"I will be with you whatever."

At this point I'm not going to attempt much of a comment on the Chilcot Report. But I thought it worth putting Mr Robertson's comments on the blog. In the very short time that he (and Mr Corbyn) had to see the report, I think that they seem to have got to the nub of the matter.

I've always thought it sad that the UK, a military nation if ever there was one, treats its ordinary military with such disdain. I'm often reminded of the truth of Kipling's poem "Tommy". (I'm sure the top brass get a REALLY good deal.)

Oh, yes, there is such respect for "our brave boys" from the top people on Remembrance Sunday,  when politicos and royals dress up in their very best black and stand at the Cenotaph looking inordinately serious.  But they show a good deal less sympathy for the guys who come back alive but traumatised, find it hard to fit back into their families and ordinary civilian life, and end up homeless and alone.

Worth noting here the Tory press criticise Mr Corbyn for not bowing sufficiently low at the Cenotaph (forgetting to mention that he stayed behind to speak to the veterans while the rest of them went to the VIP lunch). If you have the time just read the hypocritical crap in that article.

From what little I've heard of Chilcot, the line that Angus mentions (and the title of this post) won't leave my head: "I will be with you whatever."

It would be a ridiculous thing to say at the best of times, but when the lives of millions of people were hanging in the balance, it beyond parody.

I'm tempted to say that my first thought was of a particularity immature teenage lover rather than the prime minister of a war-faring nation.

Seriously, what kind of an idiot would promise unyielding support to another country, no matter what. The man gave away the power of the UK prime minister to the president of another country. "No matter what happens, you call the shots and I'll do what you say". 

And not just to any other head of government. To George DubYa Bush for heaven's sake. it would be hard to find a head of government I'd trust less!

And yet, almost undoubtedly, becasue he is who he is, he will walk away with his miserable head held high, to carry on money making giving spin doctor advice to some of the most repugnant regimes on Earth.

Someone joked on Twitter that Blair was asked if he would defend himself at the Hague (he is a barrister). He replied, "what does it pay?"

Hundreds of under-equipped British troops died in this fiasco of a war; hundreds more came home minus limbs or traumatised beyond treatment and often dependant upon charity to help them becasue the British government would not.

In Iraq hundreds of thousands of totally innocent civilians with no connection to Saddam, and no knowledge of the non-existent WMDs that could hit British targets in 45 minutes, according to Blair, died, and people continue to die in the chaos we left behind. How many were maimed we have no idea.

Iraq, a stable, albeit unpleasant, regime, with which Britain was happy to do business when it suited them, was destabilised because no one, not Bush, not Blair, not anyone, had a post war plan in place, not even in their heads (as Angus says, just like they didn't for Afghanistan, Libya or indeed Brexit).

Saddam ran a tight ship which did not allow for terrorist organisations, and no religious extremism was tolerated.  The aftermath of the war was infiltration by Islamic terrorists in the form of ISIS and we know where that has led.

Over the next few weeks more of the report will become known to us, as legal experts pour over the intricacies. It took a long time to write. It will take a long time to decipher, but I hope that at the end Blair and his bunch of  self serving, money grubbing thugs will be made to pay...as much as I believe it won't happen. 

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Well, we know that at least some of this is true...

Not sure they are worth THAT much, but the kids aren't going to be hard up  

Bang on. And it doesn't. It turns out people like Cameron.

Another atrocity from IDS's cack-handed DWP.

I take it that you're human being and not a Daily Mail reader then, Sir?

And that is a great pity, don't you think?

Ah, why would you bother with these silly wee details.
They spoil the story

Cameron is a man with a plan...
Little does he know it's being pinched by Ms Dugale.

Gideon: the man who never fails to disappoint.

Dick Cheney? Tony Blair? Any other guesses?

Disaster, I tell ye. We're all doomed! DOOMED!

Damn, did I take a snooze and miss that?

I WAS GOING TO EXPLAIN, BUT THIS PERSON GOT THERE FIRST...

I expect, in reality, Cameron wants a war. 

Things aren't looking good for him.

Business confidence is down; there's outrage over IDS killing thousands of people; the SNP has 56 seats in their parliament and is working as a real opposition to his tiny majority; he's had to withdraw Bills and last night he was defeated; the row over top people's paedophiles won't go away; he's been wrong-footed over refugees, by everyone; polls show the English will vote to take Britain out of the EU... and on and on goes the list.

