101 Things You Should Know About the UK Tory Government

Thing 76

In Thing 67 I quoted Jeremy Corbyn who had written about the Tory plan to destroy the NHS.

“How to destroy the NHS:

Step 1.  Run it into the ground with austerity

Step 2.   Exploit the crisis to empower the private sector

Step 3. Abolish the principle of universal health care."  (Corbyn:Twitter: 03/01/2)

I then gave some examples of how Steps1 and 2 were already being implemented but stated that we had not yet reached Step 3.

“No politician has yet come forward to openly advocate the abolition of the principle of universal health care, free at the point of use. We will have to wait and see if Corbyn is the dangerous socialist portrayed by the right-wing press, or a man with more forward vision than all of the Tory Party put together.”

This position has now changed. The senior Tory politician Sajid Javid is today calling for a two-tiered  system, where the better off pay for NHS treatment, thereby ending the principle of treatment free at the point of use.

“Patients should be charged for visits to the doctor and to accident and emergency, Savid Javid has said, with the Conservative former health secretary labelling the current NHS system as “unsustainable” (LBC: 21/01.23)

Mr Corbyn has been proved right after all!

But I still don't know how to hold your hand without reading the ugliness of my own, But I can't contain my soul from enveloping yours !

Web weaving about holding hands an emotion

{quotes:Mary Ruefle/uk/Francis Forever Song by Mitski/The Hand Has Twenty-Seven Bones by Natalie Diaz/Hélène Cixous, from “Olivier De Serres- A Single Passion Two Witnesses,” Love Itself: In the Letter Box (Polity Press, 2008) /uk /Saadi Youssef, from ‘Solos on the Oud’, Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems (trans. Khaled Mattawa) /@fatimaamerbilal from her garden yearns more for visitors than water. }

Tiny island territories like St. Helena and the Falklands are so interesting to me, because they're these polities with 1) very small populations, and 2) often essentially complete government apparatuses (though most are dependencies of larger countries), phenomena which exist basically only because of geography. you cannot have a subnational territory of three thousand people, unless that territory is also 13,000 kilometers away and thousands of kilometers distant from the closest other territories of your state.

and for the most part, independence isn't even on anybody's political radar, not because these places don't have a distinct cultural identity or anything (they absolutely do), but because what would you even do with independence? being a possession of a larger country, even one you're only loosely integrated to like UK overseas territories, offers far more political and economic (and military!) benefits. you would exist only long enough to be annexed by someone else if you were independent.

small-ish sovereign island states seem to work fine in the context of the caribbean and the south pacific, and you have other sparsely-populated territories or countries that have similar dynamics like greenland, but greenland and the smallest independent caribbean countries have populations on the order of like 50,000 people. tuvalu, nauru, and palau at least have populations in the 10-20,000 range (though this comes with what seem like pretty narrow economic opportunities).

it's a window into a world where human societies never stopped being primarily small communities, except still with modern technology and transport and communication. it's wild!

The general question that might be asked is - why is infrastructure more expensive in English-speaking countries, seemingly, than in places like Spain or Japan? (and it is) Is there just too much consultation? Do Anglosphere polities just give too much damn say to people who don’t want to be pushed out of the way for the common good? And my answer is … yes and no. Basically, I am not sure that the UK/US/Australian system really does have more veto points and people wanting to be bribed or look after local interests than anywhere else. But it seems very likely to me that the Anglo-Saxon system of governance does have one characteristic that makes it much more likely that every single such potential sticking point will become an actual sticking point. And that characteristic is “a healthy, vigorous and well-resourced professional services industry”. We know that this is one of the crowning glories of common law economies - it’s the great big intangible asset which was created in the time of William the Conqueror, has been invested in relatively consistently for nearly a thousand years, and which generates consequent outsize returns. But if you’ve got such an industry, then you have to respect it as a system. And as a system, it generates fee income. That’s what it’s there to do. And you can’t expect that it’s going to differentiate between one sort of fee income and another. Everyone involved in infrastructure procurement is paid according to a proportion of the costs, either contractually or de facto. So my first-order explanation for why it is that common-law countries spend so much on consultations, inquiries and litigation over every little bit of public investment is that there are lots of nice family houses in conveniently located London suburbs, the mortgages on which depend on this being so. [...] And unfortunately, I don’t see much that can be done about this. The cost of building railway lines in England is largely due to the presence of very aggressive and skilful consultants and lawyers. But the revenue base that pays for the infrastructure is also largely due to the presence of a big and successful professional services industry. We’ve somehow created a pathological relationship between the two, but it’s not obvious how you can cut out the bad bit while leaving all the valuable stuff alone.

