Tony Parsons - EUre Record’s Stuck

Anyone who works in the European Parliament must by now be immune to the puerile tantrums thrown by Britain’s free and fearless press. The EU is a rules based organisation - they codify, follow and enforce those rules. For this, a succession of overpaid and under-researched man-babies in the tabloids scream and rant “bully”, “dictator”, “imperialist”, “swaggering”, “arrogant”, and of course “you treat us like dirt”.

So they switch off when the likes of washed-up has-been Tony Parsons starts to scream and froth, and today he’s been as close to spontaneous combustion as makes no difference. That means this particular man-baby is, as so often, talking to himself.

“European Union acts like a playground bully … our nation treated like a stroppy little colony … an organisation that treats us like dirt … stop acting as if the EU has any interest in fair play … sneering tyrants of ­Brussels … EU has treated us like a rebellious little outpost … an organisation that treats them with such haughty contempt”. It’s like a dribbling old lush sat in the corner at the local Spoons, on his sixth pint before lunch.

That’s apart from Parsons clearly not knowing the first thing about the EU, or Britain’s relationship with it - let alone the benefits it has brought our country. He’s too comfortable, wilful and stupid to even start to understand how the other member states have spent decades bending over backwards to accommodate the whinging British. For him, such details are so inconvenient that he does not bother to cut the abuse to fit them in.

But, even though no-one in Brussels wants to know what a sad bigot at the Sunday Sun thinks, perhaps we should listen to what Tone is suggesting: “let us ALL support our Prime Minister as she does her best to find a solution that unites the 17.4million who voted to leave and the 16million who voted to stay. We all love our country, don’t we? We have been divided - friends, families, north and south, young and old - for too long. We will leave and we will prosper”. That it, is it? We just smile happily and jump off the cliff?

Tell us more. “Make it clear we want to keep trading with our EU friends, Theresa. But warn we will not be ­intimidated. The UK is not going to crawl away, wither and die simply because we had the temerity to leave the EU. We will leave and we will prosper”. You said that already. And if we eventually leave, yes, we may just wither away.

In any case, nobody will give a flying foxtrot if Parsons is going to use language like “And if they want that £39billion, then those rude, arrogant old bastards in Brussels must start accepting that fact”. That rude, arrogant old bastard writing the column is also ignorant to boot. There is no way we avoid settling our obligations to the EU. None at all.

And the thing that divides us, in case Tone missed it, is gobshites like him spreading falsehood, misinformation and indeed hatred against an organisation that is NOT a super state, is NOT an imperial power, is NOT the cause of deprivation in many parts of the UK, and is NOT the reason Sun pundits get stuck in traffic on the school run.

Thus the problem: those who know what the EU is about, and those who work there, tune out wackos like Tony Parsons so he becomes part of the noise floor. Then some who read the Sun actually think he knows what he’s talking about. But he doesn’t.

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Twitter BANS Yellow Vest Leader

It’s not going at all well for James Goddard, the self-styled leader of the comedy amateur Sturmabteilung that has tried to appropriate the Gilets Jaunes movement started in France. The group’s protests have become incoherent and needlessly violent, popular support has been non-existent, and he’s been banned from central London as part of his bail conditions. It’s almost as if he wasn’t on to a winner at all.

But Goddard still had Twitter, even if he couldn’t come to Westminster and hurl abuse at Anna Soubry. Well, until last night he did. And then he didn’t: in its wisdom, the social media platform has decided it can get along quite well without him. His use of the platform to peddle hate speech has come to its inevitable conclusion.

One Tweeter observed “He's gone. Twitter having one of its monthly purges it seems... Sargon has been culled also”. Well, Carl Benjamin, who styles himself Sargon of Akkad, had already been banned by Twitter but thought he could be dead clever and come back as Not Sargon. Soon after he showed the world how clever he wasn’t, Twitter made the glaringly obvious connection and he, too, was gone.

