More on Len v Lewis

Lewis Goodall

Hmm. So where are we now with the Len McCluskey-Lewis Goodall business? 

Well, it looks from what both of them are saying (see the post below) that they both got through to Barry Gardiner in Abu Dhabi last night. Len says Barry Gardiner dismissed the story as fake news while Lewis says Barry only dismissed the part about Len McMluskey encouraging him to stand. Lewis now says, however, that Barry is still making his mind up whether to stand and will decide in the next 24 hours - which isn't what Lewis was tweeting earlier last night:

EXC: I can confirm there is to be a seventh entrant into the Labour leadership contest. 

It’s Barry Gardiner.

Tune into #Newsnight at 2230 for more.
— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) January 8, 2020

In fairness to both of them, Barry Gardiner is often as clear as Dead Sea mud during TV interviews, so it's perhaps no wonder that his intentions aren't crystal clear now!

It may have been having bigger stories - the Harry and Meghan news and the Trump/Soulemaini story - on the same edition that saw last night's Newsnight shunt poor Lewis to the very end of the programme, or it may be that they lost confidence in his 'exclusive'. He got a little over a minute to do his Barry Gardiner bit, including all the caveats he had to add given Len and Barry's comments.  

It would certainly add to the gaiety of the nation though if Barry Gardiner were to stand for the Labour leadership. I laughed at this tweet from polling expert and politics professor Philip Cowley overnight: 

Woke up. Checked the news, half-asleep. Misread things and thought I'd read that Barry Gardiner was running for Deputy Leader. Thought OK, sure, whatever. 30 mins later: WAIT A GODDAMN COTTON-PICKING MINUTE! It's a bit like the time I dozed through the news bulletins about John Major's affair with Edwina Currie. Several hours later at work, I told someone that I'd had the weirdest f*cking dream...

Spin-room drama

I knew it! I knew it all along!

Back in January 2018 while reviewing Sunday Morning T.V., I wrote:

“My attention wandered till Barry Gardiner came on. Garry Bardiner. Barry Gardiner painstakingly explained, as if to a class of severely mentally disadvantaged infants, the Labour Party’s policy on the single market and the Customs Union. I think he’s saying we want the best possible deal. We will be leaving the EU by the way. Let me be clear. What we want, what people voted for, what we’re trying to do, each “what” enunciated with a kindly but slightly patronising Barry Gardiner whoosh. When challenged about Jared O”Mara’s and John McDonnell’s obnoxiously misogynistic remarks  a steely look came into his eyes that sent a chill down my spine. Gentle Barry has a nasty side.

And here’s a glimpse of that nasty side. If the Labour Party manages to wrest power from the Jaws of the Tories’  fluctuating 11 point lead, we’ll be seeing a lot more of it, God help us one and all.

“Jeremy Corbyn again can’t answer the basic questions on Brexit” says Conservative Dominic Raab

Labour’s Barry Gardiner says “your supposed Prime Minister had no grasp of numbers tonight”#BBCDebate #GE2019 https://t.co/DY0bhX9Fa7 pic.twitter.com/kIk3RTknyq

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) December 6, 2019

Love the way the cameraman yanked Christian Fraser into position, backwards, by the coat-tails. Pity no-one yanked Gardiner -  if only for the sake of symmetry and balance.

Shocking to see that most of the responses were from Labour supporters.   This country is  ****ed

Mr Impartiality Updated

Are you not ashamed?  Andrew Neil. Villain or Hero? Yes, we all praise Andrew Neil when he slaughters deserving targets. Robust, tenacious and well-briefed probing is a joy to behold, and Andrew Neil is widely considered to be the master - but is he merely the king, the one-eyed man in a country of the blind?

I’d like to point out that sometimes his whole approach is inexplicable and indefensible. For example, when he attacked Barry Gardiner yesterday, many of Gardiner’s fans thought their man had come away from the encounter as the winner.

On that occasion, Andrew Neil provoked Gardiner into revealing the inner ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ that lurks beneath that softly spoken ‘patiently explaining things to children’ exterior that many of us find deeply patronising and grating.

In other words, Gardner was forced into no-holds-barred attack-mode in a desperate attempt to make headway. What I’m saying is - Andrew Neil came across as a bully. Hey, one might say, he is indeed a bully but he’s our bully.