ID: printed from a newspaper letters column:

“Don't Tell the Children about Peterloo

Teach them how Tommies defeated the Hun

The victorious glory of a war no one won

Despising the Kaiser

That prophet of Doom

Then get them reciting from Brooke

Not Sassoon.

Dish out paper poppies

But whatever you do

Don't tell the children about Peterloo.

Don't teach how landowners, soldiers and cops

Rode into Manchester

Our protests to stop.

Of Yeomanry charges on people unarmed

Of victims of violence inciting no harm

Legitimate grievances silenced by force

Battered by batons and trampled by horses

Where the Gates of Saint Peter let the Devil ride through, but

Don't tell the children

About Peterloo.

Throughout years of history lessons in a Salford school nobody ever mentioned Peterloo, a hugely significant social and politi- cal event in the struggle for democracy and representation. This poem examines the motives of those who would steer clear of it in the classrooms of Greater Manchester - TONY KINSELLA”.

This is so depressingly true.

And, tbh, why I want to go into history as a career. I doubt I’ll ever be well enough to teach children, though I might manage part-time lecturing. But I want to write history about queer, trans, disabled, poor, BIPOC. I want to write about class warfare and marginalisation and how our society actually operates, ideally where people can read it.

Link to the Wikipedia entry on the Peterloo Massacre for context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre.

I was listening to a podcast about it in the car with my OH recently and it struck me that, if the occasional names of politicians in specific posts had been left out, I wouldn’t have been that surprised to hear the same basic details in a contemporary news report. Current criminalisation of protest by the UK Tory government has reached very similar levels as it had at this time, and they appear to have about the same level of scruples about violence towards protestors to break up peaceful, determined protest.

“But in one fell swoop – thanks to a wholly unnecessary referendum, founded, alas, on ignorance, prejudice and lies – the Cameron government opened the back door. The single market was designed, from the UK’s point of view, to boost trade with and investment from the EU, but the exit was opened and Britain has suffered.”

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2.2 | Theory: White ignorance and coloniality "Universities have a history of ignoring rather than engaging with students' antiracist campaigns (Grosfoguel, 2007; Saini & Begum, 2020). As Edward Said observed, universities and their academics have for the most part been unwilling “to make the connection between the prolonged cruelty of practices such as slavery, colonialist and racial oppression, and imperial subjection on the one hand, and the poetry, fiction, philosophy of the society that engages in these practices on the other” (as quoted by Mills, 1997, p. 27). Anibal Quijano (1992, 2000) introduces the concept of coloniality of power to underscore the intricate links that epistemes have with colonial domination and capitalist exploitation, particularly how racial logics undergird these deeply entangled systems of oppression. The concept emphasises that colonialism is not simply a historical event that ended with decolonization and independence movements. Rather, it is a complex system that continues to shape power dynamics, social hierarchies, and knowledge production. In other words, the coloniality of power sustained by knowledge producing institutions also demands a cognitive model or curriculum model, that is, “a cognitive and moral economy psychically required for conquest, colonisation, and enslavement” (Mills, 1997, p. 19). The coloniality of power is thus justified by what is referred to as the coloniality of knowledge, which “requires a certain schedule of structured blindness in order to establish and maintain the white polity” at the national level (ibid). This evidences the longue duree of academia's role in upholding whiteness and coloniality, in its multiple permutations (Fúnes‐Flores, 2022; Fúnes‐Flores et al., 2022; Lugones, 2007, Wynter, 2003). In the space of the academe, racial inequalities are viewed as “existing outside of the institution rather than produced through the academe,” to paraphrase Mirza (2006). Angela Davis also draws on this stating, “we live in a society of an imposed forgetfulness, a society that depends on public amnesia” (Hutton, 2020). This is what Mills referred to as white ignorance. Mills describes “white ignorance” as the idea of non‐knowing, which is not simply absence or lack of knowing, but is a motivated project that differentiates the dominant group by various interests. In other words, it is a willful ignorance about racial injustice and how whiteness maintains its position within a modern world that revolves around the racial, epistemic, gendered, and capitalist axes of coloniality. "

