Picking A Fight With J.K. Rowling Ought To Be The Moment The Trans-Rights Movement Winds Its Neck In
Ah, this business.
Over the last seventy two hours, it has not been a very good advert for what we’re fast becoming – competing groups of smug self-satisfied zealots.
Can everyone please take a big deep breath and start maybe, just maybe, learning to agree to disagree more?
Yes, Rowling’s outburst is dubious – but not, repeat not, because anything and everything to do with trans-rights is sacrosanct.
There’s no point in some pretending they do think anything trans-related is beyond any critique, because the evidence of the last few years speaks for itself, not merely the last few days of petty bile on J K Rowling’s Twitter page and elsewhere.
The Jessica Yaniv case in British Columbia in particular ought to have been the moment when the trans community – like the gay community before it – started making it crystal clear the fight for legitimate rights was not a shakedown. The silence however from trans activists was not merely deafening, but horrifying.
Faced with what now appeared a horde of cynical opportunists masquerading as human rights activists, it’s no wonder matters are now turning sour between them and those very celebs whose patronage earned them the opportunities to air their cause beyond the media fringes to begin with.
Rowling may be influenced by her locality’s history
J.K. Rowling has been at such pains to be as politically correct as possible as to lapse into self-parody as the worst revisionist since David Irving – thankfully however confined to her own past and her own literary output.
(What’s that J.K? You’re saying that Buckbeak is gay? He always was and it was hinted at in the books? Okay, fine, whatever … oh and you have a new book/movie/both out? Hey, what a coincidence you should mention this now!).
That the trans rights movement is now compromising those who were on their side (or at least felt there was a valid point to be made) to the extent people like Rowling are now openly starting to see them as more trouble than they’re worth ought not to be the cue for the usual screams of ‘TERF!’ – but a bloody big wake up call to the so-called ‘woke’.
Rowling lived for a long time in Edinburgh. This is a city you cannot live in for any length of time without learning the history of the Covenanters: the textbook example of blinkered zealots whose bullying micro-management of the way people were allowed to think, never mind act, proved their undoing.
They had started out demanding justice to be free to worship their way. Except pretty soon they weren’t happy until they started to demand everyone else did the same – and as their liberties increased, and their numbers grew bigger, they showed less and less qualms about the use of force to impose their way and decrease everyone else’s liberties. The point wasn’t lost that they saw others attempts to be accommodating to them as weakness to be exploited.
By the time Oliver Cromwell came up and smashed them at Dunbar, rounded up the survivors and locked them up in Greyfriars Churchyard (that of Greyfriars Bobby fame later – and which played a significant influence on the Harry Potter series) largely to die of exposure to the elements, there wasn’t a single person left in the city who cared a damn for them – forget the revisionist lies of Robert ‘Old Mortality’ Paterson.
All because they refused to agree to disagree with anyone who did not believe in ‘Sound Doctrine’. Their doctrine.
The trouble with trans-warriors
Its advocates are displaying an increasing suffocating narrow minded attitude to anyone not ‘on message’. Indeed, there’s some who clearly won’t be happy until they’re made themselves this generation’s Roland Freisler.
If you don’t get the point as to what they have become, for homework, watch ‘Donnie Darko’ this weekend, and see if you spot the analogy Richard Kelly was trying to make about zealots and what happens when you give them an inch. Doesn’t matter what the message is, they all go the same way – not content until their jackboots are on every neck.
Or perhaps have a look at the output of Titania McGrath or Jarvis Dupont.
This is someone who like Dupont was from the outset clearly taking the piss, yet it took the author, comedian Andrew Doyle from Spiked! to come clean before this was accepted – and a large number to a frightening extent took her hate filled gibberish at face value much the same as older generations took Alf Garnett’s.
No one has a monopoly on truth, or insight, or anything else, any more than the Pharasees, the Vatican, the Inquisition, Star Chamber or anyone else in the history of what’s laughable referred to as human civilisation does.
So please, please, please, start getting the f**k over yourselves. Start learning how to agree to disagree.
