Nature Is Party To All Our Deals And Decisions

Do not underestimate the power of propaganda and deliberately spoken untruths by government ministers and do not underestimate the number of stubborn and stupid people who support the government and would rather believe the lies than face and admit to the truth.
( Rose Winfold )

Europeans Are Mocking Us.
In the eyes of the wider world, the British national character has undergone a seismic shift.
Instead of seeing us as a stoic nation full of people with stiff upper lips they view us as a shower of headless chickens with loose lower bowels.
In this post-Brexit chaos where no one has a plan, and those who were supposed to have one have resigned, where racism is on the rise, and Chilcot has lacerated our politicians for taking us into a catastrophic war on a lie, Europeans are mercilessly mocking us.
( Brian Reade, 09.07.2016 )

Islam is not a religion of peace, it’s a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can.
( Ayaan Hirsi Ali )

How can we afford a huge wall in Calais to stop migrants flooding here when we can’t afford small ones on our rivers to stop water flooding our own people.
( Brian Reade, 10.09.2016 )

The Primitive Doctrine.
Groups like the Muslim Council do not do nearly enough to root out extreme versions of Islam because they too have come under the influence of Wahhabism, whose logical progression is to end up with a barbarous theocracy not dissimilar to ISIS.
Wahhabism was imported from and heavily funded by Saudi Arabia and is now the most powerful voice in most British mosques, faith schools and Muslim organisations.
The ‘primitive doctrine’, the burkha and the bushy beards, are seen as integral to British Islam though they stem from archaic Arab life and have no theological basis in the Koran.
( Imam Dr Taj Hargey, Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford )

That’s the standard technique of privatisation.
Defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.
( Noam Chomsky )

Having Sex With A Married Celebrity.
In Katie Price’s latest literary classic (about herself, obviously) she tells a story about having sex with a married celebrity who reminded her of a Bosch power drill.
“At one point I panicked, thinking, ‘if he doesn’t stop soon, I’m going to be permanently attached to the bed!’ My heart sank. Mr X wasn’t having sex with me, he was having sex at me”.
I wouldn’t let the heart sink too far, love.
If you hadn’t decided to earn millions posing with your surgically enhanced naked breasts to get males to “have sex at you”, you’d probably be pricing up those drills at your local B&Q.
( Brian Reade, 17.09.2016 )

I trust that there will be a serious attempt by the British government to rely in the future on accurate evidence rather than inaccurate anti-Palestinian propaganda against someone who has a history of opposing Israel’s crimes and violations of international law.
( Sarah Colborne, after the successful appeal by Raed Salah )

For Some Reason We Are Brainwashed.
We as black people, we are never going to be successful.
Not because of you white people, but because of other black people.
It’s a dirty, dark secret you know when there are young black kids doing well in school, the loser kids tell them, “Oh, you’re acting white.”
For some reason we are brain-washed to think if you’re not a thug or an idiot, you are not black enough.
( Charles Barkley )

Calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option.
You can beg for mercy, or you can fight back.
Consider taking a safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there.
( Sheriff David Clarke, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin )

It’s incredible how one tiny egg and one tiny sperm can produce one massive asshole.

A Very Kind, Funny And Special Woman.
I’ve interviewed, or met, six of the famous people who have died this year.
Victoria Wood, Muhammad Ali, Terry Wogan, Carla Lane, Ronnie Corbett and Caroline Aherne.
But none were as down to earth, or made me laugh as much as Aherne.
One interview was in a London house she’d moved into weeks earlier that was a tip because she hadn’t bothered to unpack.
There were BAFTAs and Comedy Awards stuffed behind mirrors still in their boxes.
A courier knocked with a case of champagne, sent for winning her latest one.
She opened a bottle, poured it into two tea mugs and said: “You’re not arsed with it being chilled, are you?”
Halfway through, she asked if I fancied writing her autobiography, which she said would be a bestseller.
I believed her and told her I couldn’t see why not, until she told me she needed total concentration so wanted to go to an Indian island for three months to write it.
Did I fancy going?
When I told her that could be a slight problem she replied: “Shame. You’ve just knocked back the best time you’ll ever have and the best story you’ll ever write because I’ve had some life, believe me”.
She had.
RIP a very kind, funny and special woman.
( Brian Reade, 09.07.2016 )

I love it when people tell you they are speechless.
( Charlie O’Malley )

There is only one hope for mankind, and that is Democratic Socialism.
( Nye Bevan )

Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry.
It merely astonishes me.
How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?
It’s beyond me.
( Zora Neale Hurston )

