and in 2016 topped BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour Power List of women judged to have had the biggest impact on female lives over the past 70 years. In 2020, Time magazine included Thatcher's name on its list of 100 Women of the Year. She was chosen as the Woman of the Year in 1982 when the Falklands War began under her command, resulting in the British victory.

In contrast to her relatively poor average approval rating as prime minister, Thatcher has since ranked highly in retrospective opinion polling and, according to YouGov, is "see[n] in overall positive terms" by the British public. Just after her death in 2013, according to a poll by The Guardian, about half of the public viewed her positively while one third viewed her negatively. In a 2019 opinion poll by YouGov, most Britons rated her as Britain's greatest post-war leader (with Churchill coming second). According to the poll, more than four in ten Britons (44%) think that Thatcher was a "good" or "great" prime minister, compared to 29% who think she was a "poor" or "terrible" one. She was voted the fourth-greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a 2011 poll of 139 academics organised by MORI. In a 2016 University of Leeds��survey of 82 academics specialising in post-1945 British history and politics, she was voted the second-greatest British prime minister after the Second World War.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[aimeedaisies]

The Coronation Procession

This week I spent a few days in London, so I decided to walk the route that the newly coronated King Charles III and Queen Camilla will take, called the Coronation Procession! The Kings Procession, before the service is this route, just in reverse. I took pictures of the highlights of the route, it will definitely be something to look back on in the future!

Westminster Abbey

Founded in 960 and consecrated in 1065, Westminster Abbey, has seen the coronations of 39 English and British monarchs and 16 royal weddings and is the burial site for 18 English, Scottish and British monarchs.

Whitehall, Downing Street and Horse Guards Parade

Whitehall is recognised as the centre of the Government of the United Kingdom and is lined with numerous departments and ministries, including the Ministry of Defence, Horse Guards and the Cabinet Office. The Palace of Whitehall previously occupied the area and was the residence of Kings Henry VIII through to William III, before it was destroyed by fire in 1698; only the Banqueting House has survived. As well as government buildings, the street is known for its memorial statues and monuments, including the UK's primary war memorial, the Cenotaph and the Women of World War Two memorial.

Downing Street was built in the 1680s by Sir George Downing. For more than three hundred years, it has held the official residences of both the First Lord of the Treasury, the office now synonymous with that of the Prime Minister, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, the office held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister's official residence is 10 Downing Street, and the Chancellor's official residence is Number 11. The government's Chief Whip has an official residence at Number 12. In practice, these office-holders may live in different flats; the current Chief Whip actually lives at Number 9.

Horse Guards Parade is a large parade ground off Whitehall. It is the site of the annual ceremonies of Trooping the Colour, which commemorates the monarch's official birthday, and the Beating Retreat. Horse Guards Parade was formerly the site of the Palace of Whitehall's tiltyard, where tournaments (including jousting) were held in the time of Henry VIII. It was also the scene of annual celebrations of the birthday of Queen Elizabeth I. The procession will go past the entrance, not onto the parade ground.

Trafalgar Square and the Equestrian Statue of King Charles I

The square is named after the Battle of Trafalgar, a British naval victory in the Napoleonic Wars with France and Spain that took place on 21 October 1805 off the coast of Cape Trafalgar, southwest Spain. In the centre of the square is Nelson's Column built to commemorate Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson's decisive victory at the Battle of Trafalgar over the combined French and Spanish navies, during which he lost his life. The monument was constructed between 1840 and 1843 to a design by William Railton. The statue of Nelson was carved from Craigleith sandstone by sculptor Edward Hodges Baily. The four bronze lions around its base, designed by Sir Edwin Landseer, were added in 1867.

The equestrian statue of Charles I is a work by the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur, probably cast in 1633. It is considered the central point of London. Its location at Charing Cross is on the former site of the most elaborate of the Eleanor crosses erected by Edward I (one of 12, to commemorate his late wife, put in location throughout the route of her funeral procession stops back to London). The statue faces down Whitehall towards Charles I's place of execution at Banqueting House. It was commissioned by Charles's Lord High Treasurer Richard Weston for the garden of his country house in Roehampton, Surrey. Following the English Civil War the statue was sold to a metalsmith to be broken down, but he hid it until the Restoration. It was installed in its current, far more prominent location in the centre of London in 1675, and the elaborately carved plinth dates from that time.

Admiralty Arch

Admiralty Arch was commissioned by King Edward VII in memory of his mother, Queen Victoria, and designed by Aston Webb, who also designed the Victoria Memorial and the new façade of Buckingham Palace at the other end of the Mall. It once served as residence of the First Sea Lord and was used by the Admiralty.

The Mall, St James Palace and Clarence House

The Mall is the long red coloured road joining Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace. It has seen several huge celebrations such as Victory in Europe Day (8 May 1945), lots of state visits, parades and Jubilee celebrations. When the royal family stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, The Mall is packed from top to bottom of vast crowds. The surface of The Mall is coloured red to give the effect of a giant red carpet leading up to Buckingham Palace. This colour was obtained using synthetic iron oxide pigment.