If you want to know where your zealotry gets you, look no further than the case of Will Johnson, a Canadian literary editor, at the Humber Literary Review, who was so exasperated at the behaviour of trans-rights activists towards Chief Librarian Vickery Bowles for allowing feminist writer Meghan Murphy to rent library space (Murphy regards the trans movement as ‘misogynist’ – in much the same way she’s accused of misandry), he said:
Five days later the Humber Literary Review fired him – they were receiving so much harassment over Johnston’s employment it was easier to let him go. They can hardly deny it, after officially firing him due to ‘internal restructuring, they forgot their own story weeks later when on 12th December they posted a request for him to remove any references to themselves on his internet pages.
This is someone who was a trans-rights supporter was treated by trans-rights activists.
If this is the way they treat their friends, are you surprised they’re beginning to run out of them?
Transphobia
Let’s view things another way. Let’s play in their ball court for a moment. Their over-simplistic, judgemental Hanna Barbera cartoon world of right and wrong.
You consider those not agreeing with you as being ‘transphobic’, right? Every little disagreement, every negative moment, is motivated by it.
Okay, based on that premise, if you knew someone was arachnophobic, you would accept that it would be counter-productive to the point of batshit stupid if you tried to change their sense of fear and loathing of arachnids by screaming every chance you get:
‘WHAT THE F**K IS WRONG WITH YOU, YOU ARACHNOPHOBIC PIECE OF SHIT? YOU START ACCEPTING SPIDERS AND THE VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION THEY MAKE TO OUR WORLD AND CULTURE YOU F**KING NAZI SCUM OR WE’RE GONNA F**K UP YOUR LIFE EVERY DAY FOREVER!’
Yeah?
So why in the name of plumbob do you think a reflexive hyper-aggressive stance towards anyone taking a negative view of trans-rights or transgenders is going to solve anything?
All you are achieving is further alienating yourselves – no one else.
Now you’re picking a fight J. K. Rowling. This is not going to go well for you. Just ask the people who did the Harry Potter Lexicon.
If you think yourselves to be ruthless and pitiless in the pursuit of your own goals (with a lot of self-justification for it in the process to the point of absurd), Joanne Rowling is someone who makes Cersei Lannister look like some soppy Church of England vicar.
She and her lawyers will shut down your websites, sue the arse of all those they can (and find reasons to do so that may have nothing to do with the trans debate). She will be the one fucking up your lives, not vice versa. That’s before her business partners – who do not wish to see anything or anyone harming the returns on their long term investments into business ventures with J.K.R. – get to work on you.
So don’t go starting a fight with someone who will be finishing it – and be cheered on the sidelines even by those who despise her and her associates because to an increasing number of people and organisations on planet Earth it will be worth it to see your little reign of terror toppled.
‘Cos if you think picking a fight with an author that – for all her faults – has made a lot of people, very, very happy with her contribution to the entertainment world, here’s your big dose of reality – she’s gonna come out from this far better off than you will.
To make a Harry Potter analogy, if the trans-rights brigade try to turn this into some McGonagall and Slughorn ‘the time has come to choose sides, Horace!’ moment, you’re about to find out the hard way your level of support in the big wide world beyond your echo chambers and multiple accounts on the interwebs doesn’t amount to diddly-squat. It was always on loan from people who like other people who like you. That’s how the world works.
You’ve got as far as you have in a very short space of time mainly because – and it’s time you accepted this – people in the First World (bar a few arseturnips, and you can find them anywhere) are in general nice, tolerant and willing to live and let live. If you blow it now, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves.
Hermione Granger Was One Of The Biggest Cunts In The Entire Potterworld
The less than graceful reaction to the latest general election result, this year’s European election results and the Brexit vote several years back brought into sharp focus the arrival of Millenials and a Generation Z intolerant of concepts for a caring and compassionate society which different to their own.
There are many reasons advanced, but one must be the deification of a certain character from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter to the point of absurd.
Step forward Hermione Granger. The role model for an entire generation brought up to believe only their viewpoint and life experiences matter.
During the making of the Harry Potter films, Rowling’s increased her meddling with the scripts to extend Emma Watson’s role, as the Potter series became more about Rowling reliving and rewriting her childhood into one where she was popular and influential rather than an unpopular jerkoff. Was it more than coincidence an increasing part of the public began to go off Hermione in turn?
After Snape called Granger ‘an insufferable know it all’ in Prisoner of Askaban, in the film version Ron said ‘He’s got a point there’ – one of the many small examples in which Rowling morphed the story into being the Trials Of Saint Hermione The Muggle Born, surrounded with idiots unable to comprehend her awesomeness.
