Halal Bread - Head, Meet Desk

New Year would not be new year without a new chapter in the paranoia generated by those out there on the far right towards all those Scary Muslims™. So it was no surprise that January had hardly begun when the latest Halal Scare™ kicked off. Except there was nothing to be scared about. Sadly, that was not enough to persuade those who truly believed that they were making fools of themselves.

One member of the far right brains trust has been studying the wrapping of a loaf of bread, specifically a loaf of Warburton’s bread. Having duly studied the wrapping, that brains trust member came to the conclusion that something dastardly and terrible had been done to the contents - because the wrapping said that the bread was Halal.

Using the hashtags “#uk #brexit #conservatives”, followers were told “Warburtons bread is now HALAL certified - why do 96% of population have to have Islamic Halal put onto them in their lives & effectively overriding  their own religions just because 4% want it?” Another brains trust member added “Well that is the last time I have Warburtons bread I eat or in my home, I have only eaten Warburtons, but I'd rather go without than have Halal contamination. Shit those people usually make their own bread, pitta's, and nans. Hope Warburton goes out of business quickly as a cost”. Oh dear!

One Tweeter helpfully responded “You’ve misunderstood the situation. The bread isn’t contaminated with/by Halal. It has been deemed Halal because of the ingredients used, which is still the same as always. Do you have any Kellogg’s cereal at home, have a look on be back”. And there on the back of the cereal box was the Halal symbol.

Another said more or less the same thing. “Mate, it’s vegan approved, halal approved, kosher approved. If you aren’t Vegan, Jewish or Muslim this information isn’t relevant to you, it’s just bread. Same bread it always was. I mean it’s shit mass-produced trash bread. But it’s not like there’s any animal welfare concerns”. And there was more.

“Kosher & Halal seem to be trending. Is it to do with the way Warburton's slaughter their bread?” asked one observer. But the original Tweeter was unmoved, returning to warn “its also down to things like if the workers wear latex gloves with any pig in them - panasonic just got a factory certified halal to make water dispensing machines  - have a read”.

More education was required. “They're trying to get a foothold in Malaysia. They can't get halal certification if the COMPANY uses any non halal goods, it's got nothing to do with creeping Sharia or employees not being allowed to touch pig”. It wasn’t getting through. “If it’s any comfort to you I won’t buy Warburton’s bread or other produce AND  I won’t go on holiday to a Muslim country and never knowingly eat halal meat. Is that alright [by] you?”

After another of the brains trust had whined “I believe Kingsmill is the same. Hovis is UK”, reality intervened once more. "Imagine refusing to buy bread cuz it *checks notes* doesn’t have meat in it. Spoiler alter: Hovis is also Halal”. Another respondent added “Outrage on Twitter now that Warburton’s bread has been Halal certified. Talk of boycotts. Some other things that are certified halal. 1. Water 2. Oxygen … Good luck”.

What’s more, Brexiting and the Conservatives won’t change any of that. Sad, really.

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The Adoration Of Dominic Cummings

No one individual encompasses the subservience of many in the media establishment before the current Government than Dominic Cummings, chief polecat to alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Polecat Dom is the most overrated and, indeed, inappropriately over-promoted individual in the Downing Street machine, in a field which contains more than one individual who should not have been let in the door.

But rather than treat Cummings’ behaviour on its merits - or, indeed, the distinct lack of them - too many media folk are choosing to tell this particular naked emperor that his new suit of clothes looks just fine. The good news is that this has provided an excellent guide to who seem not really interested in decent investigative journalism. The bad news is that some of those apparently not interested are in positions of power and influence.

Tim Shipman - not critical enough of Cummings ...

The latest attempt by those in the latter category to pass off Cummings’ wayward wittering as roughly equivalent to Moses’ visit to Mount Sinai follows The Great Man blogging about how No 10 is hiring. That the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog considered it to be news should have caused them to stop and think.

... and nor is Robert Peston

But some did not, among them Tim Shipman, political editor of the Murdoch Sunday Times, who drooled “Big majorities are boring, they said. Not so much. Dominic Cummings is hiring scientists and ‘weirdos’. This is a direct challenge to the civil service, the lobby and just about everyone in govt. It’s also the only readable job advert ever written”.

