Jacob Rees-Mogg

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10227901126813524&id=1231962617

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NOTE TO FACEBOOK:

THIS MOCK- UP IS A LEGITIMATE CRITIQUE OF A POLITICIAN, JACOB REES-MOGG, WHOSE DISHONESTY AND DECEITFUL POPULISM I CAN DEMONSTRATE, AND WHO CAME OUT WITH THE QUOTATION THAT ACCOMPANIES IT. A COMPARISON WITH THE TECHNIQUES OF 20th-CENTURY MASS MOVEMENTS IS ALLOWABLE. DO NOT BAN ME FOR IT.

INSECURE BREXITERS, Number 86: Sir Keir Starmer, Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras.

Keir Starmer hates Brexit. He fought it. He was angered by the useless Corbyn's obstruction of the Remain campaign in 2016 and his pusillanimity thereafter. He stood on platforms in front of hundreds of thousands after the great anti-Brexit marches in London and spoke passionately against it up and down the country.

In short, Keir Starmer that MOST insecure of Brexiters: a Rejoiner. 

Except he dare not say it. So he's decided to lie instead, saying this to BBC Radio Newcastle this week:

'We have exited the EU and we are not going back ... there’s no case for rejoining. What I want to see now is not just Brexit done in the sense that we are technically out of the EU. I want to make it work. I want to make sure that we take advantage of the opportunities and that we have a clear plan for Brexit. So that’s what I’m working on.' 

I see the logic from the Labour Party's own perspective. It was thrashed at the last election and lost swathes of formerly safe seats to people who were prepared to lie to voters. It needs to get them back, and it faces the worst, most incompetent, dishonorable and mendacious government in our history as a democracy. It has seen that, in today's Britain, lying works! 

But Starmer is still a Rejoiner. 

I suspect he has a longer-term plan when - if - he wins the next election, about which I have doubts.

And even if Labour does win it, it will be on a minority of votes. This will be politically significant if Starmer then tries to start undoing Brexit or take us back into the Single Market and/or Customs Union, because Brexiters will forever (and wrongly, and hypocritically) conflate the mandate conferred by the absolute majority in the  EU Referendum with that conferred by a minority of votes in a general election. The press and the full force of the Brexiters will be turned away from fighting each other to fighting Labour. 

But Starmer's right: he needs a majority. 

Here's a more honest way to get one, to begin the fightback and to represent the majority of citizens Starmer has repeatedly failed to represent in his race for the bottom and who are crying out for a leading politician to stare the bleeding obvious and lead, at long last, from the front. 

He must begin talks with his own party to change its rules and then with the LibDems and Greens to form a progressive electoral alliance. It must be EXPLICITLY built around the need to undo the damage wrought not just by Brexit but by a corrupt, malicious government and an antiquated, unsuitable constitution. 

It must call out the lies that won the 2016 Referendum. 

It must clearly explain why and how Brexit is damaging the UK. 

It must commit to electoral reform, with a constitutional convention to look at the options and regional conversations feeding into it. 

Best of all, there won't need to be any lies, which is what Starmer is doing if, as I believe, his long term plan IS anti-Brexit. We've all had too much deceit recently and it must stop.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Different time, different place, same danger - yet Labour are silent

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Different time, different subject, same danger - yet Labour are silent. 

Here's a very interesting book about how Americans in Germany viewed the rise of the Nazis and Hitler's regime.

Read this exchange between US reporter Edgar Mowrer and a young, male Nazi in a bar, described by his wife, Lilian, just before Hitler became German Chancellor.

Then ask yourself whether you've had or heard conversations like it since 2016 - or earlier. 

Then ask, given Keir Starmer's refusal even to consider challenging the lies, deceit and bogus simplicities propagated by those seeking control of our own country, who is there to support and lead the majority of us who know we've been had.

Then ask Starmer himself - and your local Labour Party. 

--------------------

Mowrer: 'Where did you learn all this interesting stuff about the Jew?' 

