Diary 2016
Wogs
24th June
Turned on the telly at 05:30 and felt quite unwell, and then got heart palpitations. The Wogs Begin at Calais tendency appear to have triumphed.
Four hours later driving down the M40, there is the UKIP farmer's hoarding "Bye, bye EU. Independence day 23rd June". Independence Day? How facile. What does he think Britain is? A third world colony? When you join a club, you abide by the rules. If the rules say no golf shoes in the dining room, then you don't wear golf shoes in the dining room. If you don't like the rules, you leave. You remain sovereign throughout.
When I arrive at my destination, one of the park gardeners says that he was going to vote to remain but because he thought that doing so would result in a Labour government, he voted leave instead.
Second referendum
25th June 2016
Interesting article here about a) the need for an Act of Parliament before the result of the referendum can be acted on and b) that said Act is subject to the decision of MPs, who are not obliged to consider the result binding (it is merely advisory).
*****
Tremendously enjoyable baiting ("You lost, get over it") of the Brexit supporters via this petition. When I came across it this morning, it stood at around 800,000 signatories. Eight hours later, it's 1.8 million+ and rising.
Idiocy
25th June 2016
A statistician on BBC Radio 4 has just said that an analysis of the Brexit vote shows it to be overwhelmingly based on a fear/loathing of immigrants. Douglas Carswell, the only UKIP MP, disagreed saying that the Brexit vote was based on "sunny optimism". I think he was being serious.
Wisdom
27th June 2016
Had to chuckle over these vis a vis Brexit:
- To escape the Romans, the Britons used to wade into the bog until up to their necks in mud
- "We had a headache so we shot ourself in the foot. Now we can't walk and we still have a headache."
Not so simple
28th June 2016
Interesting tweet yesterday:
If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.
Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.
With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.
How?
Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.
And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legislation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.
The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.
The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?
Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?
Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-manoeuvred and check-mated.
If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.
The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.
When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.
All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.
Collective gloom
7th July 2016
This post seems to sum things up:
All this "let's all pull (what, exactly?) together" stuff is all very well, but it merely highlights even more the reality that the Leave campaign was cruising entirely on rhetoric. No content or serious plans, proposals, analyses of prospects, assessments r comparison of options, nor even the remotest element of what practical steps would -- and now do -- need to be actioned. None of any of that at all, no substance, no pragmatic plans. Zip. Merely slogans and huff. You'd think that anyone with such confidence about their campaign would have been itching to get their hands on the formal Clause 50 button in order to push it and get on with it. Instead, the main advocates do a runner, because they haven't got a clue about handling what they convinced themselves that they wanted. Leaving the rest of their camp paralyzed, wishing it could all go backwards because they don't know how to go forwards. And trying to stave off doing anything at all, because they don't know what to do and hoping they can keep on spinning it out. Not going to work: the general feeling in the rest of Europe is not unlike one of those divorce where one partner has said they're going -- and the other has taken them at their word. "Fine, off you go then". This side of the Channel, it's seen as over -- and life goes on.
Can't shake it
8th July 2016
Dismal productivity, growing personal debt, growing national debt (with no end in sight), growing levels of obesity with the resultant pressure on the NHS, entitlement to welfare embedded in the culture: Brexit is like bleeding a sick patient. In a country where "austerity" is used as a synonym for living within your means, what realistic hope is there of making it work? Is it likely that the youngsters, with their Erasmus experience are thinking "Oh, good, thank God we've got rid of that lot". What about the dark-skinned girl sitting in front of me on a bus, talking in a London accent, complaining bitterly on her phone to a friend about being asked was she British and why didn't she go home? Not on the radio, not in the newspaper but on a bus as I travelled to a funeral in Muswell Hill. Is she going to be forging a new Britain, safe in her place as a British citizen? What about the eight parents of children in our nursery school who are relocating as a direct result of Brexit (that's 12% of our business). Are they seeing the "sunny optimism" that Carswell talked about.
Be prepared for Leadsom; she'll make it work. If the Labour membership can have its Corbyn moment, why can't the Conservatives?
Earl's grandson
5th August 2016
This is what passes for journalism at The Telegraph these days:
Earl's grandson 'smuggled cocaine worth £4.5m to Kenya'
Idiots, relying on single quotation marks to protect their incompetence. I didn't bother to read further knowing that what followed would be similarly poor.