Admit it, how many of you in The Deathly Hallows Part One, when Emma Watson gushed, ‘Actually I’m highly logical which allows me to look past extraneous detail and perceive clearly that which others overlook,’ found yourselves immediately shouting ‘WANKER!’
Yet you always made sure Luna came off worse.
Granger as faux feminist icon
Much feminist points have been raised about Hermione’s ‘bossiness’ being sexist objections to a ‘strong female character’. Yet Professor Minerva McGonagall – a Miss Hardbroom clone albeit without a vindictive streak – was a fan favourite. Moreover, Granger’s treatment of the good natured Luna Lovegood was a particular source of fan irritation.
Then there’s her put down of ‘… that complete cow Pansy Parkinson? How she got to be a prefect when she’s thicker than a concussed troll.’
So much for sisterhood!
Yeah, the same Parkinson who showed the presence of mind during the chaos of the Room of Requirement breakout in Order Of The Phoenix to nip inside for evidence and grab the incriminating list of D.A. members. The same Parkinson who in the films was mysteriously replaced without explanation – rumour had it because Watson (and by extention Rowling) were not happy with the large amount of fanmail Genevieve Gaunt was receiving despite her minor role.
Parkinson was based by Rowling’s own admission on every girl who was Rowling’s enemy at school. One may surmise this may have been down to being cleverer as much as her claims of having been bullied. It would certainly explain the continual degredation of the Parkinson role in the movies along with the elevation of Granger’s.
The love of Granger’s life was herself
If there was one sign in particular of Hermione Granger’s cuntitude, it was the way she treated the supposed love of her life, Ronald Weasley.
Hermione never loved Ron. He appealed to her vanity, being dependent on her to finish his homework and having won him round from thinking she was ‘a nightmare’. She was happy to cheat so he would retain being the Gryffindor Quidditch keeper, but threw a tantrum over Harry doing the same (or so she thought).
Her attitude towards Ron was frequently bossy, condescending and she never gave him a single compliment – unlike with Harry. Despite getting them through the chess puzzle in their first series of adventures at the near cost of his life, her faith in his abilities markedly decreased over the series.
When Ron became Lavender’s boyfriend, she treated the matter more like Crookshanks leaving her for a new owner. She physically attacked him with canaries, and made a point of taking to Slughorn’s Christmas party the one person Ron felt insecure about (much to her cost).
How many times did Hermione hit someone who is meant to be her friend? Didn’t her parents ever tell her you don’t hit your friends?
Her behaviour in The Half Blood Prince was probably the moment she showed her true colours, despising Harry’s potions book because suddenly he had an advantage she didn’t which made him better than her.
Even when he’d tried to share the knowledge with her she was having none of it and wanted the book destroyed.
‘– got a reputation for Potions brilliance you don’t deserve,’ said Hermione nastily.
This is also the same Hermione – whose own ‘brilliance’ only came so long as it came out of a book – suddenly getting all sniffy about Harry having ‘got a reputation for Potions brilliance you don’t deserve.’ thanks to – uh! – reading a book.
It’s little surprise it was the one time Ginny rounded on her.
‘Give it a rest, Hermione!’ said Ginny, and Harry was so amazed, so grateful, he looked up. ‘By the sound of it Malfoy was trying to use an Unforgivable Curse, you should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!’
‘Well, of course I’m glad Harry wasn’t cursed!’ said Hermione, clearly stung, ‘but you can’t call that Sectumsempra spell good, Ginny, look where it’s landed him! And I’d have thought, seeing what this has done to your chances in the match –’
‘Oh, don’t start acting as though you understand Quidditch,’ snapped Ginny, ‘you’ll only embarrass yourself.’
No surprise this was another moment Rowling decided to cut out from the film!
What was particularly noteworthy about this point was later we were to discover Ginny had been getting ‘coached’ by Hermione regarding her unrequited love for Harry for some years – again a sign of her enormous ego and control freakery that she was trying to micromanage the futures of her friends so they met with her grand plans.
How neat and orderly, that her orphan best friend should one day marry the sister of her future husband, keeping everyone neatly within one close knit family rather than several which may not regard her with the same awe.
For anyone else about to defend Hermione, just remember that Harry got an Exceeds Expectations in his Potions, so he wasn’t thick. That he had the common sense to try out the annotations Snape had added to the text (something any university student would know is standard behaviour) shows that whilst Hermione was academically brilliant, Harry was cleverer than her in reality.