If you say so, Shippers. Even ITV’s Robert Peston was taken in, responding “Not a conventional recruitment ad. From Cummings. Just now. This is government as an episode of Big Bang theory. Definitely worth reading. If you are super brainy and weird, Cummings wants you”. It was left to others to sound a note of caution.

Open Democracy’s Peter Geoghegan was one. “Cummings blog reads less like an actual recruitment exercise and more like a culture war artefact. Expect *way* more of this”. Alexander Clarkson added “As ever with Dominic Cummings post there are bits where you think ‘yup’ or ‘that's kind of interesting’ immediately followed by bits where you go ‘holy crap, EU, US, Russian, Chinese counterparts will take a state run by this guy apart’”.

Peter Walker of the Guardian was unimpressed. “This Dominic Cummings job description for his would-be assistant is so depressing in the stress on long hours and lack of outside life as if this is some sort of virtue. That sort of work culture is wearily macho, completely outdated and utterly counter-productive”. Simon Ubsdell was even more unimpressed.

“Dominic Cummings is recruiting fellow sociopaths to help create a one-party state. There's no other way of reading this insane document. Be very, very afraid. Anyone who writes this frenzied gibberish should be nowhere near government”. To which Elinor Elliott added “I don't know how many times people need to be warned that giving a man like Dominic Cummings wide-ranging influence over what he euphemistically terms ‘reform’ of the constitutional and social fabric of the UK is dangerous. Don't say you weren't warned”.

John Sweeney, late of Panorama, mused “Dominic Cummings is the clever-seeming drivel king. Read his words and be afraid”. Abby Tomlinson concluded “Dominic Cummings writes in the same way as the worst men on dating apps”. And one Tweeter had a warning.

“Dear Dominic Cummings, I was a civil servant for 15 years. You’re woefully unprepared for the likes of us”. But these latter voices go unheard and unreported, because the ones with control of the megaphone are the likes of Shipman and Peston.

The media class should be ruthless in holding Cummings to account. Instead, they are falling over one another to worship at his feet. Be afraid, everyone else. Be very afraid.

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Grant Shapps And Northern Rail

Political opportunism to no discernible purpose is only going to increase in the near future, now that alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has his overall Commons majority. And yesterday brought a particularly shameless example of the genre, as Transport Secretary Grant “Spiv” Shapps told anyone prepared to listen that he was going to strip Northern Rail of its franchise. Well, perhaps.

Transport Secretary? Er, if you say so

As the BBC has reported, “The government has described Northern rail services as ‘unacceptable’ as delays continue to plague its trains … Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he was ‘not prepared’ to tolerate the commuter line operator's poor performance … He told the BBC: ‘There's a couple of ways that can go, but one is to strip the franchise’”.

Which would achieve precisely nothing. But do go on. “In a BBC interview on Thursday, Mr Shapps was asked whether his intention was to remove Northern's franchise. He replied: ‘That's right. In the autumn I wrote to the necessary parties in this with what's called a request for proposal, and that's simply where you say: “Look, I'm going to take action.”’” 

A new Northern Class 195 set on test at Crewe

So it’s all about being seen to take Really Tough Decisions. And there was more from Michael Green, or perhaps it was Sebastian Fox. ”There’s a couple of ways that can go, but one is to strip the franchise, one is to have a short-term contract, but yes, exactly as you said, I'm simply not prepared for the service on Northern to carry on as it is and I am taking action.” He was going to take action twice!

But enough. As the BBC report also makes clear, Northern Rail’s problems are in part due to the failure of Network Rail (prop. HM Government) failing to deliver electrification projects on time, thus meaning Northern didn’t have enough crew trained on the trains that they then had to use. Northern were not the only franchise having to cancel services in the wake of the 2018 timetable overhaul: at least two other operators did the same.

Transport for Wales should have been operating a new service from Chester to Liverpool via the Halton Curve. They didn’t have enough trains to cover the service, therefore it did not run. Transpennine Express, meanwhile, are cancelling services so regularly that their offering is in danger of becoming seriously unreliable. They blame slow delivery of new trains, but Northern, affected likewise, is the one getting threatened with the boot.

Small wonder that Nigel Harris of Rail magazine was sceptical: “I look forward to seeing the magic wand which will end the situation he rightly says is unacceptable, but which is actually at least as much as Government’s fault as it is Northern’s.  Buck will then stop with you Grant. Bring it on”. He was not alone in lacking faith in Shapps’ commitment.

