Author: newarmchair

Countdown to midnight: could this be the beginning of World War III?

Within the next few days (or hours depending on where you get your news from), the world could be heading for another war. United States President Donald Trump is planning to take military action with Russia over the ongoing civil war in Syria.

Relations between the two superpower countries were frosty at best and had got worse, but it was the recent chemical weapons attack in Douma which had sent the situation over the edge. While Trump, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin (and to a lesser extent, Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad) play their petty nuclear brinkmanship, most of the rest of the world is holding its collective breath, worried about how much deaths, pain and misery that a real war would bring, principally to the people of the Middle East who would be first in the firing line.

Any bombs dropped on Syrian soil would be a rallying call for Jihadists, leading to the threat of more terror attacks across Europe. Is there any real hope of anyone to prevent the repeat of what happened in Iraq?

It seems that our current leaders haven’t learned the lessons of history and are set to repeat the same mistakes… yet again….

Capital crime crisis- press and politicians guilty

What the hell is happening in the nation’s capital?

Nearly 50 people have been murdered in London since the start of 2018. The current rate is an huge increase on the same period last year. There have been comparisons with another city, New York USA, where murder rates are heading downwards.

Understandably, each news death is a cause for concern for many people living in the city who now fear for their safety as a result. However, attempts at trying to do anything about the problem is repeatedly hampered by the actions of both politicians and the media. We have the awful spectacle of both government ministers and the city’s current mayor Sadiq Khan with the Greater London Assembly openly at loggerheads over who’s to blame.

The present Conservative government in the first place has made it hard for the mayor by initially reducing the Metropolitan Police’s operating budget, forcing an increase in council tax bills for the city’s residents to make up for any shortfall.

Across the country, police forces across the country have repeatedly suffered from successive years of budget reductions which inevitably affected their ability to tackle crime. But Mayor Khan has repeatedly tried to deflect the attention of his inability to address the problem by repeatedly blaming the government, despite the fact that he has been in office for nearly  two years.

Meanwhile, for the media, it has been open season, with everyone from journalists, self-important community leaders to bloggers, conspiracy theorists and complete nutters all having their say. Very little is known about what is behind the increase in murders and what can be done to deal with it in the long term.

In this exaggerated era of misinformation, the only casualty is truth.

Is Corbyn an anti-semite?


Oh dear…. it’s been all over the news…yet again.

It seems that Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn can no longer brush off continued allegations that the party he leads is rife with anti-Jewish prejudice. Corbyn has repeatedly tried to state that he is anti-racist, but he has failed to accept that many in his party share privately, openly, or on social media anti-semitic or racist views.

He of course should be criticised for lack of clarity on this situation, but the problem isn’t unique to Labour. Anti-Jewish prejudice is rife in British public life. To me, this is old news, brought about by Corbyn’s opponents within Labour in a bid to settle old scores. Meanwhile, the on-going suffering of Jewish communities across Britain will continue to be ignored.