Author: Brian Riley

Political Joke(s)

Brian Riley Political - National and other, Uncategorized , ,

Political jokes have a long pedigree. Hey diddle diddle is said to date back to the 16th century.
In modern times we have the Little Johnny joke which takes place in a classroom and little Johnny sitting at the back is the unexpected voice of logic and wisdom
This joke came my way this week and I immediately recognised the genre.
The joy of such jokes is that names can be changed to suit the circumstances of the  target.

donald-trump-aDonald Trump was visiting a primary school in Orlando and visited a grade four class.
They were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked Mr. Trump if he would like to lead the discussion on the word ‘tragedy.’ So our illustrious Republican candidate asked the class for an example of a ‘tragedy’.
One little boy stood up and offered: “If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field and a tractor runs him over and kills him, that would be a tragedy.”
“No,” said Trump, “that would be an accident.”
A little girl raised her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove off a cliff, killing everyone, that would be a tragedy.”
“I’m afraid not,” explained Trump. “That’s what we would call great loss.”
The room went silent.  No other child volunteered.  Trump searched the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”
Finally at the back of the room, Little Johnny raised his hand. The teacher held her breath. In a quiet voice he said: “If the plane carrying you was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens that would be a tragedy.”
“Fantastic!” exclaimed Trump, “That’s right.  And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”
“Well,” says Johnny, “It has to be a tragedy, because it sure as hell wouldn’t be a great loss… and you can bet your sweet a…. it wouldn’t be an accident either!”

Basket of Deplorables Sounds About Right

Brian Riley Political - National and other, Quotation of the day ,

Celia Rivenbark is a columnist, born and raised in North Carolina. She is also a best selling author. This is this week’s oeuvre.

donald-trumpLet’s just put aside the obvious nut job rumors like how Hillary Clinton has a body double, how she has murdered at least two people in her decades-long presidential power grab and how she rattles a necklace of bleached chicken bones every full moon to cast a spell on her enemies.
I know that’s the sort of stuff that makes Sean Hannity giddy but, really, most of us have better sense than that.
Let’s concentrate, instead, on the now famous “basket of deplorables” which, the first time I heard it, sounded like the least popular floral arrangement ever.
“Hmmmm. I was going to go for the Sunlit Meadows or the Precious Hearts bouquet but, what’s this? The Basket of Deplorables? That sounds pretty intriguing. What’s in it?”
“Well, there’s asters, carnations, baby’s breath and a bit of misogyny and homophobia.”
“Really? No daisies? And at that price point I’d expect at least a sprinkle of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.”
“We can always add some of those in. They have been very popular lately.”
Yes! The Basket of Deplorables available for only $49.99 at your local florist.
The phrase, which I predict will become part of the political lexicon like “gate” did, is captivating.
One wonders where HRC got this notion of a basket of deplorables. Was it a slip up? Did she mean to say something else? Baskets are such gentle things: adorned with flowers and affixed to the front of a little girl’s first bike. Baskets are usually filled with knitting supplies or calendar kittens or, my personal favorite, onion rings. Deplorables? Not so much.
As a longtime lover of linguistics (also alliteration), I have to say the phrase has resonated with me and I’m going to use it as often as possible, often completely out of context. I can’t stop, won’t stop saying it.
Unfortunately, as I embrace the basket of deplorables, HRC is walking back the phrase even as I write this. She now says she wishes she hadn’t said “half” of Trump’s supporters can be found in this basket, for instance.
Oh, woman up, Hills! Own the basket! Because, the truth is, you were right the first time. Half of Trump’s supporters, the ones whom I try very hard to understand and respect, will vote for him while holding their noses because they honestly believe his policies will result in less government intrusion. They are Libertarians at heart but they can’t bring themselves to vote for the guy who acted like he thought Aleppo was one of the Marx Brothers. So they vote for Trump out of frustration with the Washington establishment.
The other half? Yep, they live in the basket of deplorables. They vilify others on the basis of skin color, religion, sex, otherness. No amount of flowers can beautify this basket. It’s ugly and dark inside, the lid clamped shut to prevent daylight and decency from streaming in.
If Trump wins, we’ll be going you know where in this handbasket.
Visit www.celiarivenbark.com.