St James's Palace is the most senior royal palace in London. It is the ceremonial meeting place of the Accession Council, the office of the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, as well as the London residence of Princess Anne, the Princess Royal and her husband, The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Princess Beatrice and Princess Alexandra. The Proclamation Gallery (pictured above) is a part of St James's Palace, and it is used after the death of a reigning monarch. The Accession Council meets to declare the new monarch. Once the monarch has made a sacred oath to the council, the Garter King of Arms steps onto the Proclamation Gallery, which overlooks Friary Court to proclaim the new monarch.

Clarence House currently serves as the London residence of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. It has been Charles's residence since 2003. From 1953 until 2002 it was home to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and before her, it was the official home of her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth II.

The Queen Victoria Memorial

The Queen Victoria monument and surrounding gardens were created between 1904 and 1924. The main statue was unveiled by King George V. As well as Victoria, there are statues representing courage, constancy, victory, charity, truth and motherhood. In summer the flower beds are filled with geraniums, spider plants, salvias and weeping figs. Scarlet geraniums are used to match the tunics of The Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace. In winter time the beds are filled with about 50,000 yellow wallflowers and red tulips.

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace has served as the official London residence of the UK’s sovereigns since 1837. Buckingham Palace has 775 rooms. These include 19 State rooms, 52 Royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms. King George III bought Buckingham House in 1761 for his wife Queen Charlotte to use as a comfortable family home close to St James's Palace, where many court functions were held. Buckingham House became known as the Queen's House, and 14 of George III's 15 children were born there. Queen Victoria was the first sovereign to take up residence in July 1837 and in June 1838 she was the first British sovereign to leave from Buckingham Palace for a Coronation. Her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 soon showed up the Palace's shortcomings. A serious problem for the newly married couple was the absence of any nurseries (for her nine children) and too few bedrooms for visitors. The only solution was to move the Marble Arch - it now stands at the north-east corner of Hyde Park - and build a fourth wing, thereby creating a quadrangle. The cost of the new wing was largely covered by the sale of George IV's Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

I then walked past the Royal Mews, where the Gold State Coach is being prepared for the Coronation. Then onto Hyde Park, then Kensington Gardens and finally Kensington Palace, which is the official London residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent. I then treated myself to a scrummy yet expensive piece of lemon cake from the Prada cafè in Harrods 🍰😋

information from wikipedia, royal parks and the royal family website

[kattahj]

Reading Julian Clary's wikipedia page because he's so delightful on Taskmaster:

On 12 December 1993, he made an infamous appearance at the British Comedy Awards,

Oh no, what happened? Please don't tell me he's...

where he made a joke comparing the set to Hampstead Heath (some of which is known as a cruising area for gay men) and stated he had just been fisting the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, who had presented an award earlier in the ceremony. Due to the instant audience reaction, the punchline ("Talk about a red box!") was widely overlooked.

That's it? That's nothing! Who the hell got offended by...

Although the joke was met with uproarious laughter from the audience and Lamont himself did not complain over it, he was criticised in some newspapers, particularly by the Daily Mail and The Sun, who both launched a campaign to have him banned from television.

Oh. Oh of course. Same little bitches as always.

[mariacallous]

It would, Grant Shapps says, be bad news for British democracy if Labour won too large a majority next month. For a moment I wondered whether his words reflected a realisation that his own party had only been able to manage stable government this century when it was in coalition with someone else, but I don’t think this was his point. 

It’s true that governments with small majorities are more constrained, but this isn’t obviously a good thing. Our years of Brexit deadlock were only broken once the government had a comfortable majority. And if you believe, as some on the right claim they do, that Britain needs planning reform and plenty of housebuilding, then a Labour government with a large majority is the likeliest route to those things. Certainly the Conservatives haven’t been able to deliver them with theirs.

But let me offer a different counterargument: it would be very good for our democracy for the Conservative Party to suffer a crushing defeat. The Conservatives have behaved terribly in government, and politicians, like children, need to know that their actions have consequences.

In 2019, British voters were faced with an unusual and appalling situation: a choice between two men both utterly unfit to be prime minister. Leaving aside Jeremy Corbyn’s political abilities — he could never persuade even Labour MPs that he ought to head a government — and his instincts — he would go on to suggest the British government had provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — he had neither the temperament nor the intellect for the top job. So voters opted for what they perceived to be the lesser of two evils.

The result was that Labour paid a price for offering an unfit leader, and the Conservatives were rewarded. And that has been a bad thing. It told Tories that integrity in public life was optional. Boris Johnson, of course, needed no encouragement on that score, but his weak-minded followers, in Parliament, on his staff, and in the media, thought they had won a free pass. “Voters don’t care,” we were assured, after each fresh scandal broke. Until it turned out that they did. 