A war will take all the bad news off the front pages and get him praise from the cheapo tabloids, the Mail, Express, Sun and Telegraph. 

He'll be victorious and be photographed sitting astride a tank in the desert and everyone will proclaim him a hero...

Because it always works out for the best when Britain goes to war and kills loads of foreign people.

Doesn't it?

WHAT CONTRASTS....

So this is life for some Brits

And this is life for others

And justice for public servants is dependent on class

We take rather different attitudes to who can break rules and who can't.

And some people face this embarrassment...

...whist others are just this embarrassing.

SO THERE WAS A SMALL GET TOGETHER IN EDINBURGH ...

...And in Glasgow they collected food for the Foodbanks, because Scotland has now been put on the back burner while the Tories lose people to UKIP and send people to war yet again, in the mess that they left Iraq. This is clearly much more important to them that Scotland is. 

Niko will say... you lost, give it up. 55% of Scotland wants to be British. 

I say, OK, we will do that, when the Public School Boys start to comply with what they promised in the last days of the campaign when they were sure they were going to lose... and what swung it for all the people who really wanted devo max anyway.

OK, that's not me (I don't want to be at war right now), but I accept that it's what overall Scots wanted. 

They did right at the beginning before Cameron ruled it out. (He has form on this... you can have a referendum on voting systems but you can't have the one you all want on the ballot paper; you can have a referendum on Scotland's future but you can;t have the option most of you want.) 

And they did when the party leaders promised something like it ... no sorry "vowed" it... and when Gordon touched down briefly in Scotland, between 5 star hotels, and promised that he would guarantee devo max... as near federalism as you can get in a state where one country comprises 85% of the population. 

As soon as Gordon starts guaranteeing this, and the government starts delivering it, we'll stop hounding them to do it. Simple.

And no. It won't do to say that we will have to wait because the country is at war. It seems to me that most ministers are not involved in this war (more's the pity). They can get their pretty little heads around the problem.

The next deadline approaches, Cameron. You missed the first one. Don't do it again. 

Just in case you forget us...

Lots and lots of us...

All over the place...

Yes, we know no one in Westminster gives a flying one
that people are starving. They'd much rather be off killing
Johnny Foreigner, while supplying arms to the enemy's
backers. But in Scotland we do actually care.
Let's support people who are being starved
to death by Westminster's policies.
Oh and Edinburgh does food banks too...

*****************************

I thought it was worth reproducing this piece from the Guardian (without permission of its author, Kevin McKenna, but with a suitable link). 

The Guardian used to  be a Labour paper. Lord knows what the Torygraph is saying about Labour now.

Jim Murphy’s “scary monsters” tour of 100 towns during the independence referendum campaign encapsulated many of the reasons why the Labour party is all but finished in Scotland. Murphy, a man who has pocketed a small fortune in legitimately claimed expenses from Westminster in his 15 years there, would have had us all believe that his Herculean task of completing the tour in 100 days was all about saving the union. And indeed his narrative, like that of Alistair Darling, was all about how small, vulnerable and cowering Scotland is and why a curfew must eternally be imposed upon it.

But let’s be honest with each other here. This wasn’t really about his new-found enthusiasm for the union. It was, instead, a three-month job interview for the post of leader of the Labour party in Scotland. As Murphy began to embark on his bizarre urban peregrination around the country it began to dawn on several young Labour MSPs why, in the previous several weeks, they had been solicited to have cosy lunches with some of Murphy’s acolytes in a few of Glasgow’s more chichi restaurants.

The most troubling question that may be asked about Murphy’s tour is this one: you’ve been a Labour MP for 15 years, Jim, so why didn’t you ever get up off your arse during that time to conduct a tour of 100 towns to highlight urban deprivation and social inequality? You waited far too long to show you cared about anything beyond your career and, when you finally did, you chose the wrong subject to get all passionate about: the British state.

The same can be said about Labour in Scotland and could probably pass as its epitaph. Because, if something very drastic and very radical doesn’t happen to the party in this country soon, then it is effectively finished as a serious political entity and will become a party of the undead. It will be condemned to spend the next two generations in the same twilight zone as that occupied by the old British Liberal party throughout the 20th century.