Two Disloyal, Deceitful Narcissists.
It came as no surprise to read that today’s young people will officially be the first generation to end up poorer than their parents.
They’ll earn less money, have more debt, work longer for worse pensions and live at home until their mum’s hands are too frail to scrub their smalls.
So bad is their luck that when they are finally offered their own place it will be in an over 55s sheltered housing scheme, and their dad will have got their first.
The baby-boomer generation I belong to should hang its head in shame.
Well the men at least, because women could argue they have lifted the ambitions of their own gender.
They can claim, as Theresa, Angela, Nicola and possibly Hillary run entire countries, they’ve produced inspirational role models.
What about the boys?
Specifically, the boys of Britain and America, where the most high-profile and powerful male politicians are Boris Johnson and Donald Trump.
Two disloyal, deceitful narcissists, who are utterly consumed with their own personal ambition and willing to crush anyone, and anything including their nation’s best interests, to achieve power.
And that’s without mentioning the hair.
Outside of a serial killer, or a train-spotter, if there was one thing you prayed your son wouldn’t turn into, it would be either of these two sociopaths.
The parallels are striking.
Both are spoilt little rich boys who spin the line that they’re rebelling against the Establishment, when they are only rebelling against anyone who doesn’t buy into their belief that they were born to rule.
Both are political turncoats who feel facts only get in the way of emotionally charged lies that resonate with the disenfranchised.
Both have the attention span of a gnat, believing most of their audience does too.
That’s why they speak in populist, at times racist soundbites, with no depth too low to be plumbed.
For Trump’s walls to stop Mexicans so all Americans can have a job, read Johnson’s false pledges of £350million on buses to save the NHS.
For banning all Muslims from blowing up America, read the EU being the realisation of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi dream.
( Brian Reade, 23.07.2016 )

All ‘religions’ are man-made, and some try to impose, by force, their barbaric medieval laws on others.
Female genital mutilation, honour killings, public stonings and floggings, amputation of limbs, child abuse, and other atrocities.
( Rose Winfold )

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
( Wendell Berry )

First Night Of The Last Night Of The Post-Brexit Vote Proms.
I can’t claim to be the biggest fan of Last Night Of The Proms.
I usually try to give it a go until I see half-a-dozen Jacob Rees-Moggs in dinner jackets, manically waving their Union Jacks as they belt out Thatcher’s post-Falklands signature tune, Land of Dope and Tory, and I pray for an uninsurable act of God to strike.
I can’t watch tonight as it’s the First Night of the Last Night of the Post-Brexit Vote Proms, with jingoism going into orbit: City boys belting out Jerusalem unaware it is a socialist hymn, chinless wonders with “We’ve Taken Our Country Back” banners, Boris Johnson singing right to the end of Auld Lang Syne to show it’s not over until the fat lardy sings.
And Nigel Farage dressed in a Union Jack three-piece suit, weeping as he sings “Britons never, ever shall be slaves”, as if to show that he alone freed us from European tyranny.
When all he’ll really be showing, is that Hitler’s other ball is indeed in the Albert Hall.
( Brian Reade, 10.09.2016 )

As supporters of Israel, perhaps you agree with the racist statements of Israeli government ministers such as Eli Dahan that Jews have higher souls than non-Jews?
Or Miri Regev’s belief that asylum seekers are a ‘cancer’?
Or, would this be guilt by association, as in your character assassination of Jeremy Corbyn?
( In an open letter written by prominent members of the Jewish community to the Jewish Chronicle )

When you finally realise that our leaders are motivated only by money, you will understand why they don’t care.

Jeremy Corbyn Has Been Systematically Ridiculed.
An LSE survey recently found that 74% of broadsheet and tabloid newspaper articles ‘offered either no or a highly distorted account of Corbyn’s views and ideas’, that only 9% were ‘positive’ in tone, and that throughout this coverage he has been ‘systematically ridiculed, scorned and the object of personal attacks’.
Some of the strategies used by reputable journalists to imply that Corbyn is a terrorist sympathiser, that he has tolerated antisemitism, or that he is an apologist for dictators are reminiscent of McCarthy-era scare tactics.
( Luke Davies )

I think it dangerous to argue guilt by association and in so doing to undermine the kind of dialogue and debate that is the basis of peace, progress, and greater understanding in the world.
( Shami Chakrabarti )

You know that little voice in your head that keeps you from saying things you shouldn’t?
I don’t have one.

Like Randy Stags On Tour In Vegas.
The good news, folks, is that we’re going to kick every MP and Lord out of Westminster.
The bad news is they’ll be going back in after six years once the place has an estimated £4billion makeover (call it £7billion with backhanders) paid for by you.
Worse news is instead of grasping this golden opportunity to reconnect with the vast majority of people who put them in power, by moving parliament out of London, both houses will relocate to buildings a few minutes away.
Like randy stags on tour in Vegas, they’ve decided what goes on in the Westminster bubble, stays in the Westminster bubble.
And I suppose if you want to fiddle the highest expenses, sell access to dodgy Uzbekistanis in the penthouse suite of a swanky hotel, splash your 11% pay rise on the best shows and restaurants, cadge corporate hospitality and hand out peerages to oily cronies, London is the place to be.
( Brian Reade, 10.09.2016 )

Aren’t the Tories worried that if you put together the names of their last woman leader and their likely next one you end up with a thieving prostitute called Maggie May?
( Brian Reade, 09.07.2016 )

I have accepted that I am a little bit mad and not meant for everyone to understand.