For all their later cries of anguish as Boris Johnson’s character was laid bare on the public stage, Conservatives knew exactly who he was when they made him prime minister. If the precise details of his downfall were pleasingly novel — who had “locks up the nation while hosting a series of wild parties” on their bingo card? — it was no surprise that he thought rules were for other people and lied as was convenient. This had been his entire career. I hope my colleague Paul Goodman will forgive me reminding him of what was surely the greatest ever ConservativeHome editorial, which suggested that Johnson should be prime minister, but with rival Jeremy Hunt as a deputy, to handle the tedious business of running the country. Has any endorsement ever been less enthusiastic?

Conservative MPs knew who Johnson was during the 2019 election campaign, when he insisted his Brexit proposals wouldn’t create a regulatory border in the Irish Sea. Did any Tory correct the prime minister as he misled voters about a key feature of the deal that was the centrepiece of his election campaign? Of course not. Voters don’t care!

And that’s just Johnson. Is there any Conservative out there who wants to argue that, since their party took sole charge of the country in 2015, they have been a good government? Four years spent arguing about Brexit followed by 18 months of a lockdown policy that was conspicuously more interested in pubs than schools, and then three years of infighting. There are bright spots — the vaccine and the leadership on Ukraine — but the main theme has been chaos. We have had as many chancellors of the exchequer in the last nine years as we did in the preceding 30. 

And what is there to show for it? The party’s central economic policy has been to make it harder for British businesses to sell things to France. And, in fairness, it has achieved that — even if, for some reason, Conservatives are now reluctant to talk about it. Take that away, and you’re left with what? High taxes and a crumbling public realm. For months now, the most damning criticism of the state of the country at Prime Minister’s Questions has come from the Tory benches, as MPs complain that their constituents can’t see dentists or doctors. Not even Conservative MPs think that life is good under the Conservatives.

So I’m happy for the party to be crushed. I don’t go quite as far as the 46 per cent of the public who say Conservatives deserve to lose every seat, but I could live with that result far more easily than the party holding 250 seats. 

I want the Conservative Party from 2015 to 2024 to be a cautionary tale that politics professors whisper to terrify their students. Because if you can govern this badly, behave this badly, without any consequences, that would bode very ill indeed for our democracy.

[domlarkin]

Rachel Reeves: ( British Chancellor of the Exchequer)

It is almost Halloween

And it seems that Rachel Reeves

Is looking more and more like

A witch! Certainly, she frights

The poor and the needy who

Mistakenly thought the new

Labour Government would close

The wealth gap. O when the snow

Falls in winter, certainly

Many pensioners will freeze

To death, while she strokes her cat!

As for change, fat chance of that.

[misspeppermint2003]

Picrew Animated Portraits of World Politicians 4

After three parts at the first day, I made the fourth part of this collection with an image maker. It is also consisting of 12 politicians from different countries.

Dutch FvD party leader Thierry Baudet (left), former U.S. Presidents Donald Trump (middle) & Barack Obama (right)

British Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (left), former Home Secretary Priti Patel (middle) & Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (right)

British Labour Party Deputy National Campaign Coordinator Ellie Reeves (left), Dutch former Deputy Prime Minister Sigrid Kaag (middle) & Dutch former Socialist Party leader Lilian Marijnissen (right)

Dutch former Labour Party leader Lilianne Ploumen (left), British former Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab (middle) & Dutch former Second Deputy Prime Minister Wopke Hoekstra (right)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Tomiwa Owolade

Published: May 13, 2024

Zadie Smith seems like the poster girl for progressive ideology. She is mixed-race. She was born and raised in London. The characters in her fiction are ethnically and religiously diverse. She hates Brexit. She is deeply worried about climate change. She thinks a ceasefire in Gaza is necessary and has condemned Binyamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government. Tick, tick, tick.

Smith published an essay in The New Yorker last week in which she praised the “brave students” in Columbia University and elsewhere who demand that Israel should end its military attacks on Gaza. She argued that to “send the police in to arrest young people peacefully insisting upon a ceasefire represents a moral injury to us all. To do it with violence is a scandal. How could they do less than protest, in this moment?”

She argues that just as “there was no way to ‘win’ in Vietnam” in the 1960s, Hamas will not be “eliminated” today. That a ceasefire is not just politically wise, it is also an “ethical necessity”.

This did nothing to stop many people on Twitter/X from denouncing Smith as an apologist for Israel. This is because she also argued in her essay that words like “Zionist” should not be treated as a “monolith”. That Jewish students should not be made to feel unsafe on university campuses. And that the conflict can’t be reduced to rhetoric and buzzwords: it is too grave and complex for that.

Smith was castigated for ignorant fence-sitting, for undermining the cause of justice, for being a stooge of the establishment. We have lost Zadie, some of them moaned, as though she belonged to their tribe and has now run away. Others proclaimed that she has always been a liberal, not a progressive, as if this constitutes a definitive mark against her. But the most striking responses were from those who argued that Smith had betrayed her racial identity.

