We live in a country where policy is decided on the basis of appearance and not substance. In UK politics it’s not the Christmas present that’s important it’s the shininess of the wrapping on the big boxes under the tree. Only they contain nothing but air that’s been warmed up by a passage through the bowels of a spin doctor. The Christmas spirit is nowhere to be seen, lost in the fog of farts.
This week we’ve witnessed more examples of big shiny boxes filled with farts. The first was the UK government’s surprise U-turn on tax credits, a move made not out of any great concern for the ill effects of austerity cuts on the low paid, but rather an attempt to wrong foot the Labour party. While it’s a good thing that the income of the lowest paid isn’t going to suffer a swingeing cut – at least for now – so that big corporations can continue to evade their tax bills, that wasn’t the motive for deferring the cuts. In the UK, scoring a cheap political point in the pantomime theatrics of the Commons is worth far more than protecting the poor and the vulnerable.
Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell tried a bit of fartery of his own. But in the words of Chairman Mao, the running dogs of capitalist imperialism fart louder than the proletariat. And in the words of the great Lennonist, if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow, most certainly not with the UK media. McDonnell’s quip was obviously a joke, but when your opponents already believe that you’re a card carrying member of the international proletariat revolutionary brigade, quoting Mao is a bit too meta for the raw meat eaters of the media and the Commons. All that happened was that Labour lost the initiative and the focus was placed on John’s red face and not on Osborne’s embarrassing U-turn. Meanwhile the poor and the vulnerable in Britain are used as political scorecards, starving on the sidelines while the powerful jeer at one another and lob fart bombs across the floor of the Commons chamber.
Some of the British establishment’s fart bombs are factually fatal. This week the Conservative government and its Labour supporters want to take military action in Syria. David Cameron wants to ensure that he’s got a majority in the Commons before risking another vote. Losing the vote would be a victory for ISIS he claimed, because apparently in the UK in 2015 wanting peace is the same as supporting terrorism while wanting to bomb things means you’re opposed to violence. It’s all clear in the fog of farts, and boys get to play with toys and look important while reporters eulogise a new war.
It’s not that anyone thinks that British military involvement will actually make any difference, that’s not the point. It’s never been the point. The real point is that the British establishment is afraid of some other things even more than they’re afraid of the murdering terrorists of the so-called Islamic State of Islamic Apostates who’ve measured off a part of the infinite and who call it god. A part of the infinite that doesn’t include compassion, empathy or kindness. A part of the infinite that doesn’t include the realisation that if god is all-powerful, omnipotent and almighty then he or she doesn’t require assistance from a 20 year old with a grudge and a suicide belt. ISIS is fearsome in its ignorance and its violence, but it’s not what really frightens the British state. The British state has measured off its own part of the infinite too, a part that doesn’t include common sense, realism, or much in the way of self-awareness.
What really terrifies the British establishment is that Britain will be seen to be what it really is, not the great power of politicians’ pretensions, but a small European state whose glory days are long in the past, a useless appendage to the Pentagon whose only role is to provide a figleaf of internationalism to US military action. Britain is past it, a power in its own living room but nowhere else, and it’s desperate to cling on to what it once was because otherwise it’s faced with the realisation that it’s perfectly average and unremarkable. The British establishment is terrified of normalcy.
In the factory of international affairs, the UK is the guy with the clipboard who rushes about trying to look busy while never actually doing anything useful. A bombing campaign in Syria will produce more civilian casualties than it will damage ISIS. It’s more important to produce a fusilade of fatal fart fog, hiding the impotence of the UK. The fact that innocent civilians are likely to die in the cross fire is of no importance when the public image of the British establishment is at stake.
The bottom line is that British planes joining in the bombing campaign against ISIS will not make a shred of difference to the outcome. The Americans, and now the French, have been bombing ISIS for over a year, but there has been no real difference to the picture on the ground. ISIS has been driven out of some areas in the Kurdish north, but has made gains in Palmyra and other places.
It has already been reported that the US planes which are bombing the so-called Islamic State often return to base with their payloads complete because they can’t find any more targets to bomb. Adding a few more British planes isn’t going to change that any. ISIS won’t suddenly start putting targets in the open just to give the RAF something to hit. What British involvement does do however is to give the British media something to talk about, and allows the UK establishment to pretend that it’s doing something useful as it scooshes about the Middle East with a clipboard of destruction deploying the politics of fantasies. We don’t have a foreign policy in this country, we have a fatal fart bomb in a trance.
BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE Barking Up the Right Tree has now been published and is an anthology of my articles for The National newspaper and is being published by Vagabond Voices press, who also publish Jim Sillars. The dug is in exhalted company. None of the articles collected in this book have appeared on this blog.
