Goodness me, changing the habits of a lifetime, the UK has decided not to poke its nose into another country’s business. May be something to do with a prime minister desperate for a trade deal on any terms… Surely it cannot be that she doesn’t have a problem with white supremacists.
Of course, maybe she’s just too busy looking after the “Just Getting By”, concentrating on coming out of the single market and customs union whilst staying in the single market and customs union, and having a secure border while leaving the border open…or maybe she’s genuinely got lost in the Alps.
‘…or maybe she’s genuinely got lost in the Alps.’ I sincerely hope so!
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Now, what did the Swiss ever do to you? 🙂
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……while Obama’s comments on Scottish independence were of course welcome – but perhaps the Donald’s less so……..but of course these are ‘a matter for him’.
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Yes. He IS the boss.
I note that in response to unrest amongst decent Tories, aware of the fact that she can’t afford to alienate anyone, she has now condemned his words.
By and large, I think that foreign heads of government should keep relatively quiet about how other countries conduct themselves, but there are some things that just ahve to be called out.
Beheading people for example, for protesting, or being gay, or having an adulterous relationship, is so repugnant it should be condemned. Likewise, refusing to utterly condemn the Ku Klux Klan, Nazi, white supremacists, marching shouting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil” carrying Nazi flags and giving Nazi salutes… Yes, we need to condemn that, even if it means we miss out on a poxy trade deal.
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Remember, this is the person who, as Home Secretary sent advertising vans around various parts of England with high populations of non-white people asking “Why don’t you go home?”
She has been out of the country for some time.
People wearing white hoods during the hours of darkness in Charlotteville Virginia could not be identified.
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I’m pretty sure that the Vicar’s daughter agrees with Trump, hence her initial refusal to comment.
But she’s scared of her ministers and terrified of her back benchers.
I’m sure that’s what changed her mind.
http://news.sky.com/story/tories-break-ranks-after-mays-silence-over-trumps-charlottesville-comments-10990818
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From Sky News:
“It (the statement) comes after the PM originally failed to directly challenge remarks the President made on Saturday about the violence. On Monday her spokesman said: “What the President says is a matter for him.” “
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Well, Theresa isn’t lost in the Alps…unfortunately. She was at Portsmouth today to gawp and cheer, with many others, at the RN’s latest white elephant, HMS Queen Elizabeth. The sheer guff spouted by the BBC News about this colossal floating waste of money was hilarious – nobody seems to have noticed that this is an aircraft carrier without aircraft! OK, they parked a couple of helicopters on deck, probably so that no-one mistook it for a floating car-park but the RN are likely to be waiting some time yet for the planes to be supplied by our US allies – at eye-watering cost of course. The Big Lizzy, we’re told, will protect us for decades to come and be a potent symbol of Britain’s might – it’s a pity she can’t protect us from the idiocies and viciousness of Tory policies. Anyway, as I watched pics of the giant floating scrapyard gliding into Pompey, I was reminded of something a friend’s bro-in-law said to me many years ago, (he was a submariner) – “Andy, forget the cruisers, destroyers, carriers and all that: there are two kinds of vessels – submarines and targets”.
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I thought they had two of these things.
Maybe like 1970’s Jaguars,the other one is for spares.
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Well, if it’s anything like the last lot of ships they got, it won’t work. So I hope they have spares.
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Bringiton, If it is as useless as the last ships they bought, they’ll need spares. What was it with them? They didn;t have enough power to move and shoot at the same times, so they had to stop, fire and then start up.
Might? Jeeeeez.
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I read somewhere that the French offered 2 Billion for the other one but it would have to have modifications done before they took it on.
If that offer was in Euros the builders could be quids in.
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Well, at least they have some planes to land on it.
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I heard about that this morning, Andi.
I couldn’t make up my mind whether to laugh or cry at all the pomp over a boat for which the planes are a distant dream, signifying the might and position of Britain in the world.
An aircraft carrier without aircraft? Might?
Stop it.
Seriously, have a word with yourself Britain.
You are making a fool of yourselves and everyone is laughing.
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Did you hear the lady interviewed on the BBC News who said that everyone felt a bit safer now ? Can’t quite work out how….
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I heard her, Cairnallochy. I thought it bizarre too. There may be a lot threatening us and the rest of the world but I cannot see how a huge warship (though a tiddler compared with US carriers) can be of any practical use whatsoever. It’s a given that any carrier needs to be part of a task force, screened by destroyers (to defend it from attack). The Big Lizzy is an anachronistic, over-priced, redundant symbol of supposed past greatness – much like who it’s named after. In any case, if the North Korean nutter and/or the looney in the White House hit the nuclear button, the Big Lizzy will vapourize just as quickly as everything and everybody else. Feeling any safer? Me neither.
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Why would anyone feel safer because the UK has a giant landing strip?
I suppose she says it because she believes it because the Daily Express told her she was.
Ho hum
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Tris
Britain is just the economic whore of the west now, we will sell anything to anybody and agree to anything with anyone who will spend their money here, even when it means our own workers work for peanuts and are treated like slaves.
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Laughing stock too, Bruce.
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It appears that you don’t need borders with modern technology (NI/Eire).
Taking back control means a new bit of sofware for their computers.
Soft(ware) border for the Irish EU frontier and a very hard one for everywhere else,including Scotland should we dare to part company with them.
Joined up thinking it ain’t.
More walkabout required me thinks.
