Sometimes - oh, alright then - most times it is better for us 'ams' to give way to the 'pros'. Thus it is in the case of Mr. Tom Watson who has, allegedly, stepped down from the political platform which he has defiled for so long. Yesterday, I gave it, or rather, him, my best shot but this morning I was delighted to read Mr. Richard Littlejohn in The Mail who slipped on his 'bovver boots' and 'knuckledusters' before reducing the detestable Watson to mincemeat. Here are a few tasters for you to enjoy:
He can’t be allowed to shed his wicked past, like one of those Weight Watchers of the Year posing alongside a cardboard cut-out of his Nonce Finder General former self. The truth is he’s one of the most malevolent, malignant individuals ever to soil British politics, a self-serving, self-pitying, self-righteous enemy of free speech and persecutor of innocent men and their families.
[snip]
Instead, he made it all about him — burbling about having been on a ‘health journey’ and wanting to move on with his life. Sweet.
He didn’t mention that the only reason he had been on his health journey, shedding eight stone in the process, is because he had been eating and drinking himself into an early grave, much of the time on his parliamentary expenses.
In fact, he spent so much taxpayers’ money at Marks & Sparks, they gave him a free pizza wheel.
I wonder if he ever spares a thought for those who can’t move on with their lives, like the families of the blameless men he falsely accused of child molesting and worse.
Watson abused Parliamentary privilege to incite the hysterical Paedos In High Places witch-hunt against senior Tories, smearing them as rapists and murderers.
He used Prime Minister’s Questions to claim that there was a ‘powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10’ during the Thatcher years.
[snip]
He compared former Home Secretary Leon Brittan to the serial sex fiend Jimmy Savile, writing that he was ‘as close to evil’ as any man could get.
Brittan died before he could be exonerated, but only belatedly did Watson issue a grudging statement of regret.
He put pressure on the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue a vendetta against blameless individuals such as the then 91-year-old war hero Lord Bramall.
Watson helped to ensure that reputations were dragged through the mud, that homes were ransacked, that families were terrorised, that lives were ruined — and all on the word of a known fantasist, Carl Beech, aka Nick, currently serving 18 years for perverting the course of justice.
[snip]
Then there was his bromance with Max Mosley, son of the wartime fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, from whom he accepted a donation of more than half a million pounds. Watson shares with Mosley a hatred of the popular Press and has made several attempts to bring newspapers under state control.
Even after Max Mosley himself was exposed by this newspaper as having a revolting, racist past, Watson still refused to return the money.
[snip]
Yet, incredibly, you won’t be told any of this in the glowing tributes to Watson on the BBC and elsewhere.
They are all prepared to overlook, or forget altogether, his past transgressions. As far as they are concerned, he is the greatest Prime Minister We Never Had.
Sorry, but I’m not buying any of it. Public life is well rid of the Nonce Finder General.
I’m sticking with my verdict that Watson — to adapt the outrageous smear he directed at Leon Brittan — is as close to evil as any politician can get.
Or, as a headline on this column put it last year: ‘A muck-slinging zealot utterly unfit for high office. [My emphasis]
Thank you, Mr. Littlejohn, you put it so much better than I ever could - why am I not surprised? Still 'n' all, am I mistaken in thinking that the air smells a little sweeter this morning?
This man sounds like a completely hideous individual so goodbye and don't bother to call.
Posted by: Andra | Friday, 08 November 2019 at 20:48
Speaking of offal how's about a Syria update?
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/11/httpssouthfrontorgsyrian-army-enters-new-villages-in-northern-al-hasakah.html
Disclaimer: Colonel Lang (pl) and I have "enjoyed" both agreements and the otherwises in a, relatively, far off past.
His characterization of what's up since the withdrawal from the areas abutting Turkey as "neocon arguments" couldn't be further from what's what.
Syria's a fucking mess (50¢ in your swear jar David) and it has been since 2011 - But thank God the US media is so focused on impeachment they're so distracted "we" might get ourselves outta this, the larger mess left to be dealt with.
Can't be arsed with the ultimate details just now, just give us to Christmas. The game's afoot.
Posted by: JK | Saturday, 09 November 2019 at 05:08
There are three postures on Syria for the US now ...
Inners
Outers
Bait and Bleeders
Outers we know what they want.
Inners are confused because the line-up on the field of glory ain't linear like some medieval slugfest, it's triangular, here's the triangulation with the armies, what they stand for, and their backers: -
SNA - Islamists: Turkey
SAA - Shia coalition: Assad, Vlad, Iran
SDF - The Rojavans: US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and non-Islamist Arab states
At the moment, per JK's linked article, the SAA / SDF are fighting the SNA.
