In the U.K. between 2011-2014 2,380 people died - up to 600 of them suicides - having been declared "fit for work" and having their benefits withdrawn, and a further 7,200 claimants died while still on ESA and being placed in the work-related activity group (DWP figures).
Last year alone 27,000 "extra" elderly people died due to "austerity cuts" (Department of Health).
People are currently dying at the rate of just under 90 a month.
This is set to climb steeply as winter progresses now that the benefit caps on housing benefit and universal credit have come into force.
If this government is allowed to continue this war of attrition against the underclass of poor they have created it won't be long before they will have killed more people in this country than the 67,000 civilians who died in the U.K. during WW2 as a direct result of hostilities. By Xmas next year they will have exceeded that number by over 2,000.
The score so far, therefore stands at WW2 67,000, Conservatives: 36,580, increasing by at the very least 2,486 souls every month.
It is utterly beyond me how this can ever be justified or accepted in any way.
Tuesday 15 November 2016
Wednesday 28 September 2016
Leaving @UKLabour? Don't quit now!
If you're thinking of leaving the Labour Party now - you're about 20 years too late. This is where we take it back.
IMO winning the next election IS less important than staying on the road. We've done the whole ditching of principles for power thing and it didn't work out.
Though I have to say that if the parachuted-in entryist MPs were replaced with the democratic choice of the CLPs - even if they turn out to be the same candidate, there's no problem with that - and if the Tory election fraud scandal is brought front and centre and the police aren't allowed to just quietly bury it all - then I genuinely believe we could be looking at another landslide victory.
I don't really understand why blue labour and the nec hate the fact that we are now the biggest political party in Europe, and heading towards being the biggest political movement in the world.
It's as if their elitist little club is threatened by having to do what they are actually there TO do - oppose the Tories, stop the rot, get elected and all the while improve the lives of working people and, dare I say it? Everybody.
IMO winning the next election IS less important than staying on the road. We've done the whole ditching of principles for power thing and it didn't work out.
Though I have to say that if the parachuted-in entryist MPs were replaced with the democratic choice of the CLPs - even if they turn out to be the same candidate, there's no problem with that - and if the Tory election fraud scandal is brought front and centre and the police aren't allowed to just quietly bury it all - then I genuinely believe we could be looking at another landslide victory.
I don't really understand why blue labour and the nec hate the fact that we are now the biggest political party in Europe, and heading towards being the biggest political movement in the world.
It's as if their elitist little club is threatened by having to do what they are actually there TO do - oppose the Tories, stop the rot, get elected and all the while improve the lives of working people and, dare I say it? Everybody.
Wednesday 7 September 2016
#PMQs - Theresa May says something true!
Theresa May broke with tradition today and said one thing at #PMQs that was actually true.
"Whoever wins the leadership of the Labour Party, we are not going to let them anywhere near power again".
The Tories, being investigated over £6,000,000 election fraud which is going unremarked in the mainstream media as their Prime-Minister-Without-Mandate continues to push through the privatisation of the NHS, are busily gerrymandering the constituencies to ensure that neither Labour nor anybody else can ever win another General Election.
Tuesday 23 August 2016
Time to grow up - and Step Up
Chi Onwurah MP has moaned that she had her role jiggled around a bit after the chicken coup started, and was then left to get on with her job by herself with no help from the leader's office.
Owen Smith has made it central to his campaign that he was left alone to do his new job taking on the DWP with no help from the leader's office - he also claims for himself the successes in turning around Tory legislation (largely thanks to labour lords, I thought?) but says in the same breath this is a failure of Corbyn's.
A pattern is starting to emerge. People who were parachuted in to safe seats by the previous Labour administrations are expected to step up and do a real job on their own initiative like a proper grownup - and when no-one from central office turns up to do their job for them they claim racism, sexism, incompetence, any damn thing to cover up their panic at having to do something more than wear a shiny suit and nod through Tory policy.
Not good enough. And we can see through this.
Owen Smith has made it central to his campaign that he was left alone to do his new job taking on the DWP with no help from the leader's office - he also claims for himself the successes in turning around Tory legislation (largely thanks to labour lords, I thought?) but says in the same breath this is a failure of Corbyn's.
A pattern is starting to emerge. People who were parachuted in to safe seats by the previous Labour administrations are expected to step up and do a real job on their own initiative like a proper grownup - and when no-one from central office turns up to do their job for them they claim racism, sexism, incompetence, any damn thing to cover up their panic at having to do something more than wear a shiny suit and nod through Tory policy.
Not good enough. And we can see through this.
Tuesday 2 August 2016
Forget social media. It's useless.
We need a Labour government or we're doomed. We need a proper democratic SOCIALIST government, not a UKIP-lite Tory-lite neoliberal monocracy. Damn straight. But the political establishment on all sides are resolute that people should have no real say in how they are controlled and used as the corporates' cash cow. That's why the Green Party only have one MP, and why socialists are always in a minority.
If Labour is to actually get elected we must get the message across to millions and millions of people despite the MSM and their corporate leader writers. As a tool for national change on this scale, social media is useless. It speaks to the same people over and over, preaching to the converted, the already privileged with computers and smartphones, the few that think social medial is important. Yes, few. 2,000,000 might seem a lot, but there are 43,000,000 voters we need to talk to, voters who currently think Corbyn is a dangerous laughing stock and only the Tories have a genuine narrative, because we have let the MSM get away with it for so long.
We have to get the genuine messages about what we know to be true out there in front of 43,000,000 people? Not just a handful. If we don't, we lose. If we do, we might - might - win.
These messages have to be true, and blunt, and direct, and unequivocal. Messages about tax credits, in work poverty, homelessness, IMMIGRATION IMMIGRATION IMMIGRATION and the scarcity of resources (and why the problem isn't immigration), and how to fix it, with NHS funding and housing, schools etc well you know what the problems are.
And these messages have to be everywhere. On the back of every bus in every city. On massive posters (remember "Labour isn't working"?). In every toilet in every motorway services, on trains, on fly posters, leaflets and handouts on the street, and yes, in every newspaper on full page ads - it has to be relentless, unavoidable, inescapable that we MUST have a democratic socialist government for all our sakes, and our children's future.
And that takes planning and a lot of money. Does labour have either, and the will to do what's necessary?
If Labour is to actually get elected we must get the message across to millions and millions of people despite the MSM and their corporate leader writers. As a tool for national change on this scale, social media is useless. It speaks to the same people over and over, preaching to the converted, the already privileged with computers and smartphones, the few that think social medial is important. Yes, few. 2,000,000 might seem a lot, but there are 43,000,000 voters we need to talk to, voters who currently think Corbyn is a dangerous laughing stock and only the Tories have a genuine narrative, because we have let the MSM get away with it for so long.
We have to get the genuine messages about what we know to be true out there in front of 43,000,000 people? Not just a handful. If we don't, we lose. If we do, we might - might - win.
These messages have to be true, and blunt, and direct, and unequivocal. Messages about tax credits, in work poverty, homelessness, IMMIGRATION IMMIGRATION IMMIGRATION and the scarcity of resources (and why the problem isn't immigration), and how to fix it, with NHS funding and housing, schools etc well you know what the problems are.
And these messages have to be everywhere. On the back of every bus in every city. On massive posters (remember "Labour isn't working"?). In every toilet in every motorway services, on trains, on fly posters, leaflets and handouts on the street, and yes, in every newspaper on full page ads - it has to be relentless, unavoidable, inescapable that we MUST have a democratic socialist government for all our sakes, and our children's future.
And that takes planning and a lot of money. Does labour have either, and the will to do what's necessary?
Wednesday 27 July 2016
Don't Say You Weren't Warned.
When Britain is finally out of the EU; when Scotland and Ireland have left and we are just England and Wales; when there is no NHS free at the point of delivery and it costs £75 for a consult and an aspirin and even a semi serious illness will bankrupt you or force you to watch someone you love die slowly and horribly; when all the schools are profit-making training centres for zero hours contract jobs for corporations that take all their profits abroad; when the disabled are all tagged and ghettoised as too expensive to care about; when the elderly are demonised and deleted from existence by their miserable, degrading lack of care; when higher education costs £50,000 plus interest 10% above base; when a significant proportion of the population has been criminalised and forced to work a 10 hour day for nothing making the products that those same corporations sell; when the beaches are again so filthy that you can't ever go to the beach; when the water is so polluted by fracking that you are forced to buy over priced bottled water for everything; when your energy is so expensive that you are forced to choose between heating and eating; when every penny you earn is used to repay your debts and get yourself to work and back with nothing left over; when your friends and neighbours have been deported or excluded from society and still there are not enough resources, housing or healthcare; when the Middle East is a smoking radioactive crater populated only by robots that can drill for oil; when the only thing left in Eastern Europe are NATO's depleted uranium leftovers; when the only politicians you can have are the ones that you are allowed…
Don't say you weren't warned.