Snape once testily pointed out that Hermione’s answer regarding the advantage of non-verbal spells over verbal was regurgiated (“An answer copied almost word for word from The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Six, but correct in essentials.”) This wasn’t merely a case of Snape being nasty for nasty’s sake – it was coming back to what Harry had warned when he ran Defence Against The Dark Arts classes himself about it being not merely learning spells but being able to think fast and fight by the seat of your pants, the difference between theoretical knowledge and applied; and that rarely crosses over well if you can’t articulate knowledge using your own words rather than someone else’s.
This wasn’t the first time Harry have something putting him at an advantage and she wanted it taken off him. Remember the broom Sirius sent Harry, which saw Hermione tell McGonigall? Broom riding is something Hermione struggled with from the start. Remember the Marauders Map allowing Harry to wander the castle as he liked and break rules and Harry called her out on thinking about telling tales on him again?
It’s no wonder Ginny eventually calls her out on her crap – she’s witnessed five years of Hermione’s bullshit to Harry and her brother.
Finally there’s her Society For Promoting Elvish Welfare – S.P.E.W. – where she goes so far as to set sock traps in the Gryffindor common room in order to free the Hogwarts elves, regardless of whether they wish to be freed or not. Which they don’t, resulting in Dobby having to look after the Gryffindor common room single handed. Considering the state of the drunken Winky hiding in the Hogwarts kitchens, is it any wonder the Hogwarts elves regard Granger as not being interested in their welfare?
They’d be right too, this is an ego-trip marianated in the sauce of Granger’s own self-righteous indignation that other creatures may have a view of life and how to live it different to her own. The question is never asked (least of all by Granger) that elves may see themselves as duty bound to serve wizards in order to save them from themselves (and perhaps the rest of the non-wizarding magical community with it?), that what elves are doing is for their own sense of what constitutes ‘the greater good.’
After all, would creatures able to naturally disapparate and perform magic with the click of their fingers rather than clumsy wands and books really consider wizards and witches to be their ‘masters’ – or is this all part of an elvish culture of deceiving those who need to be deceived for their own sakes?
So why are some so forgiving of Hermione in turn? Why does the ‘strong woman’ crap get an airing?
The truth is Hermione embodies the spirit of a generation brought up on Spice Girls ‘attitude’ and the Richard Dawkins superiority complex that you have a ‘right’ to be an arsehole to those you are ‘better’ than, particularly if it’s to your advantage to do so by scoring points and putting ‘lessers’ in their place.
Hermione is frighteningly similar to Draco Malfoy – if not Voldemort – in her elitist mindset: and if anyone doubts this, remember the cursed DA coins (again cut out from the movies).
She was simply one of those utter cunts in the Potterworld fortunate – unlike Dolores Umbridge – to pick the winning side.
Jo Swinson Gets The Boot – Ah Wot A Shame!
Good riddance you skeet!
Sure Moran, because anyone who physically assaults their partner (now unsurprisingly their ex-partner), for any reason, let alone something as trivial as losing a freaking computer cable, really knows the score about what is ‘unacceptably ungracious.’
No rest until the last two-faced Lib Dem leaves Parliament forever with the last copy of The Guardian shoved up their arse where it belongs!
(Don’t worry, that’s the last of the political stuff now this madness is over with for five years. Back to Sims and other nonsense!)
HA HA PAUL ‘OWL’ FREEMAN! Creeps Never Win!
Despite all your dirty tricks, your precious Claire ‘Bambi Eyes’ Wright lost again:
All the lowest deeds of political campaigning, including posting the vehicle registration numbers of Tory activists, yet you still couldn’t win, and your precious East Devon Alliance still never won control of the local council because no one trusts fake ‘independents’ running as a party and bitching about the real independents behind their backs via a yellow press blog!
Go and cry, go and sulk. You’ve earned it!
For The Benefit Of Those Wondering If The Photos Of Diane Abbott, Prospective British Home Secretary, Wearing Two Left Shoes Are Fake, Judge For Yourselves!
Here’s the original photo in question:
Here’s the picture in context:
Yes, the Twitter account of fellow Labour MP Meg Hillier – not exactly likely to post a photoshopped photo humiliating a Cabinet rank party member.
