As I awoke to the start of a new week, we are witnessing yet another demonstration taking place against migrants arriving via the small (or not so small these days) boats. After the ‘spontaneous’ demonstration of people dressed in black and with identities concealed by balaclavas who descended on Dover over the weekend, last night was the scene of clashes between hundreds of protesters who greeted the small boat arrival at Portsmouth. The role of social media is not to be underestimated because protests appear to be well organised and the far right are using social media to maximum effect (and minimal cost) Hundreds of far-right activists have descended on Portsmouth, where a small boat with 140 asylum seekers on board was intercepted heading towards the Portsmouth coast. The vessel\u2019s arrival sparked a major response with a helicopter, an aeroplane and lifeboats sent to the scene. It is thought to be the first time such a large boat containing asylum seekers has been brought to Portsmouth and the first time a large group of anti-migrant protesters have tried to block newly arrived asylum seekers from being processed. The protesters blocked roads for hours and had vowed to stay all night to prevent the new arrivals from being taken to a processing centre. The demonstration ended about 3am, when police obtained a dispersal order and threatened arrests. It is the second major anti-migrant protest of the weekend. Many of those at Portsmouth were dressed in all black and wore face masks, similar to those who attended a rally that blocked roads in Dover on Saturday. One witness who was not involved in the protest said on Sunday night: ‘The atmosphere here is still very tense. The coaches carrying asylum seekers have still not left. About 25-30% of the far-right protesters are wearing balaclavas and many are wearing black. Two police cars had their windscreens smashed by protesters. At one point they broke through the police cordon.’ To continue with the theme of the popularity of the resurgence of the far right, it has emerged that the far right party in Germany (AfD) has emerged as the victor in one of the eastern states of Germany (a federal state) AfD secured 44% of the vote and although they may not have secured an outright majority, they have ousted the existing CSU. Preliminary results show it has fallen short of an outright majority needed to govern alone, with 43.8% of the vote to the conservative CDU’s 17.2%, and tricky negotiations on who will run the state lie ahead. Today, as I awake, I contemplate some of the tasks that are on the ‘need to be done’ list and mowing the lawns is getting to the top of the list but I may attempt to pay a visit to a small cafe, away from our High Street, that my domestic help was enthusing over the other day. But the week as a whole promises to be quite a busy one. I am also keeping an eye on the weather as low pressure systems will continue to bring wet and windy conditions, especially to the north of the UK at the beginning of the week, before things settle down on Wednesday and Thursday. After breakfast, I was amused by turning to the James O’Brien LBC podcast broadcast on YouTube and he had assembled together at least four of the six journalists who had been refused accreditation to report on the Reform party conference. Their ‘transgression’ was they had reported truthful facts about Reform which the party managers did not want their public to hear so James O’Brien gave them a full hearing on his own show which had a certain degree of piquancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a trip down to town to collect my newspaper and a beef-and-potato pie saved from the other day, I set to work getting the greened area in front of the house cut for the first time in a few months. During the hot weather and in the absence of rain, the grass did not grow at all but strangely one or two weeds grew to well over a foot. Having got this cut, the back lawn will get a similar treatment tomorrow but it only takes half of the time. As a ‘reward’ to myself, I am going on catch-up ‘Burch Cassidy and the Sun Dance kid’ which I have seen several times before but has some great one-liners in the script. Tonight, there is going to be a showing the biography of Vera Brittain (the mother of Shirley Williams) who lost her fianc\u00e9, two closest male friends and a brother in the first World War and ‘Testament of Youth’ is a cry of outrage over the consequences of the first World war. Towards the end of the film, when Vera returns to Oxford to resume her studies, a character appears who announces herself as Winifred Holtby, the author of South Riding. My mother claimed to know Winifred but how well I do not know but it is possible that they met via an amateur dramatic society in Hull in the 1930’s. There is more sad economic news to depress us further. Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) who have a huge manufacturing base in Solihull are scheduled to lose 4.000 jobs over the next two years. But to put this into context, all European car manufacturing is in a fairly dire state giving the Chinese dominance in electric vehicles manufacture. JLR had had to content both with Brexit and also with a huge internet attack in the last year and was already in a weakened position but the future of vehicle manufacture in the UK is looking bleak. The new Chancellor, John Healey, in her first major speech was seeking to reassure the bond markets and other international investors but a well known dictum is that when the UK wishes to borrow money we are at the mercy of ‘the kindness of strangers’ and recent political history does not make the UK economy seem a good place which to invest. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9\/11 attack upon the World Trade Centre, our TV screens are full of programmes reminding us of those terrible events and a Panorama programmes to be broadcast tonight implicating the role of Saudi individuals who may have been part of the planning of the overall attack. It seems strange to relate but Saudi Arabia is deemed to be an ally of the West and not an enemy such as Iran or Iraq. Bin Laden of course was a Saudi national before he sought refuge in Afghanistan and Pakistan before he was eventually tracked down and was despatched by the Americans in a summary execution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I awoke to the start of a new week, we are witnessing yet another demonstration taking place against migrants arriving via the small (or not so small these days) boats. After the ‘spontaneous’ demonstration of people dressed in black and with identities concealed by balaclavas who descended on Dover over the weekend, last night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8553,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8551\/revisions\/8553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}