“I am not quite sure why people are shocked,” one account said about Smith’s article. “This is the price of admission into elite white literary and institutional circles.” (The person who posted this, Priyamvada Gopal, is a professor of postcolonial studies at that famously marginalised institution the University of Cambridge.)

Another individual, mentioning Smith along with the head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh and the novelist Bernardine Evaristo, affirmed “there is a very specific reason why the British establishment selects these women”. The “establishment will never select anyone who will quake the foundation”.

Smith’s liberal politics — with her novelistic taste for nuance — thus renders her unfit to be at the vanguard of progressive politics. Someone of her race, it is implied, should know better.

But no one should be a poster girl or boy for left-wing ideology, or any other kind of politics, simply on the basis of their racial identity. The prime minister is an Asian man and leader of the Conservative Party. The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is an Asian man who represents the Labour Party. Until very recently, the first minister of Scotland was an Asian man who led the Scottish National Party. None of these men are any more or any less Asian than the other.

The majority of ethnic minority people in Britain support the Labour Party but before Jeremy Hunt the last four chancellors of the exchequer were called Kwasi, Nadhim, Rishi and Sajid. The favourite to be the next leader of the Tory party was born Kemi Adegoke and spent most of her childhood in Nigeria.

Diversity and progressivism are not the same thing. London is one of the most diverse cities in the UK but it is also one of the most socially conservative: polling for the Christian think tank Theos found that 29 per cent of Londoners, for instance, believe that same-sex relationships are wrong in some cases; only 23 per cent in the rest of the country think the same. London is conservative because of its diversity, not in spite of it.

Rather than being progressive and secular, many ethnic minority people in the UK are more socially conservative and religious than the rest of the population. This is true elsewhere: 92 per cent of black Americans who voted in the 2020 presidential election supported Joe Biden. But this does not mean that black Democrats constitute the most left-wing base within the party. They are on the right of the Democratic Party, not the left.

The overwhelming majority of black Americans support the Democrats but Donald Trump increased his vote share among black Americans between 2016 and 2020, particularly among younger and male black voters. These trends are holding up for the election this year.

Inferring political opinions exclusively from someone’s background is an abdication of curiosity. Anyone who cares about diversity ought also to care about pluralism: the principle that people who share a cultural background can nevertheless differ in their beliefs.

We should never assume that someone is, or ought to be, progressive by virtue of their race. Some black and brown people are progressive. Others are liberal or conservative. Some are ideologically indifferent. Others shift from one position to another. But this is not because of their race. It is because of their personality, their upbringing, their interests: that irreducible quality inherent in all of us that should never be forsaken for a narrow fixation on group identity.

Eldridge Cleaver was a spokesman for the Black Panthers in the 1960s. He called for a militant revolution and described Ronald Reagan (at that time the governor of California) as a pig. By the 1980s Cleaver was a Mormon and endorsed Reagan to be president of the United States — a fascinating narrative arc worthy of exploration by a novelist as finely attuned to the ironies and complexities of life as Zadie Smith.

[eaglesnick]

The Lower Classes

George Osborne, former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, and architect of Tory austerity cuts, was recently summoned to the Covid inquiry to discuss the impact of his cruel and heartless policies on the preparedness of the NHS to deal with the pandemic. Needless to say, he accepted NO responsibility what-so-ever.

“He denied that austerity depleted health and social care capacity. He denied that the state of the social care system became worse in his time in office. And he denied that austerity has any connection to worse health outcomes for the most disadvantaged in UK society.”  (TUC: 20/06/23)

It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what would happen to our health and social services. There were plenty of warning signs and advice being given, advice he deliberately chose to ignore.

“A strong warning that austerity policies can do more harm than good has been delivered by economists from the International Monetary Fund, in a critique of the neoliberal doctrine that has dominated economics for the past three decades.” (Guardian: 27/05/16)

Why did Osborne ignore the warnings of economic groups like the IMF and other reputable forecasters? He did it to save the Tory Party’s rich friends in banking, business and commerce. Osborne himself admitted as much when he told the Covid inquiry:

“If we had not had a clear plan to put public finances on a sustainable path then Britain might have experienced a fiscal crisis…” (LBC: 20/06/23

So, “protecting" the economy and the rich was more important than protecting public services and the most vulnerable in society. The irony here is that borrowing rates were at an ALL TIME low during Tory austerity cuts so borrowing money to help essential public services could have been done very cheaply. What is even more ironic is that Osborne’s austerity programme was based on a false premise.

“George Osborne plunged the UK into austerity “all for nothing” due to an error on an Excel spreadsheet... The whole reason that George Osborne and David Cameron launched austerity was because of a Harvard paper that did a whole bunch of calculations – which showed that if your debt was exceeding 90 per cent of GDP then the economy would shrink… Actually it had been done on a spreadsheet and a bunch of rows of data had been missed out, which if they had been included it would have shown that the economy wouldn’t shrink.”