Don't say you weren't warned.
Tuesday 19 July 2016
Democracy's Last Stand
If Corbyn doesn't get re-elected as Labour leader that will effectively mark the end of representative democracy in this country.
It will still *look* like representative democracy but the fact is that John McDonnell was right - this isn't about opposition to Jeremy Corbyn, this is about the 1% telling the rest of us to know our place.
If they manage, through their campaign of lies, spin, misinformation, gerrymandering and disenfrachisement, to block Corbyn this time then after this we will only ever be able to vote for who we are allowed to vote for, not who we want to vote for.
The choices will be between this or that neoliberal, this or that Blairite, this or that political "royalty" elitist multimilionaire. The Kinnocks, the Bennites (oh how THAT term has changed meaning), the Eagles and the Smiths of Westminster will allow to vote for them, or one of their gang, or we can vote for more of the same in the Tory party or UKIP.
But vote for who WE want to vote for - nope.
Monday 4 July 2016
@RichardBurgon Nails @DavisHD trying to dishonestly frame the debate
In this wonderful little clip Davis tries FOUR TIMES to frame the nature of reality around Corbyn as the opposite of reality. To try to claim as he does that Corbyn's hundreds of thousands of supporters are the ones who are out of step with just 172 MPs would be laughable if he, and the rest of the BBC, didn't get away with this day after day.
But Richard Burgon MP to the rescue! Just listen to the way he patiently but assertively corrects Evan Davis at every turn.
First of all Davis tries to validate an undemocratic coup attempt by bringing up Corbyn's own history of opposing the leadership. Burgon's answer to this: "There's a difference between principled opposition on .... policy to an outright attempt to capsize the whole ship".
In his next attempt Davis tries to characterise the Labour leadership as some sort of dictatorship. Burgon's response: "The truth is Jeremy Corbyn was elected with an overwhelming majority, the biggest mandate of any political leader in British history".
Following this Davis tries to describe Corbyn as "a radical", hoping some kind of negative scary description will finally stick. No chance. Burgon's answer "There's nothing radical about proposing a £10 per hour minimum wage ... nothing radical about proposing a massive program of building council houses, and I don't think there's anything radical ... in thinking Britain made a huge mistake in getting involved in the Iraq war."
Finally Davis tries one last, desperate, undignified dig: "You're implying that he can limp on", he says. Burgon, maintaining his equilibrium perfectly: "I'm not implying anything about 'limping'".
Meanwhile in other news, te Met Police report that "10,000 people gather in Parliament square to support Corbyn". This, in the hands of BBC's Laura Kuenssberg , becomes "Jeremy Corbyn's support begins to show signs of fraying".
I would normally say something like "you couldn't make it up" - but it's pretty clear that's exactly what they do.
But Richard Burgon MP to the rescue! Just listen to the way he patiently but assertively corrects Evan Davis at every turn.
First of all Davis tries to validate an undemocratic coup attempt by bringing up Corbyn's own history of opposing the leadership. Burgon's answer to this: "There's a difference between principled opposition on .... policy to an outright attempt to capsize the whole ship".
In his next attempt Davis tries to characterise the Labour leadership as some sort of dictatorship. Burgon's response: "The truth is Jeremy Corbyn was elected with an overwhelming majority, the biggest mandate of any political leader in British history".
Following this Davis tries to describe Corbyn as "a radical", hoping some kind of negative scary description will finally stick. No chance. Burgon's answer "There's nothing radical about proposing a £10 per hour minimum wage ... nothing radical about proposing a massive program of building council houses, and I don't think there's anything radical ... in thinking Britain made a huge mistake in getting involved in the Iraq war."
Finally Davis tries one last, desperate, undignified dig: "You're implying that he can limp on", he says. Burgon, maintaining his equilibrium perfectly: "I'm not implying anything about 'limping'".
Meanwhile in other news, te Met Police report that "10,000 people gather in Parliament square to support Corbyn". This, in the hands of BBC's Laura Kuenssberg , becomes "Jeremy Corbyn's support begins to show signs of fraying".
I would normally say something like "you couldn't make it up" - but it's pretty clear that's exactly what they do.
Thursday 30 June 2016
Heseltine Rants - Real Enemy Is Still Cameron
Heseltinr must be utterly furious with David Cameron - nearly everything he's accusing Johnson of is squarely Cameron's fault, but he has to find a scapegoat. As furious as he is with the towering stupidity of the prime minister, he's desperate to deflect a backlash against the true culprit because by rights this awful mess should have brought down central government. Johnson's an unprincipled bastard but Cameron started this whole shitfest to outmanoeuvre UKIP, mollify his back benches and maintain his mendacious grasp on power.
By rights we should be marching on Westminster and putting Cameron's metaphorical head on a pike on Westminster Bridge along with Osborne, Johnson, Gove, Hunt and all the rest of them, bringing the government down lock, stock and barrel, and Heseltine knows it. That's why he's come on TV to speak to the great unwashed.
The tragedy is that there's no opposition to do this for us because Labour's PLP are so blind to everyone and everything but themselves that they are engaged in their own internal power grab like dogs fighting in a cage. If they looked out through the bars they'd see a once in a century opportunity to take power and do some good in the world for a change.
I guess the PLP are so stupid we wouldn't want them there anyway. They'd only vote for another war and overclaim their expenses. It's time ALL these stuffed shirt career politicians went the way of the dodo.
Power to the people!
Heseltine's ingenuous rant is here.
By rights we should be marching on Westminster and putting Cameron's metaphorical head on a pike on Westminster Bridge along with Osborne, Johnson, Gove, Hunt and all the rest of them, bringing the government down lock, stock and barrel, and Heseltine knows it. That's why he's come on TV to speak to the great unwashed.
The tragedy is that there's no opposition to do this for us because Labour's PLP are so blind to everyone and everything but themselves that they are engaged in their own internal power grab like dogs fighting in a cage. If they looked out through the bars they'd see a once in a century opportunity to take power and do some good in the world for a change.
I guess the PLP are so stupid we wouldn't want them there anyway. They'd only vote for another war and overclaim their expenses. It's time ALL these stuffed shirt career politicians went the way of the dodo.
Power to the people!
Heseltine's ingenuous rant is here.
Wednesday 29 June 2016
Today's Email From My Labour Party Branch
Steve Ballard, the secretary of my local Labour Party Branch sent out this email today: below it is my response.
Also, this:
1.
As a current officer in our branch, I feel moved to say that we all have differences of view, but that in amongst what is a clearly a time of tumult, we must create spaces where people can share their views, collaborate and debate. All with mutual respect and an awareness that we do share common goals around equality and social justice, power for the many not the few, tolerance and solidarity... (I hope we do!)
2.Jeremy is clearly a decent, principled politician but it's time for him to step aside. The Labour movement is not a protest group. We should be seeking to return to power and then getting on with improving the lives of the millions of people in this country who need our help.
Jeremy has raised some excellent points during his time as leader. In fact, I think we'll look back and recognise how his time in office helped rebalance the party between idealism and pragmatism.
But, ultimately, politics is about leadership. When you're a representative of the people you can't just be a conduit for a protest movement; you actually have to lead. Jeremy is simply not a leader. We need a leader who will listen to all sides and unite the party. To take the fight to the Tories and guide us to election victory.
Many people clearly still support Jeremy. But many do not. I fear for our party if this situation continues.
I won't accept being a member of a leaderless, ambition-free protest group for much longer. And I'm not alone. Not by a long way...
My response was as follows. It rambles a bit, isn't as organised as I'd like, and doesn't press every button, and I'm very sad that I had to write it.
"I'm sorry I can't come along in person tonight as I would welcome the opportunity to express my views.
I am shocked and saddened by your lack of commitment to creating a fairer and more just and peaceful world for us and our children.
For me to abandon those principles by joining David Cameron when he called for Jeremy Corbyn to step down, head of a government delivered on Monday of the most stinging rebuke in the history of the United Nations, and to join those in the PLP who have consistently enabled by their abstentions the egregious punishment of the poor, sick, disabled and disadvantaged to provide tax breaks for the rich; by voting to bomb Syria, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees now being victimised for their very existence, and increasing immeasurably the terrorist threat to this country and others; by enabling the genocide now taking place in Yemen at the hands of the Saudis; and most importantly to join those "grandees" who took us to illegal war in Iraq - responsible for the biggest decline of membership in Labour's history and who lost us 2 general elections, and are now briefing every paper, every pundit, every news outlet against Jeremy Corbyn using trumped-up nonsense, paid "hecklers" and fabricated "evidence" as on Monday in order to save their own worthless skins; who await the publication of the Chilcot Report with trepidation and are using every possible ruse to unseat the one politician who has vowed to take it seriously; if I were to abandon these principles of what use, then, would be any power I might gain? To what end?
