Over a million people signed a petition which demanded that the government rescind its invitation to President Donald Trump to pay a state visit to the country. Unfortunately, of the top twenty constituencies which provided votes for this nonsense, fifteen of them are in London, and the other five are centres of student posturing.
Then they had a demonstration, but unfortunately, a fair few of the marchers looked like refugees from a freak show.
Meanwhile the rest of the country decided that it didn't really give a fuck, as you can see from the above reading, taken from a genuine meter which checks all and any fucks that are ever given in real time.
Nevertheless, being warm, wonderful human beings, we are willing to let the freaks know what they can do with their opinions of Trump, and Brexit, which is what we reckon this is really about.
The snowflakes will melt at this news, but the freakshow will move on, and soon there will be something else for them to whine about.
As for us, we shall get on with our lives, secure in the knowledge that we don't have to give a fuck about the whining losers: we are the majority of the country!
In a determined effort to lose Stoke Central, Labour has chosen Gareth Snell as its candidate. Snell is a councillor who likes to pretend that he is a local man, whereas actually he is from Stowmarket, a delightful little town in leafy Suffolk and only came to the area to attend the University of Keele.
After graduating from that intellectual powerhouse, he became a professional politician who changed seats to avoid a fight with the up and coming UKIP. The good people of Chesterton Ward, in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, decided that this was not to their liking, so voted the carpetbagger off the council in 2014, but he managed to slither back in a 2016 by-election. His attempt to win a county council seat also failed, with victory going in that election to UKIP, as you will have probably guessed.
He has never had a real job, but did earn a decent crust as an aide to the former MP, the Hunt known as Tristram. Needless to say he is also a Federast, and never had the wit to try and hide the fact, something which is now all over the web. He is also on record as someone who sang the praises of "The excellent Eddie Izzard," and now wants to be the MP for a town that probably regards Izzard as a member of a freak show.
For their part, the Tories are reported to be running a paper candidate, leaving UKIP to have a clear run, something which Labour have now allowed to happen by their choice of candidate.
All Labour had to do was select a local man, who was also a Brexiteer who shared the social conservatism of the town. A candidate who believed in the old Labour values of strong unions, protectionism and nationalised industries. Had they chosen such a candidate then the party would have walked to victory, but instead they have gone for yet another identikit chancer from the middle class, with the result that UKIP are now the odds-on favourite to take the seat.
I am getting a bit worried about Labour's chances in the Stoke by-election, I really am. Either they, or the people who are supposedly supporting them, seem determined to lose the vote, as this leaflet which supposedly was handed out in Stoke pretty much demonstrates.
Of the six reasons why people should not for UKIP, only two have any traction. The NHS is a Labour issue, so that is a fair one, and I can sort of understand why the argument that income tax should be set at a flat rate is not going to be much of a goer in Stoke, but the other four are off the wall.
Do Nope No Hope, as those of us who find this outfit worthy only of a laugh call it really believe that a population that has seen its jobs decimated in a generation will find global warming or the plight of elephants in Africa high on their list of priorities? As for the other two, which deal with Muslims, all I can say is that Labour's attitude towards those who enrich our culture with their presence is probably best played down.
Then we have the story going round that Labour men are telling the punters that they should not vote for UKIP's Paul Nuttall as his home in Liverpool is a long way from Stoke. Actually it is about 60 miles from Liverpool which means it is a damn sight closer than the 150 or so from Stoke to London, which is where the last Labour MP came from.
Then we have Stoke's famous local dish of meat, spuds, carrots and whatever other veggies are found in the cupboard. It is called lobby or lobbies and is identical to the scouse that they eat in Liverpool. Its origins are probably in the German labskaus, so the Stoke housewives took the first syllable, and Liverpool's women the second, but the meal is the same.
The accents are also somewhat similar, which suggests that the Irish influenced Liverpool twang found its way to Stoke via the bargees who supplied Stoke through the canal network in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Finally, Liverpool is as poor as Stoke and for the same reasons: the Tories waged war on the working class in the 1980s and Labour did sod-all to repair the damage in the 2000s.
Labour could lose this seat to UKIP and if they do then they only have themselves to blame.
America got President Donald Trump today and the world got Melania, his foxy First Lady, as its new MILF. She will be 47 in April and for most girls that means that their fuck-by date is long passed, but this babe can still turn heads and stiffen middle legs.