Hillier has since taken down not only the pictures, but the full tweets, not in time however to stop it reappearing with its original place credited in a Polish website:
Last of all, a second picture which was taken during the same PR event.
Taken from the following Labour activist’s account:
Make up your own minds who is telling the truth.
‘ The internet is as perpetual as time, and just as unforgiving.’ – Aarin, 6s & 7s, June 2010
What happens when some bright spark at Auntie Beeb says ‘We need something that’s Game Of Thrones, Harry Potter and Doctor Who rolled into one, safe enough for CBBC viewers but not naff enough to make them turn off.’
Some bright spark went, ‘what about His Dark Materials?’, and hoped no one remembered The Golden Compass being one of tinseltown’s biggest turkeys.
But Auntie Beeb, remembering all that money they flushed down the look last year on Watership Down (or Watered It Down as it was dubbed), remembered they needed something big and epic to restore its reputation and bank balance, especially now that Doctor Who’s a bust flush with all the money it brought into the corporation to pay certain celebs their over inflated wages.
‘Students, will return to their house domitories – ah shit, wrong book!’
It’s harder to remember a show which has been so roundly crucified, yet enjoys such massive rating figures. Overall it commands a staggering ten million viewers – once you add in those watching it by streaming platforms instead of TV. For a show on a Sunday night which can’t make up its mind whether it’s aimed at kids or adults, this is impressive.
In all likelyhood, it’s aimed as the sizeable kidult population usually found hanging around nerd interest shops except those selling soap. They’ve always been rank rotten when it comes to giving shows their due, having more attitude than gratitude towards anything, which – by the very definition of giving them something to moan about incessently to the point of other people’s attempted suicide – has therefore some intrinsic value.
‘Boo hoo hoo, why does nobody love us, Pantalaimon?’
‘Because the plot’s slower than the airship, Lyra – anyway, everyone loves me because I’m cute, so ha-ha!’
The main complaints are to those unfamiliar with the series how long it takes for the story to get from A to B – like most fantasy series they tend to be as prog rock in length as the Yes songs the author has on shuffle in the background when writing them.
Whole episodes come and go where minor points of character and plot development are strung out, to the point the process feels more like the repeat attempts to blow out half sneezed out strings of mucus during a bad cold – there’s more the sense of relief than satisfaction at each denouement.
To others, there’s the predicable – if ironic – complaints about too much being trimmed in the pursuit of being concise to fit to fifty minutes – plus one and a half minutes explaining what happened the week before and two and two third minutes explaining what’s going to happen next week.
Some are valid – the part where Lyra discovered her uncle and the research lady are really her gadfly lord dad and his discarded fucktoy mum whose idea of parenting was dumping her at Oxford University for strangers to bring up – this being a world where bastard children cramps ones respective career styles awfully so. Wham, bam and thank you ma’am moment in anyone’s book, or TV show of the book.
‘What d’ya mean I kaunt act? Cor blimey, stone the crows and haw’s ye fawver!’
‘Because you’re the only Londoner who sounds like Dick Van Dyke in ‘Mary Poppins’ pretending to be one!’
Yet all delivered with the drama of wet suet by Lara’s old nurse Ma Costa. Heaven forbid anyone suggest Anne Marie Duff got the part because she’s the ex-wife of James McAvoy, who plays the renegade Lord Asriel, someone handling material way above her soap opera and day time chewing gum TV bit part level (and a repetition of what happened in last year’s turkey version of ‘Watership Down’).
It jars with Dafne Keen’s ultra bratty Lyra – a sadly common theme in the show, where the adult cast are not always up to their roles. Mat Fraser – Luvvieland’s favourite token thalidomide – had the important role of Raymond Van Gerritt delivering one of the most important crossroads lines in the show, where they have to decide whether to go north and rescue their children, and whether to allow the hunted Lyra to stay with them and bring extra unwanted attention to their plans. As with the BBC’s other big brand show of the season – ‘The War Of The Worlds’ – a slavish devotion to tokenism and inclusivity has resulted in employing non-raters, never mind third raters.
From a sense of resignation viewers have perservered with the show they’ve cursed under their breath going to sleep for a month of ended weekends. The BBC has ‘Game Of Thrones’ to thank for installing in today’s viewers a patience to endure weeks after tortuous weeks of plot plodding (and padding) for bigger final returns.