Inside the ivory tower, the view from a “space invader”: An exploratory study into the ways racialized PhD students experience white ignorance in elite universities in the UK Elif Lootens & Jairo I. Fúnez‐Flores

https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13199

International investigation takes down phishing-as-a-service platform LabHost

This week, authorities from 19 countries collaborated in a major operation to significantly disrupt LabHost, one of the world's largest phishing-as-a-service platforms. Coordinated by Europol over the course of a year, this international effort successfully compromised LabHost's infrastructure. Between Sunday, April 14th, and Wednesday, April 17th, authorities conducted searches at a total of 70 locations worldwide, resulting in the apprehension of 37 suspects. Notably, among those arrested were four individuals in the United Kingdom believed to be associated with the administration of the LabHost platform, including its original creator. LabHost, formerly accessible on the open web, has now been deactivated. This multinational investigation was spearheaded by the London Metropolitan Police in the UK, with assistance from Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce (J-CAT) headquartered at Europol. Europol has been involved in this case since September 2023. An operational sprint was convened at Europol's headquarters, facilitating collaboration among participating countries' investigators to gather intelligence on users and victims within their jurisdictions. During the enforcement phase, a Europol specialist provided support to the Dutch National Police in executing their enforcement operations. LabHost raid in Bromley, London Cybercrime-as-a-service has emerged as a rapidly expanding business model within the criminal realm, enabling threat actors to lease or sell tools, expertise, or services to fellow cybercriminals for executing their attacks. While this model has long been established among ransomware groups, it has also permeated other spheres of cybercrime, including phishing attacks. LabHost rose to prominence as a significant tool utilized by cybercriminals worldwide. Through a monthly subscription, the platform offered a comprehensive suite of resources, including phishing kits, hosting infrastructure for malicious pages, interactive features for engaging directly with victims, and campaign management services. The investigation revealed the existence of over 40,000 phishing domains associated with LabHost, which boasted approximately 10,000 users globally. Priced at an average monthly fee of $249, LabHost provided a plethora of illicit services that were customizable and deployable with minimal effort. Depending on the subscription tier, criminals gained access to an expanding array of targets, ranging from financial institutions to postal and telecommunication service providers. LabHost boasted a menu comprising over 170 fake websites, offering convincing phishing pages for users to select from. What set LabHost apart was its integrated campaign management tool, dubbed LabRat. This feature empowered cybercriminals to monitor and control their attacks in real time. LabRat was specifically engineered to capture two-factor authentication codes and credentials, enabling criminals to circumvent enhanced security measures effectively. The following authorities have taken part in the investigation: - Australia: Australian Federal Police-led Joint Policing Cybercrime Coordination Centre; - Austria: Criminal Intelligence Service (Bundeskriminalamt); - Belgium: Federal Judicial Police Brussels (Police judiciaire fédérale Bruxelles/ Federale gerechtelijke politie Brussel); - Finland: National Police (Poliisi); - Ireland: An Garda Siochana; - Netherlands: Central Netherlands Police (Politie Midden-Nederland); - New Zealand: New Zealand Police; - Lithuania: Lithuania Police; - Malta: Malta Police Force (Il-Korp tal-Pulizija ta’ Malta); - Poland: Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (Centralne Biuro Zwalczania Cyberprzestępczości); - Portugal: Judicial Police (Polícia Judiciária); - Romania: Romanian Police (Poliția Română); - Spain: National Police (Policía Nacional); - Sweden: Swedish Police Authority (Polisen); - United Kingdom: London Metropolitan Police; - United States: United States Secret Service (USSS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); - Czechia: Bureau of Criminal Police and Investigation Service; - Estonia: Estonian Police and Border Guard Board. Read the full article

101 Things You Should Know About the UK Tory Government

Thing 72

A report in 2019 found:

“…UK's wildlife is continuing to crash, with hundreds of species now at risk of disappearing from our shores altogether. Over the past 50 years, urbanisation, agriculture, pollution and climate change have all caused the nation's plants and animals to dwindle - a trend that has continued unabated within the last decade." 

A ray of hope that this might change came a few weeks ago when BusinessGreen (25/10/22) reported:

“Rishii Sunak promises to protect the environment as PM””

Needless to say this was, as usual, empty rhetoric.

The Wildlife Trust has this to say about Sunak’s new environmental bill.

