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TRUTH UNDERLYING

If Diplomacy is 'lying abroad for one's country', surely Politics as lying at home for personal satisfaction and advancement?

I don't need to offer proof - it is all around.
Indeed - who will take issue with me?

Yet they all tell us they 'went into politics to be of service to their fellows'. (Possibly Tony avoided that ultimate lie?)

The preselection of MPs by parties, followed by their incidental advancement to office in terms of the rosette-worn, voted for, under universal suffrage, by the meek, and by the poor in spirit (bless 'em) gives us a Westminster of fools and knaves.

Small wonder we get arch fool/knaves as prime Ministers. These turkeys will not change this situation, and with their pet weasels and quid-pro-quo bank-rollers, they see to it that the gullible majority of voters think they are getting what they want. (cue JJ).

Has the ´óÏó´«Ã½ been completely absorbed in 'The Lie'? Even naughty boy: Crick?!
Might Newsnight not, at least, point out that solving the Money Mess is hampered by the poor calibre of MPs and PM plus the chicanery of their money/power entanglement? Oh - OK.

I've just watched Michael Crick's clip from the Labour Conference doing "Place That
Face". The one you missed out, of course,
is Margaret Beckett - who was the Acting
Labour Leader after John Smith had died.

Interesting too that it was the lapsed Tory
(Quentin Davies) who recognised Michael
Foot as a brave champion of lost causes.
I remember being at the meeting in Bath
Street in Glasgow when a young Gordon
Brown was circulating a clip-board with a
petition to draft Foot to stop Denis Healey!

USA seem ahead of uk in the curve as the real effect of the evaporation of credit is being seen on usa main st. it will hit in ways that will surprise people? e.g in the usa the fertilizer firms cannot get credit and some say this will affect next years harvest [because it needs to be ordered now].

there seems a focus on the 'mark to market' rule which precipitated the crisis and if it cannot be modified in some way so that losses can be taken over time rather than overnight.

as to where the real power still is - the markets are waiting not on what the uk does or even the eu but what the usa does?

china is sitting on at least a trillion of usa dollars. They might decide they will spend that on commodities rather than risk holding paper any longer?

Will the economic crisis impact on the prosecution of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I assume it will but it will be papered over.

If there are no extra troops then they will have to redeploy from Iraq to Afghanistan won't they?

I would love to hear what the ambassador will say if asked whether the mandate is not renewed (Russian veto) and al Maliki asks them to leave (that would be a surprise to be fair) would they do that?

Also will the rosy free market view of globalisation and interdependence change now that its clear how easy it is to have a major, major crisis and how hard it will probably be to avoid that in the future? How do you regulate financial instruments globally?

DEW AND MY LAWN

Is the corruption that goes to the heart of government in Britain, known to the highest person in the land?

Westminster is a game for 600-odd players,
played out with our lives, at 'our expense'. 'Democracy' is rigged and Westminster is a fix.

We need a champion; one who knows the truth of these words and is prepared - as ultimate NOBLESSE OBLIGE - to risk all, in the service of the manipulated mass of British citizenry.

Revolution is long overdue.

more on the 'mark to market' row.





this is an accounting rule used in liquid markets for shares etc to mark the value at the end of every day that was extended [by academics] to the illiquid market of derivatives including cds.

So if you do not know the value of an item to protect yourself you put it to zero.

mark to market became mark to model [guessitmate value] in the enron case. so there is history.

As their value (little IMHO, for so many reasons) and use (or abuse, including by omission), is oft discussed with much gravitas and wrinkling of foreheads, has anyone seen this interesting poll, and results (thus far)...



...in... the Guardian

I think Messrs. Draper and Thompson better get a strong memo out to the troops pronto.

All hands to the pumps!

Two days to get the 'right result should be enough. Then you can report it.

And then, from the 'in-house' publication that brings you gems such as this...

'The Tories are foreign-policy lightweights'



Meanwhile on Planet Earth...

So much for bi-partisanship! After Cameron’s statesmanlike promises, all we had was a few platitudes grafted onto what was obviously his existing speech. So much for a complete rewrite!

I can understand that, after taking weeks to write and rehearse his speech, he was unwilling to abandon it. On the other hand, he had already publicly recognised that – in view of the dire circumstances we all face - it needed to support bi-partisanship. In reality, having done the statesman thing yesterday, it proved as vicious an attack on Labour as might have been expected of any attack dog.

What I found interesting, and surprising, was that after all his embracing of the centre - remember those hoodies who needed to be hugged – the speech was a clear return to traditional Conservative values. It emphasised the sort of Thatcherite politics that Cameron’s right-wingers will love. Whether the electorate will be so keen on a return to the 1980s is less obvious.

CAMER-ON SPEECHING

Amazing! Watching Cameron give that speech, you could almost SEE the speechwriter and the PR man conferring closely - almost as one man.

'Broken Britain' cries the visionary, having visited prisons; but never realised it is the MIND and the SPIRIT of so many INDIVIDUAL BRITONS that is broken.
'Sound Money and Low Taxes' cries the sage, never realising we need SANE INDIVIDUALS AND HIGH COMPETENCE.

What we require, individually and collectively, is people who feel motivated to get up in the morning; who have volition to positively apply themselves to whatever befits their circumstance, born out of a desire to be effective. To achieve this requires a total re-appraisal of what matters: not GDP, not PhD but basic, social competence in each new arrival. School from 2 to 18, for mammon's needs, will not deliver.

Trumpeting 'Family' is hollow if family is not the place where a child acquires the undeniable advantages of breast milk and psychological secure attachment. How significant that Cameron is 'proud' of Samantha AS AN ENTREPRENEUR. Perhaps that is what we call motherhood under 'New Cameron'?

These damnable POLITICIANS are, to a man (and to a wannabe man) a threat to our future. All their predecessors have presided over multiple failures, while society is propped more and more by excessive consumption of every banal kind - all happily taxed, and the proceeds spent by those who's drug is power.

The average citizen is ever-dumber and ever-madder, with the dumbest and maddest eagerly taken up by party politics as one-eyed fodder to be schooled in leading the 'blind' remainder - us.

VICTORIAN VALUES

Just picked up chapter and verse on the spelling issue, as raised by New Cameron in that speech, from Radio 4.

I am reminded that he spoke of the: "clear barrier between right and wrong" when to all reasonable people there is no such division. The use of "barrier" deserves some scrutiny from a psychological standpoint. Is this a man who FEARS that he might 'cross the line'? Perhaps become the sort of 'good boy' who slides into taking money from dodgy donors and hires a personal weasel to be his alter ego - just like Blair??

I am off to see what I can discover of his early years and parental nurture. . .

Bring back the birch.

I FOUND NOTHING

New Dave seems to have sprung from the head of Thatcher - ready made. No word of the parenting he received.
Some perjorative comment on his character, as purportedly revealed, when employed - can't trust that.
Hmmmmm