Marmite

Unless you’ve been impersonating Rip Van Winkle, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White or Rachel from accounts, you’ll know that Trump is waging war on Iran. This has prompted the usual keffiyeh-wearing klowns to object to a regime getting its komeuppance for torturing and murdering women and gays simply for being women and gays. The klowns’ rationale is that if Netanyahu doesn’t like the Ayatollahs, they must be the good guys even though they murder women and gays for simply being women and gays. Ah, the Hope-not-Hate brigade has been exposed for what they are: Hateful no-Hopers. Meanwhile Greta Thundabunga, the Scandinavian and female (at a stretch) clone of Chris Packham, is bleating about Cuba, thus sending the message that the war with Iran is of little consequence, and there’s no longer a climate crisis. By careering from cause to cause, just like Packham, she’s trying desperately and failing comically to be relevant and to achieve something. Anything.

It was St Valentine's Day recently, and the Great British Courts gave a smacking great kiss to Palestine Action (PA) by decreeing that their proscription as a terrorist organisation was unlawful. For every force or action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, and the inferred opposite of the mwah-mwah to PA is a poke in the eye to the law abiders and enforcers that make up the bulk of the population, especially our Jewish friends and neighbours.

Tax. Immigration. EU. Sewage (or should that be the sewage that is the EU). Climate change. Kate or Meghan. Fish cutlery. Marmite. I’m prepared for disagreements with friends (and not-so-friends) on most things, but not what hit me between the eyes last Tuesday evening.

To all the Trump-toasting tariff-trashers out there, like Stewart and Campbell (sounds like a re-run of the battle of Culloden) and their dumbbell devotees, here’s a simple home truth. No one knows what’s going to happen as a result of Trump’s Tariffs (TTs), because it all depends on how other nations respond. Retaliatory tariffs will have a very different outcome from a plethora of trade agreements, both including and excluding the USA. Nations also have the option of playing around with their exchange rates, interest rates and taxes. Or nuking New Jersey.

Wow! What a week at the Whitehouse. Zelensky and his Zealots think he was bullied, Trump’s Trumpeters think he’s king, and J D Vance’s Devotees think he was dissed.  What do I think? In the context of just that one showdown-meeting, Vance behaved badly, Zelensky behaved badly, and Trump behaved badly. In the wider context of geo-politics Russia, Ukraine, the EU and America all behaved badly. The UK, under BoJo, did better as far as it went, but with hindsight (a wonderful thing that too many claim is insight and thus are shortsighted), he should have devised a longer-term strategy for Ukraine. Maybe he did and his ‘colleagues’, uncivil servants and the EU shouted him down. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors. And therein lies the rub for the supposed ambushing of the Ukraine President: what transpired before the press conference with Zelensky? Said ambush caught experts and armchair commentators alike by surprise. Furthermore it was clumsily enacted, and the consequences wer...

‘Trump’ can mean to outdo or outflank the opposition. It stands to reason that, to achieve this, an element of surprise is required. I think it’s fair to say that so far, on the question of relations with the EU and Russia (including Ukraine, to whichever evil empire it might succumb) Trump has trumped with a series of surprises.

Some attribute this quote to Sir Winston Churchill, some to John Maynard Keynes. I think Nigel Farage could have said it. This weekend Farage is under fire for saying what he’s been saying since the 1990’s. What he’s been saying and what he said this weekend he is able to justify, and the facts haven’t changed. The facts are that Putin is a warmonger, and the EU/NATO has so far failed at the complex, goalpost-moving feast that is this particular geopolitical game. Farage is claiming that the EU/NATO’s ambitions eastwards and perceived flirtation with Ukraine “provoked” Putin into invading Ukraine. He didn’t say he liked Putin. In fact he said explicitly that he didn’t like him. He said he admired him as a political operative, which does not mean he thinks he’s honourable. Farage was also very clear that Putin is to blame for the invasion of Ukraine. Neither did he criticise nation states for exercising their sovereign right to – er – sacrifice their sovereignty in order to join the EU....

I didn’t say that. Others are saying it: those quick to condemn and slow to join the dots. Usual suspects. Colonialism has had its day. No one in their right mind, which rules out the EU, wants to colonise nations to plunder their resources, goodwill and foist their values on an indigenous peoples who want to make up their own minds and manage their own affairs thank you very much. Von der Liar take note.

I honestly think there is no such thing as the human race. There are at least two: the one I belong to, and the one occupied by the likes of ISIS, The Wagner Group, paedophiles and groomers, Hamas, and their apologists and celebrants, including the Labour Party fringe. How can anyone perpetrate such horrors, support them or not condemn them?