A Tweeter called Patriotic UK (yeah, right) was one of the first to notice that there was less incoherent ranting than usual: “I've just noticed that fellow patriot James Goddard, @JGoddard230616 has had his account suspended this evening, presumably for committing the crime of owning another whiny terrorist sympathiser. Hopefully he will create a new one, which I will gladly publicise”. Don’t think you will.

Yesterday’s Yellow Vest protest in London showed exactly who the terrorists are, and it wasn’t their opponents. Also, the real patriots are the ones fighting against the hatred and intolerance perpetrated by the likes of Goddard. But none of this occurred to Harry Smith, who whined “Twitter really are anti free speech. The left meanwhile can do and say as they like”. Perhaps “the left”, as he calls them, don’t keep abusing the Ts and Cs.

That didn’t occur to one of the Manchester Yellow Vest community, who was also in full mardy strop mode at the news. “Yet the left are allowed to doxx and harass people?” Well, if they actually do doxx and harass people, they’ll get kicked off Twitter as well. But if it’s just a figment of the batshit far right’s imagination, they won’t.

Besides, James Goddard should have been happy at the news, given what he said about Twitter around a year ago. Back then, when he had the handle @Brexiteer1989, he was - surprise, surprise - handed a suspension. His response? “First I got a 12 hour ban, then they increased it, by another 12 hours … I didn’t threaten or incite violence … I’d rather convert to Islam, than use Twitter again”. So spoke the great Abu Goddard.

He didn’t want to use Twitter again - now he’s been kicked off (again), he doesn’t have to. James Goddard gets his wish, and those who wished it had happened rather earlier get a little peace and quiet. If only there could be more news like that.

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Top Six - February 3

So what’s hot, and what’s not, in the past week’s blogging? Here are the six most popular posts on Zelo Street for the past seven days, counting down in reverse order, because, well, I have to be out and about later. So there.

6 Rachel Riley Digs Herself Deeper The Countdown numbers person decided to go after campaigner Owen Jones and claim he was not really against anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

5 BBC Holocaust Memorial Day Own Goal To commemorate HMD, the Big Questions had in its audience … Anne Marie Waters - an authentic fascist.

4 James O’Brien RIGHT To Kick BBW The LBC host was spot on when he declined to give a platform to Big Brother Watch, which shares an office with the so-called Taxpayers Alliance - because it’s a TPA spinoff.

3 Dan, Dan The Backstop Whopper Man Daniel Hannan told the Murdoch Sun what it wanted to hear about the so-called Irish backstop. But it was, as so often, not true.

2 What’s Eating Mike Gapes? Natalie Rowe had a question for the usually combative Labour MP - but for once he didn’t want to answer.

1 Lee Hurst - STILL NOT FUNNY The former comedian never does appear on the TV nowadays - and after he tried to link Britain’s Muslim population to Holocaust denial, it was not hard to see why.

And that’s the end of another blogtastic week, blog pickers. Not ‘arf!

Car Makers Won’t Quit Brexit Britain? ER, HELLO

All those car manufacturers suggesting they might look elsewhere for production facilities in the event of Britain leaving the EU, so we are soothingly told by those urging the hardest break possible come the end of next month, are just another manifestation of Project Fear. It is nothing more than scare stories. They want to sell us their motors, therefore they will want to make them close to the market. We should not be unduly concerned.

As to the supply chains and just-in-time manufacturing needing no customs barriers and no more delays than our increasingly sclerotic motorway network imposes already, well, everyone else manages, don’t they? They’re still investing. You can’t, so it is told, just up and move a car factory elsewhere. You’ll see. It’ll all turn out OK.

But now has come the bad news. Already, as Fleet News has observed, “Fresh inward investment in the UK automotive sector plummeted in 2018 - down almost half (46.5%) on 2017 to £588.6 million - amid fears over a ‘no deal’ Brexit, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) … British car production also fell to its lowest level for five years in 2018, with 1,519,440 new cars leaving UK factories, a decline of 9.1% and the second consecutive annual fall”. The industry does not want a no deal exit.