Rail journalist Paul Bigland was on the same page as Harris. “Quite. Making Northern services run to time and not be cancelled by stripping Northern of the franchise will work how, exactly?” And former MP and one-time Tory London Mayoral hopeful Steve Norris concluded “This is absolutely right. Blaming Northern is missing the point. And the idea the government/DfT will run it better is absurd”. They know their subject. Shapps may not.

A minister dealing in political expediency, rather than making decisions based on first becoming knowledgeable, is the last thing the railway needs. Sadly, that is exactly what it appears to have with Grant Shapps. More cancellations? Don’t bet against it.

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Guido Fawkes - Backing Nazis, Not Jews

In the chorus of faux outrage whipped up in an effort to claim that lifelong anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn was actually a racist, and especially an anti-Semite, there has been no more righteous voice than the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. No opportunity to put the boot in on the outgoing Labour leader was passed up. But the opportunism of The Great Guido was all too obvious.

Behold the righteousness of The Great Guido

As Zelo Street regulars will know, the Fawkes blog ran two viciously anti-Semitic attacks on former Labour leader Ed Miliband, in the form of PMQs “sketches”. Staines, his now former tame gofer, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, and former teaboy Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham were so disgusted at the use of the Fawkes name for this purpose that they were caught on camera embracing Simon Carr, who wrote the offending posts.

Charlotte Nichols MP

So it was no surprise when the Fawkes massive let slip its true purpose, and sided with the far-right against a Jewish MP. You read that right: in a post titled “Labour MP Continues To Endorse Kicking Heads In”, new teaboy Tom Harwood told “Festive cheer was somewhat lacking from one Labour MP over Christmas, who took to the BBC to defend her conjecture Italian tourists should have their heads kicked in. Distancing herself from Labour’s pro-EU stance already”. Laugh? I thought I’d never start.

So who were these “Italian tourists”? Er, “Back in October, Nichols had originally tweeted that fans of the Italian club S.S. Lazio should ‘get their heads kicked in’ as they performed fascist salutes before a football match in Glasgow”. That’s not quite correct, is it, O Great Guido? They were Nazi salutes. With which Paul Staines should be familiar.

December 2014: the then Fawkes rabble embrace Simon Carr (second right) who penned two viciously anti-Semitic attacks on Ed Miliband

After all, his pal Aidan Burley decided not to stand for re-election as Tory hopeful for Cannock after the Mail on Sunday exposed his involvement in a Nazi-themed stag party at the ski resort of Val Thorens, where Nazi salutes (note correct terminology) were given. Staines wanted to disassociate himself from Burley so badly that he, er, went for a consolation drink with him after the latter’s decision to withdraw from politics.

Yet the Fawkes rabble disapprovingly quotes Ms Nichols telling “You shouldn’t be doing Nazi salutes on the streets of Britain if you don’t want your head kicked in”. And that isn’t all of it: let’s have her name in full: Charlotte Nichols, now MP for Warrington North. And she is Jewish. You know, O Great Guido, like all those Jews you pretend to defend.

Small wonder Jonn Elledge responded “Not copying in as they name search, but: is it me or has That Right Wing Blog gone massively downhill? I loathe it, but it was good at a) getting stories & b) staying just the right side of the line to retain deniability. Now its stories are rubbish & transparently far right”. And there was more.

Ms Nichols added “Of course, right wing rag Guido refers to Lazio fans doing Nazi salutes on the streets of Britain as ‘Italian tourists’. My granddad didn't risk his life in WW2 to beat fascism 'in the marketplace of ideas' and as a Jewish person I'd rather drop dead than apologise to Nazis”. Another Tweeter asked “What about conspiring to have someone beaten up? You’re ok with that?” Like their hero Bozo The Clown.

The Great Guido - hot on anti-Semitism while smearing Jewish Labour MPs. Good to see they are consistent on one subject, at least. Another fine mess, once again.

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Keir Starmer Sparks Press Panic

Yesterday evening, Sam Coates of Sky News brought news of a poll conducted among Labour Party members. “YouGov polled 1,059 Labour members. Here’s who they put down as their first preference … shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer comes out on top, getting 31% of first preferences. Corbynite favourite and shadow business secretary Rebeca Long Bailey comes out second on 20%”. Only one other name broke 10%.