Finally, it has paid off. It’s taken five episodes, but at long last, the pay off begins at episode six – inside Bolvangar, a research institute with all the dystopian trappings of a concentration camp, but one exclusively for children.
Three minutes in to a scene where the kidnapped children are having their meagre lunch, a metal door slams open, ‘BRIDGET – MCGINN!’ is barked, and the too-late switch in tone to nicey-nicey paediatrician tones fools no one. The child looks terrified, the ‘don’t make a fuss … quick quick.’ betraying this doctor and this nurse do not bode well, everyone in the room knows they don’t bode well, and still like those sent to their deaths in the gas chambers no-one does anything because if its someone else’s turn today, they get to live one day more.
Watching as the increasingly terrified Bridget walks to what we already know from the previous episode will be painful, harrowing, leaving them a husk condemned to a a slow and lingering death, is one of the most uncomfortable one and a half moments of TV you’ll watch this year, far beyond that when the door clangs shut.
It’s the knowledge build laboriously from previous episodes this has been going on for decades which makes this episode so brilliant in its horrificness – the concept of a country where those in charge organise the kidnapping of its own children by deniable assets of self-employed gangs, but only enough as required, not enough to cause mass consternation (until they kidnap one water gypsy child – or Gyptians as they’re called here – too many); to be taken north for horrific experimentation designed to find a way of preventing them committing ‘sin’ upon the change to their daemons at puberty
Lia Williams softly spoken Dr Cooper’s ‘It’s only pain we are causing … we are doing what is necessary,’ has to be the most chilling line on TV this year. Those who know what they’re doing is infinitely more twisted and evil than the ‘sin’ they hope to eradicate, but blot out the screams and terror of their victims with gin after a hard day’s mutilating and that favourite toast to justify the unjustifiable – ‘For The Greater Good.’
It makes for a ghastly prelude to later when Lyra – in full knowledge of the facts – is sent the same way, struggling and screaming, crying out for mercy from a mother she despises because the help of anyone or anything is better than the fate the callous medics and scientists of the research facility of Bolvangar have in store for her – the only time the psychotic nurse Clara (played brilliantly by Morfydd Clark) flinches – an evil that Lyra knows her estranged duck faced mother is in charge of choreographing.
The brilliance is that all this psychological horror, all this ghastliness, are preludes themselves to bigger moments, as the full evil of Bolvangar undergoes its own well deserved ragnarøkkr. The only pity is the quick end for those whose deaths deserved to be the long drawn out, protracted, messy affairs they gave to those whose lives had barely began.
Liberal Party (UK)
Please find a collection of four t-shirts, ten poster pictures and two billboards featuring various motifs from the historic and modern Liberal Party (UK) available for your Sims 3 game.
The poster pictures use a mesh with many thanks by Yarona at Sims Modeli, and the billboards use a mesh from Cloudwalker Sims, so you do not need any stuff packs for this to work – it’s all base game friendly.
To use, download, unzip, and drop the contained folder into your The Sims 3 mods packages folder and they should show up.
Enjoy!
The current Liberal Party of the United Kingdom is made from those who refused to merge with the Social Democratic Party in 1989. As in the case of the continuing SDP, they stand candidates in council and Parliamentary elections, but the Liberal Party has had more success, hold a sizeable number of seats up to County Council level (the most senior tier of government in British politics before Parliament).
Despite the Liberal Party’s avowed opposition to socialism, the continuing Liberal Party is of the social liberalist (or ‘left-liberal’) tradition which was responsible for the Welfare State.
In the 2019 General Election, the party is standing in nineteen seats.
Extinction Rebellion Prove A Right Bunch Of Silly Bees!
Three weeks after one of their lunatic cult members failed to have the Jazz-Hands blog censored (and proof if any more were needed they don’t believe in freedom of speech), those lovers of peace, democracy and truth are attacking those other lovers of peace, democracy and true, the Liberal Democrats.
It’s been a bad week for the Fib Dums: currently under investigation for their highly dubious claims in their election leaflets and their Head of Media Rosy Cobb being caught out faking emails as part of a legal dispute with Open Democracy, whose own little ‘butterfly of doom’ (not quite as cute as the real deal, but there you go) reminded voters the ‘all things to all people with the franchise’ skeets had sold on voter data to the Remain campaign for £100 000 (without the mass tithes from many members in Westminster or Strassbourg, the Lib Dems finances have been in deep trouble for some time – hence also why they were so keen to take in all those Change UK defectors upon its inevitable implosion).