(The London Economic: 22/09/22)

In other words, if Osborne had done his job correctly and checked the data he would have discovered there was absolutely no need for austerity cuts and the resulting catastrophic consequences.

I use the term “catastrophic consequences” advisedly. Not only have ALL of our public services been starved of funding under Tory austerity cuts, to the point they are all on the verge of collapse, but worse still our children and grandchildren have suffered physically from Tory austerity.

“Children raised under UK austerity shorter than European peers, study finds. Average height of boys and girls aged five has slipped due to poor diet and NHS cuts, experts say”  (Guardian: 21/06/23)

Children's height is a very good indicator of general living conditions, such as poverty, illness, stress, infections and sleep quality. Studies show that between 2010 and 2020,UK children who grew up during this period have fallen 30 places behind there European peers in height. Even more frightening is the fact that  British children are now displaying alarming rates of increasing poor health, 700 children a year being admitted to hospital with malnutrition, rickets or scurvy.

Under Osborne’s austerity cuts the rich have grown richer. In 2018, the Equality Trust reported that the rich had increased their wealth by £274 billion over a five-year period.  Meanwhile, as the rich continue to see their wealth increase many ordinary families are seeing the average height of their children shrink. Put brutally, the Tory Party has been, and continues to, deliberately sacrifice the health of the nations children for their own personal gain and that of their rich friends.

The term “lower class" was never more poignant.

[georgefairbrother]

January proved to be a month for unwanted economic milestones in Britain; in both 1972 and 1982 the unemployment rate rose to devastating levels.

In January 1972, the Heath government announced that, for the first time since the Great Depression, more than one million people were officially out of work; the exact number was 1 023 583. Anger in the House of Commons spilled over, resulting in a sitting being temporarily suspended by the Speaker to allow tempers to cool.

Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath stated that he ‘deeply deplored’ the level of unemployment, while Employment Secretary Robert Carr promised to ‘wage all-out war’ against the problems of inflation and boom-bust economics that had contributed to the jobless total. Industrial restructuring across a variety of industries, including British Steel and the Port of London Authority, led to thousands of redundancies which also contributed to the overall figures.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Anthony Barber, proposed major tax cuts in the budget and the setting up of an Industrial Development Executive to inject millions of pounds into new industrial projects. He told the Commons that his budget would add 10% to the UK’s growth in two years, and in a move that probably made future Thatcherites foam at the mouth, dismissed concerns about his forecast £3.4bn public sector borrowing requirement.

But things didn’t go according to plan; Inflation soon spiked, and within months the Chancellor was forced to take deflationary measures, including a pay freeze that led to a major confrontation with the miners. The government’s dreams of pay restraint were soon in tatters, submitting to the miners’ demands leading to a pay rise of 35%(!). The actions of both Government and National Union of Mineworkers would have major implications for the coal industry, the trade union movement, and society as a whole, a decade later.

By 1982, the Tories were back in power (Heath lost 2 elections in 1974, resulting in 6 years of Labour government, under Wilson and Callaghan), but this time under Margaret Thatcher there was a remarkably similar economic benchmark set, only it was much worse.

The BBC reported;

“…The number of people out of work in Britain has risen above three million for the first time since the 1930s. The official jobless total, announced today, is 3,070,621. It means one in eight people is out of work

Rates of unemployment vary across the country - in Northern Ireland it is nearly 20% and 15 or 16% in most parts of Scotland the North East and North West - only in the South East does it drop below 10%.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was given a rough ride when she tried to defend the government’s record on employment in the Commons this afternoon.

Mrs Thatcher was frequently heckled as she insisted there were ‘encouraging signs’ the economy was improving. The Speaker was forced to intervene and call for order…”

It was ironic that one of the Tory campaign platforms for the 1979 general election was ‘Labour isn’t Working’.

Sources; BBC reporting, BBC On This Day

[justforbooks]

In 1941 a secret British radio station called on Germans to rise up against Hitler. Run by German exiles, it was explicitly left wing. The station’s target audience was “the Good German”. Its broadcasts were serious and idealistic: a ray of light amid totalitarian darkness. They were also a complete flop. With Nazi propaganda rampant, and Hitler’s armies seemingly invincible and on the march across Europe, few bothered to listen in.

It was at this point that Britain’s wartime intelligence services tried a more radical approach. That summer, a talented journalist called Sefton Delmer was given the job of beating the Nazis at their own information game. Delmer spent his childhood in Berlin and spoke fluent German. In the early 1930s he chronicled Hitler’s rise to power – flying in the Führer’s plane and attending his mass rallies – as a correspondent for the Daily Express.

