It has begun ... (amended because I was wrong)

So I wake up this morning, make a cup of coffee, fire up my laptop and discover that mild mannered Jeremey Corbyn has been busily laying wreaths on the graves of terrorists, or some such.

The story was reported in the Sunday Times before feeding out into the wider internet.  It is already being twisted in all sorts of ways.

It was actually a memorial service for the people murdered by Phalangist militias at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982.

What Corbyn actually wrote:

The PLO had relocated after the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla in 1982 when Israeli troops oversaw massacres by Phalangist militias at the huge refugee camps in Lebanon, home to Palestinians driven from their homes in 1948.

After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991, we moved to the poignant statue in the main avenue of the coastal town of Ben Arous, which was festooned with Palestinian and Tunisian flags.

It is not clear who he means when he refers to murders in Paris in 1991 - but claims it was connected to the Munich murders look very weak, as Atef Bseiso was killed in 1992, and also Corbyn refers to 'others' - more than one person.

In a sane world, someone might ask Corbyn what he meant before blasting the stroy across the internet.  But that was beyond the capacity of the Sunday Times (the original source of the smear) because it isn't interested in proper journalism, just propaganda.

Tories using the mass murders of Sabra and Shattila to score political points. That's pretty despicable.

EDIT - I am, of course, completely wrong.  The commemoration service was not for the victims of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, but the Israeli attack on the PLO headquarters.  Still nothing to do with the Munich Massacre, however.

And at least my error was the result of genuine uselessness, not deliberate malfeasance.

Hahahahaha Part 2

Massive whoopsie!

Britain is more unsafe because of its involvement in the Iraq war, David Cameron said, as he promised his foreign policy would not be dictated by the US if he became prime minister. 

The Conservative leader endorsed a report by his party's policy group on security issues, which said: "We need to recognise that a central element of foreign policy - the intervention in Iraq - has failed in its objectives so badly that the threat to this country is actually greater than it was before it began."

You tools! You pathetic useless tools!  You hopeless bunch of no-hopers!

You can't even run a decent negative campaign without making yourselves look like idiots! You're a disgrace to the fine tradition of hatchet jobs! You've buried the hatchet alright - in your own stupid legs!

(Actually, there's probably more intelligence in you legs than in your solid bone skulls.)

The Tories have just blundered into a massive elephant trap.

The frightening thing is, I don't think it was actually intended to be a trap. Corbyn said a few reasonable things about foreign policy and its repercussions; the Tories immediately denounced him for saying, even though he was just echoing their own words.

Labour did nothing here. The Tories dug the pit for the elephant trap, put very sharp stakes in it, concealed it with considerable cunning, then all jumped into it with lemming like enthusiasm.

 Idiots.

Are we supposed to trust these clowns to run a country and negotiate Brexit? they can't even savage Jeremy Corbyn properly - the softest of soft targets, we are continually told!

Drum these clowns out of power! They're in mortal danger of making Diane Abbott look good!

Tide of history

So YouGov have Labour as high as 38%, just five points behind the Conservatives, and ten points up on their dismal polling position a month ago.

While I love polls, I do hate the way they are reported. Probably, this poll is an out-lier and and when Labour 'fall' to 35% some on the right will pronounce that the momentum is back with May and that the voters are deserting Labour.

One time Labour PM Jim Callaghan - he of the Winter of Discontent - remarked, on his way to defeat in 1979, "There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of. I suspect there is now such a sea-change and it is for Mrs. Thatcher."

Callaghan's tide of history comment was always a bit of an excuse, trying to cover up the fact he'd chickened out of an early election and made a mess of working with the unions.

I wonder if Callaghan's tide of history is suddenly running against the Tories?

Are voters looking at the state of the nation(s) and thinking, "They've had seven years, and we've still got a massive deficit and debt is still piling up; they've had seven years and they still haven't managed to keep their promises on immigration; they've had seven years and our wages are still the same; they've had seven years and we're still being attacked by crazies. Stuff 'em."

Or maybe the polls are wrong.

Who knows. Jolly good fun, though.

Theresa May - Hapless and Hopeless

Prime Minister Theresa May, commenting on Jeremy Corbyn's robust, but nuanced, speech on defence and secuity:

She added: "There can never be an excuse for terrorism. There can never be an excuse for what happened in Manchester." 

She said voters faced a choice "between me working strongly to protect the national interest and Jeremy Corbyn who, frankly, isn't up to the job".

Is this really the Tories master strategy? Claim Corbyn said that "We brought it on ourselves"?

I always thought that the Tories were cunning. Seems I was wrong.

Nothing positive to offer, only increasingly shrill negative personal attacks. They sound pathetic, disorganised and desperate.

This is the stuff of insanity. Corbyn did not 'excuse' - he condemned. He simply noted that reckless foreign policy in the past had contributed to the the current mess the world finds itself it.

Any adult - any child - can understand that actions have consequences.

Theresa May seems to think that young men wake up and decide to detonate themselves at pop concerts simply because it seems like a fun thing to do - there is no background, no (however twisted and perverted) reasoning, just a bunch of people who hate us for kicks. It's berserk thinking. I don't imagine for a moment that she genuinely believes it, but she thinks so little of the British people that she hopes we will buy it.

Almost all their facts are made up, or misprepresentations. Like May bleating that Corbyn is saying terrorist attacks are 'our fault' or people repeating the lie that he 'attended an IRA funeral.' Or that he 'danced on the way to the cenotaph,' or ... it goes on and on. And then there are the lies the Tories tell you to make themselves loook good. 'We'll eradicate the budget in a parliament,' 'We'll reduce immigration to less than 100,000,' 'We're all in this together' .... Don't Conservative voters ever get tired of getting lied to?

And it's hilarious - but at the same time slightly nauseating - to hear the woman who couldn't handle a few questions from Andrew Neil mumble how Jeremy Corbyn isn't up to the job.

She can't even look after herself, how can she look after the rest of us?

Hahahahahahahahahaha!!

Fallon disagrees with a quote, thinking it is from Corbyn, then discovers it is actually Boris Johnson saying the Iraq War "the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people".

Also repeats the stupid lie that Corbyn wants to "sit down and talk" to terrorists. Obviously not understanding what "That assessment in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children. Those terrorists will forever be reviled and implacably held to account for their actions."

Stupid Tory Muppet.