A Talking Doll That Spouts Inane Phrases.
In the two months Theresa May has been PM she’s said four things: “Brexit means Brexit… Britain is open for business… Grammar schools are good… I support Christmas”.
Which doesn’t sound like she has the policies to become a great leader.
More like a talking doll that spouts inane phrases when you pull her string.
Maybe when she visits estates savaged by Tory welfare cuts they could speak her language by getting a group of toddlers to greet her with a cry of “I’m hungry mummy! Feed me!”
( Brian Reade, 17.09.2016 )

The minute I started thinking it through, I realised all religions are a form of manipulation.
And I started having problems with certain beliefs, like in Africa, where people are dying of AIDS and over-population, the Catholic Church is going over to covert them and take away the condoms.
And I said, ‘Wait a minute’.
( Salma Hayek )

Men In Suits.
No woman in a burqa (or a hijab or a burkini) has ever done me any harm.
But I was sacked (without explanation) by a man in a suit.
Men in suits mis-sold me pensions and endowments, costing me thousands of pounds.
A man in a suit led us on a disastrous and illegal war.
Men in suits led the banks and crashed the world economy.
Other men in suits then increased the misery to millions through austerity.
If we are to start telling people what to wear, maybe we should ban suits.
( Henry Stewart )

The average Democrat voter is just plain stupid.
They are easy to manipulate.
That’s the easy part.
( Hillary Clinton )

Blair And Cameron’s Blood-Baths In Iraq And Libya Led To The Rise Of ISIS.
When I was growing up Winston Churchill wasn’t exactly the most popular name in our house.
Something to do with setting armed troops on striking workers, dismissing hunger marchers as shirkers, sending the Black and Tans to murder the Irish as Colonial Secretary in the 1920s, and holding a profound belief that the British had a moral duty to tame and civilise dark-skinned savages.
So no bubbly was opened this week to celebrate the face of a man my nan used to call “an ol’ whore-master” appearing on our new plastic fivers.
But what is undeniable about Churchill was that he was the ideal leader to stand up to Adolf Hitler.
He, like most of his cabinet, knew the reality of war.
So did most of Harold Wilson’s and Ted Heath’s.
Even Thatcher’s cabinet contained men who had seen military action.
So when they kept us out of war (as Wilson did with Vietnam) or took us into it, they had knowledge of the consequences.
If only we could say that about the two longest-serving PMs since then, Tony Blair and David Cameron, who in the space of 10 weeks have been eviscerated by Chilcot and now the Foreign Affairs Committee, for blindly dragging us into disastrous blood-baths in Iraq and Libya.
Cameron has been accused by his (mostly Tory) peers of rushing to war in 2011 on “erroneous assumptions”, ignoring military advice and a lack of intelligence to pursue an “opportunistic policy of regime change” with no thought for what would happen when Colonel Gaddafi was removed, thus facilitating the country’s descent into chaos and the rise of ISIS.
Chilcot said Blair rushed to war in 2003 when there was no imminent threat to Britain and with peaceful options still open, ignoring intelligence and hard evidence, and with a “catastrophic” lack of planning, which left the country he invaded in a state of anarchy and rife for the birth of ISIS.
For Cameron, Libya and Gaddafi, read Blair, Iraq and Saddam.
For both calamitous military blunders read shame, death and the untamed ambition of PR men who lusted after glory.
Both were a pair of preening peacocks, surrounded by fawning colleagues who had never seen the horrors of conflict, who looked past the detail, the planning, the complexity of the situation and the aftermath, and saw their place in history as a modern Churchillian figure.
Meanwhile North Africa and the Middle East, fuelled in no small way by Blair and Cameron’s reckless pursuit of immorality, are in a desperate state.
As is Britain’s military and diplomatic reputation.
( Brian Reade, 17.09.2016 )

The more I read about and listen to Donald Trump, the more appalled I am.
Not as a Democrat, as a human being.
A genuinely nasty man.
( Stephen King )

Our own opinion is always right, but sometimes we should keep it to ourselves.
I sometimes listen to a conversation between two strangers and mentally give my own opinion.
And sometimes, the amount of self-control it takes to keep my mouth shut is so exhausting I need a nap.
( Rose Winfold )

Political Point-Scoring Of The Lowest Order.
I find it deeply troubling that, of all things, Jeremy Corbyn should be attacked for supporting violent and hateful organisations and individuals when he has spent so much of his political career fighting for free speech and trying to bring about the conditions necessary for peace in many different parts of the world.
It’s hard not to conclude , given how aware most journalists and politicians are of this fact , that those responsible for circulating these accusations are guilty of political point-scoring of the lowest order.
( Luke Davies )

Isn’t it funny how right-wing papers have stopped printing photos of hordes of migrants trying to get into Britain now we’ve voted to leave Europe?
( Brian Reade, 09.07.2016 )