Meanwhile on Planet Babergh – Job Losses Loom

Brian Riley Money Matters, Political - Local , , ,

Park and RideThe EADT recently carried a report that Headlam Flooring planned to build a distribution centre on land adjacent to the Anglia Retail Park (on the A14 opposite Asda). Headlam are investing £15million and the new facility will include a 125,000 sq ft warehouse with loading and customer collection areas, offices and out-buildings.  The construction and fit-out period is expected to take around a year and the new facility should be up and running by 2018. The building be built on green space adjacent to the former Park and Ride site. The new facility will support the development of Headlam’s regional floorcovering business which includes the Hadleigh-based Faithfull’s Flooring. The existing  80 employees in Hadleigh will be relocated to the new premises. For  Headlam Flooring it all makes good sense – a purpose built facility with access to the A14. For Babergh it is a potential disaster. A significant business and 80 jobs move out of Hadleigh. Headlam had previously sought to build in Hadleigh on land alongside the Persimmon housing development off of Lady Lane. The problem with that proposal was that it was cheek by jowl with housing and the 24/7 operation was unsuitable for that location – on sloping ground with noise that could have been heard across half of Hadleigh. The question we must ask is how have Babergh allowed this development to slip through its fingers. There are plenty of former airfield sites ripe for development. There is even one in Raydon almost within sight of the A12. Ipswich has its own questions to ask. Why are there no existing sites (like the former Park and Rides) which might be suitable? Why isn’t Headlam taking space on the Ransome’s Europark? Once again, I fear Hadleigh is being let down by the people who should be serving it. If local government is not looking after the people it serves and those who pay their wages, who are they looking after?

http://www.eadt.co.uk/business/have_your_say_on_plans_to_build_a_distribution_centre_for_headlam_flooring_company_in_land_next_to_anglia_retail_park_1_4607239
http://www.headlam.com/investor-relations/investor-information/investment-proposition

					

		
		
	




			
				


	

		

					
Conspiracy, Cock Up or Business As Usual?

								

								 Brian Riley
															Money Matters					
												

					


				

			
EoE AmbulanceThe East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust has reportedly rehired six senior managers after spending £922,984 making them redundant. The trust, which covers Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex has been involved in various scandals, including bosses being given Jaguar and BMW cars at a cost of £454,000 a year in lease payments.

The golden question in these situations is who benefits? The six firees make the organisation chart look good. The salary bill goes down and most probably the rehires are via service companies. (At least one of the rehires is in a training post via an agency). Did the Chief Executive get a performance bonus for reducing the head count and the salary bill? Even if  the rehires are valid, the damage to the reputation to the Trust is worthy of heads rolling – especially as the trust’s P.R. team cost £250,000 a year!

					

		
		
	




			
				


	



			
				


	

		

					
Hadleigh Stars Gymnastics

								

								 Brian Riley
															Local Colour, Money Matters, Nice Things, Political - Local					
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GymnasticsToday amidst all the doom and gloom about the Brexit aftermath I received the following e-mail from Kelly Mires, Head Coach at Hadleigh Stars Gymnastics:


Dear Mr Riley

I’m writing  to say thank you so very much for the news I received today that you have awarded Hadleigh Stars Gymnastics a grant of £1000.

This is a huge amount of money for the club and it means we can now look to purchase the safety mats we have been fundraising hard to buy .

Thank you once again from myself and all 285 Children in Hadleigh Stars Gymnastics.

Kelly Mires

Head Coach

The locality monies will help fund the purchase of a tumble run and two safety landing mats.

The Hadleigh Stars Gymnastics are holding a club competition on Saturday 23rd July at the Hadleigh Leisure Centre. This is their biggest annual fundraiser and they will be serving refreshments and holding a raffle. All the coaches volunteer their time so that every penny raised goes into the fundraising pot to buy equipment. So if you have a free moment on the 23rd, please drop in on the Leisure Centre and support the Hadleigh Stars Gymnastics.