Young Nazi: 'Everybody in Germany knows that the Jews are our misfortune.'* 

M: 'But just how? Why?' 

YN: 'There are too many of them. And then, Jews are not people like the rest of us.' 

M: 'But in my country the proportion of Jews is much higher than in Germany. But we lost no war, have not starved, not been betrayed to foreigners, have suffered none of the evils you attribute to the presence of the Jews in Germany. How do you account for this?'

YN:' We don't account for it. We simply know it is true ... no matter how hard the Jew works, he won't be on top for long. '

M: 'So you admit the Jew works harder?' 

YN: 'Of course' 

M: 'But doesn't the hardest worker deserve the best jobs?' 

YN: 'Yes - that is, no; not if he is a Jew.' 

M: 'Is that logical, is that clear thinking?' 

YN: 'Ach, THINKING! We are sick of thinking. Thinking gets you nowhere.'

--------------------

* 'Die Juden sind unser Unglueck' is a direct quote from one of Goebbels' main slogans.

INSECURE BREXITERS, Number 85: Mark Jenkinson, Conservative MP for Workington.

Like so many new Tory MPs, Mark Jenkinson - seen here on the far right welcoming our corrupt prime minister to west Cumbria - benefited from both the neo-Trotskyist hollowing out of the Conservative party and free movement of people (for Brexiters, at least) when he made the short, well-oiled journey from losing UKIP candidate in 2015 to winning Tory candidate in 2019, earning him the open congratulations of Nigel Frottage who, along with fellow world statesmen Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, no doubt saw it as a job well done. 

Leaving Ireland aside, Jenkinson's is pretty well the English constituency furthest from the EU, but clearly even that isn't far enough for the former nuclear industry contractor, who is all in favour of opening a new coal mine in his area despite winning votes on a manifesto committed to achieving Net Zero. Indeed, he was still championing the government's "Green Industrial Revolution" as recently as November 2020. The Government's botched Brexit deal was a price worth paying for the fact that, to use Jenkinson's historically questionable statement on his website, the UK is 'a newly sovereign country'.

And on the subject of elections, Jenkinson complains about Labour running Cumbria County Council on a minority of the vote, conveniently forgetting that it doesn't (it's in coalition with the Liberal Democrats because the Tory Kippers failed to build one around their bonkers ideology, despite winning more seats). He also ignores the fact that his own government has an 80-seat elective dictatorship on a minority of the vote, and that he is himself an MP on a minority of the vote. So will he campaign to end such unfairness across our electoral system? What do YOU think?

For Jenkinson, eager to raid the pots of Westminster money that were denied his area by the party he now represents for so long that its people - with his help - took out their anger on the EU, which was just about the only body that ever DID give a toss, it's all about "levelling up". 

But how can you "level up" the poorest areas while simultaneously bringing the whole country to its knees, Mark?

STEVE BAKER WATCH: STEVE AND "CIVILITY IN POLITICS"

See link to my Facebook page (just testing options as I try to re-energise my Blog). 

MOGG IN THE CHANNEL, EUROPE ISOLATED, Number 315

It's official! Rees-Mogg's new post has no responsibilities ... 

As befits a man who has been shirking responsibility for his actions - and who gets mighty uptight, not to say nasty and petulant - when the plebs demand one or two of them, the new "Ministry of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency" web page contains a lovely biography of Jacob but, under the heading "Responsibilities", a long, yellow streak of absolutely nothing. No, not a single one! 

This confirms two things:

1. The role was dreamed up on the spur of the moment to detract from the governmental calamities in which Jacob has played such a major and pivotal role. 

2. They - and he - have never had any idea what opportinities Brexit DOES offer, even six years down its rutted track. 

No wonder he's seeking "the wisdom of crowds" - for, as Winston once observed (Winston Smith, I mean, not Winston Churchill), "If there is any hope, it lies in the Proles." 

A blank sheet to lie on: now I know why the old chancer won't stop grinning! 