Politics is not about leadership at any cost. This is exactly why we are in this mess today. We stand on the brink of the most horrible future imaginable and your answer is to stand with the unprincipled thieves and liars that brought us here?
No thank you. I stand with the vast majority of the Labour Party
membership, with the 17,000 who have joined the party in the last week to defend Jeremy Corbyn, with the thousands in Momentum and the millions in the country who want a fairer society free from racism, war, poverty and injustice.
You stand where you think your own advantage lies; I won't be standing there with you."
Also, this:
Tuesday 28 June 2016
The Corbyn Coup - THE FULL TIMELINE
A friend posted this in an email. it may of course all be nonsense.
"It now emerges that Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle have been secretly briefing against Jeremy Corbyn for the last 9 months. They have constantly fed information to Laura Kuenssberg and the Murdoch press corps about pending coups and dissatisfaction in the Parliamentary Party.They were planning to move against him on several occasions and chickened out'. The debate on the RAF bombing intervention on Syria on the 2.12.15 was to be the preliminary opportunity for Benn to strike by
speaking out against the Labour line ( which he did to much Tory
applause). This was to be followed up by a no confidence motion after
the loss of the Oldham by-election which was confidently predicted by
the Murdoch press.The plot fell apart when the Oldham by-election was won by Labour, with UKIP in second place and the Tories beaten into third.
Their next attempt was when Shadow Foreign Minister,Stephen Doughty,resigned on air during the BBC's Daily Politics programme on 7.1.16,just before Prime Ministers Questions. Kuenssberg had been briefed by the plotters beforehand and she had fed this information to David Cameron who announced it during PM's Questions to the surprise of the Labour benches.
This plot to usurp Jeremy also fell apart.
All of Kuenssberg's reports which began with 'a senior Labour spokesman
told me....etc.' came from the offices of Benn and Eagle.
Kuenssberg was also informed about the present debacle. The conspirators had received news that Corbyn would suggest the impeachment of Tony Blair if the soon to be published Chilcott report on the Iraq war showed any basis of 'war crimes'. The conspirators decided they had to pre-empt this attack on Blair. It was agreed that Benn would initiate the attack on Corbyn. He awoke Corbyn in the early hours of Sunday morning 26.6.16 with a phone call to inform him of his intention to attack him publicly with a statement of his lack of confidence in his leadership. Corbyn had
no option but to remove him from post.The plan was then to organise a series of resignations with one being announced roughly every 2 hours to give the impression of a growing revolt. This was designed to keep it in the public eye and they would hopefully then encourage others not involved in the plot to join the bandwagon if they thought the ship was sinking.Initially there were 10 Shadow cabinet members recruited. and Eagles was to be the last one to declare in order to separate any association between Benn and herself.She would make a tearful, on-line resignation speech underlining Jeremy's honesty and goodness but saying he had no leadership skills.
"OH ! WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE"
The link to the original Facebook post is HERE.
"It now emerges that Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle have been secretly briefing against Jeremy Corbyn for the last 9 months. They have constantly fed information to Laura Kuenssberg and the Murdoch press corps about pending coups and dissatisfaction in the Parliamentary Party.They were planning to move against him on several occasions and chickened out'. The debate on the RAF bombing intervention on Syria on the 2.12.15 was to be the preliminary opportunity for Benn to strike by
speaking out against the Labour line ( which he did to much Tory
applause). This was to be followed up by a no confidence motion after
the loss of the Oldham by-election which was confidently predicted by
the Murdoch press.The plot fell apart when the Oldham by-election was won by Labour, with UKIP in second place and the Tories beaten into third.
Their next attempt was when Shadow Foreign Minister,Stephen Doughty,resigned on air during the BBC's Daily Politics programme on 7.1.16,just before Prime Ministers Questions. Kuenssberg had been briefed by the plotters beforehand and she had fed this information to David Cameron who announced it during PM's Questions to the surprise of the Labour benches.
This plot to usurp Jeremy also fell apart.
All of Kuenssberg's reports which began with 'a senior Labour spokesman
told me....etc.' came from the offices of Benn and Eagle.
Kuenssberg was also informed about the present debacle. The conspirators had received news that Corbyn would suggest the impeachment of Tony Blair if the soon to be published Chilcott report on the Iraq war showed any basis of 'war crimes'. The conspirators decided they had to pre-empt this attack on Blair. It was agreed that Benn would initiate the attack on Corbyn. He awoke Corbyn in the early hours of Sunday morning 26.6.16 with a phone call to inform him of his intention to attack him publicly with a statement of his lack of confidence in his leadership. Corbyn had
no option but to remove him from post.The plan was then to organise a series of resignations with one being announced roughly every 2 hours to give the impression of a growing revolt. This was designed to keep it in the public eye and they would hopefully then encourage others not involved in the plot to join the bandwagon if they thought the ship was sinking.Initially there were 10 Shadow cabinet members recruited. and Eagles was to be the last one to declare in order to separate any association between Benn and herself.She would make a tearful, on-line resignation speech underlining Jeremy's honesty and goodness but saying he had no leadership skills.
"OH ! WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE"
The link to the original Facebook post is HERE.
Demand That Your MP Represents Your Views
To anyone thinking of writing to their Labour MP in protest at their attack on the leadership, a friend asked what he might say and I came up with this, hope it helps, please nick bits if you, too, have an MP like Chuka Umunna who is *not* representing you.
You could try pointing out that speaking for yourself and the few hundred people whose political views you know about, fighting their own leadership instead of making a common enemy of the real threat to everyone in this country - the Tories - is rapidly eroding their support and making Corbyn's even stronger as your friends continue to join the Labour Party in the expectation that they will have to defend Corbyn's leadership against further attack.
You might remind them that the PLP are the elected representatives of both the general population and those self-same The Labour Party members, not the other way around - that if the EURef result was about anything, it was about people being determined to have their own voice and not one handed down to them by a patronising political elite, and that the Labour party is not its MPs, it is its membership.
If he or she wants to continue the hemorrhage of support started by Tony Blair's illegal war and continued by their support for David Cameron's then they might want to start considering the views of the people that actually vote for them for once.
Or something.
Monday 27 June 2016
Corbyn - delivered more #Remain votes than anyone
@JeremyCorbynMP was PERCEIVED to be a failure in the referendum debate for three important reasons.
It is true that he does not court the media; he is well aware that everything he says will be weaponised and turned against him; I don't need to provide examples of this, they are everywhere.
Lest we forget, it was Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson who actually LED the "Labour In" campaign, and we heard little or nothing of any import from either of them in all the long months. It is THEIR campaign that has failed and to #BlameCorbyn is laughable. It merely points up how desperate the same old political elite are to retain control.
The very elite that everyone seems to be saying the vote was in reality registering a protest against.
Benn and Johnson asked Corbyn to do 2 things during the campaign: deliver the votes of
- He refused to share a platform with Cameron who he fundamentally disagrees with on literally everything, and therefore got little media coverage by association.
- The media didn't report a single one of the dozens of speeches he made, nor interview any of the tens of thousands of people he connected with and won over.
- His would-be political assassins have furthered the lie on #Marr and elsewhere in order to further their own tawdry careers at the expense of Great Britain. this cynical attempt at a coup was planned long ago to coincide with the #EuRef and would be taking place whatever the outcome.
It is true that he does not court the media; he is well aware that everything he says will be weaponised and turned against him; I don't need to provide examples of this, they are everywhere.
Lest we forget, it was Hilary Benn and Alan Johnson who actually LED the "Labour In" campaign, and we heard little or nothing of any import from either of them in all the long months. It is THEIR campaign that has failed and to #BlameCorbyn is laughable. It merely points up how desperate the same old political elite are to retain control.
The very elite that everyone seems to be saying the vote was in reality registering a protest against.
Benn and Johnson asked Corbyn to do 2 things during the campaign: deliver the votes of
- Labour supporters. Around 2/3 voted to remain as a result.
- Young voters. Around 3/4 voted to remain.
Saturday 25 June 2016
Where's Wally Osborne?
He's spending rather a long time in the toilets. He's either shitting himself like he did after his last budget made history by being torn to shreds and voted down by our, ahem, "tragically weak and ineffective opposition" or he's stuffing class A's up his hooter and running around the room shouting "shit shit shit".
Shit either way.
Shit either way.
Friday 24 June 2016
There May Be Light
Well, I can't say I'm not disappointed with the #EURef result, as doddery old reactionaries all over the UK and the far-right fascist parties here and across Europe cheer the loudest and everyone else shakes their heads in disbelief.
Cameron's vanity project - the only promise he has kept since he began campaigning in 2010 - has destroyed his career and probably broken up the UK as well as the EU. Quite a result for the millionaire PR man from Carlton TV, whose only other success seems to have been burying Carlton's investigative reporting into VIP paedophilia.