Working from an English country house, Delmer launched an experimental radio station. He called it Gustaf Siegfried Eins, or GS1. Instead of invoking lofty precepts, or Marxism, Delmer targeted what he called the “inner pig-dog”. The answer to Goebbels, Delmer concluded, was more Goebbels. His radio show became a grotesque cabaret aimed at the worst and most Schwein-like aspects of human nature.

As Peter Pomerantsev writes in his compelling new study How to Win an Information War, Delmer was a “nearly forgotten genius of propaganda”. GS1 backed Hitler and was staunchly anti-Bolshevik. Its mysterious leader, dubbed der Chef, ridiculed Churchill using foul Berlin slang. At the same time the station lambasted the Nazi elite as a group of decadent crooks. They stole and whored, it said, as British planes bombed and decent Germans suffered.

Delmer’s goal was to undermine nazism from within, by turning ordinary citizens against their aloof party bosses. A cast of Jewish refugees and former cabaret artists played the role of Nazis. Recordings took place in a billiards room, located inside the Woburn Abbey estate in Bedfordshire, a centre of wartime operations. Some of the content was real. Other elements were made up, including titillating accounts of SS orgies at a Bavarian monastery.

The station was a sensation. Large numbers of Germans tuned in. The US embassy in Berlin – America had yet to enter the war – thought it to be the work of German nationalists or disgruntled army officers. The Nazis fretted about its influence. One unimpressed person was Stafford Cripps, the future chancellor of the exchequer, who complained to Anthony Eden, the then minister for foreign affairs, about the station’s use of “filthy pornography”.

By 1943, Delmer’s counter-propaganda operation had grown. He and his now expanded team ran a live news bulletin aimed at German soldiers, the Soldatensender Calais, as well as a series of clandestine radio programmes in a variety of languages. Delmer’s artist wife Isabel joined in. She drew explicit pictures showing a blonde woman having sex with a dark-skinned foreigner. Partisans sent the pamphlets to homesick German troops stationed in Crete.

Others who made a contribution to Delmer’s productions included Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, and the 26-year-old future novelist Muriel Spark. Fleming worked for naval intelligence. He brought titbits of information that made the show feel genuine, including the latest results from U-boat football leagues. Many Germans guessed the station was British. But they listened anyway, feeling it represented “them”.

Pomerantsev is an expert on propaganda and the author of two previous books on the subject, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible and This Is Not Propaganda. The son of political dissidents in Kyiv, he was born in Ukraine and grew up in London. During the 00s he lived in Moscow and worked there as a TV producer. Since Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion he has been part of a project that documents Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Like Delmer, Pomeranstev has personal experience of two rival cultures: one authoritarian, the other liberal and democratic. He draws parallels between the fascist 1930s and our own populist age. The same “underlying mindset” can be seen in dictators such as Putin and Xi Jinping, and wannabe strongmen and bullies such as Donald Trump. “Propagandists across the world and across the ages play on the same emotional notes like well-worn scales,” he observes.

In Pomerantsev’s view, propaganda works not because it convinces, or even confuses. Its real power lies in its ability to convey a sense of belonging, he argues. Those left behind feel themselves emboldened and part of a special community. It is a world of grievance, victimhood and enemies, where facts are meaningless. What matters are feelings and the illusion propaganda lends of “individual agency”. Its practitioners bend reality. And – as with Putin’s fictions about Ukraine – make murder possible.

The book offers a few ideas as to how we might fight back. When horrors were uncovered in Bucha, the town near Kyiv where Russian soldiers executed civilians, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, appealed to the Russian people. This didn’t cut through. Most preferred to believe the version shown on state TV: that Moscow was waging a defensive fight against “neo-Nazis”. It was a comforting lie that absolved Russians of personal responsibility.

Ukrainian activists hit a similar wall when they cold-called Russians and told them about the destruction caused by Kremlin bombing. Many called relatives in St Petersburg and other Russian cities to explain they were under attack. Typically, their family members did not believe them. “They really brainwashed you over there,” one said.

The activists had more success when they mentioned taxes or travel restrictions – issues that spoke to the self-interested “pig-dog”. Pomerantsev suggests that Delmer’s approach worked because he allowed people to care about the truth again, nudging them towards independent thought, while avoiding the pitfall of obvious disloyalty. He brought wit and creativity to his anti-propaganda efforts as well, turning his radio shows into bravura transmissions.

Pomerantsev makes an intriguing comparison between der Chef and Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who in summer 2023 staged a short-lived rebellion against Putin. Two months later, Prigozhin died in a plane crash. The oligarch was a charismatic figure who roasted Russia’s generals for their incompetent handling of the war. He used earthy prison slang. It was this ability to communicate in plain language that made him popular – and a rival.

The book muses on whether Delmer was ultimately good or bad. Are tricks and subterfuge justified in pursuit of noble goals? It concludes that the journalist’s greatest insight was his understanding of his own ordinariness, and how this might be exploited by unscrupulous governments and rabble-rousing individuals. “He was vulnerable to propaganda for the same reasons we all are – through the need to fit in and conform,” Pomerantsev notes.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[aimeedaisies]

Court Circular | 21st November 2023

Buckingham Palace

The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee today commenced a State Visit to The King and Queen.