And now has come far, far worse. Sky News Tweeted out this taster “Sky Sources: Japanese car-maker Nissan is cancelling plans to build its X-Trail model at its plant in Sunderland”. Mark Kleinmann’s article has just confirmed the news. “Nissan will drop another bombshell into the heart of Britain's car manufacturing industry next week by announcing the cancellation of plans to manufacture its X-Trail model in the UK … Sky News has learnt that the Japanese car-maker's executives will confirm the move on Monday, casting further gloom over an already-embattled sector”.

There was more. “Sources said the X-Trail move would be interpreted as projecting renewed doubt over Nissan's future investment in the UK … Precise details of Nissan's impending announcement were unclear this weekend, but sources said it was likely to initially involve abandoning the X-Trail production plans which had been announced in the autumn of 2016”. No-one should be surprised. Others may follow suit.

Also, there was this ominous warning. “The consequences of the announcement for the longer-term future of Sunderland were uncertain, although some car industry insiders believe that Nissan may seek to further scale back its operations there during the coming years”. The only unknown is that we don’t know who is next. But someone will be.

When Margaret Thatcher opened the Sunderland plant in 1986, she said “It was confirmation from Nissan that within the whole of Europe, the United Kingdom was the most attractive country - politically and economically - for large-scale investment”.

Mrs T’s industry minister Keith Joseph put it more directly: “The deal [is] tangible evidence of the benefits to the UK of membership of the European Community; Nissan [has] chosen the United Kingdom because it [gives] them access to the whole European market. If we were outside the community, it is very unlikely that Nissan would have given the United Kingdom serious consideration as a base for this substantial investment”.

What would the Sunderland area be without Nissan? Project Reality just arrived.

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James O’Brien RIGHT To Kick BBW

Yesterday, LBC host James O’Brien opened a discussion on the subject of the Police using facial recognition software, and the case of one individual who had refused to be scanned by it. His first caller was Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch. But she did not get to talk about the cops and how they used their new software.

Just one thing ... this address of yours looks familiar ...

O’Brien had discovered that BBW is based at 55 Tufton Street, home of the so-called Taxpayers Alliance. And he doesn’t give a platform to groups like the TPA, who decline to say who pays the bills and salaries. So he asked Ms Carlo who paid her bills and salaries. She gave the same kind of response that the TPA always gives, claiming lots of ordinary people donate, and they aren’t named in order to respect their privacy.

This is disingenuous claptrap. As O’Brien pointed out, both the TPA and BBW were founded by Matthew Elliott. In the days when Zelo Street first featured the TPA and its tendency to falsehood, misinformation and smearing critics, BBW was actually described as “a project from … the Taxpayers’ Alliance”. The two organisations may no longer share staff, but they certainly did back in the day, as I discovered on a trip to Manchester.

Now who might live behind this front door?

The TPA invited its supporters to come and campaign alongside them in Ashton-under-Lyne early in September 2011. The total strength of the turnout was eight, just to show what grassroots support they don’t have. One of those who had travelled all the way from London to attend was Maria Fort. She was a BBW staffer at the time.

Attempting to persuade the Ashton locals that Tameside council was wasting lots of public money on rotten Lefty Trades Unions was so successful that a second outing, this time to Southampton, was later abandoned. It was a waste of time, and someone else’s money, but exactly whose money, we didn’t get to find out. And we won’t with today’s BBW.

What Ms Carlo also didn’t tell James O’Brien is that the BBW campaign against the so-called “Surveillance State” is a purely one-dimensional one. Attention is focused only on public bodies, and others who may be contracted to work for them. That is because BBW’s campaign to “roll back the surveillance state” is aimed at demonising and diminishing Government of any kind - the same aim as the TPA.