Those Scottish nationalists experiencing problems in accepting the independence defeat are gleefully portrayed as stumbling through the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief model. Some grief. Seven years ago, their party remained in opposition in its own devolved parliament. Since then, it has become the natural party of government in Scotland, having achieved an overall majority of seats and having come closer to bringing the British establishment to its knees than Hitler, Napoleon or Christine Keeler. Its membership currently sits at around 70,000, almost three times what it was on 18 September. If Carlsberg made political defeats…

It is Scottish Labour’s party chiefs and its senior strategists who need to acknowledge, and quickly, what has just happened to them and to face reality. In four of their five most impenetrable redoubts, their core voters rejected the most intense barrage of anti-independence propaganda that any had ever encountered. They lost Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, for heaven’s sake. For two years, every Scottish MSP and all the Westminster ones that matter hectored Labour’s most loyal voters with wave upon wave of attacks on Scottish independence: only Labour at Westminster can deliver true social justice; there are too few of you adequately to foot the annual care bill; your pensions are at risk. Yet still, almost 40% of their supporters rejected these lines.

Gordon Brown was wheeled out at the last to entreat the comrades to win one more for the Gipper while displaying a love for the NHS largely invisible during his 13 years at Downing Street. They saw through him, too, and left Labour’s King Lear to reflect that his greatest political achievement was to play a cameo role in keeping David Cameron’s career alive.

Labour’s recently elevated aristocracy, Baron Reid of Cardowan and a retinue headed by their lordships McConnell of Arran and Robertson of Port Ellen also suffered to come down among those folk they once knew and talked too of social justice and building communities. Margaret Curran was the first to wake up to the nightmare when she declared that Labour must reach out to its heartlands. There is no satellite navigation system sophisticated enough to guide them to these long-forgotten places.

Already I hear some of them claiming that the lost 37% will be back in due course to “kick the Tories out”. They are deluding themselves. This time around, disaffected Labour people aren’t simply registering a protest vote. They are actually joining the SNP in droves. Many of the 37% of their voters who voted yes were initially disowned by their own party, or their existence actually denied. Then they were hounded out of their constituencies and demonised as nationalist stooges. They will not forgive such treatment easily.

Many others were sickened at watching their party acting as swordbearers for the baleful forces of the Conservative party, big oil, big business and the landed and undeserving rich during the referendum campaign. The sight of Labour people singing and dancing with Conservatives at having preserved the established order of things will not be erased soon.

Ed Miliband will require all of his 41 Scottish Labour MPs to be returned if he is to have any hope of winning an overall majority at Westminster next year. Yet how many of them would survive a backlash from among the 1.6 million who voted yes and who have effectively renounced the Labour faith?

In recent days, I’ve been rebuked by some chums in the Labour party for deploying the term “careerist” to describe them. Leaving aside Murphy and his 100-day job application and Baron Reid and Baron Foulkes of, ahem, Cumnock and their exalted Labour lordships McConnell and Robertson, I’m willing to concede that “careerist” doesn’t apply to all Labour stalwarts.

So here’s a challenge to the good and able Scottish Labour MPs at Westminster such as Gregg McClymont, Tom Greatrex, Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar. The party in Scotland, gentlemen, is on a life-support machine. How many of you care enough about it to give up your Westminster careers and come to its aid at Holyrood?

RANDOM THOUGHTS

So, let’s see…

That’s nearly a week since the referendum and so far:

The vow or pledge or whatever it was, has been put on hold by Labour because they have discovered that the poor are poor and they need to do something about that all over the UK. 

The Tories have said that they stick by the promise, but they have to include England, Wales and NI in the devo plans, however, don't worry, they will stick to the timetable of it being ready for the General Election in the UK in May next year. So clearly they think it's going to be a fairly easy job.

Massive Fail. Again.
Just as well he's incredibly rich and doesn't need the job

No one cares what Nick Clegg thinks because Willie Hague has been given his job...and in any case, he is insignificant.

Labour has announced a raft of policies, like increasing the already pathetically low and utterly unlikeable minimum wage by 25p a year, freezing child benefit, taking away the pensions’ winter payments and coming down like several tonnes of bricks on the sick, the skivers and the dispossessed so that they will learn to think back to Iain Duncan Smith and the McVile creature as some sort of very ugly fairy god mothers.