But who cares who's fighting who, so long as Old Hickory is safe? Every dead jihadi or Iranian revolutionary guardsman before any peace is arrived at is a good thing. And that's the Bait and Bleeder position: hold their three coats while they knock six bells out of each other, while staying safe ourselves.
The last thing we want is peace too soon so a surplus of Sunni and Shia Islamist nutters can pick up their downed tools and start chucking them at us.
Somehow we - the US and West - seem to have landed in this very advantageous Bait and Bleed triangulation.
Was it all a cunning plan by the Don and his team? Or did the push and pull of the Don (outer) vs his team (inners) do the right job of making us a de facto Bait and Bleeder?
Is this an example of the wrestling between populist and establishment actually doing us a favour by wrong-footing our enemies and keeping them fighting each other?
The sort of clever-clever thing a quality Machiavellian Pol like Vlad would do his people would wait decades for and in between suffer with foolish leaders, but the democratic world with its teamwork of checks and balances spares the blushes of a low quality leader?
Or is it just a simple case of "Don't give me good generals, give me lucky ones" - and we just landed a lucky one?
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Saturday, 09 November 2019 at 11:02
Here's a good un ...
https://apnews.com/d11a96e9210845388f62835c082ab1ee
It's nothing to do with the oil. It's all to do with "SoD's Corridor" that I very kindly passed on with no invoice attached to Uncle Sam via his agent JK. I can feel that Green Card might be hitting the doormat pretty soon, mind?!
But please, if there is a God of the public sector ...
Residents of the east are already wary of the forces of Assad and his Iranian-backed allies, deployed just across the Euphrates.
Reports have circulated among locals that government troops were massing and Iranian-backed militias arriving from Iraq. Kurdish-led forces and government troops clashed Tuesday near the town of Husseiniya, according to Deir Ezzor 24 and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor group.
The Observatory said the clashes prompted the U.S. military to fire rockets at the government forces. The U.S.-led coalition denied firing, but the reports underscored the possibility of frictions.
... let him get the Iron Fist and Trophy APS's onto Old Hickory's Bradley's and Abrams ASAP.
Goddam it, I'll take a month out and fly over and spot weld the kit on myself (or do the IT; don't have much spot-welding experience myself).
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Saturday, 09 November 2019 at 14:22
While the media's been sleeping at the switch Loz - well except there's Russia Russia Russia and now added in Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine! (albeit in a separate context) and there's talk of Impeachment! in the air ...
All over the ME, including Egypt incidentally to some extent all the north and all the east of Africa down Somoliland way, has been for some time festering (as I noted just before our '16 elections) but lately the tinder seems to've lighted itself:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/why-iran-wants-the-lebanon-and-iraq-uprisings-to-fade/
https://www.vox.com/2019/11/5/20947668/iraqs-protests-baghdad-mahdi-tehran-explained
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/07/why-iraqs-protesters-are-still-in-the-streets/
https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/yemen/massive-plaudits-greet-yemen-deal-uae-us-kuwait-un-arab-league-hail-riyadh-agreement-1.67632206
https://www.timesofisrael.com/uae-frees-millions-in-frozen-funds-amid-warming-ties-iran-says/
Let's remember how it was Tunisia where Arab Spring 1.0 set off east and got itself as far as Tehran - which then the Chinaman stepped in with "a bargain" quieting the Iranian miscreants with ports building projects. As well Chinaman did from Djibouti to points north. Then the Arab autocracies in order to save themselves began to export their more Wahhabi-inclined to points "anywhere but home"! Then the Chechen Wahhabis saw they was missing out on all the fun and, figuring they could get for themselves "protection contracts/rackets aimed at out-of-accepted-norms would be leaders but then the question had to've occurred, "Where's someplace that's been relatively immune from this here Arab Spring?"
Enter Syria.
Vlad notes "his Chechens" are very likely to return home and Shades of Shamir Baseyev Batman! Vlad says to himself "Better we extend their visas and better yet - do whatever it takes to keep 'em from home."
Russia enters Syria in '15 and oh by the way smooths relations with Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile over in the US Hillary manages the impossible and gets beat.
Then it gets complicated. And the natives are restless.
Posted by: JK | Saturday, 09 November 2019 at 18:12
https://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/07/10/russia.basayev/
I only bother to tack that on because Bob may be finding himself lost in the comics trying to figure whether Shamir was hooked up with either the Joker or the Riddler.
Posted by: JK | Saturday, 09 November 2019 at 18:43