The Prince and Princess of Wales welcomed The President and Mrs Kim on behalf of The King at the Four Seasons Hotel, 10 Trinity Square, London EC3.

The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee, accompanied by Their Royal Highnesses, drove to Horse Guards and were met by The King and Queen.

The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee, accompanied by The King and Queen, drove in a Carriage Procession to Buckingham Palace with a Sovereign’s Escort of the Household Cavalry.

Gun Salutes were fired in Green Park by The King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, and at the Tower of London by the Honourable Artillery Company.

Guards of Honour were provided at Horse Guards by F Company Scots Guards and at Buckingham Palace by 1st Battalion Welsh Guards.

His Majesty’s Body Guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, The King’s Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard and a Detachment of Household Cavalry were on duty.

The King presented The President of the Republic of Korea with the Insignia of an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Civil Division of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath.

The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee, accompanied by The Duke of Gloucester, this afternoon visited the Korean War Memorial, Victoria Embankment Gardens, London SW1, where The President and Mrs Kim laid a wreath and His Royal Highness, Patron, the British Korean Veterans Association, also laid a wreath.

The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee subsequently met United Kingdom Korean War veterans.

The President and Mrs Kim afterwards drove to Westminster Abbey where His Excellency laid a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior.

The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee met General Sir Adrian Bradshaw (Governor of the Royal Hospital Chelsea) and In-Pensioners who fought in the Korean War, before touring the Abbey, escorted by the Dean (the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle).

The President and Mrs Kim afterwards drove to the Palace of Westminster and were received by the Lord Speaker (the Lord McFall of Alcluith) and the Speaker of the House of Commons (the Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle).

The Speaker welcomed The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee and His Excellency delivered an Address.

The President and Mrs Kim subsequently attended a Reception with Peers, Members of Parliament and other guests.

The Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP (Chancellor of the Exchequer) had an audience of The King this afternoon.

The Lord Hodge (Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland) was received by His Majesty and reported on the recent proceedings of the General Assembly.

The King and Queen gave a State Banquet this evening in honour of The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee at which The Prince and Princess of Wales, The Duchess of Edinburgh, The Princess Royal and Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence, and The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were present.

The following had the honour of being invited:

Suite of The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee:

His Excellency Mr Choo Kyungho (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance), His Excellency Mr Park Jin (Minister of Foreign Affairs), His Excellency Mr Lee Sangmin (Minister of Interior and Safety), His Excellency Mr Bang Moonkyu (Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy), His Excellency Mr Cho Taeyong (Director of National Security), His Excellency Mr Yoon Yeocheol (Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United Kingdom), Dr Kim Taehyo (Principal Deputy National Security Adviser), the Hon Kim Eunhye (Senior Secretary to The President for Public Relations), Dr Choi Sangmok (Senior Secretary to The President for Economic Affairs) and Ambassador Lee Choongmyon (Secretary to The President for Foreign Affairs).

Specially attached to The President of the Republic of Korea and Mrs Kim Keon Hee:

The Viscount Hood (Lord in Waiting) and the Viscountess Hood, Mr Colin Crooks (His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Republic of Korea) and Miss Sheila O’Connor (Head of VIP Visits, Protocol Directorate, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office).

Diplomatic Corps:

His Excellency the Ambassador of the Republic of Honduras and Mrs Mirian Nasser de Romero.

The Cabinet and Government:

The Prime Minister and Mrs Murty, the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and the Lady Cameron of Chipping Norton, the Rt Hon Oliver Dowden MP (Deputy Prime Minister), the Minister of State for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and United Nations and the Lady Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (the Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP) and Mr T Turner, and the Leader of the House of Lords and the Lady True.

Special Invitations:

