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News and Comment June 2019

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13 June - Jews, boos and lose

Whenever there is a break on Bonkers - too many trips to East Ham, Bexley Councillors behaving themselves etc. - a dilemma arises. Does one let the blog die naturally or keep it going on nothing much?

Given the stupidity of politics nationally it is tempting to comment on that, there would be a never ending supply of material.

TweetFor the Many not the Jew
What goes on within the two major political parties is horrifying though in very different ways. Jeremy Corbyn is just a nightmare from every point of view. The anti-Semitism displayed is beyond my comprehension. Quoting Anne Frank while welcoming yet another anti-Semite into Parliament. A woman who denies the one incident of Jew hating that got her into the headlines but who has a history of doing the same thing which tends to prove her a liar.

There is simply no excuse for any of it.

Anti-Semitism or maybe I should say anti-anti-Semitism came to the fore in Bexley six months ago when it adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of anti-Semitism.

I had always assumed the Cabinet decision had the backing of everyone locally and Philip Read’s comments suggests it did but unfortunately I missed the debate - if any - and even more unfortunately Bexley’s webcast had no audio track. It still hasn’t.

In ignorance of the detail I find myself wondering what is behind this Twitter exchange. Did the Labour Group have nothing at all to say about the IHRA definition, surely their Leader must have commented but why is the then Labour Councillor Danny Hackett claiming to have his support gagged?

I see nothing at all to justify Councillor Read’s slur on the whole local party but as usual Councillor Ahmet Dourmoush hits the nail squarely on the head.

Note: This subject was expanded on 19th June.

Boris Johnson
So the man who robbed South East London of its bridge over the Thames (†) is the front runner to be the next Prime Minister. What a sorry state of affairs. It says everything one needs to know about top Tories that he is their best candidate.

I am inclined to agree which makes the situation even worse. I wouldn’t trust Boris Johnson one inch and I’m a firm believer in Elwyn Bryant’s opinion of how he operates. To understand that comment you would have to be present at the meeting between former Bexley Police Borough Commander Victor Olisa and the pair of us when I asked the Chief Superintendent exactly what persuaded him to disregard Crown Prosecution advice and drop the impending charges against Cabinet Member Peter Craske after so much incriminating evidence was found on his laptop.

† Mayor Livingstone’s small scale bridge had been approved and due for completion in 2014 before the newly elected Boris Johnson succumbed to Bexley Council Leader Teresa O’Neill’s NIMBYism.

TV Licences
My email Inbox tells me that some readers are concerned or amused by the impending loss of my free TV licence after becoming eligible for it less than a year ago. Except that I will have to tell Capita where to go at frequent intervals I am not personally concerned at all.

I fell out of love with the BBC many years ago, firstly in my usual nerdy way, for their failure to observe the minimum technical standards for digital broadcasting mandated by the European Broadcasting Union of which they are a founding member and later for distorting and censoring the news.

For reasons I would be hard pressed to specify I gradually stopped watching any TV programme. It started four or five years ago and now I can say with hand on heart that this year I watched most of the Inspector Morse based drama Endeavour (ITV) and the penultimate episode of Line of Duty (BBC) which looked too much like a documentary to me.

And that’s it. I occasionally flick on a news channel if something interesting is going on so I saw a bit of the D-Day celebrations and that really is the lot.

So I won’t be buying a TV licence. From being a major fan twenty years ago I have gone to being perfectly happy to see the BBC closed down.

The only good thing I can say about it is that it has kept my daughter employed for the past 30 years or whatever it is and paid her so well that she has never come to me suggesting that a bit of cash would come in handy.

 

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