The press is busy promoting our beloved Prime Minister’s attempts to deflect attention from his complete lack of ideas over negotiations about the UK’s membership of the EU (apparently he will be publishing his “list of demands” next month which is a bit like his answer to the leader of HM Opposition at PMQ’s which in a nutshell was “we have no idea so you will have to wait and see what Gideon comes up with”).

But if you can be bothered to read the article there’s an interesting paragraph right down at the bottom where you will see that Michael Froman, a US Trade Representative, stated that, “We have no FTA with the UK so they would be subject to the same tariffs – and other trade-related measures – as China, or Brazil or India” if the UK left the EU. Now I may be a little bit cynical here but surely that should be a headline item? Would it have been a headline if it were directed at Scotland outside the UK? I’m sure that it would have made the front page of every newspaper and it would have been the headline on every TV and radio news show. But I’m just a blogger, I should leave these things to the people who know. Mind you, RT saw it as a big enough story to headline it which probably means that it’s propaganda or something.

In some other news, the majority of the European Parliament voted to drop all charges against the American whistleblower Edward Snowden. It was a slim majority mind you (285 for and 281 against) but that’s democracy for you. The MEP’s urged member states to, “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender,” in a press release.

The press release goes on to say, “Parliament is concerned about “recent laws in some member states that extend surveillance capabilities of intelligence bodies”, including in France, the UK and the Netherlands. It is also worried by revelations of mass surveillance of telecommunications and internet traffic inside the EU by the German foreign intelligence agency BND in cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA).” So it would appear that the EU is not too bad an outfit after all. Oddly there is not much coverage of this in our media, but oh, look there’s a princess. There’s absolutely no mention of this story on our beloved, unbiased, BBC. Maybe someone missed it?

A Princess

And finally, 343 UK university professors say they will “halt all cooperation with Israeli schools in an effort to draw attention to Israel’s violations of international law.” The action is part of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign which aims to” boycott Israel as part of  non-violent resistance to defend the Palestinian cause.” Surely such a move would be bound to feature in the organs of the UK state? Well they don’t appear on the BBC, although BDS appeared back in July. Look there’s Harry! Is that a potential princess he’s with? Phwoar.