Lebedev's other dog and Putin's pooches

It's just struck me (and several million others, no doubt) that there's a very good chance that our Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, may have effectively sold classified information to the Russians by giving the oligarch Evgeny Lebedev a peerage in 2020. (Peerage = seat in the House of Lords. House Of Lords = US Senate)

That's not a snarky sobriquet - that's his official title. Lord of Hampton And Siberia

That isn't the worst of it. The worst of it is that nobody outside of Twitterland gives a flying fuck about it.

Our political system is hopelessly compromised, both the Left and the Right seem to have sold out to the Russians lock, stock and barrel. In fact it reminds me of things I've read about pre-Euromaidan Ukraine.

The only senior person in the system behaving with any kind of honour is the leader of the Opposition, unfortunately he is a bit of a charisma vacuum and he is under attack by the left wing of his own party, who are being suspiciously supportive of the Russians (blaming NATO for everything, etc) and not uttering a peep about the very blatant corruption of the ruling (right wing) party by the Russian oligarchs. They're not demonstrating outside of the many properties owned by them, they're not demonstrating outside the Russian embassy, they're just running around with their dumb placards waving Soviet flags and chanting their stupid, bleating chants.

I'm not kidding! Actual footage shown.

I repeat: The Left in this country are failing to criticize the Right for selling us out to the Russians, which they have done. (For example Brexit was notoriously funded by Russian money).  Is this ideological, or have they also sold us out? (They wouldn't be the first.) The ONLY people telling the truth are a few liberal journalists and the not very popular, incredibly bland opposition leader Sir Kier Starmer, who has as much chance of being elected Prime Minister as I have of being elected Pope.

It is worse than you could possibly imagine. We are basically a Trojan Horse of the Russians, we are talking a good fight but actually giving them time to hide their money before we implement any sanctions. At this point I have to wonder if any of the weapons we're supposedly giving the Ukranians even work.

Speaking of which, we're now officially turning away Ukrainian refugees. I guess it helps that the electorate have been conditioned to see refugees as the enemy by the same right wing politicians that Putin has obviously compromised - in the case of the PM, by literally having him along to a massive party in an oligarch's castle.

Links as and when I can be bothered. I just had to get that out of my system.

Lebedev with his other dog

 

 

Predictions for the Post Pandemic Future

OK. Let's get the clichés out of the way. It's A Tumultuous TimeⓇ, and Nothing Will Ever Be The Same Again™.

Now, you wanna know how Right-wing governments are going to not only get away with this, but also gain from it?

Here's how:

They're gonna blame China, and bring back all the jobs we sent overseas back in the Eighties and Nineties.

The Right have already got a grass roots / astroturf campaign going to blame China for the 'Rona. So it's China's fault that the Prime Minister went around a coronavirus ward shaking hands with everyone and babbling about herd immunity, it's China's fault that El Trumpo spent precious weeks bibbling on about how it was all a conspiracy and even more precious time keeping medical equipment from those who needed it instead of doing anything constructive, it's China's fault that the rich and the bankers got bailed out first and everyone else had to eat shit... all the blame for that - deflected at China.

So that's the electorate half way to happy. The only problem - the post-plague recession. Cos the economy's collapsed and every fucker has lost their job.

Plenty of jobs in China. Fortunate indeed that the country we're choosing to scapegoat for everything (and they are indeed far from blameless) also just happens to be the richest country in the world. And why are they rich? To quote South Park: They took our jobs!

Well, our fearless leaders gave them our jobs, actually. And now, this is the perfect opportunity to bring them home.

If I'm correct, the post-Pandemic years will see a dramatic industrial renaissance in the CANUSUK countries. All the factories that were shuttered back in the day will suddenly find that they're economical again, and the jobs sent overseas during the neoliberal globalisation years will come back.

After all, we've got our working classes "disciplined" and willing to work for peanuts, and there's the added advantage that we don't have to shift goods halfway across the world or worry about a sinister Communist government stealing our greatest technological secrets, like how to make a shitty fucking iPhone knockoff. In the future, the shitty iPhone knockoffs will be built right here in the West! Woohoo! Go us!

Oh, joy.

That's if they don't manage to fuck it up. I mean, Trump could definitely screw up even a scam that simple- mainly because it's not even that much of a scam, and people like him are so used to dishonesty that simple geopolitics tend to break them. But Britain will likely be fine, while the US's loss and long-term decline is Canada and Mexico's gain.

Brexit will... go away, as nobody is going to give a flying fuck about how many migrant workers we have in the country, in fact we'll pay to bring them back now the fruit are rotting in the fields, and this virus is a great face saving opportunity for the extreme nationalists who pushed that particular dumb and evil policy - cos they can always go: "Look - CHINA!" and then run away while we're all looking around for the Red Menace.

So yeah, the good news is, the economy is saved, and it might even reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping - the bad news is that it means Johnson has a clear path to saving his skin.

Labour have gone back to the Centrist brand just when the Left were starting to get over the worst of it, and nobody's going to choose some has-been lawyer they've never heard of, with a face like a spanked arse, when they could be choosing The Man Who Saved Us From The Virus (and got us all jobs while he was at it)! come 2024... though there is plenty Johnson could fuck up, that is my projection for the next election.

Just call me Cassandra!

And as for the Left? Traditionally a day late and a dollar short, I think that after Starmer completely fails to get anywhere in 2024, we'll see the return of Rebecca Long-Bailey, revamped and reprogrammed to kick arse and take names. With the return of industrial jobs, we'll see a return to trade unionism, it's just a part of the scene - and the Left will get back a considerable amount of its former mojo with it.

So, to recap: After The Pandemic ends, I predict we'll see rapid re-industrialization followed by, sadly, yet another fucking Tory government in 2024, followed by Labour finally getting its' shit together and actually getting elected in 2029. I've long been predicting that Labour wouldn't get in until around about 2030, and now I'm one step closer to finding out how.