But wait! 

A bully is a bully, and sometimes bullying is the only way to counter bullying from the opposition. But if you bully for the sake of it, or for the lack of a substantial case for the prosecution, which it now seems to be what Andrew Neil is doing, it’s  - what’s the term?   Let’s say ‘unbecoming’.

“How many complaints of Islamophobia by Tory Party members have you had? How many members have been expelled?”@afneil

Conservative Robert Buckland says “record shows we have been taking swift and immediate action” but has no figures#andrewneilshow https://t.co/pN5DcsckS6 pic.twitter.com/HnmQsm5Kte

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 27, 2019

If Andrew Neil really equates Islamophobia with antisemitism then he’s a fool, but if he’s merely going the extra mile to demonstrate his scrupulous impartiality, he’s chosen the wrong weapon. Islamophobia is not racism.

Let’s be frank. You can’t explain away antisemitism by claiming it’s ‘simply because Israel’. These people don’t hate Jews because ‘Israel’. The very opposite. They hate Israel because ‘Jews’. 

so-called Islamophobes fear Islam, the religion / ideology. Within the religion of Islam, there’s a core of anti-Jewish racism, which is the root of anti-Zionism. That is the reason for the Arabs’ stubborn, self-harming, rejectionist position.

On the other side, Antisemites know next to nowt about Judaism the religion. It’s the perceived characteristics of Jews (as a people) they vilify. Greedy Jews. The fabrication The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. Etc., etc.

Remember the way Andrew Neil disparaged Tommy Robinson? Little or no argument was employed. There’s no need to engage with any argument your victim might put forward when public opinion is behind you; you can rely on pure bullying while the public cheers you on.

Cornering Robert Buckland and forcing him onto the back foot was like slowly pulling the legs off a spider.  Presenting your victim with a false equivalence as a starting point was, in this case, tantamount to defending a blasphemy law. This tactic, based on Baroness Warsi’s ludicrous demands, has crept into public discourse by stealth and is spurred on with the assistance of Andrew Neil’s egotistical drive to become Mr Impartiality.

“I’d defend the devil to show what a clever fellow I am”  might be his motto. A shame.

Update: "Our bully"

The Shadow Justice Minister @RichardBurgon should have been expelled from @UKLabour when this video emerged. Instead he continues as a prominent pro-Corbyn spokesperson.
Claims that anti-Jewish racism is being dealt with are #LabourLies.#NeverCorbyn #GE19pic.twitter.com/T0iE1USXNI

— Euan Philipps (@EuanPhilipps) November 29, 2019

Shome mishtake

What do you think? I’m starting to think that anyone who has ever given up smoking has no business carping about hypocrisy over peoples’ past mistakes. Mishtakes.

(Since you ask, an impending consultation with a rapier-tongued obstetrician was the pivot that turned me into a non-smoker. Decades ago, that was, and I haven’t lit-up from then on. However, for years I was plagued with dreams that I had ‘caved’. These dreams were ‘real’, credible and devilish, as I definitely hadn’t.)

Anyway, I understand that the BBC is rife with coke-sniffing. I thought that was common knowledge, but it could just be malicious gossip. So it seems hypocritical, doesn’t it, that Andrew Marr would devote about 80% of his interrogation of Michael Gove to that topic when some of us might have been more interested in the detail of his plan to swap VAT for purchase tax. Anyone who has ever been unfortunate enough to be involved with the bureaucracy of completing those wretched VAT returns and the like will want to know. 

One might have spotted that Marr allowed his interview with that patronising Corbynite bore Gardiner to over-run, and consequently impinge on Gove’s allotted time.

Andrew Marr was so well-primed on Gove’s mistake and so unwilling to let his apology suffice, that one couldn’t help comparing it with that other abomination. Peterborough. 

It seems that Marr’s research on Ms Forbes’s ‘mistake’ was confined to her ‘liking’ the one offending Tweet. He didn’t show any interest in or knowledge of the rest of her shortcomings, namely the abundance of other indications that she is indeed as antisemitic as the rest of the Corbynists, and that she is thick as a brick. As we used to say of the BBC itself, it’s either ignorance or malevolence.