But there *may* be a small positive to take from this. Greece elected a radical left wing government opposed to the harsh austerity measures imposed by the IMF/World Bank/EU that was having an even worse effect there than they have had so far here, and the EU crushed them mercilessly.
We can still elect a proper non-austerity government that will rebalance our economy in favour of everyone, not just the IMF/World Bank/Usual Billionaires, and the EU can't stop us.
The danger,of course, is we may not have an economy to rebalance, as we are now back in the unfettered hands of the most incompetent financial mis-managers known to man - the Tory party, that brought us Black Wednesday, 15% interest rates, and latterly a massively increased 1.7tn of debt and a 100bn deficit despite punishing the poor, pushing the disabled and infirm into destitution, the introduction of slavery through "workfare" and enriching the already obscenely wealthy through tax breaks and avoidance, and now, this; what may turn out to be the worst shrinking of our economy ever known to anyone alive.
But I'm trying to be positive, so fingers crossed, eh? Hope for the best....
All in all a bit of a mixed bag, you might say.
Cameron's vanity project - the only promise he has kept since he began campaigning in 2010 - has destroyed his career and probably broken up the UK as well as the EU. Quite a result for the millionaire PR man from Carlton TV, whose only other success seems to have been burying Carlton's investigative reporting into VIP paedophilia.
But there *may* be a small positive to take from this. Greece elected a radical left wing government opposed to the harsh austerity measures imposed by the IMF/World Bank/EU that was having an even worse effect there than they have had so far here, and the EU crushed them mercilessly.
We can still elect a proper non-austerity government that will rebalance our economy in favour of everyone, not just the IMF/World Bank/Usual Billionaires, and the EU can't stop us.
The danger,of course, is we may not have an economy to rebalance, as we are now back in the unfettered hands of the most incompetent financial mis-managers known to man - the Tory party, that brought us Black Wednesday, 15% interest rates, and latterly a massively increased 1.7tn of debt and a 100bn deficit despite punishing the poor, pushing the disabled and infirm into destitution, the introduction of slavery through "workfare" and enriching the already obscenely wealthy through tax breaks and avoidance, and now, this; what may turn out to be the worst shrinking of our economy ever known to anyone alive.
But I'm trying to be positive, so fingers crossed, eh? Hope for the best....
All in all a bit of a mixed bag, you might say.
Thursday 23 June 2016
So, I voted IN - this is why.
Because the Leave campaign was hateful. Literally, full of hate. The economic arguments are capable of being pitched either way, like any set of numbers, and the argument that leaving would be "more for us, you lot stay out, even more for us" I found less than compelling. There is a bigger picture than all that, and it is this; the EU is full of people. The UK is full of people. Every country is no more nor less than its people; the referendum is all about what happens to us, and to them, as people, and division is never in people's, or a peoples' best interests.
The thing that chilled me the most about the hateful Leave campaign was not Johnson's about-turn on the EU the second he saw a personally advantageous career move, and never mind the cost to anyone; not Gove lying about some Nazi propaganda concerning scientists and Einstein which he basically made up for the same reasons as Johnson (though in his case he may just be dim enough to believe his own rhetoric).
The thing that chilled me the most about the hateful Leave campaign was not Johnson's about-turn on the EU the second he saw a personally advantageous career move, and never mind the cost to anyone; not Gove lying about some Nazi propaganda concerning scientists and Einstein which he basically made up for the same reasons as Johnson (though in his case he may just be dim enough to believe his own rhetoric).
What really got me was hearing Farage telling us that his dream, his vision, was for Europe to become totally independent sovereign states once again, and as he described it my mind's eye wandered inevitably to Serbs fighting Croats and the siege of Kosovo, tanks rolling up the high streets of Prague, and Ukraine and the others, and camped outside the mines in Poland, and shoot-to-kill curfews, and of an emboldened Germany or France, or whoever, making their grab for land and power from their neighbours, and the thousand years of war that Europe enjoyed until recently. That more than anything.
Especially not migrants FFS!
I also think it's massively ironic that the main thing that seems to be motivating the Leavers is that "migrants are willing to work for low, below minimum wage pay". Well, the EU have rules about that, and employers are breaking the law and could, and should, be prosecuted and workers paid the national going rate. To fix this they are voting to leave the EU whereupon the practice will instantly become not only legal, but encouraged.
It would be funny if it weren't so damn tragic. The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist.
Tuesday 21 June 2016
#EuRef - a case for staying? Comments please!
Been having a long discussion with a mostly reasonable Leave-er on Twitter. Was interesting. The general conclusion I came
to, though, is that we don’t stand to gain anything by leaving.
We’d still be the 5th biggest economy
(though might not be if we leave) and 4th military power (for whatever
that’s worth), and would still play a central role in NATO, the UN, the G7, the
G20 and the Commonwealth. We could play an even greater central role in Europe
if we stay but no role at all if we leave. Yet we will still have to pay them
bucketloads of money and abide by their rules and regulations (the way Norway
does) while having NO influence over any of it, which sounds like madness.
In exchange for what?
Control of our borders? We have that now as we are
not in Shengen.
The freedom to engage in a race to the bottom by
lowering wages and tearing up workers rights to compete with China and Pakistan
in cheap manufacturing?
The freedom to go back to shit floating up on our
beaches, 200,000 deaths a year from air pollution and the destruction of our
countryside due to unrestrained fracking?
And … Er …. That’s it.
Oh and our currency and the banks will crash again,
which will be lovely, but at least houses will be cheap for a while ;-)
Doesn’t seem like that good a deal to me.
#EuRef - a case for leaving? Nope. It's all BS!
Somebody (not I) posted the following on a Facebook thread a couple of days ago: I duly reposted it on a @UKLabour "Vote Remain" comment thread asking for comments/refutations. I feel foolish now though!
Turns out the whole thing is cut n paste bullshit designed to tie you, the postee, up in refutable detail forever while making the poster look like they know more than Jack Shit, which they do not.
In other words, typical #Brexit bullshit. If you see this crap anywhere, the point by point refutation is here, and below is what Brexit Bollocks looks like.
"Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.
Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.
Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn't paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK, I used to contract out to many, then the work just dried up as they were sold off to companies from France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc., and now we don't even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.
I haven't detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don't even go there.
I haven't mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.
Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven't read the party manifesto of The European Peoples' Party.
2/ You haven't had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don't think it matters."
Turns out the whole thing is cut n paste bullshit designed to tie you, the postee, up in refutable detail forever while making the poster look like they know more than Jack Shit, which they do not.
In other words, typical #Brexit bullshit. If you see this crap anywhere, the point by point refutation is here, and below is what Brexit Bollocks looks like.
"Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011 with EU grant.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013 with EU grant.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east with EU loan.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents all with with EU grants.
Gillette gone to eastern Europe with EU grant.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with EU grant.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with EU grant.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU 'regeneration' grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK tax-payer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it's Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.
Anyone who thinks the EU is good for British industry or any other business simply hasn't paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name me one major technology company still running in the UK, I used to contract out to many, then the work just dried up as they were sold off to companies from France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, etc., and now we don't even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.
I haven't detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don't even go there.
I haven't mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.
Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't. If you think the EU is a good idea,
1/ You haven't read the party manifesto of The European Peoples' Party.
2/ You haven't had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.
3/ You don't think it matters."
Monday 20 June 2016
Parliament recalled: Cameron, Farage in denial.
Until the Prime Minister and the baying mob he is pleased to call his MPs, and indeed some PLP MPs who appear to side with "our" far right government, and others connected to the Westminster hate-fest that the EU debate has amplified, recognise that the name-calling and spreading of fear and hate starts with them - they who set the tone for the debate and have willingly dragged UK politics into the gutter - then all the recalling of the house, fine words and what will inevitably appear to be the crocodile tears of those MPs and their cronies and enablers in the Media will only be seen as hypocritical nonsense.
There are many examples to quote just from Cameron alone; "terrorist sympathiser", "horde of migrants", "bunch of migrants in Calais" for starters, and that's without Farage's holocaust tribute poster or the racist, abusive, divisive and downright horrible contributions of so many others.
While Cameron and the rest are in denial about their role in all this and their responsibilities in this regard things will only get worse.
It is now abundantly clear that Jeremy Corbyn's steadfast refusal to share a platform with Cameron and his cronies was absolutely the right thing to do. Yet again Corbyn's judgement has been utterly vindicated and his campaign stands alone as the only campaign with a shred of dignity, integrity and morality.
It is now abundantly clear that Jeremy Corbyn's steadfast refusal to share a platform with Cameron and his cronies was absolutely the right thing to do. Yet again Corbyn's judgement has been utterly vindicated and his campaign stands alone as the only campaign with a shred of dignity, integrity and morality.