Jacob Rees-Mogg is a Liar, a Hypocrite and a Coward. 

https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/minister-of-state-minister-for-brexit-opportunities-and-government-efficiency

NO MINUTES WERE KEPT OF THE DOWNING STREET "MEETING" ON 20TH MAY 2020

On 14th January I put in a Freedom of Information Request to Number 10 Downing Street asking for minutes to be provided of the supposed meeting held in the Downing Street garden on 20th May 2020. 

Today I received a reply from Number 10 stating that no minutes of the meeting have been found in the archives. 

The letter states, however, that 'minutes do not have to be taken for every meeting that is held in the Civil Service.' 

The letter was signed by Nicholas Howard, David Cameron's former assistant private secretary. I am unsure of his present position as he doesn't reveal it.  

It referred me to Section 12 of the Guidance on the Management of Private Office Papers.

Having checked this, Section 12 states this under 'Events which do not need to be recorded':

'In some instances meetings will be purely informal or of a social nature [sic] and no record needs to be created.' 

There is nothing on the subsequent list of these meetings that appears to cover what happened on 20th May 2020, though I imagine that the very loose criteria above will probably allow little to stick. 

So we still await Sue Grey. Remember her?

On Churchill, Burke, Representative Parliamentary Democracy and giving MPs a spine.

Churchill on representative democracy and the duty of an MP.

LET'S GET OUT THERE! It's time to challenge our MPs and flush them from cover. The media won't do it. MPs themselves certainly won't do it. The country is in crisis, Brexit is in crisis, the Government is in crisis and local elections are coming up.

As Timothy Garton Ash has written, we've about 6 months before the Government and hard Brexiteers fabricate a fudge to get us out by any means because, even though they're not aligned, it serves both their malign purposes. (A link to Garton Ash's recent article follows this post.)

Feel free to share this to your MP if you wish, and ask him or her:

DO YOU ACCEPT THIS DEFINITION OF BRITISH REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY?

(If they are a Conservative, remind them that this is supposed to be their party's very creed: a principle laid down by their greatest thinker and here asserted by their greatest prime minister.)

Ask them: what are you going to do now?

They'll probably ignore you or fob you off with feeble justifications.

If so, keep at them.

Bring them back to the substance of the representative principle. Will they act in accordance with it or not?

More silence? More weasel words? KEEP AT THEM!

Remember, had MPs followed the principle that underpins our constitution our country wouldn't have got to this crisis. And it has grown worse on account of MPs' neglect of it ever since.

Three wrongs don't make a right. MPs should be brave enough to vote in accordance their consciences now. And if WE don't tell them that, NO ONE will.

I've kicked things off by asking my own MP (Steve Baker, Con, Wycombe) this through Facebook, Twitter and an email:

"Time to ask again. I know - for you told me in person - that you agree with Burke. I presume - for you wouldn't dare not to - that you agree with Churchill. So no need for 'a prolonged philosophical debate'. [Baker's words last time I challenged him on his inconsistency in demanding that Parliament fulfil The Will Of The People] Why do you deny our sovereign Parliament's rights over Brexit?"

I'm also going to write again to my local paper challenging Baker - see attached earlier letter on this theme which was published last year.

Garton Ash's article: https://www.theguardian.com/…/six-months-foil-brexit-vote-p…

Imagining Britain's Lost Glaciers

My take on how some of the British Isles' grand old mountains would look if the glaciers were still there ...

You can see them all here:
https://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/features/imagining_britain's_lost_glaciers-10207

Two cases against Brexit

Please read, digest, share, use and - if you disagree or have improvements - critically engage with my two sheets in a constructive and polite manner:

1. Why it is not undemocratic to oppose Brexit
2. Why the nation's anger is not the EU's fault.

I hope they will help you challenge the ignorance and complacency that might lead to the greatest disaster this nation has suffered in modern history - and at its own hands.

Ignore the mindless tendency among Leavers! They won't change. Focus on those who are open to rational, evidenced debate and are secure enough to be able to change their opinions as a result of it.