Mr Ashley Alder (Chairman, Financial Conduct Authority), Mr Andrew Bailey (Governor of the Bank of England) and Professor Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, Sir Timothy Barrow (National Security Adviser) and Lady Barrow, Sir Philip Barton (Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs) and Lady Barton, Ms Jenny Bates (Director-General, Indo-Pacific, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), Dr Stephen Billingham (Chairman, Urenco) and Mrs Billingham, Mr Jonathan Brearley (Chief Executive Officer, Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) and Mrs Brearley, Ms Ruth Cairnie (Chairman, Babcock International Group) and Mr Anthony Heggs, the Lord Great Chamberlain and the Lady Carrington, Mr Joshua Carrott (Co-Founder of YouTube Channel, Korean Englishman) and Ms Gabriela Kook, Sir David Chipperfield (Architect) and Lady Chipperfield, Mr Jonathan Cole (Chief Executive Officer, Corio Generation) and Mrs Cole, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Lady Davey, the Rt Hon Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP (Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party at Westminster), the Leader of the Scottish National Party at Westminster and Mrs Flynn, Dame Anita Frew (Chairman, Rolls-Royce and Croda) and Mr Michael van Hemert, Ms Poppy Gustafsson (Chief Executive Officer, Darktrace Holdings Limited) and Mr Joel Gustafsson, Mr Rene Haas (Chief Executive Officer, Arm Holdings) and Ms Regina Frenkel, Mr Demis Hassabis (Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, DeepMind), the Speaker of the House of Commons and Lady Hoyle, General Gwyn Jenkins (Vice Chief of the Defence Staff) and Mrs Jenkins, Mr Oliver Kendal (Co-Founder of YouTube Channel, Korean Englishman) and Mrs Kendal, Dr Rosalie Kim (Lead Curator, Hallyu Exhibition, Victoria and Albert Museum), Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser (Chief Executive, UK Research and Innovation) and Professor Philip Bond, the Rt Hon the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress, the Lord Speaker (the Lord McFall of Alcluith), the Lord Newby (Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords) and the Reverend Canon the Lady Newby, Sir Kenneth Olisa (His Majesty’s Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London) and Lady Olisa, Ms Jihyun Park (Human Rights Activist) and Mr Kwanghyun Joo, Miss Sohee Park (Fashion Designer), Mr Woongchul Park (Founder and Chef Patron, Sollip) and Mrs Bomee Ki, the Lord Reed of Allermuir (President of the Supreme Court of the UK) and the Lady Reed of Allermuir, the Dowager Viscountess Rothermere (Patron of the Arts), Sir Mark Rowley (Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis) and Lady Rowley, Mr Wael Sawan (Global Chief Executive Officer, Shell Global) and Mrs Sawan, Professor Hazel Smith (Professor of International Relations, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) and Dr Mihail Petkovski, Ms Cho So-hyun (Footballer, Birmingham City), Dr Sarah Son (Lecturer in Korean Studies, University of Sheffield) and Mr Kyung Moon Son, the Leader of the Opposition and Lady Starmer, Mr Jakob Stausholm (Chief Executive Officer, Rio Tinto) and Mrs Stausholm, Mr Colin Thackery (Korean War Veteran) and Mrs J Simms, Dr José Vinals (Group Chairman, Standard Chartered) and Mrs Rafaela Camallonga Vilanova, Dame Emma Walmsley (Chief Executive Officer, GlaxoSmithKline) and Mr David Owen, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and Mrs Welby, Ms Nari Yi (Florist), and Ms Jenni Kim, Ms Jisoo Kim, Ms Lisa Manobal and Ms Rosé Park (Band Members, Blackpink).

Korean Delegation and Guests:

Mr Yonghyun Kim (Chief of Presidential Security Service), Ambassador Taejin Kim (Chief of Protocol), Mr Joo Sung Kim (Chief Physician to The President), Mr Dong Man Park (Physician to The President), Mr Jung Hwan Kim (Assistant Secretary, Office of the Personal Secretary to The President), Ms Younkyung Cho (Personal Attendant, Office of Personal Secretary to The President), Mr Jae-yong Lee (Chairman, Samsung Electronics), Mr Kwang-mo Koo (Chairman, LG Corporation), Mr Dong-bin Shin (Chairman, Lotte Corporation), Mr Dong Kwan Kim (Vice Chairman, Hanwha Corporation), Professor Myungsik Kim (Professor, King’s College London), Professor Do Young Noh (President, Institute of Basic Science), Professor Narry Kim (Professor, Institute of Basic Science), Mr Jin Ryu (Chairman, Federation of Korean Industries), Mr Kimun Kim (Chairman, Korea Federation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), Mr Cha Yol Koo (Chairman, Korea International Trade Association), Mr Kyung Shik Sohn (Chairman, Korea Enterprises Federation), Mr Hyun Joon Cho (Chairman, Hyosung Corporation), Mr Saehong Hur (President and Chief Executive Officer, GS Caltex Corporation), Mr Sunggeun Song (Chief Executive Officer, IL Science Company Limited), Mr Dabriel Choi (Chief Executive Officer, DC Medical, University College London) and Mr Chang Hun Yoo (Chief Executive Officer, SSenStone Incorporated).

St James’s Palace

The Princess Royal, Master, the Corporation of Trinity House, this afternoon presented Merchant Navy medals for Meritorious Service at Trinity House, Trinity Square, London EC3.

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1848 – Birth of Fanny Parnell, Land League agitator and sister of Charles Stewart Parnell.

Fanny Parnell was born in Avondale, Co Wicklow, into a wealthy Protestant background. She was the eighth child out of eleven and fourth daughter born to John Henry Parnell, a landowner and the grandson of the last Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, and Delia Tudor Stewart Parnell, an Irish-American and the daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart of the US Navy. Fanny’s mother hated British rule in…