We also saw Ivanka, his delightful daughter, who takes after her step-mother in the bedability stakes:
We hope to be seeing a lot more of both Trumpettes over the next four years, but here's a final shot of the lovely Ivanka displaying her finest assets:
Say what you like about Donald J. Trump, but he has fine taste in women. We haven't had a decent bit of tottie as First Lady since Jackie Kennedy, and she always struck me as a bit of a cold fish. Melania looks as if she would see a man right, as Donald will no doubt tell us in one of his unguarded moments.
Today was the day when even the Guardian had to implicitly admit that Brussels' dogs really are just cowardly curs. Just read The Brexit Resistance from John Harris, who I must admit is one of the saner Guardian writers, if you had any doubts.
Harris went to Manchester to interview Eoin Ward, who as you might expect is a student. He helps pay for his course by giving English lessons to EU nationals, and as someone who was once in the teaching trade I can tell you that every single penny of his wages will have come from the public purse. There may have been cutbacks in other further education areas, but teaching English to those who enrich our culture by the presence is still easy money for the lecturers.
They met at a Pret a Manger, naturally, and Ward tried to big himself up by telling the reporter that he was a real live activist who had done “a bit of leafleting” for Brussels during the campaign. Just a bit, mind you...
In August Ward even organised a street stall in city centre Manchester, and guess what happened? No, don't guess, since we can let Ward take up the tale:
“At least 20 quite scary-looking people turned up with bandanas over
their faces, holding up St George’s flags and filming everything. I
don’t know what group they were from but, to me, they looked a bit kind
of neo-Nazi, white supremacist – that sort of ilk. They were giving us a
lot of grief, telling us we didn’t respect democracy.”
Got that? A counter demonstration of about twenty people turned up and this Federast almost shit his load. God knows what will happen if the tame judges ever do manage to subvert our vote because then there will be a lot more than twenty people on the street to make their feelings clear. Best buy some adult nappies now.
Ward went on to say that campaigning on-line is easier than on the street: "It’s much scarier in real life,” he said. Yes, you precious little snowflake, it damn well is, and it will get a lot worse if Brexit is subverted by the wealthy that you pander too.
Let's look on the bright side: if this is the best that the Federasts can muster then they are fucked, they really are.
Back in June 2016 yours truly predicted that Bella Caledonia, the nauseatingly trendy website that hardly anyone reads would close sooner rather than later. Up popped the editor Mike Small to state: "I'm sorry to disappoint you Ken but we'll be around for a very long time." A long time turned out to be just seven months, as Mike Small is now job hunting and the site looks as if it will close any day now. For that reason I have saved the page that earned my ire just a few short months ago, and which includes my prediction that the train was about to hit the buffers.
Mexico seems to have paused to take stock of the situation today, with a small crowd going to the main square in Mexico City called the Zocalo to protest against the government, as you can see in the top right of this photo, which was taken at 2.52pm, local time. However, far more people are to be seen on the left, enjoying themselves on an ice rink that was put up for the Christmas festivities.
My family and friends across Mexico City all report that today has been quiet, but with a feeling of unease running through the massive city.
More and more people are convinced that the government was behind the rioting, but if that was the case then they do not seem to have done a very good job today as people went out, not to riot, but to enjoy themselves in the 70F January weather.
The first photos have started to arrive from Mexico, taken by family or friends - or friends of friends - and then passed along to me. This one was taken on Wednesday 4 January at about 5.00pm, and shows a rather nervous shopkeeper on the road from Mexico City to Tacuba, wondering if he should stay open or call it a day.
The same deserted road that would normally be bustling at that time.
This rather leads me to wonder where are the rioters? I mean the shops are all closed and the people are nowhere to be seen, so why has that happened when nobody is around?
As was reported back in August 2015, the Mexican federal government does have form when it comes to using bots to try and spread discord amongst political activists who all use Twitter to communicate with each other. If they are doing the same thing now, we are left wondering just exactly what there motive could be? One possible answer is that the government wants to have an opportunity to crush the opposition once and for all, as they did with the Tlateloloco Massacre in 1968, which left a whole generation terrified of any political activity whatsoever.