Challenge "soft" Remainers who, for a quiet life (fat chance!) or out of a misguided sense that to oppose Brexit is a slight against democracy, sit on their hands and call it honourable.

Challenge your MP to vote with a view to what he or she genuinely considers to be the national interest, for that is their calling in a representative democracy and they will have failed it and the nation if they dodge it.

Peter

How to debate with Quitters - some ideas.

Some Top Tips for Remainers when attempting to debate with less thoughtful Quitters. By no means exhaustive. Please critique and/or add your own ideas. We are all going to need them in the months ahead as we turn this mother of a ship around.

1. Don't get angry.

2. Remember that you are the patriot. They are nationalists. You love your country enough to criticise it where due and know that partnership is not surrender; they are insecure enough about it to deny all failings and fear that partnership will reveal them.

3. Don't immediately rebut what they say: ask why they say it and what evidence they have. If none, politely tell them that you can't debate their point unless they can give some. Keep drawing out their beliefs and their reasons for them.

4. Remind them that the Referendum was advisory, Parliament is sovereign and Parliamentarians are representatives not delegates, so they - and it - can still change their minds. Use that to refute accusations of not being "democratic".

5. Don't initially get drawn into defending the EU, however much you're tempted and however well you're able: WE are still in it and THEY want to leave it - so they have to make and defend their case for changing the status quo.

6. Don't be afraid to criticise the EU. Only the dafter among us haven't a trace of scepticism. The crucial thing is to compare the EU's failings with the disaster of leaving it. Then, having established some common ground ...

7. ... re-frame the sovereignty question, usually expressed as something like "getting our country back" or similar hand-me-downs. Ask the Quitter what they think of the UK's care system (adult social care, mental health care etc.), our education systems, the state of the NHS, our prison system, our road, rail & transport infrastructure etc. - there are more! They're unlikely to sing any of their praises. Then point out that the EU has no or next to no input in any of them. They're products of our sovereignty not membership of the EU. You may also want to point out that we are, by international comparisons, one of the least healthy and least literate countries in the developed world and have chronically low productivity compared to all major and most minor EU nations. Nothing to do with the EU. Hand the question to the Quitter: what faith do they have that we would use our sovereignty more wisely after Brexit, and why?

8. This may fail, and if I know my average Quitter, will be likely to fail without their having left a mark on you (metaphorically speaking; they may of course by now have clumped you one or told you, in what seems to pass in Quitter circles as the argument clincher, to "fuck off"). If so, smile, use Ronald Reagan's presidency-winning phrase, "There you go again" - and end the conversation.

Go home and kick the cat or a convenient synthetic - but recyclable -alternative.

Thought for the Day, 8th August 2017

The Brexit “experience”– the rejection of knowledge and expertise on no better grounds that they are expert and knowledgeable; the primacy of assertion over argument; the abolition of the tedious duty to justify opinions – is less a right-wing upsurge (which is nothing new) than the child of the marriage between the relativist leftism dominant since the 1980s, for which all opinions were equal, and the market, in which we’re all customers and therefore always right.

Both these indulgent parents encourage, sustain but above all permit the worst in us and make us blind to the results of our choices. This is what we are seeing in these dark, dark days and what we must fight.

Hey America!

America, you’re looking old –
No longer fair and free and bold.
Perhaps that never was the truth
But as a dream it gave you youth.
For us back here, though moan we might
We saw the point, the nickel’s light:
A new world hammered from the wood
Where Europe reached its adulthood.
But human nature sniffed your track
To brand its mark upon your back.
Where fact fell short the dream too died
And left you nothing else inside –
So time has broken you; and thus
You’re no younger than the rest of us.

Sticky Wicket.

Let's Call a Spade a Spade, Shall We? is proud to team up with Don't Shoot the Messenger to bring you a souvenir edition to mark England's defeat to Sarth Efrica by several thousand runs.

Potential future employers may not wish to look away now, but I'd rather you did.

What is this garbage?