Friday 17 June 2016
Jo Cox - No. We *should* blame the Tories.
So we're living in a country where the great and the good are murdered and those that create the conditions where this can happen parade their "thoughts and prayers" before us like it was nothing to do with them.
Well I'm sorry, but it has everything to do with them.
The Tories are responsible. The Tory government, and the far right government in waiting, are responsible for setting the tone. They enable it all with their constant labelling of the peacemakers as "terrorist sympathisers" and "security risks", their labelling of the sick and dying as "scroungers", their demonising of the very refugees they have created with their guns and bombs as a "swarm", a "horde", a "tide" of lawless benefit tourists wrecking our NHS and grabbing our housing stock when the government itself is destroying those very things as fast and as efficiently as it possibly can. They print their lies in their tax-dodging friends' newspapers and media outlets, they peddle their drivel through once-respectable channels like Newsnight and the News at 10, they set us against each other and lap it up as they shovel the cash value of our country's assets into their offshore accounts.
And when they've got away with everything they can, make no mistake, they will be winched out by private chopper as the blood rises above their knees to some private island in the sun.
#justsaying
Well I'm sorry, but it has everything to do with them.
The Tories are responsible. The Tory government, and the far right government in waiting, are responsible for setting the tone. They enable it all with their constant labelling of the peacemakers as "terrorist sympathisers" and "security risks", their labelling of the sick and dying as "scroungers", their demonising of the very refugees they have created with their guns and bombs as a "swarm", a "horde", a "tide" of lawless benefit tourists wrecking our NHS and grabbing our housing stock when the government itself is destroying those very things as fast and as efficiently as it possibly can. They print their lies in their tax-dodging friends' newspapers and media outlets, they peddle their drivel through once-respectable channels like Newsnight and the News at 10, they set us against each other and lap it up as they shovel the cash value of our country's assets into their offshore accounts.
And when they've got away with everything they can, make no mistake, they will be winched out by private chopper as the blood rises above their knees to some private island in the sun.
#justsaying
Jo Cox. Hope not hate. Make love not war.
Jo Cox's murder is sad beyond words. I have a spouse, and young kids who are having to grow up in a world where these things still happen, and happen here. I can't begin to imagine how bad the grief is for them. As JK Rowling put it: don't pity the dead; pity the living.
They say she was one of the good ones. One of those fighting for the refugees, the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the struggling. So it's a double tragedy that we have lost someone like that. There seem to be so few MPs like her. I hope that one day some good will come of it, as it always does from such atrocious acts. One day I hope those other MPs - the ones working to sow division, and hatred, and judgemental finger pointing among us to help them get what they want - will realise what it is like for the rest of out here in the real world, and work to give us hope, not hate. Start to promote peace and love, not war and division and profit at the cost of human lives. One day I hope, as they sit their vigils and tell us all about their "thoughts and prayers", that they will spare a thought and maybe a prayer for the 15 teenagers stabbed to death in the UK last year and the 126+ women murdered by their partners; and further afield the deaths of so many in the wars that we wage or waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Libya and all the rest. They say that politicians live in their Westminster bubble, insulated by their high salaries, obscene expenses allowances and gargantuan pensions, from the struggles that so many people face - literally millions more than just 6 years ago - trying to cope with illness, stress, mental illness, hunger, homelessness, insecure employment, disability - persecution by the very institutions that are supposed to have been trying to help them. Well yesterday the bubble was burst and if any good is to come of this, it has to stay that way.
They say she was one of the good ones. One of those fighting for the refugees, the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the struggling. So it's a double tragedy that we have lost someone like that. There seem to be so few MPs like her. I hope that one day some good will come of it, as it always does from such atrocious acts. One day I hope those other MPs - the ones working to sow division, and hatred, and judgemental finger pointing among us to help them get what they want - will realise what it is like for the rest of out here in the real world, and work to give us hope, not hate. Start to promote peace and love, not war and division and profit at the cost of human lives. One day I hope, as they sit their vigils and tell us all about their "thoughts and prayers", that they will spare a thought and maybe a prayer for the 15 teenagers stabbed to death in the UK last year and the 126+ women murdered by their partners; and further afield the deaths of so many in the wars that we wage or waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Libya and all the rest. They say that politicians live in their Westminster bubble, insulated by their high salaries, obscene expenses allowances and gargantuan pensions, from the struggles that so many people face - literally millions more than just 6 years ago - trying to cope with illness, stress, mental illness, hunger, homelessness, insecure employment, disability - persecution by the very institutions that are supposed to have been trying to help them. Well yesterday the bubble was burst and if any good is to come of this, it has to stay that way.
Thursday 16 June 2016
Wednesday 15 June 2016
Channel 4 does the nation proud.
This is the first time that David Cameron has been questioned by Channel 4 News over alleged Tory election fraud.
After five months of investigation, Jon Snow was finally able to ask the PM about the claims centring around hundreds of thousands of pounds of apparently undeclared or misdeclared election expenditure by the Conservative Party.
Channel 4 Facebook post and video
That's a cracking go from Jon Snow. Literally the only one to take this on properly, when all the others - Marr, Neil, Kuenssberg, Peston, Humphrys, Robinson, Naughtie, and pundits like Portillo and Johnson - have merely facilitated brushing it off lightly.
And this is hugely important for everyone. If the Tories bought the election in 32 constituencies and are an illegitimate government then so is everything they've done - including this awful referendum.
After five months of investigation, Jon Snow was finally able to ask the PM about the claims centring around hundreds of thousands of pounds of apparently undeclared or misdeclared election expenditure by the Conservative Party.
Channel 4 Facebook post and video
That's a cracking go from Jon Snow. Literally the only one to take this on properly, when all the others - Marr, Neil, Kuenssberg, Peston, Humphrys, Robinson, Naughtie, and pundits like Portillo and Johnson - have merely facilitated brushing it off lightly.
And this is hugely important for everyone. If the Tories bought the election in 32 constituencies and are an illegitimate government then so is everything they've done - including this awful referendum.
Saturday 11 June 2016
Shouldn't we be calling New Labour "Neo Labour"?
It's almost as though people, including MPs, aren't one-dimensional ciphers for memes and media campaigns. There are some spectacularly awful MPs on every side of the house, and some spectacularly good ones too. A good Tory is hard to find, in my opinion, but they DO exist. Easier to find them among the Greens and Labour... Jeremy Corbyn was on The Last Leg last night and wsa asked "How many of your MPs are at home watching right now hoping you'll cock this up?" - he reckoned about half. So to mind the glass is also half full.
But I'm thinking less and less about left vs right these days That old binary system of thought is well past its sell-by date, surely. To my mind it's more about the neoliberal wealth hoarders vs. humanity.
Jeremy Corbyn is almost uniquely unqualified to be a minister, bless him, and especially leader which is precisely why he should be, and why I and about half a million other members of the Labour Party support him.
Like Groucho Marx who wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member, and the old adage (was it really Douglas Adams coined this, bless him?) that anyone who seeks power is by definition unfit to hold office, Corbyn was reluctant to stand and only did so after John McDonnell, who had stood twice before, insisted "it was his turn".
Corbyn's was the last minute nomination of a truly Old Labour principled and uncompromising left winger, made so that the others - all New Labour Blairites through and through - could prove once and for all that Old Labour was finished and neoliberal New Labour was what everyone wanted.
Shouldn't we be calling them Neo Labour, really?
Because the result was abject failure. An almost total rejection of the warmongering, PFI wielding, NHS destroying, financial crash enabling privatisation-friendly clause 4 revoking neoliberal New Labour experiment. The experiment that said it was acceptable to get elected at any cost fell flat on its face because it turned out the cost was way more than anyone was willing to pay, even if it was the remnants of a previously successful administration demanding the payment.
But I'm thinking less and less about left vs right these days That old binary system of thought is well past its sell-by date, surely. To my mind it's more about the neoliberal wealth hoarders vs. humanity.
Jeremy Corbyn is almost uniquely unqualified to be a minister, bless him, and especially leader which is precisely why he should be, and why I and about half a million other members of the Labour Party support him.
Like Groucho Marx who wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member, and the old adage (was it really Douglas Adams coined this, bless him?) that anyone who seeks power is by definition unfit to hold office, Corbyn was reluctant to stand and only did so after John McDonnell, who had stood twice before, insisted "it was his turn".
Corbyn's was the last minute nomination of a truly Old Labour principled and uncompromising left winger, made so that the others - all New Labour Blairites through and through - could prove once and for all that Old Labour was finished and neoliberal New Labour was what everyone wanted.
Shouldn't we be calling them Neo Labour, really?