And that was Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips, who got 11%. Other mooted hopefuls, including Clive Lewis, Yvette Cooper, Emily Thornberry and Lisa Nandy, managed between 5% and 7%. YouGov might not be some Labour members’ first choice as a pollster, but this is a clear indication of how that membership is thinking. And the prospect of Starmer as Labour leader has sent the right-wing press into a spin.

Although Coates reminded viewers “There are plenty of caveats when it comes to working out Jeremy Corbyn’s successor. A poll isn’t a prediction, some candidates may yet enter the race, and it might not include some of the other categories of supporter … eligible to vote”, the news has been taken by the Tories’ media pals as the starting signal.

That’s starting signal, as in starting to sling mud at the likely front runners. As usual, the Daily Mail was in a league of its own in nodding and winking, telling “Sir Keir Starmer is the early front-runner to succeed Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, according to the first major poll of the contest”. He’s a Sir, which means aloof and snob! And there was more.

“The centrist shadow Brexit secretary would beat Rebecca Long Bailey by 61 per cent to 39 per cent in a run-off, according to the YouGov survey. The poll, reported by the Guardian, shows Mr Starmer in the lead in every UK region and age group”. Yeah, it’s the rotten lefty Guardian reporting it, not Sky News! And hey Labour lefties, he’s a Centrist, so don’t you dare vote for him! [Starmer is not, as far as is known, a Centrist, but hey ho]

Meanwhile, the Murdoch Sun rants that Corbyn’s “preferred successor Rebecca Long-Bailey sounds like an automated supermarket checkout reprogrammed with Corbynite cliches. Her mate Angela Rayner is a droning foghorn who spreads lies for Twitter ‘likes’. Keir Starmer, the nitwit behind Labour’s fatal Remain position, tells new Tory voters in Leigh that they ‘need’ Labour. Just marvel at that entitlement”.

Giveaway, much? That means the Murdoch mafiosi are frightened of all three of them. And they’re going to portray Starmer as “entitled”, which is a bit rich, given their backing for alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. But they are in lockstep with their pals at the Guido Fawkes blog, who are trying the same con.

Here, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble have sneered “Despite all the talk of electing a non-London based working class woman to the role, it seems that members currently prefer a male, Oxford educated, inner-London MP with a knighthood”. Bozo The Clown is, er, male, Oxford educated, and represents a London constituency.

The right-wing press pack is frit of Keir Starmer. So they’ll paint him as snobby and out of touch in order to defend Bozo, who is, er, snobby and out of touch.

After alt, they succeeded in calling a lifelong anti-racist a racist. It’s going to get dirty.

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Adolf von Batten Bows Out

We hear so often of how the mighty are fallen. But what of those who were never really all that mighty, but who are also fallen? The latter category contains some particularly sad individuals, amongst whom are most of those who followed Nigel “Thirsty” Farage as leaders of the now joke party that is UKIP. Paul “bad Bootle meff” Nuttall and Henry Bolton (Henry who?) were bad enough, but then came Gerard Batten.

I em not a racialist but, und zis is a big but ...

Batten took a party that was in decline, and finished it off. His was the most disastrous of tenures: turning a populist but not too bigoted movement into one hell-bent on rabid Islamophobia and in denial of its crude racism. Teaming up with Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who styles himself Tommy Robinson, merely made matters worse. Batten, whisper it quietly, was not known as Adolf von Batten for nothing.

Sadly for him, Mr Thirsty went off and brought us the Brexit Party, which put Batten’s political career out of its misery. More sadly, though, Batten continued to entertain the fantasy that he enjoyed any influence at all, which he did not. An attempt to sneak back as UKIP deputy leader under new head man Dick Braine ended in farce.

Still, on he went with the pretence, typified by “Who will pay the UK's share of EU budget after Brexit? This is the main reason they didn’t want us to leave? Germany won’t want to pay more & the parasite nations won’t want to pay at all. And we shouldn’t pay another penny”. What’s it to you, Adolf? If you don’t care about the EU, why keep sniping about it?