It's an advertisement in this Sunday's papers for NatWest Bank, presumably attempting to cash in - which is what banks do - on its sponsorship of cricket, that greatest of all team games, although it is modest about saying so.

It ticks just about every box in the politically-correct yet sell-your grandmother lexicon of big business today:

Firstly, you may notice something that is becoming the norm: the main photograph studiously features a person of indeterminate ethnic origin. (We've "moved on" from the odd black or Asian face: far too challenging; why, people may actually form opinions! We did try but unfortunately we all ended up hating each other, or would have done had we not been blessed with white European immigrants whom we're permitted to hate instead without being called "racist". Wiser by far to picture someone who, to paraphrase Theresa May, could be anyone - and ends up being comfortably no-one.)

Then, having laid this mushy, swampy foundation, down to patriotic business with a mawkish appeal to an admittedly rather apt shame-faced patriotism ... "This game is different. Just like the country it comes from. Our island of individuality." Yeah, RIGHT: where we all - individually, of course - are proud to follow liars, dissemblers and, NatWest clearly hopes, the shining example of international banking! ... "Where we ... champion the lucky and defend the underdog." That underdog being ourselves, of course, as we are inexplicably and unreasonably bullied by horrid, backward Europeans. It must be us: we certainly don't seem to give a cuss for anyone else.

Yet there's still time for a Goebbelesque, straight-up lobotomising beamer of a lie ("Not a country of small minds ...") followed by that limp but eternal excuse for philistinism ("... but of big hearts.") - the kind of phrase often heard at international football tournaments as England crash out to one of the United Nations' newer members who nonetheless seem to play another game we invented more intelligently than we do.

And how about this for bottom-of-the-pond relativism: "And, even if you're the odd one out, you can still be in." To which the absolute (relatively speaking) clincher is added: "Or out." Precisely. Relatively speaking.

As for "Cricket has no boundaries." Well, yes it does, actually. Two of which are: how you hold the bat and your stance at the crease. So cut the crap and have a word about technique with that poor young lady of who-knows-where, whom you've either roped in to your squalid little game or exploited by buying her off a picture agency.

Sickening stuff. But, as NatWest tell us, we are what we do.

Time for my annual joust with the Automobile Association.

Ten minutes listening to Chris de Burgh, then ...
“Good afternoon. How can I help?”
Me: “Good afternoon. I’d like to make my annual enquiry why my car insurance has gone up by nearly 20% and over £120.”
Her: “Well, the Government has put up Insurance Premium Tax by ...”
Me: “... 2.5%. I know. What about the other hundred quid of mine you're after?”
Her: “Average premiums across the insurance sector have gone up 16% this year. They’ve been paying out a lot of money.”
Me: “I can well imagine. But just now I’ll avoid asking why yours are even higher as that’s not really my point.”
Her: “So you’re not happy with the price?”
Me: “Let me think ... no, it says on this card that I suspect I may not be.”
Her: “Well Sir, you do have a healthy No-Claims Bonus so I may just be able to see if I can find you a better price.”
Me: “Look, nothing personal but we have this conversation every single year: the AA sends me a vastly inflated insurance price, I ring you up and spend half an hour on the phone and then you discount it back down to about what I paid last year. May I suggest that you give me your best price in the first place and then I don’t have to make this ritual phone-call? This would have the added bonus that I won’t think the AA is running a squalid little scam.”
Her: “I think you’ll find we’re not the only company who ...”
Me: “Then I apologise and stand corrected: a squalid BIG scam. Again: since there is clearly a better offer out there, why don’t you tell me in the first place?”
Her: “You have to ring us up first.”
Me: “Why?”
Her: “It’s company policy.”
Me: “It’s a SCAM! Your company well knows that a goodly number of customers will nod your inflated price through. It also knows that there are much better prices that it could have offered them. Again, nothing personal, but your company is trying to rip me off. If I thought that some of it would reach your wage-slip I might just let it past but the trouble is, I don't like people who are already rich getting even richer on account of it, see.”
Her: “Would you like me to see if there’s a better price?”
Me: “Not really, but since we’re already on the phone to each other, perhaps you would? Can I have some more Chris de Burgh while I wait please?”
After a while ...
Her: “I have managed to find a price of £xxx.xx.”
Me: “Goodness, allowing for the Government’s tax hike, that’s just a few quid higher than last year and a Saving Of Nearly A Hundred Pounds On the Price I Just Got Through The Post! Again. You AA guys really are AMAZING!”
Her: “Would you like me to renew at that price, Sir!”
Me: “Oh go on, twist my arm!”
Her: “Right you are, that’s all gone through.
Me: “Thank you! Begob, here’s me bus – must dash! Speak to you next year! I trust the kids is doing well and the mother’s little problem is all sorted?”
Her: “Yes, it’s all tickety-boo chez nous! So long!”
Me: “Hey, that rhymed! Cheery-bye!”