Because the result was abject failure. An almost total rejection of the warmongering, PFI wielding, NHS destroying, financial crash enabling privatisation-friendly clause 4 revoking neoliberal New Labour experiment. The experiment that said it was acceptable to get elected at any cost fell flat on its face because it turned out the cost was way more than anyone was willing to pay, even if it was the remnants of a previously successful administration demanding the payment.
Corbyn given a chance to speak properly on the TV. Don't the audience love it?
Jeremy Corbyn on The Last Leg (Thanks @GeorgeAylett) - he still looks like a politician but, the most normal-looking one I've ever seen. Typical of him that of all the places he could have popped up it was @TheLastLeg. He knew that Adam Hills and the guys would rib him but get laughs with him not at him and, crucially, allow him to speak without constantly shutting him down or seizing and subverting the narrative the way the Marrs and the Kuenssbergs of this world always have to do because of who pays them and how their shows work.
.@jeremycorbyn on #TheLastLeg saying why Britain should remain in the EU - build on its strengths to help workers. https://t.co/FoJf1jJufU— George Aylett (@GeorgeAylett) 11 June 2016
Friday 10 June 2016
Max Hastings - still awful after all these years.
Max Hastings - you all know Max Hastings - today writes in the Spectator that David Cameron "could tell more of the truth" to regain public trust in his article An age of broken promises.
But there is an awful lot to argue with.
His "intelligent middle-aged, middle-class woman" certainly sounds middle class but "intelligent" is really pushing it.
His conviction that the world is becoming a more comfortable place certainly doesn't chime with the latest figures from even the "leaders of the free world" America where in 6 years the low earners have seen their average net worth drop by 50%-ish, middle earners by 20%-ish and the top earners average has gone UP by 45%-ish - so, more comfortable for himself , Parris and Ridley, perhaps.
"Today’s political class is collectively more intelligent and better educated than those who went before". Really? Our chancellor is mathematically illiterate, our PM is a foul-mouthed ranting bully, most of the other ministers are by turns corrupt, hypocritical and willfully ignorant (you really need examples?) and a large proportion of the opposition (all parties) are little or no better and arrogant enough to assume that it either doesn't matter or nobody has noticed. Or both :)
"Yet those people somehow commanded more respect than do their 21st-century successors." ... hmm! Martin Rowson vs Hogarth? There's always been a low opinin of politicians. In my opinion, natch.
"Twitter, Facebook and other social media have raised new obstacles in the path of rationality and understanding". Equally though, they have subverted the ability of establishment pundits to frame and limit debate and provide the conclusions. Corbyn has vetoed the mainstream media becuase he knows that whatever he says will be twisted around and weaponised against him; but using new media the result is that his riposte in the HOC to the Queen's speech was viewed - unedited and untrammeled by "opinion" - over 2,000,000 times in the first day. Yes there's a lot of static on Twitter etc but the fact that it is uncontrolled - not least by the 5 billionaires running the rest of the media machine - is its strength.
I'm kind of struggling to discern his real point though - politicians have always been lying scum so it's OK if they continue to be? I don't think David Cameron telling the truth over the next few years is going to help the Conservatives much.
"We defrauded the public in over 100 constituencies at the last election"?
"1500 disabled people have killed themselves since we started harassing them and casting them into destitution"?
"12,000 disabled people have been thrown out of work and now have to exist on benefits because we deliberately took away their motability vehicles"?
"Homelessness is at its highest level ever because we have an uncontrolled rental market, have destroyed social housing, we think £450,000 is 'affordable' and BTW 45% of MPs are landlords"?
"We said tax havens were immoral but we have billions stashed away there and our MEPs block all attempts to to open them to scrutiny because it's only immoral for other people"?
"More people are in work than ever before but somehow in-work poverty is at its highest level ever too, likewise the number of children in families in in-work poverty"?
"Children living in poverty is up by 30% to 4,000,000 since 2010"?
"Destitution and malnutrition and paupers' burials have risen by an unprecedented amount in the last 5 years"?
Most damning of all - "austerity" is justified by us "paying down the debt and reducing the deficit" but the debt has now risen to £1.7 trillion and the deficit more than doubled to £100 billion, while (surprise) the richest 1,000 people's net worth has gone UP since 2010 from around £270,000,000,000 to £ 540,000,000,000. The biggest lie of the lot.
And so on - and on, and on. No, Max, I really don't think Cameron should start telling the truth if he knows what's good for him.
Hilariously, the only election promise that Cameron has ever kept - the EU referendum - is the one that will destroy him. There's irony. And the clear lesson? NEVER tell the truth!
Wednesday 1 June 2016
#EURef - monopolising the narrative.
All we're being allowed to base our decision in the EU referendum is a choice between two Tory governments.
Do we want the current one, that has all but destroyed everything left to us by the Thatcher/Blair neoliberal onslaught?
The government that has stolen everything we as a nation owned from under our noses while telling us it was for our own good?
Stole our disabled people's mobility vehicles and with it their jobs, Esa allowances, and hopes for a future, to name but one inhuman injustice, while banking the cash in their own offshore accounts as national debt and deficit rise to unprecedented, irrecoverable levels?
The government that bought their election through fraud on an industrial scale?
Or do we want an alternative government, whose lies make even the current bunch look almost plausible?
Gove, who is telling us that he, the man that voted to increase VAT the week after he was elected on a manifesto that explicitly promised not to do so and voted three times since against any possibility of a cut, would cut VAT if only we voted the uk out of Europe and him, presumably, into a position of even greater power.
Johnson, the self aggrandising career politician who has wrecked London's housing infrastructure and is responsible for at least 4 deaths so far as a result of cutting fire stations to finance his awful vanity bridge?
An alternative government that includes the Doctor Death of the DWP Ian Duncan Smith himself, who wants to sweep away our human rights, employment rights, and every other kind of protection from rampant neoliberal capitalism, who says that "another two years of austerity is a small price to pay" - it for sure isn't him that will be paying any price - creating a government so right wing that it will disenfranchise UKIP.
That is the choice being presented to us by our so-called free press. A press so biased that on the day that a judge threw out the Tories attempt to block a time extension to allow their electoral fraud to be investigated on the grounds of the "unprecedented scale" of the allegations, the big stories of the day at the BBC majored on Corbyn-bashing, the Telegraph ran with migrant-bashing, the Mail with Isis and Brexit FUD, and so on.
Because apparently nobody else has an opinion. Not the LibDems. Not Deim. Not Labour, and CERTAINLY not Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell or any of the hugely respected economists and academics weighing in with rational, reasoned argument. Literally nobody apart from the two sides of the most fraudulent, damaged, split party in the whole history of British democracy has either a single word to say, a single argument worth hearing or any validity whatsoever.
Well you know what they say about free stuff, like our free press. It ain't worth shit.
So the biggest decision we'll ever make, that will affect this country's future, and that of our children and all future generations, is to be based on this thanks to the five or so non-domiciled extreme right wing billionaires that run our media and our parliament.
Fuck em all. May contain swearing.
I really am getting closer and closer to just telling everyone to fuck off.
The EU can fuck off for what they did to Greece, what they are doing to the rest of us, and they can take the world fucking bank and the IM fucking F with them.
The BBC can fuck right off and take their fraudulently misused licence fee with them.
Brexit can fuck off with their pathetic lies about investing in the NHS and cutting vat because that is the last thing any of them would ever do.
Cameron can fuck off and take Sadiq Khan with him because they are a pair of the most unprincipled lying two faced shitmongers ever to walk the earth.
Labour can fuck off because half of them are neoliberal self serving Tory bastards wrapped in a red flag spreading lies about everyone, debasing the concept of anti-semitism for their own profit and destroying lives and any chance of us having a labour government, and the other half of the Labour Party wring their hands and rearrange the deckchairs and do fuck all about it.
The media and especially the BBC can fuck right off for lying to us every day by covering up the real stories; about "austerity" which is just the rich stealing everything they can lay their filthy hands on and grinding the faces of the poor, the disabled, the children they are literally screwing and every other wage slave - literally slave - into the shit and laughing in our faces at us; about the biggest political scandal in the 600 year history of parliament which is hardly reported at all especially by, again, the publicly fucking funded BBC; about the deaths, the suicides, the leap in child poverty, paupers' burials, destitution, in-work poverty, lifetime debt, housing crisis and all the rest that we never hear about.
IDS and Osborne can fuck off for being the chief architects of all that, for lying to us about why they're doing it and laughing in our faces while they do it because most of us appear to believe them.
HMRC can fuck off for persecuting ordinary working people while letting literally hundreds of billions of pounds slip through their incompetent greasy fingers owed by corporations, executives, offshore investment holders, politicians and rich scroungers everywhere.
Meanwhile Murdoch, Cameron, Hilary Benn, the Mail, the Torygraph, the guardian the BBC, itv, and most of our politicians, insurance and pension companies manufacture wars in which tens of thousands of ordinary people die or are horribly maimed and scarred for life by the senseless horrors inflicted on them daily so that vast profits can be made, resources stolen and all opposition exterminated, so they can really fucking well fuck off.