Why would Marr be so willing to take Forbes’s belated ‘apology’ at face value, when he stubbornly refused to accept the one he repeatedly forced from Michael Gove?

As for the leadership stakes, the jury’s out. 

I fear that the MSM has kiboshed Gove’s prospects, which (personality-wise) weren’t looking too promising from the get-go. 

Jeremy Hunt came across better than I’d thought (on Sky) but his opposition to Trump’s position on the Iran nuclear deal put me off, as I’d like to know why anyone would support Obama’s pro-Iran, anti-Israel fiasco of a temporary deal, which involved abandoning economic sanctions just as they were beginning to take effect, while funding Iran's terror by proxy and their nuclear development programme bound for fruition just beyond an increasingly imminent time window. 

I think Boris’s decision to lie low, media-wise, is sensible but not helpful - the media is so vicious and unreasonable that their meddling is the most negative force we’re facing, barring a Corbyn gov’ment.

Right?

Sunday Programme featured another interview with Tanya Joya. (Scroll to 25:19) Once again, she reinforced the points I made earlier about the family’s culpability in this epidemic of radicalisation. These families and ‘communities’ are just as responsible for their children’s propensity to rebel or ‘break out’ as any other families whose over-strict, oppressive and repressive regimes produce in their offspring, pressure-cooker style; unhappiness, rebellion, criminality and general antisocial behaviour. 

“You live without romance, without sex till you marry, have children, have grandchildren, you die.” 

says Tania by way of an explanation for this behaviour. If there’s any cure for this self-inflicted societal problem imposed upon this country by the Blair government (and I don’t really think there is) then it’s only by whole families receiving ‘de-radicalising’ in the form of family therapy or whole-community re-habilitation.  Not a compulsory time-limited course of once-a-week classes to be endured and forgotten, perhaps with a spot of community service thrown in in lieu of pay-back.

I really didn’t know this, but I now see that Shamima’s father lives in Bangladesh. So much for the stable family background.

father figure

I read a terrific piece in the Spectator (£) by Douglas Murray in which he cited many of the references I made in one of my previous posts. I wish I could flatter myself that he had read my article. I wish -  but spot the convergence.

***********

In the void created by the 10am start of the Andrew Marr show, one can be forced to watch Sophy Ridge. We all know she’s just ‘pretending’, like a little girl dressed up in her mother’s clothes. If you can get over that, (I couldn’t) you’ll have concentrated on her conversation with Barry Gardiner.

Fresh from his tearful contribution to last Wednesdays’ antisemitism debate in the HoC, a reptilian Gardiner now admits that the only one of his ex-Labour Party colleagues he believes to be genuine when citing antisemitism as a factor in their decision to defect is Luciana Berger. Does he doubt even Joan Ryan’s sincerity? 

Barry Gardiner he says, other than Luciana Berger, he doesn't believe antisemitism is "the sole focus" of the rest of the former Labour MPs who have joined the Independent Group of MPs #Ridge

Follow live updates on today's politics news here: https://t.co/KkPO32hAs9 pic.twitter.com/oMUzFMVUst

— Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) February 24, 2019

While we’re on the subject of pressure cookers, Gardiner’s exaggeratedly measured delivery gives the impression of someone sitting on an impending explosion. At the end of an interview, his tetchy “Right?” reminded me of Jeremy Corbyn at his most irritable when, with a menacing stare, he croaks “Can I finish?”

The Labour Party’s concept of antisemitism is confined to stereotypical tried and tested tropes and memes. “Bankers” “Controlling the world” “Hook-nosed”, and various sad old slogans. They’re watching out for jackboots, swastikas and the Heil-Hitler salute. 

It’s Zionism that they have a problem with. Somebody from the Guardian has gone to Luciana Berger's constituency, Wavertree, to get an idea of what her constituents think. Of course, we can’t be sure whether this is a fair representation, or a cherry-picked, Guardianista/BBC type agenda driven exercise, but this is what I mean:

“To judge by the area’s recent political dramas, it’s a phrase that hasn’t gone out of fashion. Last week, the constituency’s sitting MP, Luciana Berger, announced that she was quitting the Labour party to join the Independent Group. Among the reasons she gave for leaving was growing antisemitism within Labour.”