So those private security providers who routinely harass photographers, and indeed anyone who takes out a camera within the precincts of many modern buildings such as shopping centres, will not feature on BBW. Nor will firms providing their own physical and online security services get a hard time there. But if it’s the Police, local and national Government, the NHS, schools, and anything EU related - they’re on it straight away.

"A campaign from the founders of the Taxpayers Alliance"

What James O’Brien has discovered is yet another Astroturf lobby group claiming to have a grassroots base. It doesn’t. Silkie Carlo can bleat about having worked for Liberty, but that does not alter the fact of the matter: BBW was for several years a TPA sideshow, it shared resources with the better-known group, and its transparency level is zero.

O’Brien was right to deny Ms Carlo a platform. Now you all know why.

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Press EU Gibraltar Stupidity EXPOSED

The attitude of our free and fearless press towards the EU is to seek constantly to frame any move, any statement, any approach from its institutions as a hostile gesture. Hence the constant claims of intransigence, bullying, and of course the lack of respect which we Brits should be given because, well, we’re British, dammit!

Add in a particularly sensitive subject - like, oh I dunno, Gibraltar - and the risk of righteous hacks spontaneously combusting with rage becomes all too real. It was ceded to us at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 IN PERPETUITY! Don’t these ghastly garlic crunching foreigners have any sense of history? Well, given many of them were rather closer to World War 2 and the succeeding Cold War, maybe they do. But this is for home consumption only.

So what has set them off this time? As the BBC has reported, “The UK has objected to Gibraltar being described as a ‘colony’ in European Union legislation allowing UK nationals to travel to the EU after Brexit. The EU proposed allowing visa-free travel for Britons in November. The Spanish government has since insisted a footnote be added describing Gibraltar as a ‘colony’ and referring to ‘controversy’ over its status”.

Britain’s ambassador to the EU has raised an objection to the description. But the more rabid part of the press has gone further, with the Express putting its rant on the front page: “HOW DARE YOU! EU INSULTS ‘COLONY’ GIBRALTAR … No 10 condemns Eurocrats trying to ‘irritate the hell out of Britain’ in Brexit war of words”.

The Murdoch Sun has also gone full screaming indignation: “BRITAIN risked a full blown diplomatic row with Spain - blasting its ‘inappropriate’ bid to use EU law to brand Gibraltar a COLONY … The UK’s ambassador to Brussels confronted his Spanish counterpart at a meeting in Brussels in a bitter Brexit dispute”. Like heck he did.

Tim Barrow would have trouble confronting a Chimay Rouge. He doesn’t do that sort of thing. That’s why he’s a diplomat. Still, a Government spokesman did manage “Gibraltar is a full part of the UK family … All parties should respect the people of Gibraltar’s democratic wish to be British”. Democratic wish, you say?

Strangely, the press ranters don’t talk much of the democratic wish of Gibraltarians to remain in the EU - which they did by posting a 95.9% Remain vote in the 2016 referendum. But they’re going to be removed from the EU against their will, along with the UK. Not in the Express. Not in the Sun. Probably not in any paper either.

So how might that kind of behaviour towards an isolated Overseas Territory so far from the rest of Britain, and of such divergent view on this issue, be described? There’s a word that sums it up succinctly - and that word, press people, is colonial.

Our free and fearless press might not like the term, but in this case it is spot on.

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Brussels Fascist Conference IS A FLOP

Those out there on the alt-right share one clear trait: paranoia. Someone, somewhere is coming to get them. Worse, someone else is coming to take away their freedom of speech. So it was that a number of alt-right alumni converged on Brussels to show the world that they were an endangered species, holding a conference titled “Free speech in the age of censorship” at the European Parliament, which they all hate.

Janice Atkinson. Claims to be an MEP

But they do not hate the EP enough to refuse an offer to use its facilities. Thus it was that Janice Atkinson, the MEP who was too poisonous even for UKIP, and her group “The Europe of Nations and Freedom” hosted the bash. The thought occurs that talking of “freedom” while removing the same freedom from every citizen of the UK might come over as slightly hypocritical, and that the freedom of speech complaint fails by default.