Israel exterminating the Palestinians can fuck off.
Saudi and Iran exterminating the legit opposition to Assad in Syria can fuck off as can Russia, Turkey and the fucking Americans.
Fuck 'em. Fuck all of 'em to fuck, the fuckers.
The EU can fuck off for what they did to Greece, what they are doing to the rest of us, and they can take the world fucking bank and the IM fucking F with them.
The BBC can fuck right off and take their fraudulently misused licence fee with them.
Brexit can fuck off with their pathetic lies about investing in the NHS and cutting vat because that is the last thing any of them would ever do.
Cameron can fuck off and take Sadiq Khan with him because they are a pair of the most unprincipled lying two faced shitmongers ever to walk the earth.
Labour can fuck off because half of them are neoliberal self serving Tory bastards wrapped in a red flag spreading lies about everyone, debasing the concept of anti-semitism for their own profit and destroying lives and any chance of us having a labour government, and the other half of the Labour Party wring their hands and rearrange the deckchairs and do fuck all about it.
The media and especially the BBC can fuck right off for lying to us every day by covering up the real stories; about "austerity" which is just the rich stealing everything they can lay their filthy hands on and grinding the faces of the poor, the disabled, the children they are literally screwing and every other wage slave - literally slave - into the shit and laughing in our faces at us; about the biggest political scandal in the 600 year history of parliament which is hardly reported at all especially by, again, the publicly fucking funded BBC; about the deaths, the suicides, the leap in child poverty, paupers' burials, destitution, in-work poverty, lifetime debt, housing crisis and all the rest that we never hear about.
IDS and Osborne can fuck off for being the chief architects of all that, for lying to us about why they're doing it and laughing in our faces while they do it because most of us appear to believe them.
HMRC can fuck off for persecuting ordinary working people while letting literally hundreds of billions of pounds slip through their incompetent greasy fingers owed by corporations, executives, offshore investment holders, politicians and rich scroungers everywhere.
Meanwhile Murdoch, Cameron, Hilary Benn, the Mail, the Torygraph, the guardian the BBC, itv, and most of our politicians, insurance and pension companies manufacture wars in which tens of thousands of ordinary people die or are horribly maimed and scarred for life by the senseless horrors inflicted on them daily so that vast profits can be made, resources stolen and all opposition exterminated, so they can really fucking well fuck off.
Israel exterminating the Palestinians can fuck off.
Saudi and Iran exterminating the legit opposition to Assad in Syria can fuck off as can Russia, Turkey and the fucking Americans.
Fuck 'em. Fuck all of 'em to fuck, the fuckers.
Sunday 29 May 2016
They're all fractured. What a mess.
The Tory party is now so horribly split that two of their heavyweight Brexiters - Bridgen and Dorries - are openly calling for a change of leadership and a general election by Christmas. The Toried are doomed. If not by this crazy EU referendum, which let's face it. Was only ever intended to pacify the back benches and keep UKIP at bay; if not by the same poisonous infighting that destroyed Major's government; then by the largely unreported (at least by the BBC and ITV) but nevertheless utterly unprecedented industrial-scale allegations of electoral fraud currently being investigated in (currently) 28 constituencies.
Interestingly, since Cameron's much trumpeted "mandate" can be said to depend on an allegedly fraudulent election result that the Tories thought they could buy with impunity, the whole EU referendum - not to mention the vast list of revolting things they've done to our country like the junior doctors' contract, all the changes to ESA, working tax credits, the whole and total destruction of our country and everything in it - could be called invalid, and reversed.
Unfortunately Labour are in almost equal disarray. Around half a million of us have come back to Labour thanks to the democratic election of Jeremy Corbyn and the return to sensible socialist policies. But crazed multi-millionaire Murdoch-loving property hoarder and widely-regarded-as-war-criminal Blair and all those who sailed in him are intent on ripping any chance we have of getting our country back out of their hands in the last gasp of a neoliberal shitstorm that's already cost us nearly everything we have.
The LibDems meanwhile are down to six MPs and the only thing stopping them being outnumbered by the lunatic even-farther-right-than-the-Tories UKIP is the most undemocratic electoral system ever invented.
Jeez what a mess. What's the answer? Corbyn for Emporer? Proper proportional representation? Jail the bankers, VIP paedophiles, expenses scroungers and tax dodgers and assemble a parliament from the hundred or so (and I feel like I'm being generous here) MPs that are left? What??
Interestingly, since Cameron's much trumpeted "mandate" can be said to depend on an allegedly fraudulent election result that the Tories thought they could buy with impunity, the whole EU referendum - not to mention the vast list of revolting things they've done to our country like the junior doctors' contract, all the changes to ESA, working tax credits, the whole and total destruction of our country and everything in it - could be called invalid, and reversed.
Unfortunately Labour are in almost equal disarray. Around half a million of us have come back to Labour thanks to the democratic election of Jeremy Corbyn and the return to sensible socialist policies. But crazed multi-millionaire Murdoch-loving property hoarder and widely-regarded-as-war-criminal Blair and all those who sailed in him are intent on ripping any chance we have of getting our country back out of their hands in the last gasp of a neoliberal shitstorm that's already cost us nearly everything we have.
The LibDems meanwhile are down to six MPs and the only thing stopping them being outnumbered by the lunatic even-farther-right-than-the-Tories UKIP is the most undemocratic electoral system ever invented.
Jeez what a mess. What's the answer? Corbyn for Emporer? Proper proportional representation? Jail the bankers, VIP paedophiles, expenses scroungers and tax dodgers and assemble a parliament from the hundred or so (and I feel like I'm being generous here) MPs that are left? What??
Saturday 28 May 2016
Osborne - chief accountant to Cameron the Robber Baron
So The Guardian says that the "austerity" policies of the Robber Baron Tory party do more harm than good. I'm surprised they noticed, given their record since 2010, but well done, anyway.
Finally they've noticed that everyone with half a brain has been saying "this won't work". That while the debt has soared up to £1.7 trillion, the deficit to £100bn and there's no money for anything, food bank use is over 1 million visits a year, pauper's burials, child poverty, in-work poverty and destitution are all massively increased.
Finally they've noticed that while all this was happening the richest 1,000 people in the country's wealth hoard has gone up from around £260,000,000,000 to around £570,000,000,000, and that's just the money we know about that isn't squirreled away in an offshore account in Panama.
The Guardian's experts have now realised that austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. In fact if there is one economic necessity that we should all heed it's that austerity is destroying the economy, destroying the country and only benefits a very, very few at the expense of very, very many.
He's Cameron the robber baron's chief accountant and he isn't "stupid", he isn't "a wanker" and he isn't "wrong". He knows EXACTLY what he's doing.
Finally they've noticed that everyone with half a brain has been saying "this won't work". That while the debt has soared up to £1.7 trillion, the deficit to £100bn and there's no money for anything, food bank use is over 1 million visits a year, pauper's burials, child poverty, in-work poverty and destitution are all massively increased.
Finally they've noticed that while all this was happening the richest 1,000 people in the country's wealth hoard has gone up from around £260,000,000,000 to around £570,000,000,000, and that's just the money we know about that isn't squirreled away in an offshore account in Panama.
The Guardian's experts have now realised that austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. In fact if there is one economic necessity that we should all heed it's that austerity is destroying the economy, destroying the country and only benefits a very, very few at the expense of very, very many.
The trouble is, though, that he doesn't care. His policies have absolutely nothing to do with what is good for the country, and absolutely everything to do with what is good for the banks, hedge funds, Tory party MPs and their billionaire backers with offshore investment accounts, arms manufacturers and those that invest in and profit from war, illness, insurance and bent privatisation deals.
So the experts can say what they like and the evidence can pile up to the height of Everest because he literally couldn't care less.
He's Cameron the robber baron's chief accountant and he isn't "stupid", he isn't "a wanker" and he isn't "wrong". He knows EXACTLY what he's doing.
Portillo: legalising slavery and murder-for-profit are "nothing at all".
Portillo was on one of the Tories' apologist shows the other day - Daily Politics - claiming that the government "had no ideas" and there was "literally nothing in the Queens Speech".
This has been shared all over social media and is the most brilliant whitewash I've ever witnessed. So many people bought it. "Oh there's nothing there, let's look the other way". ""Ha ha - the Tories are idiots". "Well that's nothing, let's talk about the weather".
But the fact is that the Queens Speech was a masterclass in hiding the most outrageous plans - the reintroduction of slavery through the adoption of the US model of privatised prisons (this really is no exaggeration), the final destruction of the NHS through the introduction of "home hospitalisation" and US style HMO's and the Kaiser Permanente "healthcare" of legalised murder by omission of treatment for profit - oh there was plenty in that speech, Portillo.