“There is no overall target to improve water quality – The Wildlife Trusts called for a target for at least 75% of rivers, streams and other freshwater bodies to reach an overall “clean waters” status by 2042 – without this we could see improvements on a few specific pollutants while others, including plastics and pesticides, continue to pour into our rivers and seas, threatening wildlife and human health.

There is no target to improve the condition of protected nature areas – despite calls for 75% of protected wildlife sites to be in favourable condition by 2042.

The targets set for wildlife abundance will fail to reverse decades of species declines – instead recovery will flatline.

Increased conifer planting will not help natural habitats and wildlife to recover. It will also fail to store carbon for the longer term as trees are chopped down and burnt as biofuels.

Currently, the UK is one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, where almost one in 10 species are at risk of extinction. Despite this, the Government has proposed that by 2042, nature will be in a similar condition to our current depleted state. In England, for example, every freshwater body currently fails chemical standards.”  (The Wildlife Trust: 16/12/22)

John Watkins’ new travelogue offers an intriguing snapshot of a country still scarred by the legacy of its brutal dictator.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, it would be easy for someone with only a passing knowledge of history to think that Albania is just another part of what has become known as “the Western Balkans”, or “Western Balkans Six/WB6.” Foreign, and to some extent domestic policy on the non-EU members west of Russia, have in many ways become intertwined with the idea and reality of EU expansion, a post-Cold War process most markedly noted by the accession of ten new member states in 2004, practically and symbolically demonstrating the ascendence of liberalism and reform, and the “magnetic pull” of the EU as both a trading and political values bloc.

Following the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, and then Croatia in 2013, the focus for years was on the countries of the remaining Yugoslav successor states and Albania, with countries such as Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine until recently viewed as a separate potential expansion basket. (Turkey has been all but forgotten since the rise of illiberalism ushered in by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.) 

As a result, this WB6 construct – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – of countries already surrounded by EU members has become viewed as a territorial and geographical unit.

While this conceptualization eases references to this space in policy and in reports, it can also easily lead to the minimization or neglect of some key differences among these six. Language issues aside, perhaps the most important is their different 20th-century experiences, and the fact that five of these political units had been a part of former Yugoslavia, while Albania was not. 

While during the initial fever dream of the post-Cold War reform wave, economists and social scientists may have expected (or fervently hoped) that forward-moving liberal economic and political transitions would follow a similar path, regardless of the structure of the previous state polity, one cannot ignore the impact of these different histories on understanding of the past, or the present.

It is, therefore, helpful to see a number of books coming out explaining various elements of the Albanian experience for experts and interested readers in general alike. Lea Ypi’s Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History, in 2021, is indispensable in learning of the Albanian Cold War experience, which was so different to the experience of Yugoslavia until its collapse as to be incomparable. While Ypi’s memoir account is informed by her insights as a political philosopher, John Watkins’ travelogue, Enver Hoxha’s Long Shadow: Travels in Albania, provides another angle, offering an accessible snapshot of Albania today, while also explaining its recent past.

The structure of the book is centered on the author’s many visits to Albania from the UK; the first time in 1972 as a teenage hitchhiker and traveler, and then, having been bitten by the Albania bug, returning in 1987 on a tour organized by the officially sanctioned state tourism agency. During this visit, he took photos of the post-Hoxha but still isolated and unknown country, capturing images in places ranging from street scenes to factory complexes on urban outskirts. 

N L Holmes The Moon That Fell from Heaven #Hittites #WomenProtagonists #PoliticalIntrigue #HistoricalFiction #BlogTour #TheCoffeePotBookClub @nlholmesbooks @cathiedunn