The vox pop format continues and clearly demonstrates a combination of a profound lack of interest in antisemitism because “no dog in the fight”,  a fistful of old fashioned conspiracy theories and, most significant, a well embedded and completely misinformed and passionate pro-Palestinianism.  

“Stephen Brown, who supplements his pension by selling sausages to the local pubs, also said he was sad Berger was gone. “She didn’t deserve to be treated that way,” he said, adding as an unthinking afterthought, “even though she is Jewish.” 

Like most people I encountered, Brown is a diehard Labour supporter, but not one particularly aware of antisemitic issues, including his own. “I’ve got nothing against Jeremy Corbyn,” he said, “but he got into bed with the wrong Jews.” What did that mean? “The high rollers,” he explained. 

Though sympathy for Berger was common, almost no one I spoke to had a good word to say about Hatton. Michael, a builder in a baseball cap, thought he was untrustworthy. He didn’t know about his tweet, but he said: “I work with Jews in the building business, and they’re lovely people. Then, when you’re in the pub with your friends, someone will talk about the Jews, the Rothschilds and all that.” 

Anne Maloney, a retired teacher who lives in one of the elegant houses, is not a party member, but she’s a loyal Labour voter. What did she make of Berger as an MP? “I wrote to her once,” she told me. 

What about? “Palestine. I firmly believe Israel is illegally occupying Palestinian territories. She wrote back saying she supported the Palestinian people. But I didn’t think she was campaigning for the Palestinians. The problem is any criticism of Israel is always seen as antisemitism.” 

Her neighbour, a woman in her 40s who didn’t want to give her name, concurred. She said that she voted Green and had never agreed with Derek Hatton but, as a supporter of the Palestinians, she couldn’t see what was wrong with his tweet. Had she read it? “A summary of it, yes.” 

The original wasn’t long. It stated: “Jewish people with any sense of humanity need to start speaking out publicly against the ruthless murdering being carried out by Israel!”

Ruthless murdering? No wonder they hate the wrong kind of Jews. The Zionist ones. The Jews that the BBC has been indirectly and disingenuously demonising for the last half a dozen decades, by simply missing out all references to the religious bigotry that fuels the Palestinians’ racism and the provocative aggression that arises from it.

Where Israel is concerned, these misinformed activists and their puppeteer churnalists in the MSM are like royalists who are more royalist than the actual King.  They are just as responsible for perpetuating the ‘Palestinian cause’ which is ultimately to replace the thriving Jewish state with yet another failed Islamic one as any of your common or garden racist antisemites.  

So I can only echo Barry Gardiner with a very tetchy “Right!” 

Voices matter

Whispering wanker

Is Barry Gardiner’s voice silv’ry, slithery or silken? This debate was raised earlier on this blog below the line, and so was the state of the English language via Dawkins on Twitter.  

Unless there is something intrinsically wrong with Barry Gardiner’s vocal chords, the muted volume effect must be there for a purpose. ‘Sinister whispering wanker’, someone on Guido called him.

The Scottish burr is normally an asset (for clarity of diction think BBC announcer Susan Rae) and your normal Scottish and Irish speaker will enunciate that  “wh” gently as if lightly puffing away a feather. However, the whoosh of Barry Gardiner’s ‘whh’ is expelled forcefully, as if to snuff out a candle, and each word is articulated with pained precision; a meaningful pause separates each one, allowing time for the profundity of his message to sink in because the audience is a bit thick.

*******

The ’t’ sound.

Of course, most Labour MPs habitually use the glottal stop as well as the silent ’t’ at the end of a word. Take Faiza Shaheen on Politics Live. Yes, do.

A bizarre perversion of the missing ’t' occurs in the accent spoken by folks that hail from the region somewhere up north, (wherever it is that Michelle Dewberry comes from) (Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. )

'T' gone awry

Do you watch The Pledge?  I’m not worried about the weird vowels, but those ’t’ endings are fascinating. See how the final ’t’ has gone awry when Michelle Dewberry articulates the word “want”. It comes out as “won-ugh” (That’s ‘won’ as in ‘wonky’, and not as in wonderful.) I rather like Michelle Dewberry’s carefully enunciated delivery but that distorted  ’t’ thing is mad.