Buzz off, Trump.

https://www.facebook.com/boredpanda/videos/10155541171404252/

Phooey!

Buzz Aldrin was never much of an astronaut anyway. He was even worse than Meryl Streep. Lousy also-ran. Not like that Neil Armstrong. He was the first man on the Moon. No prizes for second, Aldrin! And remember that Neil - who's a friend of mine: a great guy, terrific guy, high net worth - had to GET THERE too.

Ooh what's this? A tweet from The Man In The Moon himself! What's that? "Aldrin, you LOSER!"? Sure I'll tell him!

I could stand on the Moon better than Buzz Aldrin. It's easy. And anyway, I'm going to the Moon. Next week. It's made of cheese, you know. Like my brain. And my hair.

Thought for the Day:

The EU should no more indulge us over Brexit than one should assist a friend who, in a fit of insanity, tries to kill themselves.

Boris Johnson’s Today Programme Blues

Shuffles papers with a hum,

Bullshits, flusters, sounds quite glum,

Dead-bats, stutters, scratches bum,

Lastly crowns it with an “Um ...”

The drinking man's Diane Abbott; the shrinking man's Silvio Berlusconi.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-40358825/boris-johnson-struggles-in-interview?SThisFB

Email exchange with Jacob Rees-Mogg MP

Since there is barely a political programme on which Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn't display his well-polished pearls, it's only fair that the nation should occasionally get the chance to answer back ...

If you're interested, Burke's speech is here, and makes VERY interesting reading. Most MPs are Remainers although all but a few bottled out over Article 50:

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/foun…/documents/v1ch13s7.html

Dear Mr Rees-Mogg,

I just heard you say on BBC News that Parliament should be the servant not the master of the people.

Can I ask whether you consider that Edmund Burke was wrong in his address to the electors of Bristol in 1774?

If so, what principle best replaces it, in your view?

Yours,
Peter Roberts

(from R-M's Parliamentary assistant)

Dear Mr Roberts
Many thanks for your email.
As Jacob receives so much correspondence he must prioritise his constituents. However, I will ensure that your message is passed to him and if he gets the opportunity he will reply to you.
With best wishes,
S

My response:

Dear S,
Thank you for your prompt response to my email to Mr Rees-Mogg. I do appreciate the heavy workload of an MP and the need to address local correspondence.
However, this is a matter of great national significance. As Mr Rees-Mogg often takes time away from his constituency concerns to speak to us all using the national media, on this occasion I will be most grateful for a response from him.
Best regards,
Peter Roberts

Top Tips, Number 30,003

Can't sleep because it's too hot? Then why not join my new campaigning group, Republicans for Her Majesty?

Because sometimes even a monarch can say it with flowers ...

Translation:
"I've been Queen since before most of you spineless MPs were born and I didn't get to 91 - and having kept my trap shut throughout - to let this country perish at about the same time I do. So sort it out."

From this lifelong republican: well done Ma'am!

(And I'll bet she discussed her choice of clothing with the Duke beforehand - and that it was SHE who put him in hospital as a result of it.)

Quitters: the Queen is the one in the first picture.