FEATURED AUTHOR: N.L. HOLMES I am pleased to host N. L. Homes again as the featured author in The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour being held between October 30th — November 10th, 2023. She is the author of the Historical fiction, The Moon That Fell from Heaven (Empire at Twilight Series), released by Red Adept Publishing on 26th September 2023 (307 pages) Below are highlights of The Moon That Fell from Heaven, the author bio for N. L. Holmes, and a post about her fascinating research on the Bronze Age port city of Ugarit in northern Syria. Tour Schedule Page:  https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2023/10/blog-tour-the-moon-that-fell-from-heaven.html   HIGHLIGHTS: THE MOON THAT FELL FROM HEAVEN   The Moon That Fell from Heaven (Empire at Twilight Series) by N.L. Holmes Blurb: Ehli-nikkalu, eldest daughter of the Hittite emperor, is married to a mere vassal of her father's. But despite her status, her foreignness and inability to produce an heir drive a wedge between her and the court that surrounds her. When her secretary is mysteriously murdered while carrying the emperor a message that would indict the loyalty of his vassal, Ehli-nikkalu adopts the dead man’s orphaned children out of a guilty sense of responsibility. A young cousin she has never met becomes a pretender to the throne and mobilizes roving armies of the poor and dispossessed, which causes the priority of her loyalties to become even more suspect. However, Ehli-nikkalu discovers a terrible secret that could destabilize the present regime if the pretender ever learns of it. With the help of a kindly scribe, her brave young ward, and an embittered former soldier trapped in debt and self-doubt, Ehli-nikkalu sets out to save the kingdom and prove herself to her father. And along the way, she learns something about love. Buy Links: Universal Link:  https://books2read.com/u/mdqeeX Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moon-That-Fell-Heaven-ebook/dp/B0CGP7B5ML/ Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Moon-That-Fell-Heaven-ebook/dp/B0CGP7B5ML/   Amazon CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Moon-That-Fell-Heaven-ebook/dp/B0CGP7B5ML/ Amazon AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Moon-That-Fell-Heaven-ebook/dp/B0CGP7B5ML/ Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-moon-that-fell-from-heaven-n-l-holmes/1143996343?ean=9781958231340 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/the-moon-that-fell-from-heaven AUTHOR BIO: N. L. HOLMES   N.L. Holmes is the pen name of a professional archaeologist who received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr College. She has excavated in Greece and in Israel and taught ancient history and humanities at the university level for many years. She has always had a passion for books, and in childhood, she and her cousin used to write stories for fun. These days she lives in France with her husband, two cats, geese, and chickens, where she gardens, weaves, dances, and plays the violin Author Links: Website: https://www.nlholmes.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nlholmesbooks LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/n-l-holmes/ Twitter: https://www.twitter/nlholmesbooks Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/n l.holmes/ Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nlholmes Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/nlholmesbooks/ Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/n-l-holmes Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/N-L-Holmes/e/B0858H3K7S Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/20117057.N_L_Holmes POST: RESEARCH ON UGARIT     My research on Ugarit, the mighty midget of the Late Bronze Age, began eleven or twelve years ago when I taught a course at the University of South Florida called Ancient Near Eastern Empires. Its main focus, of course, was the big players like Egypt and the Hittite Empire, but there's no way to understand the dynamics among such polities without looking at border zones like Ugarit. This seaport and caravan terminus in northern Syria (near modern Latakia) wielded disproportionate influence because of its wealth. Sometimes a vassal of Egypt and sometimes of Hatti, they almost singlehandedly provided the navy of their Hittite masters, a landlocked power. Having always been interested, both personally and professionally, in this part of the world—especially the Phoenicians—I had studied Hebrew and Arabic and found the Ugarites, with their closely related Semitic language, a fascinating bunch. My class looked briefly at the culture and art of the place, but then we got into the snippets of diplomatic correspondence that had survived the fiery downfall of the city in the early twelfth century BCE. That's when my eyes really lit up. Modern historians are indebted to the violent end of Ugarit, because the conflagration that spelled a permanent finish to its habitation also baked the clay tablets that made up its archives. Piecemeal and random though they are, they have given us incomparable glimpses into the diplomatic doings of Ugarit and its neighbors near the end of its days. One of the most interesting events, described partially in a number of different fragments, was King Ammishtamru's divorce from his Amurrite queen, a Hittite princess through her mother. What on earth had she done, that such a prestigious princess would be cast off? It turns out there were inklings of sedition... and adultery. At first, she was sent home to neighboring Amurru. But then the king extradited her and had her put to death. Their small son had to relinquish any claim to the succession. This episode provided the main plot of my first novel, The Queen's Dog. When I set The Moon That Fell from Heaven in the same city seventeen years later, it was fun to speculate about where life had moved the survivors. What had become of the dispossessed little prince, for example? A lot of scholarly attention has turned in recent years to the causes of the so-called Sea People event that brought down Ugarit and many other kingdoms of the Bronze Age. It's almost always agreed that the states that didn't survive the collision had internal flawlines already opening: social unrest, dynastic infighting, flailing economies—here they all were in embryo. The Umman-manda were just one group of roaming dispossessed who wandered from the Aegean to the border of Egypt. By disrupting inland caravans upon which Ugarit depended in its luxury trade, half of the city's economy was dumped overboard. Add to that a pretender with a good claim to the throne, and you have radical instability. The happily preserved archives of Ugarit dropped a myriad of hints, bare one-liners, that could add up to a fuller picture of a society close to the edge. Other kinds of details came to me through more purely archaeological finds. For example, I studied the plan of the palace until I knew it like a native. Of course, that was only the ground floor—the upper stories had fallen in. But evidence of an earthquake was there. The garden and its kiosk were there. The court of the royal dead with its dynastic tombs was there, and the porch, and the bridge between the palace and the city wall. All these details gave me the geography of the action. And readers of The Queen's Dog will remember the creepy sewer tunnel under the palace plaza, which really existed and lent itself so wonderfully to a clandestine crossing. So when people ask "How do you start out a novel?", it's an easy answer. With research. Because there, buried in the pile of factoids about the past, are the outlines of everything an author needs: the events, the characters, and the setting.   Instagram Handle: @thecoffeepotbookclub       Read the full article