The worst voice abomination is vocal-fry aka throat-fry. It’s really really, like, annoying, but as it’s largely American (unless we follow the Kardashians) we don’t have to put up with it so much. There’s also that two-tone thing that some people have all the time, even when they’re not suffering from tonsillitis or laryngitis. There’s probably a medical name for it, but you hear it as a kind of duet as if two voices of a slightly different pitch are speaking at once; a cappella - harmonising in unison.

Here we have Christine Blasey Ford. Her extreme vocal-fry voice and what’s known as “Valley Girl” manner sabotaged her testimony. For me at least, it completely undermined her credibility. 

Some people insist that they were profoundly moved by her testimony, but not I. Not #meToo. I bet they were motivated by PC. My motivation, on the other hand, may have been a tad political, but  I really think her trauma would be a lot more credible if she had actually been raped, and not merely “laughed at”. I’m not a ‘Trump firster’ and I wasn’t overly won over by Brett Kavanaugh either.

Just imagine being ambushed in a lift by a posse of sobbing sexual assault  ‘survivors’; Senator Flake is the most aptly named character in the whole pantomime.

Pitch for new BBC drama.

Jed Mercurio has sufficient material to base a six-part series on an FBI investigation into the inebriated sexually perverted antics of Ivy League undergraduate year-book alumni dating back to the days before radical misandry began in nineteen seventy-three (Between the introduction of the Contraceptive pill and the Beatles’ last LP.)  

The general idea will be that no-one will be able to make head nor tail of the plot, the cast or the outcome unless they consult the explanatory recap on the Guardian. The privilege of being guilty is reserved for the stale, pale white guy, and the lead character, based on Dr Ford, will be played by a mixed-race transgender actor who will do a pitch-perfect, Bafta-winning  performance, recreating the vocal fry and “Valley-girl” mannerisms, which will later prove to have been mimed and covertly voiced by a white, voice-gymnast who will hire eminent QC Michael Mansfield to sue the BBC for ‘uman rights.

Jason Farrell will appear in a cameo performance as ‘himself’ interviewing a BAME suspect, introduced purely as a ‘double-bluff’ red-herring. (BAMEs are inherently innocent. Fact.)

Rob Burley and Gabriel Gatehouse will tune in for that bit, but no-one else will be watching TV by then.

Who needs elocution?

mellifluous

Well, one person has charmed us all with his rich, olden-day voice. Attorney General Geoffrey Cox. We do still value a nice voice. Mellifluous, meaning sweet-sounding, honeyed, mellow and dulcet. Having an attractive voice used to be a primary requisite for the radio, and perhaps a secondary requisite for TV. 

Now, anything goes. The more incomprehensible and unintelligible the accent and diction the better. Suffering from one of the most serious cases of fashion victimhood on the box, that and her slurred, nasal, adenoidal diction and harsh-toned voice hasn’t held Kirsty Wark back.  Voice like a bark. Woof! Ruff! A contender for next chair-person of Question Time.

where did you get that dress

Did Barry Gardiner ask Diane Abbott to time the Marr Show for him?

So shadow cabinet member Barry Gardiner (he of the silv'ry voice) has complained to the BBC about The Andrew Marr Show. 

It was Andrew's "grilling" of Jeremy Corbyn over antisemitism that got Mr Gardiner's goat:

It is perfectly legitimate to question Jeremy about this but to spend 24 minutes on it and six on Brexit - it was in my view bad editorial judgement.

Unfortunately, Mr Gardiner's stopwatch must have been faulty, or maybe he got Diane Abbott to do the timings, because the whole interview lasted 24 minutes. 

As for the true breakdown of the interview, well, the first eight minutes were spent on Brexit, 11 minutes on antisemitism and five minutes on Labour domestic policies.  

And to think this man could be a government minister in the not-too-distant future! 

Out of Office-ish

This is a kind of ‘out of office message’ but in the meantime, here are two brilliant ‘long(ish) reads’ relating to the new, ‘left’ antisemitism. Harry’s Place "Labour's problem is not antisemitism" (Catch it before the comments disappear) and Brendan O’Neill / Spiked"Why do you hate Israel?"  (Beware of the comments) 

If I’m not mistaken, both these articles explain that the fanatical anti-imperialist / anti western/ anti-capitalist ideology of the devout Corbynista outweighs or overrides the anti-semitism within its inherent anti-Zionism. In other words, followers of the far-left cult, including Jewish members and those who are not necessarily antisemitic, will deflect accusations of racism (antisemitism) with: a.) whataboutery; b.) ‘bad apples’ ; c.) ‘smear’; d.) turning a blind eye.  

