Moonlight

Sir Edward Elgar : In Moonlight. John Atkinson Grimshaw : Paintings.

Dud v Dud

Labour civil war: Andy Burnham supporters 'furious' with Wes Streeting over 'Brexit reverse' comments

Andy Burnham says there is a ‘long-term case’ for advocating to join the EU - but insists he is not campaigning on that issue in the by-election...

Wes Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last week, signalled he wanted to see Britain return to the EU as he announced on Saturday he would stand in any Labour leadership contest.

Supporters of Mr Burnham are angry with Mr Streeting, according to the Times, as they believe it is a deliberate attempt to raise the issue of Brexit in the leave-voting constituency of Makerfield, where the Greater Manchester Mayor hopes to stand as a parliamentary candidate.

Mr Burnham sought to play down his own support for rejoining the trade bloc as he took part in a media blitz across the weekend.


By gum this is unedifying, two duds trying to do each other down in their squabble over a role for which neither is suited. 

But they think otherwise which won't help them either.

Seems like a fairly basic check

Strict new checks to stop a 'dead dog' from registering as a waste carrier

Legislation will be put forward this week requiring waste handlers to prove they are qualified to transport rubbish - with those granted a new-style permit obliged to display it in their vehicles and on advertising.

Speaking to Sky News last week, Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change committee, believes reforms are vital.

"We hope very much that they [EA] will carry out the things that they're doing, particularly making sure that the... reforms are brought in, because at the moment that regime is totally broken, where you can register anyone, even a dead dog, as a carrier," she said.

Twenty years ago inspectors would visit registered waste carriers. I don't know if things have changed, but I'm pretty sure a dead dog registration would have been picked up.

Starmer may be gone by then

Olympic Games could come to north of England under Labour plan

A bid to stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the north of England in the 2040s is to enter an initial assessment phase, the government has announced...

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “London 2012 showed what the Olympics can do for our country. It inspired a generation through sport, attracted huge investment and showed the best of Britain to the world.


A chap is bound to wonder which new sports will be included in the Olympic Games by the 2040s. 

Robot or bio-engineered cyborg athletics.

Competitive virtual reality games where even couch potatoes take part.

Cloud racing in sentient rocket suits...

Nope, by then it will be all fake.

Wes aims to make voting even more pointless

Streeting’s call for UK to rejoin EU pulls Labour back into Brexit war

Wes Streeting has called for the UK to rejoin the EU as he laid out his bid to No 10 in a much anticipated speech this weekend.

The former health secretary said he will be running for Labour leader after dramatically quitting his role as a Cabinet minister earlier this week.

He said leaving the EU was a “catastrophic mistake” as he stressed it was time for the UK to build a new “special relationship” with the Union, adding that Labour risks risks becoming “handmaidens” to Nigel Farage in the next general election.

Streeting doesn't seem to be suggesting a formal request to become a member of the EU here. It's more of a slogan pandering to the traditional Labour determination to keep a firm lid on the aspirations of working people. The EU does that for them, it curtails the point of voting to an even greater degree than national politics.

If Streeting grabs the top job, there are sound reasons to anticipate someone worse than Starmer.

The reality of the situation has begun to dawn on those who created it

Charlie Napier has a Critic piece on what is now a permanently topical issue, the predictable growth of sectarian politics in the UK. Napier identifies three possible outcomes.

• Management of sectarianism 
• Failure to manage sectarianism
• The victory of one group over the others

The whole piece covers familiar ground but is well worth reading as an issue our political establishment has created and cannot manage.

The disunited kingdom

The establishment must confront the disturbing realities of sectarian politics in the UK

Slowly, and by no means surely, the British political establishment is being forced to acknowledge the divided nature of the country over which it now presides.

This process has not been without significant resistance and self-delusion. Having ignored the doubters when they embarked on a policy of mass migration during the 20th century, the ever-more frequent case studies which proved the folly of this project were, one-by-one, ignored.

The vote-rigging scandal amongst Birmingham’s Muslim community in 2004 was largely written-off as a unique case. George Galloway’s by-election victory in Bradford West, 2011, was written off as well — this time, as an isolated case of public frustration with Western foreign policy in the Middle East.

The Lutfur Rahman case in 2015 was likewise treated as an isolated incident. The fact that a local mayor was able to win elections by exploiting family networks amongst the Bangladeshi community, should have been the canary in the coal mine — but it wasn’t.

On, and on, and on — but slowly, the reality of the situation has begun to dawn on those who created it.

Mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull

Suppose we invent a Ruritanian character called Erik Merstar who after a successful legal career enters the Ruritanian political arena. Via rapid promotion  he manages to become party leader then after a fortuitous collapse of the governing party he becomes Grand Minister of Ruritania.

Unfortunately for the people of Ruritania, Erik Merstar turns out to be mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull. Suppose we try to find out why that is by considering his upbringing, beliefs, character and personal circumstances.

We might begin by asking people who know him quite well. They generally say he is intelligent, quite personable away from the political arena and committed to the heavy responsibilities of Grand Minister. Others say he is rather odd and inclined to be cold at times, but nothing out of the ordinary, yet they are part of his social circle with all that this implies.

We might go on to ask a few pundits from various sections of the Ruritanian media and political spectrum. As expected, they give differing views about his ideology and motives, some saying he has no ideology and his motives tend to be swayed by the strongest consensus. Ruritanian pundits prefer to maintain a consistent narrative though, what they say has to bear some relation to what they say more generally and have said in the past.

Other pundits say Erik Merstar is an ideologue with a strongly globalist outlook which doesn’t necessarily put Ruritania at the centre of political debates. They say this ideology is rooted in his days as a student radical while doing his law degree at Ruritania State University. These pundits prefer to maintain a consistent narrative too though.

Yet what Ruritanian people still see is a mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull Grand Minister. That’s it for Erik, there is nothing deeper, it’s all there on the surface. Apart from what we see, we just have stories about character and influences, but they are just stories which vary significantly depending on the storyteller.

Mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull – beyond the stories that’s it.