Monthly Archives: November 2020

‘Richie’: Sunak’s referral to ethics watchdog over wife’s vast wealth won’t address the real problem

The paper trail: financial holdings of Rishi Sunak, his wife Akshata Murty and her family are explained in this image, originally published by The Guardian.

How can a man as insanely rich as Rishi Sunak is – through the wealth of his wife and her family – honestly have any understanding of the struggles normal people are suffering as a result of his many decisions to cut their income?

He can’t.

That is the concern that we face after the revelation that the Tory Chancellor did not declare wealth larger than that of the Queen in the register of ministerial interests.

It won’t be addressed by Lord Evans, chair of the committee on standards in public life, because there is no rule requiring him to.

So the referral to the ethics watchdog by Labour’s Tonia Antoniazzi and James Murray may be seen as a pointless waste of time.

Here are the facts, neatly summed up in a couple of tweets:

More information is in the Guardian stories here and here.

According to the second of those stories, the Labour MPs’ referral to the ethics watchdog arises because they are concerned that Sunak’s wife’s holdings may create a potential conflict between his public and private interests.

But the Treasury has already said that Sunak “followed the ministerial code to the letter” in his declarations.

It seems he met the government’s then head of propriety and ethics, Helen MacNamara, to decide what needed to be declared before he joined the Treasury.

However: as This Writer learned only last week, a person can comply with the letter of the law and still be doing something wrong.

It doesn’t surprise me that Labour MPs are trying to tease out the nature of any wrong-doing by Sunak, because it was Labour that mistreated me.

Despite adhering to the letter of its rules on investigating anti-Semitism allegations against me, Labour ignored the requirements of its actual procedures in order to falsify a case against me, and manufactured an incorrect verdict. I had to go to court to have the facts revealed.

Will anything come of an investigation into Sunak? Doubtful. There’s no law against being ignorant of the way the other half live.

But if we know that Sunak is so far removed from the rest of us, we may also draw logical conclusions about his ability to create policies for everybody in the UK, no matter how deprived – or his lack of any such ability.

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Is Whittome Labour’s latest hypocrite in the Corbyn/suspension/free speech controversy?

Nadia Whittome: her behaviour is all the more vexing because she has no reason to be loyal to Keir Starmer – he sacked her as a Parliamentary Private Secretary because she voted against a Bill that would have protected soldiers from prosecution if they participated in acts of torture overseas, and briefed the right-wing Guido Fawkes blog about the sacking BEFORE telling her.

A Labour MP who had been considered to be on the left of the party and who said Jeremy Corbyn should be reinstated when his membership was suspended has become a turncoat, it seems.

Despite her own comments about Corbyn, it seems Nadia Whittome does not believe that her peers in the party should have the same right, as she stated in a Tweet following a meeting of Nottingham East Labour Party (she is MP for that constituency but not a member of the CLP):

It seems the agenda of last Friday’s CLP meeting included a motion that called for Corbyn’s reinstatement, the lifting of disciplinary measures from others for discussing the issues as well as for the removal of David Evans, General Secretary of the Labour Party, who imposed Corbyn’s suspension and the ban on discussing it that led to the suspensions of other party members.

Ms Whittome objected to the motion, despite having spoken against Corbyn’s suspension herself, it seems.

What are we to make of that? That she considers herself to be above her party colleagues? That she agrees that, while she may discuss such matters with impunity, it is right that rank-and-file party members be suspended for daring to do so? That she thinks party members should not be allowed to register their opposition when party officers flout rules and regulations?

That’s how it looks to This Writer.

Worse, Ms Whittome passed comment on an incident in which a Jewish CLP member left the meeting, claiming they did not feel safe there.

It appears that all was not as she led people to believe. Here‘s a statement from the CLP itself:

“There was only one interruption during the meeting. This arose when one member stated that in his personal experience he had never witnessed any antisemitism in any of our meetings. As he continued with his personal view, another member shouted out – in a manner that some found to be aggressive – that he himself had suffered personal, antisemitic abuse from the person speaking, who was taken aback and stated that this wasn’t true; the Chair intervened and tried to calm things down. At this point the member who had interrupted declared that he no longer felt safe at the meeting and left.

