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Yearly Archives: 2024
Keir and Rachel teach us never to lose our sense of humour
As we approach the new year, I am cheered up by the Resolution Foundation’s predictions. You can’t help laughing. What I get from them I would sum up as follows: if we face higher energy bills, higher council tax, higher rents and higher prices in Tesco’s and all of this begins to affect our health, we should feel better off because it will be easier to get into hospital than it was before. This shows that Starmer and Reeves (despite her stony look) have not lost their sense of humour, and for that I am grateful.
In my case, their humour is particularly subtle, and I momentarily failed to see the joke. But it’s there: after finally granting me pension credit, and restoring my winter fuel payment as a result, I find that they have calculated my level of pension credit to be £11.29 per week. “Money in”, announces my bank app every week. And every week I have a good laugh!
Thanks Rachel.
Living standards 2025 outlook ‘hardly cause for celebration’, says UK thinktank https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/dec/27/living-standards-outlook-2025-uk-resolution-foundation-ifs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Revolutions, rebels and David Lammy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce90x283rv7o
This, I suppose, does count as half-promising. But Lammy still calls what amounts to the new government in Syria “rebels”, although the outfit they were rebelling against has shuffled off. Lammy still counts the new leaders as terrorists. He, and presumably Blinken (although I don’t want to throw accusations around), wants a representative government in Syria. The chutzpah of this demand by the UK government is astounding. Where was this demand during the Assad years? Nowhere in sight. When Assad’s daddy ruled Syria we gave Assad junior a university education (some of his tutors thought he was a fine, promising young man who wanted the best for his country. Perhaps they were just pleased he met all his essay deadlines).
Getting back to the new hope in Syria after his overthrow, I confess to seeing the presence of the US, the EU and Turkey in the talks as a threat rather than a promise. But who knows? But the US and its acolytes want the Middle East for themselves, with Israel taking care of the dissidents. But with luck and more resistance to that in the region, change (real change I mean — sorry Keir) could stand a chance.
One regret: David Lammy has definitely changed. I once kind of admired him. He used to take up injustices, and take on governments. Remember Grenfell? No more. David is a fast learner. Being foreign secretary has transformed him.
Sadly.
Israel, US and Turkey launch strikes on Syria
Oh yes, let’s all join in and ensure that the revived hopes of millions will be finally crushed. To Netanyahu, who once used the biblical genocide of the Amalekites to justify his own acts of genocide in Gaza — let me give him another biblical prophet — Amos:
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)
No chance, is there Bibi?! Not if you have anything to do with it.
Israel, US and Turkey launch strikes in Syria to protect interests https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/israel-us-and-turkey-launch-strikes-to-protect-interests-in-syria?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
The last judgment
A message to Netanyahu from Shakespeare’s Henry V. The soldier Williams, on the battlefield, is questioning whether the war they are fighting is just:
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
Henry V, Act 4, scene 1, lines126-138
Disproportionate slaughter?
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, says “There is nothing more atrocious and preposterous” than the lawsuit filed in the international court of justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocidal actions against Palestinians in the Gaza war.
Israel is a Jewish state. The Nazis committed genocide against the Jews, murdering 6 million of them. That historical tragedy is called the Holocaust – with a capital H.
I say there is nothing more atrocious and preposterous than Israel doing the same to the Palestinians.
Some have said the Israeli response to the Hamas attack is “disproportionate”. That’s not good enough, is it? We’ve all seen what it is: it’s a holocaust. Even if they haven’t reached 6 million.
We should call it by that name. And Israel should be held accountable.
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