The problem with that theory is that Mexico is far angrier, and much better armed, than it was in 1968. Killing a few hundred students in a plaza is one thing, but this would require slaughter on an almost industrial scale. I would not put anything past any government that felt threatened, but deliberately playing up the fear so that massacres that would put Tlateloloco in the shade could take place strikes even me as a bit far-fetched.
Friends who live in the north of Mexico City, just over the border into Mexico State as a matter of fact, report rumours that the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) who control Mexico City are behind the agitation. Stories are circulating that people are being offered around $800M.N. or about £30 in British money, to go and loot supermarkets.
The problem with that theory is that why would anyone need to be paid to go and turn over their local Walmart, Suburbia or Comercial Mexicana? The videos that exist which show looting also show the Mexican mob in full throttle, helping themselves to all the electrical goods that they can lay their hands on. The notion that they have to be paid to do what they want to do, anyway, strikes me as a bit ludicrous.
The only thing we can be sure about at the moment is that there are continuing riots across the country. There may be people trying to fan the flames, but the information reaching me is that people are now so angry that they do not need any outside agitation to keep their anger boiling.
The government and its policies have done that nicely.
Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans are protesting today and have been since the start of the year. The trigger that set off the protests is the gasolinazo, the almost twenty percent hike in the price of petrol which the country endured on New Year's Day. Since then the protests have turned into riots, with supermarkets being stripped, and petrol stations being taken over by armed men who then distribute the fuel free to anyone who wants it. My family in the Tlahuac district of Mexico City report that in the early hours of this morning, the police were forced to start shooting into the air to try and clear a vast crowd away from the local Walmart. An area that includes petrol station and car showrooms.
YouTube is rapidly filling up with videos of the pillage, such as this one shot on the 3 January in the Nicolas Romero district of Mexico City
As is so often the case with events such as this, the gasolinazo is the trigger, and not the cause of the unrest. That said, by its actions the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto could not have chosen a better trigger than this, as it is one that was almost guaranteed to enrage the Mexican population.
The petroleum industry was nationalised in 1938, and since then Pemex, the state oil company has had a total monopoly over all petroleum products right down to the petrol stations where it is sold to the public.
What this meant was that the old dictatorship had enough money available to subsidise a whole range of basic goods, as well as provide cheap petrol and oil products to its local market. Foreign exchange was magicked out of thin air by selling Mexican crude oil to the rest of the world, especially the USA.
The country worked on an autarkic system of near monopolies, so if you were a smoker you had plenty of brands to choose from, but they were all produced by just two companies. Photographers could choose between Kodak and Fuji film for their cameras, and motorists could choose between five companies, each one making and selling in Mexico a few models of car and truck. It was a closed economy where almost everything that was sold in Mexico had to be made in the country by companies that had strong links to the government, otherwise they were not allowed to set up shop.
Then came liberalisation in the early 1990s. Having flogged off many state assets, and allowed foreign companies in to compete in the local market, the only way that the government could keep control of the system was to give the people more and more democracy. In the past they could buy them off with jobs and subsidies, but those economic wells no longer existed as the government withdrew from the economic field, so political rights were offered up as a bargaining chip to keep the people quiet.
It worked rather well, until it stopped working, which is the situation that the country faces today. Opposition parties control large swathes of the country, especially Mexico City which has all the powers of a state, but without actually being called one. That means that there are sub-federal centres of power where opposition to the federal government can be organised, and they are.
The years 2000 to 2012, when the presidency was controlled by the opposition just made a bad situation worse. Then the government tried to suppress the drug dealing cartels who control between them the supply of nose powder and wacky-baccy to the USA. Before 2000 the cartels had been linked to the government, via the old system, but once the opposition took control they were treated as outlaws, so not unnaturally they began to behave like that, with the result that tens of thousands of people died in an undeclared civil war between the federal government and the cartels.
It is against this background that we need to look at the gasolinazo. It is the final straw that breaks the last hegemonic link between governors and governed. The people know that the government will allow foreign companies in to sell imported petrol later on this year. They know that when that happens the price, which is still subject to a price cap, but won't be then, will go through the roof.
The government now has a choice. It can resort to an autogolpe, which is to say a type of coup where Peña Nieto would keep control with the support of the army and the constitution is suspended, or it can find a way to appease the rioters. As I write there are reports coming in that at least one amparo, or injunction, has been accepted by the courts, which may buy some time, if both sides want that. If they don't, then the rioting will worsen and we are into autogolpe territory.