What? Ask people for their permission to do so first? Don’t be silly! All’s fair in love, war and politics – so long as you don’t get caught.
But it got worse this morning. A number of polls put their support into single figures. Now polls can be rogue, and with some estimating up to a third of voters are undecided with a week to go (unprecedented for any British general election) should be taken with a pinch of salt anyway, but it’s to no one’s surprise but the Fib Dums the more people encounter Jo Swinson, the more they’re turned off the Liberal Democrats.
Having got rid of one odious School Snitch risen to Head Girl in Theresa May, whoever thought Swinson’s snide tones would endere herself to the public must have been smoking a particularly large bong of that blend they’d legalise if in power (or at least that’s what they’re telling ‘select audiences’ – ie. the young and the poor, because that’s what the young and poor want most of all – right?)
Now to end a perfect day before it has even started, their ‘Battle Bus’ (a Liberal/LibDem staple since the days of David Steel in the 1970s) has been attacked by Extinction Rebellion members, dressed up as bees, who after flitting around like a complete load of mincing nancy boys (Arthur Askey must be turning in his grave), glued themselves to the bus.
Considering Jo Swinson flitted with these thugs when they made nuisances of themselves in London earlier this year, nice to see her getting a taste of the medicine ordinary members of the public had to swallow when trying to get to their own work.
The funniest part of all is that – once again – Extinction Rebellion got their facts wrong. In targetting the LibDems Battle Bus for being a carbon fuel spewing gas guzzler, it never came into their heads to check that it was a carbon fuel spewing gas guzzler to begin with – rather than an all-electric powered one.
Extinction Rebellion – being a complete liability to environmentalism then, now and always.
Postscript: Extinction Rebellion proved their inability to bee nice or bee hive behave by flashmobbing the Grimsby constituency headquarters for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party campaign.
The sting operation backfired yet again when the Brexiteers promptly entered it as an installation for this year’s Turner Prize.
George Grylls Writes The Most Dishonest Piece Of Election Coverage This Whole General Election (And That’s Against Some Pretty Stiff Competition!)
Like, WTF?
There’s been some dishonest, biased and downright distasteful claims in this campaign, but George Grylls sour grapes piece for the loyal Labour lapdog New Statesman (it likes to think itself as ‘liberal-socialist’ – however its self-gagging during Tony Blair’s red Toryism makes that risible) regarding the Lib Dems looking set for a bloody nose down Cornwall way again – and it’s all a bunch of Kippers pretending to be liberals fault – scraps the barrel.
Of course, you should never trust anyone called George anyway. They will come invariably from the cuntier parts of the middle class, along with Jasons, Justins, Nigels and Tristrans. But this is undoubtedly the worst example of leaving out inconvenient facts to suit a journalist’s own bias.
Putting the term Liberal Party in parenthesis as Grylls has done is to give the impression that the poor little Lib Dems are about to be ‘cheated’ at the ballot box ‘Literal Democrat’ style again by electoral skulduggery is simply ignoring electoral facts and history to suit one’s own prejudices.
The Huggett case
One of the longest self-pity stories in British politics is the Liberal Democrats claim that voters were ‘tricked’ into voting for one Richard Huggett in the 1994 European Elections when he stood as a Literal Democrat, taking over 10 000 votes and so ‘costing’ the Lib Dems a seat they would have ‘won’ from the Tories.
Additional versions of the story claim Huggett’s candidature was part of a family feud. Others claim Huggett received a hero’s reception at that year’s Official Monster Raving Loony Party conference in Ashburton, Devon; as if all a put-up job (the conference spot being the Golden Lion Hotel, owned by OMRLP Chairman Alan Hope, a former member of his local Tory party).
The much repeated version of the story fails to mention the Lib Dems going to court before the election to stop Huggett doing so, but the case being thrown out by Sir Justice Thayne John Forbes (later to preside over the mass murderer Dr Harold Shipman trial), which only succeeded in giving Huggett the media publicity hitherto he’d only dreamed of for his campaign (based around ‘computer democracy’ – years earlier there had been a number of ‘Computer Democrat’ candidates, one of whom was arrested for attempting to tamper with electricity pylons).
