John Ward – Election Opinion : When Voting Is About Real Choice Again, Then I’ll Start Voting Again – 29 April 2015

Did Great Aunt Edna protest in vain?

The electorate is not paying attention to the issues, and none of the politicians are talking about the real issues. So what right am I exercising if I vote?

For the benefit of veteran Sloggers alone, I suppose I must post in the light of Monday’s ONS data….if only as a tribute to their patience.

Since 2013, I’ve posted seven times to say that the 2015 UK General Election was always going to be a race against time in the context of the Camerlot ‘economic recovery’ bollocks. That is to say, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne had to cross his fingers and hope that the plates stayed in the air long enough to fool enough of the electorate into returning them to Office.

John Ward – Greece Debt Exclusive: It’s Not Just Tsipras Who’s Taken Over From Varoufakis….Merkel Has Taken Over From The Finmins – 28 April 2015

German Chancellor confides in intimates: ‘Tsipras and I will settle this one way or the other’

Fury in ECB, German finance ministry and eurogroupe, Juncker triumphant

Varoufakis out but not down

Although the news media are largely ignoring a major new development in the Greek debt crisis – and most of the Greek media are playing it straight as a demotion for Varoufakis – the truth is that Angela Merkel has played a bold power-stroke. She has affirmed that she alone will finalise whatever deal emerges from the Troika/Athens negotiations direct with Alexis Tsipras….in much the same way as she moved to direct talks with Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine debacle.

John Ward – UK Election Scandal : Why Karren Brady, The Barclay Twins, Piers Morgan And Rupert Murdoch Should All Face Perversion Charges – 27 April 2015

Compared to the current UK crop of truth-twisters, Nixon was a Babe in Arms

You have to go back to the antics of Haldeman, Erlichman and Dick Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ in order to equal the sheer scope of Dirty Tricks media manipulation going down in the UK 2015 General Election. And the latest example really is – without any bias whatsoever – by far the worst we have seen to date.

The ‘story’ featured below takes the Grant Shapps view of news as propaganda, and his definition of the Truth to be ‘because it’s in the papers’:

John Ward – Ed Miliband : Hell Yes – He’s A Phony Tough Guy, Just As David Cameron Is A Fiat Currency – 26 April 2015

If there is one thing even funnier than David Cameron trying to be the Common Man, it is Ed Miliband trying to be macho tough-guy. No doubt most of you saw that debate last week where he was asked the palpably braindead question, “Can you be tough if the occasion demands it?”

Edward the Ruthless Rabbit had been waiting for the question all evening, and thoroughly relished the chance to say “Oh hell yes!”. The trouble was, his perfect received Oxford pronunciation and startled eyes somehow made the response ridiculous – as if Bertrand Russell was making it. There was also a dimension of the Transexual from Transylvania in The Rocky Horror Show – who asks Brad what does he think of the man he’s created, and Brad answers “He’s OK I guess” to which Frank replies, full-on bitch, “Listen dear, I didn’t make him for yooo“.

John Ward – The Saturday Essay : Migrants, Money, Messing About And Mediocrity….The Multiple Dimensions Of EU Dysfunction – 26 April 2015

This is an excerpt from a US paper yesterday – it could’ve been any one of many, as there doesn’t seem to be much debate about the migration problem Europe now faces:

‘Human traffickers profit from the lucrative trade of transporting migrants from the poverty and political instability of North Africa to the security of European shores….Migration is today a global phenomenon. Economic, social and political forces are operating around the world to push impoverished individuals from fractured, dysfunctional countries to more prosperous and law-abiding ones….The unrest in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, together with the increasing instability across Africa, has created a growing pool of men and women desperate enough to undertake any risks to find a better home.’

For some reason, the author left off Libya (a colossal problem for Italy) but more importantly, he failed to join up the dots that go from that unfortunate country to Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan: for these are all places subjected to the persuasive bombing techniques of the US ‘Campaign against Terrorism’….to which our own political class also signs up.

John Ward – Greece: Deadline Fatigue Is In Danger Of Boring Us All To Death – 25 April 2015

I went for a long lie down in a cool room this afternoon after a morning full of chores, followed by a lunchtime laying gravel, and then bordering it with rocks the size of Earth-threatening asteroids.

All of this, I’m here to tell you, was less tiring than Deadline Fatigue – a new board-game for all the family invented by the Eurogroupe-Varoufakis-IMF Toy Company.

I’m up and about again now, preparing dinner while lighting the fire-pit outside because the weather’s gone a little grey and chilly here. Things also seem to have gone a little chilly in the ‘tough’ negotiations between sound economics on the one hand, and Jeroboam Drivelclown on the other. Tough or not, this ridiculous paint-drying championship could have been predicted from Day One.

I shrink, as always, from the limelight; but as it happens, The Slog did piss off just about everyone at the outset by suggesting there were no grounds at all for optimism on the subject of compromise.

John Ward – Analysis : No Reality Before Voting, Twisted Reality After Voting – 24 April 2015

In the Western world, democracy faces a far more serious crisis than either the quasi-religious Left or the neoliberal Right would have you believe. The news now is like observing the drivel that emerges from a brain where the two hemispheres can no longer communicate.

As the days pass this year, for some reason I find myself noticing more and more examples of a complete absence of reality beyond our small commune here: in government, in the media, on social networks….and especially during elections and geopolitical ‘negotiations’.

John Ward – Greece : ECB To Announce Press Conference This Afternoon – 23 April 2015

At one or at odds?

As hopes of a eurogroupe/Syriza deal fade, Draghi is said to be giving a press conference later today

Although Greek PM Alexis Tsipras will hold sideline talks with Germany’s Angela Merkel during the African migrants summit, Reuters claims that ‘the prospects of a reform-for-cash deal when euro zone finance ministers meet in Riga on Friday appear to have evaporated’.

John Ward – Election 2015: The Left Fawns Over LGBT While The Right Warns Of An Imminent Soviet Invasion. This Is Beyond Tedious – 23 April 2015

The twins Barclayzamoff have gone to Warp factor 9 today in a bid to prove that 2015 is Marble Arch and tomorrow will be Monday. Much as these days I’d rather eat glass than offer a link to the Torynaff, today I must break the rule in order to point you at this ludicrous piece from one Andrew Formica, the well-known MFI kitchen surface.

The only polite thing I can say about the column is that it represents one of the most formicating bouts of media drivel I have read in a long time. Observe, however, the comment threads…and ask yourself: does the Barclaygraph management ever read the responses this risible stuff gets?

John Ward – Opinion : Why LGBT Rights Are Irrelevant To Cultural Recovery – 22 April 2015

Here in one screen capture is what’s wrong with the contemporary Labour Party:

Just by writing this, of course, I will immediately be pigeon-holed as a blue-rinse Surrey Tory – although being that might well mean I’m a cross-dresser. But that’s nonsense.

What more rights do Bi, Tranny, Gay and Lesbian people need? They’ve gone legal and public, they have their own sites, clubs and pressure groups, the consent age has been dropped, they can get married, they can adopt, they have the same legal rights as straights. I mean, whatTF more do they need?