“The member who left has changed his narrative on social media to stating that the member he accused had ‘witnessed an anti-Semitic attack’ on him rather than had attacked him personally.”

Ms Whittome also mentioned the possibility that disciplinary proceedings had been launched against a member of the CLP. This appears to be CLP chair Louise Regan, a former NUT president and (I really hope this has nothing to do with it) vice-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

It seems Ms Regan’s party membership was, in fact, suspended:

This can only be for allowing the motion to be heard (it was passed by 23 votes to 10). Ms Regan’s conduct during the meeting was described in the CLP statement as “exemplary” and Ms Whittome is said to have joined in thanking her for the way she chaired it.

If that was everything, it would be bad enough, but it seems even worse than that, as evidence has come to light claiming that Ms Whittome actually participated in a smear campaign against Ms Regan. Read:

Maybe Mr Kazmi has his own axe to grind (although, considering the number of Tweets by other people linking Ms Whittome with this AWL group, this seems doubtful). In any case, This Writer will be happy to hear what the MP has to say about all this.

At the moment, it seems likely she has fatally wounded her reputation among the very people on whom she would have to rely in order to be re-elected in any future Parliamentary poll.

And at the very least, it seems likely that she should expect a flood of complaints to Labour’s Governance and Legal Unit, that her comments have brought the party into disrepute – the very charge which, when used against her colleagues, she supported.

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Torygraph politics: paper praises Tories for saving money because senior citizens have died of Covid-19

Some institutions have twisted priorities:

That’s the Daily Telegraph for you.

But doesn’t it make you question whether the Tory intention really was for Covid-19 to kill as many pensioners as possible, in order to cut the National Insurance bill?

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BBC is named as least objective news provider – which we all knew already

No wonder I couldn’t find a correlation between what the BBC was reporting and what people were talking about when I compared them!

Look:

I couldn’t read the story in Broadcast (paywall) but found it in the Express, of all places:

Ofcom conducted an annual survey covering the period April 2019 to March 2020 in which the broadcasting regulator asked audiences if they believed news programmes they watched on each of the main television channels were free of bias.

But in the latest blow for the BBC, the Corporation ranked bottom with a score of just 58 percent. Sky News led the way with 69 percent, followed by Channel 4 (66 per cent), ITV (63 per cent) and Channel 5 (61 per cent).

Ofcom said: “There is a risk that future relationships between the BBC and its audiences could be jeopardised if audience concerns around impartiality continue to grow.”

Bizarrely, the report has come to light at the same time as Andrew Marr said viewers would choose “BBC impartiality” over “Fox News-style rivals”.

But then, Marr’s mission is not ours: he’s saying the BBC cannot be accused of left-wing bias – and I’m sure we could all agree with that.

According to the i, Marr said:

“When Hugh Carleton Greene was Director-General (from 1960), he was pushing a much more anti-conservative, anti-hierarchical agenda than anyone is today.”

Carleton Greene was accused of causing the nation’s “moral collapse” by “decency” campaigner Mary Whitehouse, not least for refusing to censor the word “knickers” from a broadcast.

So he clearly equates Conservatism with impartiality. That’s interesting. Then again…

Does Marr welcome the challenge from the Discovery-backed GB News and Rupert Murdoch’s new “opinionated” TV news venture, both set to launch next year?

“You bet,” he asserts. “All competition is good. I hope we’ll demonstrate quite quickly that whilst partisan TV is great fun for a short period, after a while you turn back with great relief to something that is at least trying to be impartial.”

Anything backed by Murdoch is going to be deeply right-wing, so it seems Marr recognises the far-right as partisan, as well as the left. So it’s an Overton Window problem; he simply doesn’t understand where the genuine political centre lies.

Perhaps that’s the BBC’s problem in a nutshell. Run by upper-middle-class elitist twits, its political compass is tuned to their point of view and they don’t recognise and are too dim to understand that it is out of touch with reality.