You can submit an advance order for the book on the Vagabond Voices website at http://vagabondvoices.co.uk/?page_id=1993
Price is just £7.95 for 156 pages of doggy goodness. Order today!
A limited number of signed copies of the two volumes of the Collected Yaps is also still available. See below for order details.
Donate to the Dug This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.
Order the Collected Yaps of the Wee Ginger Dug Vols 1 & 2 for only £21.90 for both volumes. A limited number of signed copies is still available, so get your order in now! P&P will be extra, approximately £3 per single volume or £4 for both sent together. If you only want to order one volume, please specify which. Single volumes are available for £10.95 per copy.
To order please send an email with WEE GINGER BOOK ORDER in the subject field to weegingerbook@yahoo.com giving your name, postal address, and email address and which volumes (1, 2 or both) you wish to order. I will contact you with details of how to make payment. Payment can be made by Paypal, or by cheque or bank transfer. Get your order in today – an ideal Christmas present!
Wee Ginger Dug 
excellent post Paul – The Emperor has no clothes!!!
When your latest epistle came up in my in-box, I thought it was about Wee Wullie Rennie and wondered how you could get a whole post out of him alone.
Anyway, I am beginning to think that Corbyn and McDonnel are just useless, sadly so.
They just seem so gauche, and I don’t mean left wing.
I am beginning to wonder what is the purpose of Labour anyway. They seem to just be a waste of a political space which, at least, the SNP seems capable of falling. Not that the BBC will ever tell you, though.
We really need to get out of this bollox of a Union and prosper. It isn’t going to happen whilst the two Tory Parties still pretend to be a World military power. I have friends in the US military command and they say that Cameron has been urged to get rid of Trident and beef up our conventional forces and equipment. The US has effectively outsourced 2 or 3 submarine launch vehicles for their Trident missiles and we, instead of being paid for that service, pay for it, so that Cameron et al can sit on the UN Security Council and get hurls in Airforce One.
The who whole Country is being asset stripped to pay for that fantasy.
We need to get out of this cursed Union and prosper, before it is too late.
“When your latest epistle came up in my in-box, I thought it was about Wee Wullie Rennie and wondered how you could get a whole post out of him alone.”
Excellent.
I guess that depends on how far you shoved the post into him 😉
BtP
Out and onwards.
David
Cameron wants more blood on the Butcher’s Apron.
Add Kezia Dugdale’s brainfart at FMQs today and you have air biscuits floating north and south with the prevailing winds.
On the ‘nose’ as usual Paul.
FMQs was quite astonishing today.
Kezia was her usual ineffectual self – “Yous got yer oil forecast wrang two years ago – even though the ither side said it was going to be even bigger, whit are yous going tae dae aboot it?”
She got blown away by shell after shell from the FM’s verbal howitzer (seein’ as how were all supposed to be in a “bomb the bastards” mode now – aye right).
They have absolutely zero redeeming qualities Steve. Not honesty, not courage, not even humility.
Never mind the crass and brainless stupidity of the premise they were trying to sell, it was the shear naked dishonesty and attempt to deflect that left my jaw dragging on the deck.
They WON the referendum. This economy, this carnage, this hardship is all part and parcel of better together land. What may or may not have happened under independence, what economic measures the SG would have undertaken is beyond a moot point and into the realms of speculation.
The tory austerity measures, the job losses and threatened job losses in power generation, oil and gas, steel, the yards, HMRC even bloody B&Q is on HMGs watch, in the here and now. In point of fact on the watch of the Westminster system and the UK economic model which we were assured were a ‘broad pair of shoulders’. We were assured that only together would Scotland’s economy be protected and in safe hands.
But then THAT was the point of Ms Dugdale’s wander into whataboutery wasn’t it? Don’t look over here, look over there. We can’t have folks looking at Labour in Scotland and asking very pointed and awkward questions.
Exactly Sam. It’s just deflection. It’s pathetic.
yea, just yea.
“They WON the referendum. This economy, this carnage, this hardship is all part and parcel of better together land.
This is their Land. The Land they wanted us not to leave. They would rather us have this than strike out in a way of our own chosing. They are craven cowards and toiuch the forlock to their Southern Slavemasters.
Their Land, their Wasteland but, I’m alright Massa. I dun good.
Mad as hell today Panda. Yesterday that towel boy wrote another 5% real terms cut into our budget by 2020, with real, very real suffering coming on the back end of it. Today? Today we have Kezia jumping entire schools of sharks in a moronic deflection attempt.
Dear God, what have they become, that they act as apologists for tory austerity?
Reblogged this on Bampots Utd.
