John Ward – The Sunday Splash – 1 February 2015

JohnW Colourful weather, the Fuhrer’s funny walk, Boris Johnson on masturbation, Rigid Merkel says Nein again, Minority rule after May 2015, and Inside the Cosy Bubble with Charles Moore

Be very afraid Blighty, for parts of the country are about to be enclosed in an arctic airmass. It doesn’t sound good, and it isn’t: freezing snow. Blizzards. Winds of up to 70mph. That’s the maximum they’re allowed to be and remain legal.

But here’s the killer: the Met Office has issued yellow ice warnings across the whole of the UK. Yes in another upgrade, the Met boffins are now able to offer us the forecast in technicolor.

I’ve no idea what yellow ice is, but the days of mono black ice are obviously behind us at last. We can look forward to grey sleet, blue floods, brown mud and green shoots of Spring.

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It seems there is a place in Cornwall, wherein resides a Park called Hitler’s Walk. Now the local Jewish community wants it taken down. The locals insist it has nothing to do with unser geliebte Fuhrer, and was named after a rather unpleasant local Councillor who wouldn’t brook debate. One of the current council, John Daniel, says,”It’s not offensive, it’s just what local people call it.”

If the Jews are going to join the offence-takers, then I give up. It’s not as if the village was visited by little Dolfie, or indeed that one is expected to goose-step down the thing: it’s a local joke about ‘little Hitlers’…very much in the same way that the ARP Warden in Dad’s Army always called Mainwaring “Napoleon”.

I’m fed up of those who take offence. What they’re really trying to do is airbrush history, as if the Nazi leader never existed. The next step will be banning all books with his face on the front. And then burning books, he observed pointedly.

What we need is to stop taking offence, and instead take a fence in the shape of a corral, and put all those who take offence in it. There will be nothing offensive allowed in the fencing, and so nothing to take offence about. There will of course by lots of other idiots in there like Islamists, Gender facists, New Dawners, and people who run the European Submission, sorry, Commission. But I’m sure they’ll all get on famously.

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For once, London Mayor Benito Borisconi is taking a leaf out of The Slog’s book and offending a truly disgusting minority. And no – you’re wrong I’m afraid – it’s not bankers, property developers or two-faced Saudi Royals….it’s Jihadists.

Mayor Borisconi alla Casa di Elm says jihadists are ‘literally wankers’ who have problems with girls. I must say, I’ve never been in favour of Fatwahs, but under some cases involving obesely corrupt arseholes, I can see its benefits.

As it happens, masturbation is forbidden based on the following verses from the Qur’aan…but there’s a surprise exception in it as well:

‘…except from their wives that their right hands possess, – for them, they are free from blame. But whoever seeks beyond that, then those are the transgressors…’

That reads to me like a little hand-relief from the wife is OK….or, women can sit on the washing machine during the spin cycle as much as they like. Or perhaps both: is there a cleric among the readership who can guide me re this one?

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Moving on from one sort of rigidity to another, Mutti Geli has ruled out cancelling any of Greece’s crippling debts, saying banks and creditors have “suffered enough”. Poor things. I thought – in the context of that insufferably holy utterance – this might be the time to pen a few lines on the subject of Sovereign debt.

it is always important to remember that the Germans have a terrible memory for the inconvenient truth, and a passion for vainglorious fantasy. As a Brit, I’d still like to know why we had to pay the Americans back every penny of lendlease (we made it, three years ago) having kept the flame alive….whereas the Marshall Plan bailed out 100% of all German debt, lent them billions to rebuild, and apportioned zero war reparations.

The Germans paid nobody for their hazy concept of the borders thing, or the concentration camp thing, the looted art thing, the V1/V2 thing – or the scorched earth thing as they retreated. They contributed zilch to rebuilding Warsaw, London, Coventry, Manchester, Liverpool, and their blatant rip-off of the Greeks remains unpaid and denied.

Only three countries got their money’s worth out of the Second World War: the US (they rebuilt Germany because they wanted a tame market), France (they ripped the Germans off from 1955 onwards) and….Germany. Britain ended the War bankrupt…and then the best Government we’ve ever had gave the Empire back to its rightful owners. We’ve been playing Dick & Jane go Accounting with that innate insolvency ever since.

I’m afraid I have zero sympathy for the German taxpayer, and even less for Geli the Fridge-magnet or her disabled spook-cum-finance minister. Germany has been enjoying a cheap, rebranded ‘Mark’ for 13 years, Mutti was a Stalinist until the Wall came down, and Wolfie is in a wheelchair because somebody shot him…and it wasn’t a hunting accident.

I completely understand that Tsipras dropped his opposition to the euro to get elected, but if you look around Europe there are three things in the way of complete recovery: insane global mercantilism, frb/derivative banking, and the euro. The reason why nobody can sell a house is the euro. The reason Spain’s banks were emptied by property liquidation is the euro. The reason why shoppers are too nervous to spend is the euro. The reason why the French continue to spend on infrastructure is the euro.

My ideal outcome would be for Syriza to stonewall while Varoufakis continues to win the citizen vote around Europe: and for Germany to go back to the Mark. When people ask me to consider the consequences, I give the same answer as I give to those terrified of British secession from the EU: What consequences? What are the creditors, Sprouts and CDU rednecks going to do – invade?

Greece isn’t going to turn into a lone pariah a la Argentina, because by the end of 2016 – at the very latest – everyone is going to be broke. By far the smartest thing Yanis has done is to ask whether the gun is actually loaded: the more that’s done, the more Europeans will grasp that it isn’t…..and the Wizard of Oz is just a little guy behind a curtain, talking into a megaphone.

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Inside the Westmadster chamber of horrors, SDLP leader Alasdair McDonnell said his Party could help to form a coalition government in the event of a hung parliament in May. Mr McDonnell has obligingly suggested that a coalition consisting of Labour, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the SDLP could form a government. As he leads a social democratic Party, he would say that. The SDLP has three (3) seats at Westmadster, and is a predominantly Catholic Party in Ulster. So the new Government line-up in 2015 could consist of:

* A Labour Party with very few seats south of Watford Gap or beyond Inner London

* An SNP that lost the Independence vote last year, but will use the situation to leave the UK anyway

* An SDLP representing 0.46% of the UK population, whose religion represents 8% of the electorate.

It’s not exactly what you might call Majority Rule is it? No, it is not: and neither is Charles Moore’s piece in yesterday’s Daily Torygraph.

It’s sad to see Young Fogey Charles Moore renewing his membership of the Neoliberal NHS Demolition Club. Most of the piece is Inside the Bubble claptrap by a chap who, I’d be willing to bet, has never lived fulltime in the US – or paid for private health cover out of his own pocket. I’d suggest he’s also never lived in ClubMed, Australia or Africa.

A recent survey among US expats in the UK showed that, when asked what they would like least about going back, over three quarters of them said “the US health insurance system”.

I’m not a socialist, but we must ask ourselves here: if the State can’t afford a public Health service, how on earth does Moore think ordinary people could afford a private one?

The choice for us is very simple: we can move to private medicine that bankrupts insurance companies and cheats the patients; or make the one we have more expert in fewer fields…and mutualised within the local community.

It’s a no-brainer. I’m sorry Charles, it isn’t money that’s getting in the way here, it’s political ideology.