Salem
5th August 2016
I'm not sure human nature has improved since those days; maybe it never will. The Times article on Jack contained, as comments:
Hope big Leroy gives him a good pounding
[Burn the witch)
Glad Jack got caught. That kind of haul would have caused untold suffering if it had reached the streets. He may have some time to reflect now.
[Burn the witch]
Nairobi's White elite? I dont think so, white trash more like
[Burn the witch]
I always find it interesting that whenever a British person is charged with offences abroad, the assumption is that he cannot possibly be guilty.
[Burn the bitch]
The only sensible comment was:
A lot of the article is nothing to with the fact he's been charged, its history. If he's not guilty and stitched up, he could go away for a long time. The facts will come out and those involved should be locked up. Guilty until proved innocent down there.
[Guilty until proved innocent amongst Times readers too...]
The article stated:
The UN and the United States have said that Kenya has become a cocaine distribution hub in recent years, with traffickers from South America taking advantage of Nairobi’s extensive air links to Europe and Asia. Traffickers also exploit Kenya’s long Indian Ocean coastline and lack of adequate security.
The Guardian on the same day stated:
The seizure was a rare one in Kenya
Hmmm, if Kenya is a "cocaine distribution hub", why no seizures? Interpol got hold of this one back in South America and advised the Kenyan authorities. Maybe that helps. Why then charge Jack? That shows a distinct lack of imagination given that the likelihood of Jack being an international drugs smuggler is zero.
No response from Kenya's CID
10th September
From The Times:
A shipment of cocaine that has left a British aristocrat facing possible life imprisonment in Kenya was supposed to have been off-loaded by a gang in Spain and had nothing to do with him or the man accused alongside him, according to US and Spanish investigators who have tipped off the Kenyan police.
Jack Marrian, 31, a sugar trader and nephew of the 7th Thane of Cawdor, was charged with smuggling 99.7kg of the Class A drug, alongside Roy Mwanthi, a Kenyan clearing agent, after anti-narcotics police found the drugs in a sea container carrying sugar from Brazil.
The cellophane bricks of cocaine, worth at least £2.2 million, were packed in white polythene sacks and buried under bags of sugar, owned by the global commodities trader ED&F Man.
Spanish police said the drugs were loaded in Brazil without the traders’ knowledge, using a smuggling technique called “blind hook” or “rip-on, rip-off”, in which smugglers hide their drugs inside other people’s cargo.
“They do it without the knowledge of the companies transporting these goods. It has been a popular method used by Colombian cartels,” a source in the organised crime unit of the Spanish national police told The Times.
The drugs were supposed to be off-loaded in Valencia when the containers changed ships for the second leg of their journey to Salalah, in Oman. There they changed boats again for the final leg to Mombasa.
Melvin Patterson, a spokesman for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), said that “a criminal group based in Valencia tried to get cocaine out of a container, but failed”.
Spanish police tried to search the containers on July 29, after they had spent five days on the dockside, but four of the containers had already been loaded onto the MSC Sonia, including the one with cocaine.
“We do not have a clear idea of who was waiting for this shipment to arrive in Spain but it was certain that it was heading for Spain, not Kenya,” the Spanish police source added. “For some reason it was not collected at Valencia.”
Containers are sealed with security bolts to prevent them being opened in transit. Kenyan police found a spare seal in the container with the drugs, which would have allowed smugglers to reseal it without attracting attention.
“The Spanish stressed that this was a rip-off load and the recipient of the container would have no knowledge that it was being used to transport drugs,” Mr Patterson said. “The DEA shared this information with the head of Kenya’s CID, but has not received any response.”
Mr Marrian, who denies the charges, has been released on bail of £1 million. Sheetal Kapila, his lawyer, said: “He should never have been charged. It’s a disgrace that he was arrested and kept in custody for two weeks in demeaning, humiliating and scandalous conditions. There’s absolutely no evidence to connect Jack to this offence.”
Mr Mwanthi also denies the charges. An official familiar with the investigation said the pair were victims of political pressure to make high-profile arrests, as well-known drug barons remain at large.
Third world
The Daily Mail describes three High Court judges as "Enemies of the people" because, having been asked to interpret the law, the judges did so.
According to the Guardian on 1st April 2005: "the proprietor of the Daily Mail sent a series of supportive and congratulatory telegrams to Nazi Germany's leaders, including Hitler, just months before the second world war, papers released today reveal"
One can only hope that the Daily Mail's idiotic headline is not a sign that a similar lack of judgement now pervades its editorial staff.