The economy is swirling faster and faster down the plughole, which is something that Westminster is determined to keep from us…how stupid is that!
Meanwhile, the “duelling” continues between Tories and Labour to the detriment of those who are suffering in this “Low wage, no welfare economy”.
Well done UK…
Reblogged this on pictishbeastie.
[…] Source: A fatal fart bomb in a trance […]
I don’t give a moments thought for Scottish labour anymore. I walked out of the room when I realised all they could do is talk pish. They are a wretched and pitiful band of petty, petulant and pugnacious little pricks. They have no purpose except to stink out holyrood with their stupidity. The exist now on starvation rations of bad SNP stories peddled by their fair weather friends in the UK media. They think smears pass for opposition. They think brainfarts can be passed off for policy. Today they took a polished turd on a stick from George Osborne; who told them it was candy floss, and they started munching on it, all the while claiming that it was through their efforts that they earned this golden treat.
They are the dumbest fuckers in the room. I await the happy day that they will be consigned to the dustbin of history; a fate they richly deserve, then we can open the windows and get the smell of their stupidity of the seats.
yes
…& people still vote for them ffs. how embarrasing !!
And here was me thinking no one could despise them more than me…:-)
Ditto.
Double ditto.
They are a wretched and pitiful band of petty, petulant and pugnacious little pricks.
Without a doubt, this is one of the best lines I have ever read. Thankyou for that.
Think yourselves lucky. Imagine being in the FM’s shoes and actually having to listen and what’s worse, reply to these foolish people! It’s as if they haven’t yet left school – worse, as many 5th and 6th Year pupils could leave them standing.
Clear them out in May.
You are a teacher and I claim my £20 note.
The US “attack” on ISIL/ISIS (whatever) is bogus – the Russians are actually causing damage which is why they’re getting shot down by US proxy Turkey.
A recent photo showing a column of ISIS fighters riding along in their matching shiny new CIA bought 4x4s with a friendly US Apache overhead riding shotgun, tells you all you need to know.
And if the Paris event was a genuine “ISIS terror attack” then I’m a Dutchman! (I’m not btw)
Hoi – hoe gaat het!
Damn I’ve been outed as Dutch!
I’ll get ma clogs….
Thank you for this post Paul.
As per normal, the Westminster Parties turned up to play at being representatives of the people. As per normal, they showed that their only interest is their self-interest. I can’t forgive the Tories for being the predators that they are but my principal animosity is toward Labour. They are a shower of hypocrites who have supported ‘austerity’ ie the further impoverishment of the vulnerable, for years and who were NOT responsible in any way for Osborne’s pretend change of heart. I will never forget how Labour under Corbyn voted against tax credits being devolved. And of course, with the aid of the red tories the SNP and the Scottish people who elected them were marginalised.
Meanwhile, following on from being the Tories’ little helpers in the referendum, Slab are working hand in hand with the Tories, the media and London Labour to marginalise the Scottish Parliament. The Slab policy of attacking the SNP rather than proposing constructive alternatives is a concerted attack on the very idea of a competent Scottish Government. They have nothing positive to contribute because in truth they sorely regret that a Scottish Parliament was ever allowed to be resurrected. They wish to destroy the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. They turn up to bury the Scottish Government, not to further it. We should acknowledge that and stop pondering over why Slab is so puerile – it is deliberate. They are fronted by idiots who are being manipulated to besmirch and undermine everything that is remotely positive that is achieved in Scotland.
Corbyn, as evidenced by his studied aversion to being seen to support anything put forward by the SNP, is happy to be at the core of this. He is just another supporter of the British establishment who has spent a lifetime supporting a system that has gutted Scotland. Scotland’s awful condition under Labour was just collateral damage in his ideological game. His only interest in Scotland is to return it to that former state.
Osborne is a thoroughly nasty piece of work who I can’t think of without imagining him wearing a particular military uniform. Corbyn is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Of the two, I believe Corbyn is the greater threat to the long-term wellbeing of Scotland and its people.
It is really beginning to anger me how some in the ‘new media’ are clearly bent on promoting Corbyn as someone who, in some obscure way, should be perceived as being an ally of the poor and vulnerable in Scotland. He isn’t and neither are those who promote him. They are just the ideological left and in pursuit of their ultimate goal they conspire to undermine Scotland’s independence movement..
Great article thanks.
Arthur Thomson, very well put.
It would appear that the unionist parties are intent on completely undermining Scotland with a view to arming themselves for the Scottish election and also regards a second referendum. They want Scotland to look incapable to not only the people of Scotland, but also in a wider context of Europe. It’s amazing considering we were so wanted and even loved by ukok, before the Indy ref. Well we all knew that was total crap.