YES

They seem to have no comment on the fact that the retirement pension is the lowest (bar Mexico's) in the developed world, and a good £80 a week less than that in Eire, Guernsey or Jersey.

The Tories, for their part, have promised England that they will reduce the amount of money that Scotland gets under the Barnet Formula, leaving out that that is what they have been doing year on year.

Someone found a massive amount of oil in Scottish waters and oil is going to last a lot longer than 2017 as Alistair Darling once suggested.. 

Ah, that makes it all clear then

We are about to go to war in Iraq for no particular reason. In these matters it is always a good idea to read Craig Murray. I suspect there is always money to be made from wars when your biggest export is weapons, and you sell them to everyone.

The Bank of England says that it is likely that interest rates will have to go up rather sooner than they had thought, so the more expensive mortgages that they warned you would come in an independent Scotland, are on the way in the UK.

I'm hearing that the prime minister has been forced to apologise to the queen for breaking the convention that their conversations are private, and for showing that she did hold a political view on the future of Scotland. 

You tell her, Dave....

I understand too that the queen has issued a statement saying that she hopes that Scotland will come together again. I would respectfully suggest that the queen sends for his bunch of vowers and tells them that when they make a promise they bloody well keep it.

Nothing to worry about. We're in good hands

And Ineos has secured a licence to frack Scotland. Comforting to know that they are such a well managed and responsible company.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

Fair's fair. I'm a republican, but I can praise individual royals' work when it's good. I've always said that Anne is a star with her Save the Children work. But today I take my hat off to Harry. He may be a bit of a prat sometimes, but he's done a good job of showing other royals how they can behave on tour. He's been a credit to his mum and to Britain the way he's been connecting with people, especially with kids.  You'll not get any bowing and scraping or any idiotic titles and styles from me, Harry; just a well done, mate.

Hague is going to be sued (couldn't happen to a nicer bloke) for providing intelligence to America which then drone bombed  Pakistan killing totally innocent people. Lawyers said that they had "credible, unchallenged" evidence that Hague oversaw a policy of passing British intelligence to US forces planning attacks against militants. And this time he, or they, or both,  got it wrong! We really have to learn that this isn't the good old colonial days when we could go around killing natives with abandon.

On the same theme, I wonder what kind of payback there is going to be for the murders of 16 Afghans, including 5 kids, carried out by a "rogue" soldier. There is sure to be some. It might be better to use this as an excuse to get the hell out of there, with our apologies for the mess we are leaving it in. 


Talking about leaving messes behind us, I was reading this morning that fashionably dressed men in Iraq are being attacked and killed. The Telegraph reported that up to 90 people, all but 2 men, have been killed for being trendily dressed and having floppy hair. It is assumed by the religious fanatics that now hold sway in the country (that we went in to liberate from a dictator), that anyone who is dressed fashionably is a homosexual, and that justifies killing them. Clearly the fanatics should get out more. Oh and to Bush and Blair...well done guys. You certainly liberated the Iraqis.


According to the Independent, the bill for London's Olympics has increased by another £2 billion. You would never credit that we are all in this together, would you? Just how much more is this fiasco going to cost.

Again, this time in the Telegraph, (enough to take you breath away, this one), the London government is going to support people buying homes worth up to £500,000 in an effort to revive the middle class dream of home ownership. Apparently rescuing the banks from their own stupidity and greed, and then handing them further billions of pounds in quantitative easing hasn't actually stimulated any lending (and we all know why that is: they needed it all for their bloody bonuses and salaries). So the government is going to have to guarantee their loans too, out of our money....at a time when house prices are going down. Smart thinking, Cameron.


And finally, while we're on the subject of the idiot Cameron, I noticed in one of the "idiot" papers yesterday that Cameron is going to get a ride in Airforce One. Imagine that! The paper pointed out with glee that President Sarkozy has never been invited to ride in the President's personal plane, ergo that President Obama had a very special relationship with Britain and Cameron. A bit of a leap.  I think it's highly unlikely that the  intellectual Mr Obama, who got where he is despite his origins, and because of his brain, would have much in common with Cameron who got where he got because of his connections and despite his brain.