It also failed to mention such stunts had been happening for years, with renegades changing their name by deed poll to that of sitting MPs, and none had ever worked. A certain Roy Jenkins won Hillhead in 1982 despite there being two Roy Jenkins, both for different Social Democratic Parties, on the ballot paper.
Most damning of all, it failed to mention that the Liberal Party’s David Morrish – a local County Councillor – had finished in fourth with over 14 000 votes. The Lib Dems had lost because diehard West Country liberals stayed with what they saw as the true original party, not the merged one.
A bluffers guide to the Liberal Party
The Liberal Party in its present form have been around since 1989. Like the continuing Social Democratic Party, it was made up of those members who objected to the Liberal-SDP merger after their 1986 general election trouncing.
The continuing Liberals had even more reason than the SDP rebels to be aggrieved: the Liberal Party’s structure meant it was controlled from the membership upwards. But the party’s leadership at the time, under David Steel, wanted to flip this on its head, and have the party controlled top-down, same as the Conservatives, and same as Labour was learning the hard way it needed to adopt to stop local ‘mavericks’ bringing the party into disrepute.
But the Liberals had little reason to do so. It had no major financial backers it needed to keep happy, almost all party money was raised by activists and any in salaried political office had to tithe ten percent of that wage (a concept stemming from the party’s roots within the non-Conformist churches).
It also did not suffer the Conservatives or Labour’s problems of ‘affiliated’ groups being loose cannons or even trying to impose their own hobby horses on national party policy against the mass members’ wishes – as happened to Labour with the Trotskyite front Militant Tendency and the Tories with the Monday Club’s dalliances with the National Front. This had been the major reason for the two major British political parties becoming more centralised, not merely a wish to become more ‘professional.’
Finally, the Liberals saw this – perhaps a little ironically in the circumstances – as the SDP taking over their party, with their party structure being the proposed template for the proposed Social and Liberal Democrats. The idea of becoming a party where their purpose was to do as they were told by their ‘betters’ was the antithesis of everything they believed a political party ought to be about.
Much as the continuing Liberals and continuing SDP hated each other, both were united in belief that the ‘Salads’ (as they referred sneeringly to the old political allies they left behind) were unprincipled careerists wanting to create a British version of West Germany’s Free Democrats (the bastard child of the pre-WW2 Democratic Party and the People’s Party of the legendary Gustav Stresemann – arguably Germany’s greatest democratic politician of all) which had been the junior partner of almost every Bundestag post-war government.
The whole future strategy for the new party appeared nothing more than becoming a wishy-washy official party for disillisioned Labour and Tory supporters’ protest votes, waiting for the day when – by the law of electoral averages – they’d get into government as the coalition partner of one or the other in return for proportional representation in all future elections – putting them into government almost forever as the minor coalition partner of choice.
To those who believed in liberalism as an ideal and ethic, not merely a party brand name, this was equally as intolerable as it was to those who believed in social democracy now watched in disbelief as the Trotskyite Labour Party still shrilling calling their old SDP friends ‘traitors’ morphed into All Things To All People With The Franchise without the merest blush.
So it came to pass in areas such as Liverpool, the Marches, Yorkshire and especially Cornwall and Devon, the Liberal Party continued in a small but highly resolute manner ever since, and has never been without representation in local government at a minimum District/Unitary authority tier.
They also hate the Liberal Democrats with a passion as illiberal undemocratic imposters epitomising the cynicism of modern politicians towards electorates.
Catching the kippers
It’s no surprise that the collapse of UKIP as it transmorphed into a Diet BNP led to horrified local members defecting as a group elsewhere to other Eurosceptic parties. It is also no coincidence that the two maverick ex-Alliance parties have proved the most attractive proposition: the United Kingdom Independence Party (formerly the Anti-Maastrict League) was founded originally by Professor Alan Sked, a former old Liberal Party parliamentary candidate; and the only reason the original SDP had been pro-Europe was by the diktat of its first leader, Roy Jenkins, previously the head of the European Commission.
In Sheffield and Leeds, it was the Social Democrats who picked up the original defectors. It should be no surprise that for geographical reasons, the ex-Kippers in the West Country should turn to the Liberals.
It is also somewhat rich for any Lib Dem to complain when over a third of their entire Parliamentary party consisted of people who had defected or been expelled by other ones – in some cases people on their third or fourth party in a single year!
AA42
AA6x7
The Mare's Nest
6s & 7s
Skeletal Screams Blogspot
Jazz-Hands 