Labour's 'Costa Plenty'

I enjoyed this MATT cartoon which has some fun with Jeremy Corbyn's appearance on Women's Hour in which the Labour leader could not explain the costs of an expensive childcare policy commitment he had just announced. 

Sounds about par for the course, if you ask me, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the voters finally have their say next week.

Jeremy Corbyn on 'Women's Hour'

  

Politics of Make-Believe (30/05/17)

I didn't watch last night's 'election special' featuring Jeremy Corbyn, but apparently the Labour leader repeated his ridiculous assertion that Osama bin Laden should really have been captured and put on trial.

Now like lots of things the Labour leader says, his comment on combatting terrorists and terrorism belongs in the land of fantasy and make-believe, since there's no way that Osama bin Laden or the head-chopping 'Jihadi John' were ever going to hand themselves in to the forces of law and order. 

So the real choice came down to bringing these cowardly murderers to a rough form of justice or leaving them free to inspire and commit even more terrorist acts.

If you ask me, President Barack Obama deserves credit for making the right call.

  

Jezbollah Corbyn (25/04/17)

Jeremy Corbyn got the Labour Party's general election campaign off to a terrible start when he told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that in the unlikely event of Jezza becoming Prime Minister, he would be very reluctant to authorise a drone strike against the head of the so-called Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Which is not surprising when you consider what the Labour leader had to say about the death of Osama bin Laden or the drone strike which took out the notorious murderer Mohammed Emwazi, also known as 'Jihadi John'.

Corbyn's a fool if you ask me, completely unfit to be the leader of a major political party. 

  

Words of War (30/11/15)

A war of words is underway about whether the UK should participate in the bombing campaign against the mad dogs of the Islamic State in their safe havens in Syria.

In Raqqa, for example, where 'Jihadi John' was taken out in a targeted strike from an American drone missile.

Now people like Jeremy Corbyn say that it would have been 'far better' if Mohammed Emwazi (aka Jihadi John) had been captured and put on trial for his cowardly, murderous crimes, but this would have put the lives of UK or Nato troops at risk.

Not only that, of course, because people like Jeremy Corbyn and his friends in the Stop the War (STW) Coalition would then have complained that western troops were acting unlawfully by taking military action in another country (Syria) without the permission of the Syrian Government.

In my view the arguments about extending military action into Syria are finely balanced - there are no guarantees of success of success and there are obvious risks one way or the other.

But the UK is currently the target of terrorist plots and potential attacks by the Islamic State and other groups who are not waiting for and attack on Raqqa to 'justify' their actions - their murderous intent is aimed at western democratic values and our secular 'live and let live' way of life.

So extending military action into Syria does not make any difference because the Islamists will always find an 'excuse' for murdering innocent people in the name of their religion - or kidnapping young girls in Nigeria or forcing Syrian Yazidi women into slavery.

Talking or negotiating with a death cult like the Islamic State would make as much sense as inviting Charles Manson and the Manson Family round to dinner.

Like most people I can see both sides of the argument, but on balance I am in favour of preventing the Islamic State from turning places like Raqqa into a stronghold from which they can continue to plan and launch further terrorist attacks.

The terrorists don't recognise the international border between Iraq and Syria - and nor should we because if we were to do so, we would effectively be abandoning the Syrian Kurds to their fate in towns like Kobane which has only recently been freed from the scourge of IS. 

Jezbollah Corbyn (31/08/17)

Jeremy Corbyn's 'jezbollah' tendencies have been laid bare with the revelation that the London Labour MP described Osama bin Laden's death as a "tragedy" in an interview with Iranian state television back in 2011. 

Apparently while speaking to the Iranian government's Press TV channel in 2011, Jezza said:

"This was an assassination attempt, and is yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy. The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy."

Now if you ask me, the attack on 9/11 was a terrible crime not a tragedy, cold-blooded murder on an industrial scale involving innocent civilians, people of all religious faiths and other with no religious convictions at all.  

Jeremy went on to portray himself a fully paid up member of the Conspiracy Party with comments suggesting that the US may have faked bin Laden's death:

"We can only guess that there is something fishy here. Either Bin Laden wasn’t there, therefore there has to be a story. Or, the pictures ... show something else​." 

Yet in less than two weeks time Jezbollah Corbyn will be unveiled as the next leader of the Labour Party and while that's funny in some ways it's also a very sad reflection on the scale of Labour's decline.

Murderer Brought to Justice (02/05/11)

The news that Osama Bin Laden has finally paid for his crimes will bring a sense of grim satisfaction to all - except the extreme religious warriors or 'jihadists' - who seek to follow in his footsteps.

The murder of thousands of innocent civilians - including many Muslims it should be recalled - in New York on 9/11 is the most obvious example of Bin Laden's casual disregard for human life.

Contrast that with the behaviour of US special forces earlier today - who spared the lives of Bin Laden's wives and children - as they stormed the 'safe' compound in which he was hiding in North Parkistan.

On a smaller scale and much nearer to home - a young British woman, a young Muslim - is facing the same poisonous cocktail of religious extremism, hatred and intolerence.

Shanna Bukhari is a young Muslim woman from Manchester - who hopes to be the first British entrant to win the Miss Universe competition.

Now you can say what you like about her ambition - but the point is that she has received death threats from Islamic extremists - for daring to take part in what amounts to a beauty/fashion show.

So what?

So did Kate Middleton when she was a student at St Andrews University - and no one batted an eyelid about the behaviour of the country's possible future queen.

To my mind a young woman like Shanna Bukhari represents the future of Islam - a future where young women have the right to be educated, hopeful and ambitious.

And that's the best answer of all - to vile murderers like Bin Laden.