One small observation. Jews, on the whole are loath to forget their gratitude to countries that took them in in their hour of need and feel it would be hypocritical to turn away any kind of refugee, ever. That might account for the concept (if true) that the Jews are encouraging , if not actually facilitating, multiculturalism and mass immigration. However, it has to be said. Muslim immigration - much too much, much too soon - plays a huge part in this. 

P.S. Last might’s QT. Barry Gardiner surprised me; he looked genuinely ashamed, but still, in the end he deflected. Kate Andrews was excellent. Dimbles changed the subject with an air of boredom just as it got into its stride. As soon as that lout in the audience mentioned Boris Johnson I knew it. I knew Watermelon  and Piccaninnies  would come up, but i didn’t think the idiot who would come up with it would be Jonathan Freedland. Spiteful, out of context and gratuitous. Oh dear.

Sunday Morning TV.

Good grief, the Beeb’s Sunday Morning viewing provides a pot pourri of bad sights and peculiar people and peculiar sights and bad people.

Let’s take Emily Thornberry. It is said that Emily, or Lady Nugee, as they prefer to call her on Guido’s website, is positioning for Corby’s job. No, surely not! But worse things happen at sea. 

Admittedly she is thought to have eclipsed old Steptoe when she stood in for him at PMQs, but how hard is that?

Isn’t she a bit of a square peg in a shitround hole? I mean her demeanour is not that of your bog standard Labour M P. Unlike your standard, labourite, glottal-stop estuary English (gettin’ on down wiv the workin’ class) favoured by all Labour MPs during the Blair - Miliband era, Emily talks a bit posh, with her slightly Sloaney vowels and a hint of mid-Atlantic drawl; the sort of accent Beatrice and Eugene from W1A might pick up at the Golden Globes. She begins all her sentences with “I think”, confident that we care. At her most irritating she will blink and half-close her eyes, a look often given by the very smug after successfully making A Very Important Point.

On the Marr show she said:

“He is an asteroid of awfulness that has fallen on this world. I think that he is a danger an’ I think that he is a raycust.” “That shays that he doesn’t have a real grasp of what a trade agreement actually uhs.” 

Hmm. And I thought Trump was a businessman. Oh well. 

Watching the insufferable Meryl Streep was not pleasant. Nicola Sturgeon may not be my favourite politician, but she’s smart and articulate in a way that knocks poor Lady Nugee’s performance into the proverbial cocked hat.

Yippidee dooda, The Big Questions is back!! When you get your first glimpse of the ‘front row’, your immediate  challenge is to see how quickly you can spot the regulars. Today there were only two. Angela Epstein and Abdullah al-Andalusi. 

The debates were a little lacklustre, but when they turned their attention to the troubling question of the persecution of Christians I was relieved to see that no-one even mentioned Israel.  Thank goodness I didn’t have to write an infuriated blogpost about that, for once. Here’s a list of the offending top 50.

Put that in your pipe, Lucy Winkett, the Rev Stephen Sizer and Sarah Montague.

The Sunday Politics has lost its sparkle since Sarah Smith took over from Andrew Neil. I wonder if she gets equal pay? My attention wandered till Barry Gardiner came on. Garry Bardiner. Barry Gardiner painstakingly explained, as if to a class of severely mentally disadvantaged infants, the Labour Party’s policy on the single market and the Customs Union. I think he’s saying we want the best possible deal. We will be leaving the EU by the way. Let me be clear. What we want, what people voted for, what we’re trying to do, each “what” enunciated with a kindly but slightly patronising Barry Gardiner whoosh. When challenged about Jared O”Mara’s and John McDonnell’s obnoxiously misogynistic remarks  a steely look came into his eyes that sent a chill down my spine. Gentle Barry has a nasty side. 

Ukip! Poor old Henry Bolton. His girlfriend made him look enough of an idiot even before she said all that stupid stuff.  I don’t think even Nige could salvage what’s left of the party. But you never know what’s around the corner. Now I’m off to watch the Queen.