Viewers may still want to look away now

After all, if the so-called establishment wants to take away the alt-right’s freedom of speech, then what is the most establishment part of Brussels doing providing them with, er, freedom of speech? The lineup wasn’t exactly inspiring, either, including Stefan Molyneux, a backer of the White Genocide conspiracy theory, and Lauren Southern, last seen pushing a similar idea about white South African farmers.

Fascist fringe leader Anne Marie Waters was on the bill, as was Imam Mohammed Tawhidi, which would provide a shield against accusations of Islamophobia, were he not so badly discredited, and indeed nowadays widely characterised as a Fake Imam.

The far right gathering has also attracted James “saviour of Western civilisation” Delingople, reduced to a prop for pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins. It has been so wildly successful that, apart from those already identified, very few have talked about it, promoted it, or even said anything about it. The exercise has been an expensive flop.

Why that should be can be deduced from the antics of Ms Hopkins, who cheerily strolled around the EP building videoing Herself Personally Now and telling anyone out there “Disregard the bolshy press lines. In truth, The European Parliament is a deeply nervous place. The end of British cash will leave a huge hole … Bureaucrats are scrabbling about like syphillitic crabs for budget, positions & jobs”. Yeah, right.

How many “bureaucrats” does she thus identify? None. How many does she question? None. What figures does she use to back up her claims? None. But she is labouring under the delusion that the EP doesn’t know how it will manage without “British money”. She also predicts that what she calls “populists” - for which, read others with a tendency to fascism - will win big in this year’s EP elections. Because she supports them.

What Hatey Katie and her pals really need to look to, though, is that apart from a BuzzFeed report that shows how dreadful even the organisers’ research has been, there has been very little coverage of the conference. But then, being reduced to getting co-sponsorship from a group whose figurehead is best known for sticking her fingers up at those who oppose her means you’re probably out of other options.

If that’s how popular “populism” is across Europe right now, it won’t be going anywhere in those upcoming elections. And nor will this ragbag of fascists. Good thing too.

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Arron Banks Lawbreaking BUSTED

In April last year, I noted that Arron Banks, the alleged “man who bankrolled Brexit”, who told the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr “Eldon has never given or used any data to Leave.EU. They are separate entities with strong data control rules. And vice versa … Make any mistakes relating to the business and we will be most assuredly coming after the Guardian & you”, was under fire for breaches of data protection law.

Those pertained to the 2016 EU referendum campaign, and the claim that clients of Banks’ Eldon Insurance outfit had been targeted by Leave EU propaganda. The Information Commissioner’s Office investigated, was unimpressed, and declared that it would hit Banksy with a £135,000 fine. Then came a French TV show featuring Leave EU.

The commentary made embarrassing listening for those defending Banks as it told viewers “Leave EU … employs 60 people at this call centre, seven days a week … but the surprise was that the worker [shown] was neither activist nor volunteer … He works in the premises of an insurance company, GoSkippy, and some do it without even being employees … this is the case of Elisabeth Bilney”. Ms Bilney confirmed some in the call centre were working on both Eldon Insurance and Leave EU work. It got worse.

Former employees’ stories merely confirmed the lax attitude: “There were no separate contracts for the Leave work. None at all. You were just told to do that at the same time as working on the insurance business … We worked for all the different groups. I worked for Leave and I never had a contract for Leave. It was just what you were told to do”.

And now has come not only the confirmation that the ICO fine, now £120,000, will indeed be imposed on Banksy and his pals, but that there will also be an audit of data protection policies at both Leave EU and Eldon Insurance. Any attempt to obstruct such an audit is in itself a serious offence, as is concealment or destruction of evidence.

As the Guardian has observed, “The results of that audit, which will include interviewing the directors and staff, will be made public … Leave.EU is already being investigated by the National Crime Agency over a multimillion-pound donation the Electoral Commission believes came from Rock Holdings, one of Banks’s companies that is based in the Isle of Man, and thus not legally allowed to participate in UK elections”.