Regards Kezia, she is an embarrassment. Again put there to stir and stifle, not to enter into anything like meaningful debate. Liebour are a disgrace and what you say about Corbyn is correct he cares nothing for Scotland’s people.
I would not be surprised if the unionists in power in London attempt to dismantle Holyrood if we make a definite decision to have a second Indy ref. Too much to lose, their cash cow is not milked yet.
Very well put both Arthur and Helena.
There is the added benefit that whilst all these people are being bombed the media can shout in a very loud and grave voice “There’s a squirrel!” No one will be looking at tax credit cuts whilst the country is at war. Throw in the masses of dosh to be made by all your pals in the military supplies trade (why are missiles not sold at cost price?). Suddenly Georges inability to add up and the vast siphoning of money from the tax payer to the wealthy are not even questioned.
Excellent post. Regard bombing, I think you have missed the point. You see, according to the war apologists on BBCQT last night, it’s critical that the UK bombs as well because OUR bombs are superior to the others bombs and WILL DEFINITELY hit the right targets and are specially designed to take a sharp right if any innocent civilians are in the way.
We really do live in Oceania.
WAR is PEACE
IGNORANCE is STRENGTH
FREEDOM is SLAVERY.
What I find truly depressing is that so many people still allow themselves to be led by the nose by an Establishment leaning Corporate Media that spins one message: Your BETTERS are always right, so shut up and eat your cereal.
These are depressing times and I have no doubt that we (i.e. the UK war-mongers) will be bombing. Expect the terror threat to rise to DEFCON super max!
I am not quite sure why the war criminal Porky Cameron wants to go to war. Is he under orders from his war criminal masters in America? Is he trying to regain the “glory” days of the Empire and the Raj? Is he trying to emulate his “hero”, the war criminal Bliar? Or is he just trying the standard parlour trick of Third World despots by having a war to distract the people’s attention from the disasterous state of the economy?
In any event, if Porky Cameron wants to bomb Syria, he has two legal avenues, i.e. getting permission from the sovereign government in Syria, or by getting a UN resolution for such action. He will not, of course, ask permission of the sovereign government of Syria as he, to comply with the wishes of his American war criminal masters, is trying to force regime change in Syria; despite such actions being in contravention of international law. In any event, bombing Syria illegally would add to his existing charges as a war criminal.
If he gets the support of the Red Tories in the English parliament, and starts his illegal bombing campaign, all that will happen is that his actions will be just as ineffective in fighting ISIL as those of his American masters. To make matters worse, his actions will undoubtedly result in increased civilian casualties in Syria, including casualties amongst women and children.
Whilst we know that the American war criminal government has been supplying assorted terrorist groups, including ISIL, with weapons and money, I wonder just how much similar assistance has been given by the English government? Moreover, does Porky Cameron support that lunatic Turkish despot, Erdogan, in his actions of arming ISIL and buying stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil from ISIL? I have yet to hear Porky commenting on Erdogan’s actions in supporting ISIL or his actions in his continuing genocide of the Kurdish people and the Armenian people living within Turkey’s borders. Nor have I heard him criticising the Turks for machine-gunning the Russian pilot who was parachuting down after his aircraft was illegally brought down by the Turks; despite this murder of the Russian pilot being in breach of the Geneva Convention.
Anyway, members of the English parliament (including the Blue Tories, the Red Tories and the rump of the Whigs) should be made aware that if they support Porky Cameron and enable him to pretend that he has justification for bombing a sovereign state, they will be joining Bliar and Porky as war criminals and, one of these days, they will all, deservedly, be put on trial as war criminals.
You are never a real Tory Prime Minister until you have had your war.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/international/raf-to-look-for-any-unbombed-bits-of-syria-20151127104220
A neat wee budget equation:
£1billion Syria post-bombing rebuild = £1billion carbon capture plant project abandoned.
The steady withdrawal of UK resources from Scotland, and re- resourced in the South.
How long until No voters swallow their pride, and start to march in protest? It is difficult to accept and admit you have been fooled, but they were well warned of the consequences of a No vote during the referendum campaign.
The Hong Kong Gambit.
The problem I find most with No Voters is that their default response to anything is “You lost the referendum so why are you still banging on about it”
I have tried on numerous occasions to suggest to the people closest to me that were nae sayers, that they were fed a shit sandwich before 18.09.14, yet none of them seem to have any interest in the slightest.
As far as they are concerned, the status quo has now been resumed and there’s no point in caring about it.
Even my Mother in Law (who is a manager for a charity that looks after the disabled) cannot even contemplate the carnage that IDS has brought upon the people that she is trying protect and look after. She’s a bloody royalist aswell which makes my piss boil!!!