I was able to work this out by checking the BBC’s output against what people are actually discussing. Anybody with an ounce of intelligence and curiosity could have done the same.

I dare say it hasn’t even occurred to the BBC’s news bosses.

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Questions mount over Covid-19 vaccine that Boris Johnson was so keen to promote

This Site took a (small) degree of flak after I raised questions about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine that Boris Johnson had touted as 90 per cent effective.

It turned out that the extra effectiveness only worked when a lower dose was administered first (of the two that were provided to test subjects).

It was enough for me to flag up concern – and that was enough for some people to complain. “Why the negative spin?”

Perhaps because there’s more to it, as the New York Times has revealed:

The regimen that appeared to be 90 percent effective was based on participants receiving a half dose of the vaccine followed a month later by a full dose; the less effective version involved a pair of full doses. AstraZeneca disclosed in its initial announcement that fewer than 2,800 participants received the smaller dosing regimen, compared with nearly 8,900 participants who received two full doses.

The biggest questions were, why was there such a large variation in the effectiveness of the vaccine at different doses, and why did a smaller dose appear to produce much better results? AstraZeneca and Oxford researchers said they did not know.

Crucial information was also missing. The company said that the early analysis was based on 131 symptomatic Covid-19 cases that had turned up in study participants. But it did not break down how many cases were found in each group of participants — those who received the half-strength initial dose, the regular-strength initial dose and the placebo.

Adding to the confusion, AstraZeneca pooled the results from two differently designed clinical trials in Britain and Brazil, a break from standard practice in reporting the results of drug and vaccine trials.

The company had not intended for any participants to receive the half dose. British researchers running the trial there had meant to give the full dose initially to volunteers, but a miscalculation meant they were mistakenly given only a half dose.

To many outside experts, that undercut the credibility of the results because the closely calibrated clinical trials had not been designed to test how well a half-strength initial dose worked.

The company’s initial announcement didn’t mention the accidental nature of the discovery.

Then… Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. initiative to fast-track coronavirus vaccines, noted another limitation in AstraZeneca’s data. On a call with reporters, he suggested that the participants who received the half-strength initial dose had been 55 years old or younger.

Mr. Pangalos confirmed that on Wednesday, saying the participants received the half-strength dose over a matter of weeks before the error was discovered.

The fact that the initial half-strength dose wasn’t tested in older participants, who are especially vulnerable to Covid-19, could undermine AstraZeneca’s case to regulators that the vaccine should be authorized for emergency use.

So the vaccine’s 90 per cent effectiveness only works on people aged 55 or younger. For older people, it was 62 per cent effective – a significant drop, and enough to jeopardise the vaccine’s bid to be fast-tracked into use.

Johnson would have had it pressed into service straight away, if he could.

And how would that have affected older people who would then be encouraged to take it, based on a false belief?

Source: AstraZeneca Faces Difficult Questions About Its Vaccine After Admitting Mistake – The New York Times

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Sink, Britain, Sink: The Tories had six years to fix the UK’s flood defences and failed

Builth Wells: This mid-Powys town stood at a relatively high altitude – and under a considerable amount of water in February 2020.

The Environment Agency will have to resort to pumps and temporary flood barriers to ensure thousands of homes are protected this winter, it has been revealed.

According to the National Audit Office,

the Government awarded the Environment Agency £120m extra funding to repair [last year’s] damage, but the Agency will only complete 80 per cent of the work before the end of this year.

This means

one in five damaged flood defences will not be repaired in time for this winter’s stormy weather.

Oh, I know. There’s been a huge crisis to do with a pandemic disease called Covid-19 since the last floods, and it has been taking all the cash that’s available and slowing down maintenance work such as this.

That would be a good excuse.

But the simple fact is that successive Tory governments have had more than six years to stop our homes from flooding and they simply couldn’t be bothered.

To them, it’s a waste of money to take preventative action – even though the cost of fixing the damage is, cumulatively, far more.