Banksy is not out of the wood yet. So has he been keeping a low profile? Not a bit of it, as his occasional side-kick Andy Wigmore told earlier: “Good to catch up with @Jacob_Rees_Mogg in Ballymena with @duponline @eastantrimmp and #IanPaisley talking brexit, Irish border, backstop and WTO”. Brexit is good business for some.

Arron Banks broke the law. Yet the referendum is still treated with due reverence, he is still feted by those who hold power - including Sammy Wilson, the Marie Antoinette of East Antrim, as well as the disgraced Ian Paisley Jr. - and courted by the Tory right.

Few kinds of political corruption smell more rank that that. And all the while, Banks has been treated as some kind of media celebrity. That says rather more about the media than it does about him.

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What’s Eating Mike Gapes?

Long-serving Labour MP Mike Gapes was on his feet in the Commons this week, doing what he does best - slagging off his own party leadership. The representative for Ilford South therefore attracted a significant amount of adverse comment from many Labour supporters, particularly those on the left of the party.

Mike Gapes ... unhappy ...

... because of who is asking the questions

After taking to Twitter to tell “Pleased to see that I’ve annoyed the Trots Stalinists and Antisemites on this thread. Truth hurts doesn’t it? And as regards the deselection threats bring it on!” he also attracted the attention of someone whose intervention has clearly caused him more than a little discomfort: step forward former Madam Natalie Rowe, who taught George Osborne all he knows about proper strict fiscal discipline.

Ms Rowe was not impressed with Gapes the Gammon. “You desperate lying Humpty Dumpty .. Labour voters won’t be buying into your shite! There was a Labour MP that a sex Worker friend of mine used to see, he liked to dress up in ladies under wear and trot around... any idea @MikeGapes as to who that might be?” Subtle? Fuck that.

After following that with “Calm Down you Brazen Hussy. @MikeGapes ... just saying”, Steve Scott asked “Perhaps @MikeGapes should come on to Twitter and scotch these scurrilous rumours. He's usually terribly keen to give us his opinion”. Ms Rowe clearly thought this a good idea. “Waiting MIKE”. But Mike wasn’t going to turn up.

Ms Rowe decided to send him a gentle reminder, well, gentle for her anyway. “Hey @MikeGapes any comment. You’re Constituency that voted your Humpty Dumpty Arse in as their Politician deserves a denial .... if it wasn’t you trotting around in ladies underwear & make up ( I don’t judge) just say ‘it wasn’t me’”. Fair comment, though.

Meanwhile, Alec Moss tried to inject a little gravitas into proceedings, telling “To be honest, I don’t think paying a sex worker to help indulge some fringe interests involving ladies underwear is actually wrong... it’s just a bit out there. I’m far more disgusted with his portrayal of the wider labour membership than whatever gets him off”. But he failed.

Because Gapes had indeed got the message: the normally voluble and combative MP ran off and hid behind the Block button. Ms Rowe mocked him a little more: “WELL FAN ME DOWN WITH A FEATHER DUSTER! You can run but you can’t hide Mikey Boy … And all I wanted to do was to confirm his knicker size”. Well, of course she did.

In any case, she has already moved on, suggesting a cross-party dimension to the exposures that may follow. After Steven Swinford of the Telegraph had told his followers “In emails sent on Mon and Tues [Oliver] Robbins is said to have questioned practicality of Malthouse compromise drawn up by Eurosceptics & Remainers  … Jacob Rees-Mogg responds: 'It is the job of officials to implement policy, not to obstruct, and any civil servant is bound to respect this’” she took aim at the Moggster.

“Moggy you’ve been a VERY naughty boy ! I have many friends in the City of London ... I’ll be back. You’re a total opportunist hypocrite”. Doesn’t pay to be a very naughty boy when Ms Rowe gets to find out. What will the voters of North East Somerset be thinking?

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