31 Jul 2013

With every day, the West feels more and more like a Soviet satellite

Erich Hoenecker would feel totally at home in the West today
The Slog: It’s a bit of a mixed news bag this afternoon, but what strikes one is how it really is all pointing in the same direction: people above the Law, bankers cheating, the EU lying, America’s security services intruding etc etc. Here’s a little run-through…
Over the last two years, JP Morgan has run up a staggering $7billion in malfeasance fines. Nobody went to jail, and the weasel ‘without prejudice’ approach to paying up is always the same: “JP Morgan agrees with the facts, but does not admit to any crime”. You couldn’t make it up.
Still nobody has felt Murdoch’s collar, despite the fact that tapes released last week show that he clearly perjured himself at the CM&S, and threatened ‘revenge’ on an entire police force.
Surprise, surprise – the Stafford NHS is being dissolved: so the strategy of demonisation, misrepresented facts and blurred causes has worked. What has happened today is that, when it reemerges from its cryogenic chrysalis, Stafford will have had six key services cut. The idea that this is in response to public demand is a blatant lie: last April, 50,000 people took part in a march from Stafford’s town centre to the hospital, protesting at plans to downgrade Stafford’s services.

A lot of rejigging will go on and then Hunt will decide exactly what happens at the end of the year – ie, five months away. Watch now as various privately outsourced services replace the ones they’ve cut. I’ll give anyone £5 at 5-1 on this.
Home Secretary Theresa Mayor-Maynot has announced that operating as an unlicensed private investigator will become a criminal offence. So regulation does work after all, then?
Britain’s EU membership subs have trebled in ten years, and our trade deficit with this crock almost doubled last year to £83bn. Our ‘net’ EU contribution is now bigger than all the Draper’s austerity cuts put together…but still dwarfed by the amount thrown pointlessly into QE. But still Nigel Average can’t win a single seat at Westminster.
The FT is seriously trying to suggest that “a 1.7% gdp growth” in the US is encouraging the Fed to push ahead with tapering off QE at a faster rate. Apparently 200,000 “jobs” were also created in 2013 Q2. As usual, however, the export growth is crap, the deficit is rising still, and the job hours – how many times do I have to make this bloody point? – are falling. With the FT these days (I cancelled my subscription last Spring) I sometimes wonder if its editorial has secretly been handed over to G4S.
Just like the one-off that became a template, the Greek bailout shortfall is becoming the truth that was a lie. And with every day, the truth grows increasingly engorged. The IMF is now telling the EC that €11bn more cash and tons more debt relief (at least 4% of GDP) are required to avert disaster. Klaus Regling’s response to this was “Lalalalalalalalala”. But to add to the unbridled joy, the number of people out of a job in the euro zone has fallen for the first time in more than two years. Hours worked FFS, hourly rate FFS aaaaaarg.
And finally, I would LOL at this one, but the subject is far too serious: West Yorkshire Police have launched a leaflet and general media/PR campaign to tell parents how to ‘Look out for the Signs’ that their children are being sexually exploited. On the other hand, if WY Plod had looked out for the signs of Jimmy Savile’s eccentricity (as opposed to taking backhanders) things might have been a lot better all round.
It’s a weird world at the moment. Toleration of the disgusting from systemic paedophilia to Rupert Murdoch; apathy at an all-time high; nobody believing a single press release or statistic that emanates from government bodies; and a near-universal denial – nay, dismissal – of reality.
I suppose this is what it must have been like living in the DDR. The Slog’s Berlin correspondent Melissa Gherkin née Kasner writes, on Chancellery headed paper, to testify as follows:
“Ach so, when we were all in ze wunderbar HoeneckerjugendszusammenarbeitSozialisteGlucklichLiga, life was beautiful all the time and we worshipped Erich the father of our nation, dutifully handing over every deviant we could find. But then came the wall gefallink, and suddenly was I a CDU person become.”
What on earth can this all mean?
bernmann  Two warnings for Sun readers:
1. The man on your left is NOT Bradley Manning
2. As from tomorrow, you’ll have to pay to read Newscorp tabloid sh*t.

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