I explained the problem in This Site, waaaaaaay back in 2014 [boldings mine, at time of writing this]:

This is a result of bad planning – by water and sewerage companies that have failed to implement successful drainage schemes or to divert floodwater from rivers in order to prevent overflow, and by planning authorities that have allowed housing to be built in the wrong place.

We live in a country where management of the water supply went into private hands several decades ago. When that happened, it became impossible to have any kind of integrated plan to deal with the supply of water, droughts, floods and storage. Water supply became a commodity to be bought and sold by rich people according to the golden rules of capitalism: Invest the minimum; charge the maximum.

So reservoirs have been sold off to foreign water companies, meaning we have no adequate response to droughts. None have been built, meaning we have no adequate response to floods. Concerns about river flooding have been neglected. There has not been the investment in extraction and storage of floodwater that repeated incidents over the last few years have demanded.

The government is reducing its budget for handling these issues. Not only that, but it is delaying implementation of a new policy on drainage.

In short, there is no joined-up thinking.

There will be no joined-up thinking in the future, either – unless the situation is changed radically.

Meanwhile, the cost racked up by the damage is huge – in ruined farmland, in ruined homes and possessions, and blighted lives. And what about the risk of disease that floodwater brings with it? The NHS in England is ill-equipped to deal with any outbreaks, being seriously weakened by the government-sponsored incursions of private, cheap-and-simple health firms.

Something has to give beneath the weight of all this floodwater. Change is vital – from commercial competition to co-operation and co-ordination.

Privatisation of water has failed. It’s time to bring it back under public control.

Is anyone opposed?

It turns out that a majority were not. Reversing the privatisation of water and restoring a joined-up policy is supported by most of the UK’s voting population, according to polls.

In 2012, it was said that 71 per cent of voters wanted renationalisation. By 2018 this had risen to 83 per cent.

But millions of people voted Conservative at the ballot box so water has remained in private hands and the government has refused to stump up the cash to pay for what has become an annual – and therefore predictable – disaster.

The Environment Agency reckons it has a strategy to “build up the resilience of millions more homes and businesses” in the coming years.

What happens if the Tories strip away the funding for it?

Source: Damaged flood defences won’t be repaired in time for this winter’s storms

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Rayner defies EHRC by threatening to suspend ‘thousands’ of Labour members

Angela Rayner (here with her boss Keir Starmer): hypocrites – and very possibly anti-Semites without acknowledging it.

Note to Sienna Rodgers at LabourList: the headline on your report is wrong. It should have read Angela Rayner is a big ol’ hypocrite.

In the article, Rayner states that the findings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party are not open to debate:

There’s no debating what the EHRC said.

LabourList also reported another statement she made to the Jewish Labour Movement’s conference – insultingly held on the International Day of Solidarity with Palestinians – that she and Keir Starmer attended rather than support the Palestine solidarity event:

If I have to suspend thousands and thousands of members, we will do that.

The two comments are mutually exclusive. The report clearly states that

We have concluded that the practice of political interference was unlawful… The Labour Party should… implement clear rules and guidance that prohibit and sanction political interference in the complaints process.

Her threat to suspend thousands – a warning that the leadership is planning to purge the party of anybody who dissents against its dictatorship – is itself political interference in the process, as it is an attempt to suppress complaints by members against the actions of the leadership of which she is a member. Therefore she is not only debating the legitimacy of the EHRC’s finding; she is ignoring it altogether.

Remember that this is all about the attack on Jeremy Corbyn by Keir Starmer, party general secretary David Evans, and others at the very top of the Labour leadership including Rayner herself, despite the fact that she once said this:

She went from that position to saying that the truth is “unacceptable”:

She is a hypocrite. She has revealed her true colours. She cannot be trusted. She should be ejected from her position of power.

This will be hard because the Labour Party leadership has a well-known track record of rejecting any complaints against its own members and friends, no matter how well-justified they may be.