The monies came from my County Councillor’s Locality Budget. As readers of this blog may know the Locality Budget amounts to £12,000 a year and is distributed in Hadleigh to promote ways in which Suffolk County Council can make life better for its residents. I like to direct the monies to game changers. So in the past I have given support to (among others)  Hadleigh Diamond Lites (Drum Majorettes), an ecotherapy allotment project for Suffolk Mind and Surviving Winter in Hadleigh whose funding was to cover the initial expenses in establishing the charity and to provide such ongoing support as necessary.

					

		
		
	




			
				


	

		

					
Brexit Thoughts

								

								 Brian Riley
															Political - National and other					
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Brexit CartoonThe results are in and with a 52/48 mixture, obviously not everyone is happy. The result is not all doom and gloom. On the plus side we will no longer paying to the EU more than we get out. We will no longer pay for the layer of bureaucracy in Brussels which has not had signed off audited accounts for over nineteen years. We will no longer pay for our MEPs since we will not need them.

I thought that the letters to the press are a good sign of desperation. In March a cluster of East Anglian council leaders joined forces to publicly back the campaign to remain in the EU. Were they lobbying the Government to bring us more grants and subsidies? Were they asking for more equity in the education funding arrangements? Were they asking for greater infrastructure support?

No, “The EU is, of course, far from perfect. But that is why Britain needs to stay, influencing the single market and protecting our interests.” If that were true why is the UK suffering the bureaucratic nonsense that we have been seeing from Brussels.

I only recognise two District Council leaders among the signatories (Mid-Suffolk leader Derrick Haley, Babergh leader Jennie Jenkins). If they were concerned for their local communities they would do more to move their Councils’ operations to Babergh’s building in Hadleigh. The saving to the communities would be £1,000,000 a year. Instead of which they have sat on their hands for two years ignoring the Consultants’ recommendation and declining to publish the recommendation as promised.

In June the Daily Telegraph published a letter from 165 Conservative District Councillors from all over England urging people to Remain and rubbishing the Brexiteers. Braintree (home to a prominent Brexiteer Pritti Patel M.P.) provided 21 of the signatories and voted 61.1%:38.9% to leave. Babergh provided only two signatories from recently elected members who seem to have little to recommend them apart from getting elected in the first place. Babergh voted 54.1%:45.8% to leave. The Babergh leadership was not in evidence on the June letter, nor was Mid Suffolk’s leadership visible. (Mid Suffolk voted 55.2%:44.8% to leave).

I think I was confirmed in my Brexit views when the Bremainders wheeled out Gordon Brown to support their case. This is the man who sold off just under 400 tons of gold from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US$275 per ounce, raising approximately US$3.5 billion. Immediately after the sale, gold entered a prolonged bull market and is currently priced at $1,315 per ounce. Why should anyone heed his advice? Currently we are in that dead zone when the battle has just been lost and won.

There are adjustments to be made and to quote Tim Passmore, Police & Crime Commissioner for Suffolk “Those worried about the decision should be understood – and that everyone should work together to try to ensure stability returns to the economic and political system as soon as possible. Now, though, we must all work together to make the decision work. We have to try to ensure community cohesion.”


http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/eight_east_anglian_local_authority_leaders_back_the_european_union_remain_campaign_1_4447574 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2016/06/11/letters-remain-campaigners-decry-little-englanders–but-they-are/ http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/don_t_feel_guilty_if_you_voted_for_brexit_suffolk_s_police_and_crime_commissioner_tim_passmore_1_4592070

					

		
		
	




			
				


	

		

					
Freely to breathe again!

								

								 Brian Riley
															Nice Things, Political - Local, Political - National and other, Uncategorized					
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Jenny Antill (a fellow blogger) posted this on Friday morning.

View from the window 160624View from the window. 24th June 2016 6.15 a.m.


Oh what joy, in the open air

Freely to breathe again!

