time for reflection

the Silly Boys have not updated their website for ages now, and it is still saying that the Tories and Liberals are "unprincipled" to have gone into coalition and taken over Reading Borough Council.  They are also spinning (and His Master's Voice has faithfully copied out, to be followed by others) that Labour was in power for 27 years.  Not so.  And while we are on the subject of principles, I was there when Labour got the chairs of committees (without actually taking control) in 1986.  The council had gone Tory from NOC in 1983 and the chairs of committees were acquired because a renegade Tory called Hamza Fuad (great bloke, I liked him, he was mayor one year, I wonder where he is now) voted with Labour against his own group.  He was not a fan of M. Thatcher.  Two seats won the following year enabled Labour actually to take control.  But using a renegade Tory to get power?  Is that principled?  Personally I have no problem with any of it, politics is about power and there is no virtue in opposition, but most in the Labour Party seem to disagree.  A bit rich though for Zim One Lovelock to talk about principles.  Hein?

Basher

hasn't gone away, though he is on crutches (oh dear, tries to keep straight face, a just punishment for what he has done to others) and is still describing himself as "the Labour candidate for Park ward" - they are selecting their candidates early this year! Think so?

oh dear they don't look happy do they

hahahahahahahaha

pictured Cllr Pete "Both Ways on Kennet Meadows" Ruhemann and an empty chair for Cllr John "Salter's catamite" Ennis, who has probably had to go and live in a barrel now that his master has disappeared from the scene.  Labour council?  Yes, I remember that.  Got rid of it nicely didn't you boys?  Even Dictatorship Dave "moronic members of the public" Sutton was there to be in at the death, no doubt pleased with his handiwork now that he has got his wish - two Tory MPs in Reading and Labour in opposition.  Well done.  Very very well done.

Hat-tip Adrian Windisch for pic.  More please.
update:  I understand I have readers who do not know what a catamite is.  Disappointing.  They can find out here.

a new era dawns

for Reading Borough that is, according to Cllr Willis, who becomes the new lead councillor for strategic planning and transport.  The cabinet is interesting, though one or two of the better talents have not been given the positions they probably deserve.  We'll see.  How I wish I had been there to see the faces of the Labour Group, who were apparently glum and silent.  Congrats Zim One Lovelock, taking the group to oblivion after 27 years.  What a waste.

As the shredders fall silent a new dawn breaks.  In the early quiet a lone blackbird sings.

my man on the Strasbourg tram says

Oona King got off it at the European Parliament stop last Wednesday morning

I was a bit shocked

by this picture, published in Le Monde's weekend magazine.  There are other cartoons on the page, which has a British theme because there is a new government in the UK.  For those who do not read French, the man in the picture is intended to represent then President (in 1992) Mitterrand, and the Queen is of course intended to represent the British state.  This is what it is saying old Mits thought he was doing at the time, and his speech bubble says (and if there is a play on words in French it is beyond me) "Can you feel it babe?  My Maastricht Treaty?" The cartoonist says his editor refused to publish this in 1992, but he is making that up I fancy.  But would a British medium publish it now?  And what would their reaction be?  Readers' reactions welcome.

balls

yes, that one.  He is not a fit person to lead a major political party - or a whelk stall.  He said, about the Iraq war, "Saddam Hussein was a horrible man, but..." and that although he was a key adviser to Gordon Brown in 2003 when the decision was made he thinks the decision was wrong.  Oliver Kamm rightly says that the Saddam Hussein regime (whether the man was "horrible" or not is irrelevant) was a major genocidal catastrophe of the 20th century, and I know that too many members of the Labour Party do not understand that.  Hence Balls' facing both ways at once. If any Labour Party member is tempted to vote for him this should help them to decide not to.  Miliband Major has kept quiet on the issue, because he was an MP in 2003 and voted for the war, as I did.  Miliband Minor has said he was against it.  Miliband Major should stand up and say that he is proud of his decision in 2003.  He should be proud.  But he has showed pusillanimity in not doing so.

And at the same time we have key figures in government, like Liam Fox, going to Afghanistan and saying they are not interested in nation building, just in bomb and run.  This is as bad as the likes of Douglas Hurd in the 1990s propping up the Slobodan Milosevic regime and then milking Serbia for money.

Bastards.  Traitors to the values of international solidarity, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.  Bastards.