But we have all seen this behaviour and we are talking about it:

And organisations that formerly wanted Rayner’s support and endorsement are now rejecting her. To be honest, I don’t know if the following tweet was connected with what she said on LabourList, but I anticipate that this is the soft footfall that precedes a stampede:

Oh, and by the way, Labour is not completely irredeemable. Members across the UK did come out in support of Palestine, unlike their treacherous leader and deputy leader. Here’s a tweet from Wales:

Let’s remember that Rayner – and her vile boss Starmer – are saying that they are taking all this action against the good members of their own party because of hurt, harm and injury done to Jewish people in the UK.

What about the harm done to Jewish people who agree with the viewpoint Rayner, Starmer and the others are attacking?

That’s right. These Jews feel that Rayner, Starmer and the others are attacking them. And Rayner, Starmer et al treat them as though they don’t even exist.

Isn’t that attitude a little… you know… anti-Semitic?

Finally, Labour’s deplorable leaders need to acknowledge that this confrontation between them and party members arose because the EHRC found that the leadership had been interfering in investigations of anti-Semitism complaints in order to make it seem that there were more anti-Semites in the party than was the case.

A court found only last week that the process of investigating accusations against This Writer – me, Mike Sivier – was perverted in order to produce a false finding against me.

Labour failed to follow its own investigation procedure. It did not adequately inform me of the nature of the allegations against me (in fact, the party changed those claims as it went on, in order to ‘fix’ the result), and a party officer leaked false claims about me – including a lie that I was a Holocaust denier – to The Sunday Times (which subsequently had to publish a lengthy correction).

And I’m not the only one who has suffered this treatment. The EHRC report found that, of the investigations it examined, no fewer than 60 per cent suffered from bias calculated to discriminate against the respondent – against the person accused of anti-Semitism.

Where are the apologies for lying and smearing us? I still receive abusive messages accusing me of anti-Semitism, even now. It may be that I will continue receiving them for the rest of my life. The Labour Party is to blame for that. Where is the contrition? Where is the apology for that?

Zahawi appointed minister for Covid vaccine deployment – so it’ll be a disaster

Do you really want a National Health Service profiteer and expenses cheat running the deployment of Covid-19 vaccines?

Nadhim Zahawi was among 24 Tory MPs and lords who were found to have links with 15 private healthcare firms that received £1.5 billion of NHS money due to privatisation, between 2012 and 2014.

Before that, in November 2013, it was reported that he had claimed £5,822 expenses for electricity for his riding school stables and a yard manager’s mobile home.

In 2015, he helped ensure that energy companies would not have to pass on price cuts to consumers when wholesale prices fall – meaning your bills stayed high, inflating profits for the bosses of our privatised energy firms.

There’s more – see the image above (which was created several years ago) for some of it.

This is the Tory that Boris Johnson wants to run the vaccination scheme.

He’ll probably have a private company providing the jabs (one in which he has a financial interest, perhaps?) and demand that we pay for them.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks UK citizens are subjects of the Tory government. Not since 1948, baby!

Rees-Mogg: this cartoon makes him look like a fictional character. If he was, he still wouldn’t be acceptable.

The Leader of the House of Commons – Jacob Rees-Mogg – thinks that the rest of the UK’s population are his subjects.

The revelation in a tweet today (November 28), says much about this Tory’s twisted ideology.

And people are right to be angry about it:

The difference is very important because a subject is a person who is under the power of another; Rees-Mogg thinks you are under his power.

A citizen – which is what you actually are – is a member of a mass of free people who, collectively, possess sovereignty. We choose who represents us in Parliament, therefore we are the masters.

Many people believe that UK citizens are subjects – that we must all look up to a master – because it has been said that we are subjects of our monarchy. But this was changed by the 1948 British Nationality Act, which altered our status from “British Subjects” to “Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies”. The definition was further changed in 1981.

Perhaps Rees-Mogg thinks he is above us because we pay tax and he doesn’t – or at least, he hasn’t so far – on the profits of his firm.

His 15 per cent holding of Somerset Capital Management – an investment firm that is working on profiteering on the Covid crisis by buying devalued shares in firms that have struggled as a result of the pandemic but are expected to recover – may have earned him £15 million over the last five years.