Up here alone is life!

The dungeon is a grave.

FIRST PRISONER

We shall with all our faith

Trust in the help of God!

Hope whispers softly in my ears!

We shall be free, we shall find peace.

ALL THE OTHERS

Oh Heaven! Salvation! Happiness!

Oh Freedom! Will you be given us?


CHOR DER GEFANGENEN (Prisoners Chorus, Fidelio)

					

		
		
	




			
				


	

		

					
Zero Sum Game

								

								 Brian Riley
															Money Matters					
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Brexit CartoonA Zero Sum Game is a  situation in which a gain by one person or side must be matched by a loss by another person or side. Good examples of this can be found in the following list which was sent to me by email showing losses to the United Kingdom as a result of activities being transferred abroad with EU assistance, often financial.


    

  • Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
    • 

  • Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
    • 

  • Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia  with EU grant, owned by Tata.
    • 

  • Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production  to Slovakia with EU grant.
    • 

  • British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using  SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU  grant, rather than Wales.
    • 

  • Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
    • 

  • Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU  grant, once employed 1,200.
    • 

  • M&S manufacturing gone to the Far East with EU loan.
    • 

  • Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along  with the patents all with with EU grants.
    • 

  • Gillette gone to Eastern Europe with EU grant.
    • 

  • Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
    • 

  • Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
    • 

  • Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park  foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands,  with EU funding.
    • 

  • Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far  East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
    • 

  • ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within  days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed,  eliminating 3,500 jobs.
    • 



I have edited the comments from e-mail and I have only checked the first statement which can be verified from the Daily Telegraph of 3rd October 2007.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2816921/Cadbury-to-move-jobs-to-Poland.html


Nevertheless the sentiments ring true.


 

					

		
		
	




			
				


	

		

					
Brexit in Ipswich

								

								 Brian Riley
															Local Colour, Political - Local, Political - National and other					
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bojesen_brexitThe E.A.D.T., last week featured visits to Ipswich by the great, the good and the not so good, when Boris Johnson and Michael Gove visited on Tuesday to promote their Brexit campaign and Hilary Benn came on Wednesday as a Bremainder. Wednesday’s photo showed at least one of my Labour Councillor friends in a supporting role. This is interesting because Hilary Benn is a champagne Corbynista, educated at Holland Park School also known as the Socialist Eton. Benn is a member of the Stansgate Clan and an adept of telling lesser mortals what’s good for them. Whilst the Corbyn line is to remain in Europe, there are a number of Labour M.P. dissenters including Dennis Skinner, the M.P. for Bolsover, and Frank Field, M.P. for Birkenhead.

Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were greeted by Bremainders in the form of students demonstrating against the visit and thus exercising their rights to free speech whilst denying their responsibility to allow others to campaign for their views.

Mixed into this motley crowd was the university Provost and Chief Executive Richard Lister who joined the anti Brexit demonstrators. He is quoted as saying that academics were concerned about breaking ties with European colleges and universities. Yet, these ties are political not cultural. Academics will be able to participate in joint research (if their skills are up to it). Who is Richard Lister who thinks he is still an adolescent student at heart and who thinks that he does not have enough influence as a member of the Ipswich Vision Group, Chair of the Greater Ipswich Partnership and a member of the New Anglia LEP Skills Board that he has to behave like a hooligan?

Brazenly, like Basildon Man, he parades his self interest. He is short on specifics but the University depends on Government grants and subsidies (i.e. tax payers’ monies). He knows on which side his bread is buttered. But do we need him to take time off from provosting about in order to behave like a student?

He reports to the Board of UCS. It is time they asked him what’s going on!

For more information please see:


http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/boris_johnson_and_michael_gove_mobbed_in_ipswich_as_they_bring_brexit_campaign_to_suffolk_1_4566446 http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/hilary_benn_brings_remain_message_to_ipswich_1_4568799 http://www.eadt.co.uk/ea-life/do_politicians_visits_make_any_difference_to_the_way_we_vote_asks_paul_geater_1_4570745