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But we need borders with other countries?
Because the technology won’t work unless it’s in Ireland?
I’m only guessing, of course, but let’s face it so are Davis, Fox and Mayhem.
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Tris,.
Off topic for a change, check out a song called “Scotland Rule” by Donnie Macdonald on you-tube – Sorry,. I’m too thick to provide a link.. It’s an impartial song about independence and was written by the singer’s Mum to amuse the grand-kids which is probably why I like it!
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There ya go.
Nice cheery wee song too, John. I’ve tweeted it too.
Do you know the Donnie?
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Know and like his music but don’t know him at all. My holidays were great and got a taste for arak again. Journey to the Leb and back no problem then got held up at Stanstead for five hours – no explanation or apology. Britain at it’s best!
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PS: I like this one too:
C and W in Gaelic.
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I did just see Tessie May on a big boat making a statement of some sort about Mr. Trump’s press conference rant about good people on “both sides.” Republicans have come out with some bold and fearless statements against Nazis and the KKK. (No political penalty there.) But just about NONE of the GOP officeholders have been brave enough to call Mr. Trump by name the racist demagogue he is. Too many of the Republican voter base think it’s just fine that he ranted about moral equivalency and about how the LEFT wing opposition viciously attacked the right wing racists.
Interesting to remember the historical power of the KKK in American politics, and for matter the “America First” movement prior to World War II. (Trump has often used the America First rhetoric with apparently not the slightest awareness of its historically evil significance in American politics.)
The Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden on February 21, 1939, under the giant portrait of George Washington:
KKK march in Washington in the 1920’s:
Unlike Trump and his white supremacist supporters, FDR was AGAINST the Nazis. On the other hand, Woodrow Wilson (our only PhD president who was the President of Princeton before he was President of the US) was a racist southerner who was just fine with the KKK.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/charlottesville-clashes-reminiscent-30s-nazi-rallies-msg-article-1.3406557
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They launched an aircraft carrier, Danny. It’s been at sea for a few weeks, and apparently it’s not letting in water, so… that’s good.
It’s a chocolate teapot of course, because there won’t be any planes for it until 2025 or something, by which time it will have rotted, or rusted, or sunk, or be obsolete or something.
May was shamed into saying something by backbench MPs (and some ministers, I think). She can’t afford to upset anyone. Of course she would have the DUP on side by not criticising Trump. They are almost as mad as he is.
I watched the events in Virginia, the people marching chanting “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us”, with their Nazi flags… and I was sickened.
I’m always mindful at these times of the fact that these “white” people marching and carrying on about how superior they are, are immigrants.
Thanks for the article. Good from Mr Signer.
Incidentally surely now we cannot have Trump on a state visit. I just can’t imagine the reception he’d get.
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Seems to me that I read once about France and Britain sharing warplanes on the carriers. Maybe that idea was a casualty of Brexit.
Interesting that after his initial statement which didn’t mention the Nazis or KKK groups, the orange faced moron bowed to pressure, and with glum face and clenched teeth issued a NEW statement the next day that corrected that…..leaving the podium stone faced with not a word to the reporters. Then Tuesday, after a nice night at his penthouse on Fifth Avenue in New York City (he has called the White House a “dump,”) he happily announced that his first statement was just fine and there were “good People” on BOTH sides.
Now the white supremacists know without doubt that they have a friend in the White House. One who morally equates the Nazis and their opposition, and the slave owning Presidents like Washington and Jefferson with the likes of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee and Jeff Davis, who committed treason by waging war against the republic to maintain slavery, and then fought against equality for the freed slaves that established the Jim Crow system of southern apartheid.
But who can be surprised that Trump is himself a racist demagogue. He made his career by questioning the birth of the first black president in order to constitutionally delegitimize his presidency, and he played to the crowd who lapped that up like mother’s milk.
I certainly do agree that he can now kiss goodbye to that state dinner with Her Majesty that he wanted so badly.
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Excellent article in NYT, Danny.
I think we agreed when he was campaigning, that he was legitimising racism, and that becasue of his audience, he would have to carry through if he ever became president… not that we thought that was a possibility.
When you whip up that kind of hate in that kind of people, you can’t just shrug it off when you have power.
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This is good…
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Yes, Seth was great as always. It was weird to watch WH Chief of Staff General Kelly during the insane press conference rant…..head down and probably thinking “I can’t believe this idiot.”
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I wonder if he was writing his resignation speech in his head…
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Before this disgraceful event, Charlottesville had been mostly known as the home of the University of Virginia, founded by Tom Jefferson, whose home Monticello is up on a hill above the town.
A candlelight vigil was held tonight at the University.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/hundreds-carry-lit-candles-across-uva-campus-against-white-nationalism/2017/08/16/cd615178-82f0-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html?utm_term=.3085b75b4099
As for old Tom, for all his yammering about liberty and the tyranny of the British King, one would wish that he hadn’t owned slaves. At least his original draft of his Declaration of Independence included a denunciation of slavery…….which was deleted in the final draft by the Continental Congress to get the votes of the southern colonies for independence.
Did you know Tris (LOL) that Tom Jefferson and John Adams BOTH died on July 4, 1826…….the 50th anniversary to the day of American independence……Tom near Charlottesville and John up north in Massachusetts.
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Mrs Heyer was impressive.
Actually, I did know that, and I’m pretty sure that you were my source of information!!!
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However Putin’s actions aren’t.
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