And if that was bad, here’s a real wacko endorsement from Batten, as he tells his followers “Climate change hoax COLLAPSES as new science finds human activity has virtually zero impact on global temperatures”. His endorsement is of Natural News dot Com, which Wikipedia, with some understatement, calls “a conspiracy theory and fake news website”.

How about a little Islamophobia? You got it. “The founder of the Mohammedan cult was himself a bandit who took a 20% cut from the booty stolen by members of his gang. Using criminality to raise funds is regarded as legitimate by cult members”. Wibble, wibble, he’s a hatstand. Then it was back to endorsing the Express’ wacko Europhobia.

“The EU will never give up. It will do everything it can to impede us leaving. They work on the principle that the peoples’ views don’t matter & governments change. So if they hang on long enough they can reverse Brexit. No compromise. No surrender”. Take a fake story and rant until you vanish up your own arse? Batten’s your man.

There was still, though, his presence in UKIP to link him, however tenuously, with the real world. Not any more: The Great Man has now told anyone not yet asleep that “It is great sadness & regret that I have resigned my membership of UKIP with immediate effect. I will write about this in more detail elsewhere & publish a link on twitter.My thanks to all those who have suppprted me over the years. Best wishes for 2020 & beyond!”

Yeah, right. Adolf von Batten has spent the recent past pissing his own credibility, and that of UKIP, up the wall. Now he’s out of piss, and wind is all that remains.

Bye bye Batten. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

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Happy New Propaganda Year

And so a new year, and arguably a new decade, are upon us. For some, a chance to start anew; for others, another opportunity to carry on as before. In the case of our free and fearless press, no-one should be in any doubt that they are in the latter category. They alone have escaped effective regulation; they are therefore doing The Right Thing.

Bozo wants to be the new Churchill ...

That thing has been, in the most part, to shill shamelessly for alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. This got him noticed, secured his election as very occasional Mayor of London, got him into 10 Downing Street, and sealed a General Election victory that his character and behaviour did not merit. But, as the saying goes, he may have been an SOB, but he was their SOB.

So with their SOB in power, it should surprise no-one that today’s papers resort to crude propagandising in order to talk up a politician who is one of their own, even though his career in journalism has been marked by the kind of serial dishonesty that caused him to be sacked from his first press job. The Murdoch Times has led the way.

“Britain sees in new year on a wave of optimism … Johnson promises decade of prosperity” proclaimed its front page headline. The Daily Brexit, still officially called the Express, was on the same page with “PM hails new chapter for a prosperous Britain … BORIS: OUR DECADE OF HOPE AND GLORY”. Sick of it yet? It gets worse.

The Murdoch Sun, as befits a paper that believes that It Won It For Bozo, goes full projectile vomit inducing with an editorial declaring “Let this be our golden decade” and going on to assert “WE on The Sun cannot recall feeling as hopeful for Britain’s future as we do on this first day of a new decade”. Homelessness, hatred, poverty, crime, a declining NHS, climate crisis inactivity, social care ignored, yes, real hopeful stuff.

But the Murdoch goons continue with the propaganda. “That means finally achieving Brexit 30 days from now and then, we hope, rapidly ­striking trade deals with Brussels and the world’s greatest economies [no. Just no] … It means a dramatic, imaginative ­Budget to turbo-charge both those ‘left-behind’ regions which voted Tory for the first time and the wider economy”. Never before did “turbo-charge” mean “do sweet stuff all”.

Because all that the press is giving us is Bozo propaganda. What is being plastered all over front pages today is not news. It is no longer about news. The right-wing press is now embarked on a mission not to trouble its readers with reality, but to advertise their chosen product. And their chosen product is Bozo The Clown.

... we should be careful what he wishes for

Boris Johnson likes to portray himself as a successor to Churchill. The latter’s most significant non-wartime political intervention was the disastrous returning of Sterling to the gold standard in 1925. The New York Times, in an echo of today’s headlines, told that he had carried “Parliament and nation to height of enthusiasm”. J K Galbraith later called it “the most dramatically disastrous error by a Government in modern economic history”.

Brexit has the potential to be worse. But We The People will not be told that. Whether it was Lord Northcliffe or Orwell who said it is immaterial: the old adage “News is what people do not want you to print. All the rest is advertising” was never as true as today. Welcome to the decade of No News but Plenty of Advertising.

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