Ash Amin, After Nativism: Belonging in an Age of Intolerance - Polity, October 2023

Ash Amin, After Nativism: Belonging in an Age of Intolerance – Polity, October 2023 Increasingly, many people in democracies are turning to a strongarm politics for reassurance against globalization, uncertainty and precarity. In countries ranging from the US and the UK to Brazil, India and Turkey, support has grown for a nativist politics attacking migrants, minorities, liberals and elites as…

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"Buhari Rejected 2003, 2007, 2011 Presidential Elections - Group calls on Lai Mohammed to Apologise For Accusing Peter Obi Of Treason

Acivic organisation, the Credibility Group, has demanded that the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, tenders a national apology for de-marketing Nigeria as a country. The group in a statement by its President, Chief Goddy Uwazurike, said that the minister displayed myopic, narrow mindedness and de-marketed Nigeria by accusing the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi and his running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, of committing treason by challenging the outcome of the 2023 presidential election. Uwazurike, who further said that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Nigerian government and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) were overheating the Nigerian polity, reminded Lai Mohammed that President Buhari challenged the outcome of 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections in the same election tribunals but no one accused him of treason or threatened to arrest him and his supporters. Uwazurike’s statement noted that “The recent statement by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed accusing the presidential candidate of the Labour Party of treason is nothing but quixotic display of a narrow minded and forgetful person. “Indeed, only a person suffering from myopia will descend to the level of equating going to court to challenge election results with treason. Myopia because the President of Nigeria, Muhamadu Buhari challenged the outcome of the 2003, 2007 and 2011 in the election tribunals the same way Peter Obi and Atiku are doing now. Nobody accused Buhari of treason. Nobody threatened to arrest him and his followers, including you.” According to him, “Alhaji Lai Mohammed should retrace his steps and apologise to the nation for de-marketing Nigeria. “Again, the notorious gang of four, also known as the media campaign team, has gone overboard in destroying the freedom of the media and inter-ethnic harmony. Bayo Onanuga coughs and the NBC swings into action. “The other day, Arise TV and now Channels TV are all at the whims and caprices of the gang of four. Today, all non-Yoruba and Hausa people are seen as Igbo in Lagos and must be disenfranchised. “The security arrangements are not for the Igbo in Lagos. Any statement in protest must be met with a sledge hammer. “Enough of the derailing of the harmony of the society and the freedom of the press. For record purposes, Bayo Onanuga, Dele Alake and Femi Fani Kayode are non-indigenous residents while Festus Keyamo and I are regarded by Bayo Onanuga and company as Igbo people. “Let common sense come back to Nigeria. Bayo Onanuga and company rejoiced over Kemi of UK and Kemi of the Republic of Island for winning election in Europe and have declared hostility towards non indigenous people. The security agencies have seen no evil and hear no evil.” Read the full article

“It’s easy to identify the many ways, including those discussed here, that Brexit has rendered the UK directionless, confused or destabilized across just about every policy area. And whilst there is no single measure to capture the consequences, one which is highly revealing is business investment, since it implies some degree of confidence in the current and future UK economy and polity. Moreover, it allows a degree of comparison with other countries.”