But This Writer is told it doesn’t pay Corporation Tax because it is a partnership, meaning the partners (including Rees-Mogg) directly benefit from the profits, and bear the losses. The firm is based in the tax haven of Singapore, however, meaning it has not been required to provide information on its profits to HM Revenue and Customs in the past.

That has changed recently; changes in EU tax law that have been adopted into UK law mean Singapore is now providing that information to HMRC, which will have to decide whether to demand tax from those firms in the future.

But for the time being, Rees-Mogg has been making a killing.

Most of us are not in a position to hold shares in a partnership based in a tax haven, so it seems reasonable to suggest that this is where Rees-Mogg vests his belief in his own superiority.

There, and in his own boneheaded ignorance.

Are you sure you want somebody as vile as this to have any say in your life?

*For clarity, I should make it clear that I know UK citizens have never been subjects of their government. The 1948 Act seemed a handy hook on which to hang Rees-Mogg’s mistake.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Starmer’s hollow politics: he wanted another referendum last year – now he’ll accept any rotten Brexit

Keir Starmer: hollow man.

What’s wrong with this?

How strange.

Only last year, Starmer was the one who came up with the Brexit policy that lost Labour the 2019 general election, when he demanded that the party must support another referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union.

Now – according to a report in The Guardian (I won’t go to The Sun if I can possibly help it),

Keir Starmer is preparing to risk a party rift by throwing Labour’s weight behind a Brexit deal if last-minute negotiations succeed in the coming days.

In what he hopes will be a signal to “red wall” voters that the party has heard them, multiple Labour sources said Starmer, and Cabinet Office shadow minister, Rachel Reeves – who has been liaising with backbenchers on the issue – are minded to impose a three-line whip in support of a deal, subject to the detail.

They have rejected the idea of abstaining or giving MPs a free vote, fearing it would suggest Labour has failed to absorb the lessons of the pasting it took in last December’s general election.

Tony Benn’s immortal comment about weathercocks and signposts springs to mind.

The late, great Benn said some politicians are like signposts – you always know what they stand for and in which direction they want to travel, politically. Others are like weathercocks; they blow with the wind of public opinion.

Starmer is, therefore, a cock.

His current Brexit dilemma could have been avoided if he – and others in Labour – had only worked out an appropriate Labour Party position on the possibility of leaving the European Union before the 2016 referendum but they didn’t.

For more than four years, these creatures have been “triangulating” – trying to work out what policy would be most popular with the voting public in order to pretend that it was what they genuinely believed.

Last year the position may have been slightly more complicated, as it is entirely possible that Starmer had an eye on bidding for the Labour leadership if the party failed to win an election with Jeremy Corbyn as leader, and his decision to demand a referendum may have had something to do with that.

Yes, I wrote it. Somebody had to, and I’m not the only one thinking it:

Now, it seems he is definitely back to triangulating, pretending he wants the same thing as the general public (in this cse the so-called Red Wall voters who defected to the Tories in the face of Starmer’s election Brexit policy.

And we all know it:

Sadly, those of us with an ounce of intelligence know that Starmer is simply leading Labour into another trap. An endorsement of a Tory Brexit will swap long-term harm to the party for an uncertain short-term election gain, and it will signal a capitulation to the Tory narrative on Brexit.

And there’s no need for any of that. Consider:

The smart choice is to abstain:

Even this is unpalatable for Starmer because of his recent behaviour towards votes on Tory government policy, that earned him the nickname “Keir Abstainer”.

Wise observers will take away just one message: that Starmer and his so-called “Centrist” friends are political frauds:

They simply don’t have any policies other than gaining power for themselves. Once they have it, they won’t know what to do with it.

I can demonstrate this with reference to the following:

Well, Starmer now has power within the Labour Party – for the time being, at least. He obtained it by stabbing Jeremy Corbyn in the back over Brexit, and now he doesn’t know what to do with it.

He is a hollowed-out politician – a fraud. He’ll say anything he thinks can advance him and he doesn’t have any political beliefs of his own at all.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/mike-sivier-libel-fight/


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