Nice try, but some of us are just not as stupid as you seem to think we are.
Watch him here doing his very best to convince us there was nothing of note in the Queen's Speech this year.
Watch the video on Nye Bevan News
This has been shared all over social media and is the most brilliant whitewash I've ever witnessed. So many people bought it. "Oh there's nothing there, let's look the other way". ""Ha ha - the Tories are idiots". "Well that's nothing, let's talk about the weather".
But the fact is that the Queens Speech was a masterclass in hiding the most outrageous plans - the reintroduction of slavery through the adoption of the US model of privatised prisons (this really is no exaggeration), the final destruction of the NHS through the introduction of "home hospitalisation" and US style HMO's and the Kaiser Permanente "healthcare" of legalised murder by omission of treatment for profit - oh there was plenty in that speech, Portillo.
Nice try, but some of us are just not as stupid as you seem to think we are.
Watch him here doing his very best to convince us there was nothing of note in the Queen's Speech this year.
Watch the video on Nye Bevan News
Save the Land Registry
Why am I not surprised?
If further proof were needed - which it isn't - that far from "paying down the debt" (around £1.7tn far from it) - so-called austerity and the fire sale of the UK's few remaining assets is all about the Tories and their mates banking our cash offshore in their accounts.
The Land Registry should under no circumstances be "privatised". It is successful, profitable and a national asset in every sense.
If further proof were needed - which it isn't - that far from "paying down the debt" (around £1.7tn far from it) - so-called austerity and the fire sale of the UK's few remaining assets is all about the Tories and their mates banking our cash offshore in their accounts.
The Land Registry should under no circumstances be "privatised". It is successful, profitable and a national asset in every sense.
If you thought the undervaluation of the post office was scandalous feast your eyes on this.
Friday 27 May 2016
Channel 4 this evening reported that the Tory party overspent fighting the marginal Thanet South seat by "tens of thousands of pounds which was never declared".
They even sent their lawyers down there this week - including top QC James Laddie - to fight the local police application for a time extension to allow a proper investigation to take place. The court will announce its decision next Wednesday.
UKIP candidate Nigel Farage was defeated by just 2,800 votes.
I'm no UKIP supporter. But there's such a thing as democracy and like the right to free speech, it must be defended at all costs.
They even sent their lawyers down there this week - including top QC James Laddie - to fight the local police application for a time extension to allow a proper investigation to take place. The court will announce its decision next Wednesday.
UKIP candidate Nigel Farage was defeated by just 2,800 votes.
I'm no UKIP supporter. But there's such a thing as democracy and like the right to free speech, it must be defended at all costs.
Thursday 26 May 2016
The Guardian - trying to look balanced while only standing on their right leg.
Several things emerge from this slightly hysterical article in the Grauniad today.
One is that the paper is still right wing enough to think that the current labour leadership are "far left", which only looks true from where they stand, not from the viewpoint of our beleaguered population.
Another is that this aligns well with the remaining right wing of the PLP who see "their" party as being taken over by Class War. If they haven't noticed that the Tories are already waging the most abhorrent class war on 99% of the country they are blinkered indeed. The Tories in my opinion pose the greatest threat to this country since 1939, and it's way past time we fought back.
To that end its good to see a strengthened leadership preparing itself for a more outward facing fight than it has had to cope with up until now.
There are still fifth-columnists within the PLP fighting dirty to bring the leadership down, for instance by trying to tarnish John McDonnell with the Tory party's deliberate electoral fraud brush:
"One party source briefed the Times that [economics adviser] Meadway was paid by the Transport Salaried Staffs Association union while working for the shadow chancellor but this was not declared as a donation to McDonnell."
Those seeking to destroy the party from within by damaging their own must either join a party more closely aligned with their ambitions or begin to work in the interests of those they are supposed to be serving - the poor, the weak, the disadvantaged, the politically criminalised, the helpless and innocent victims of Tory misrule and neoliberal policy.
But it's good to see a genuinely thoughtful, intelligent and centrist left wing leadership gearing itself up. They need to address the 5 billionaires' media machine rather better than this, though!
jeremy-corbyn-labour-review-ready-snap-election
One is that the paper is still right wing enough to think that the current labour leadership are "far left", which only looks true from where they stand, not from the viewpoint of our beleaguered population.
Another is that this aligns well with the remaining right wing of the PLP who see "their" party as being taken over by Class War. If they haven't noticed that the Tories are already waging the most abhorrent class war on 99% of the country they are blinkered indeed. The Tories in my opinion pose the greatest threat to this country since 1939, and it's way past time we fought back.
To that end its good to see a strengthened leadership preparing itself for a more outward facing fight than it has had to cope with up until now.
There are still fifth-columnists within the PLP fighting dirty to bring the leadership down, for instance by trying to tarnish John McDonnell with the Tory party's deliberate electoral fraud brush:
"One party source briefed the Times that [economics adviser] Meadway was paid by the Transport Salaried Staffs Association union while working for the shadow chancellor but this was not declared as a donation to McDonnell."
Those seeking to destroy the party from within by damaging their own must either join a party more closely aligned with their ambitions or begin to work in the interests of those they are supposed to be serving - the poor, the weak, the disadvantaged, the politically criminalised, the helpless and innocent victims of Tory misrule and neoliberal policy.
But it's good to see a genuinely thoughtful, intelligent and centrist left wing leadership gearing itself up. They need to address the 5 billionaires' media machine rather better than this, though!
jeremy-corbyn-labour-review-ready-snap-election
Democracy? Moi?
We don't, really, have much of a democracy, do we? Over 70% of the country is unrepresented in Westminster. 12.6% share of vote for ukip, for example, who I don't support by the way, and they have one mp o/o 650. Tories 36.9% (only 3 times the votes) but have a 12 seat majority. This is not really democracy, it is the appearance of one if you squint with one eye firmly shut. Deim and others are starting to address this in Europe and not before time.
Far from "the left wing" being "increasingly rejected", it is the authoritarian right wing, becoming increasingly desperate in their attempts to discredit the ever more resonant and supported opposition to the neoliberal narrative, whom the public have rumbled. Every big gun has been brought to bear in the last year: the combined might of the BBC news and politics departments, the Murdoch, Barclay Bros and Rothermere press machine, half of the guardian and some of the independent who were the first to go broke peddling the establishment line and have now seen the error of that and have started to print something approaching balance (and thank heavens for Jon snow and Michael crick at C4); but still people aren't fooled. Despite all of this the public are still overwhelmingly supportive of the doctors and the NHS, and implacably opposed to the privatisation of all schools and the notion that Google et al paying 3% tax when the rest of us pay 25%-odd is fair.
Any edition of question time will show you the deep unpopularity of the ruling class and their horrible attitudes and assault on ordinary people that has produced an endless succession of Teary Tories and lords, generals and former establishment figures rushing to distance themselves from the racist Islamophobia of the modern right wing, and the longest and loudest applause from every audience every week is always against the latest government moron to try sitting there trotting out their tired old neoliberal cliches and discredited lies dressed up as research. Every week.
It is Osborne that has no economic credibility with the public, with academia, and with any economist they are not paying off.
The so-called austerity with which the "debt is being paid down" is so obviously nothing of the sort that only the most simple minded buffoon could now regard it as such. In the 6 years since this lie started the debt has more than doubled to 1.7 trillion, the deficit is now £100 billion a year, they have borrowed more money than every other uk government combined and he has missed every single target he has ever set himself bar none in what has to be the most outstanding display of incompetence in the history of the world.
Astonishingly while there is apparently no money for working tax credits, supporting the disabled, protecting women from domestic violence, making the law accessible to all but the rich, developing sustainable energy, funding the NHS, schools, universities, supporting industry or keeping 400,000 children out of poverty, 1,000,000+ people from needing to use food banks and suffering from in-work poverty (thus used to be called slavery but we dress it up nice now) or doing something about the return of rickets, destitution and a 30% rise in pauper's burials, the richest 1,000 have seen their personal wealth increase from 247billion to over 570 billion in those same six years. Fancy that.
Tbh it doesn't take a left winger to either think that this is sick beyond belief or to realise that far from simply not caring about the 5th richest nation on earth sinking into poverty it is wealth hoarding that is actually causing it.
The neoliberal ideal and the wealth hoarding are increasingly being recognised as a cancer and when Ian Duncan Smith can appear to be left wing compared to a government that calls itself centre moderate then you know that the world really has gone mad.
1984 was supposed to be a warning not a fucking blueprint.
Anyway, we can't really be said to be living in a democracy when the election was won by fraudulent means. 24 constituencies under reported their expenditure, 14 I think it is are being investigated by the police so far, as is Cameron himself… until their names are whitewashed, sorry, cleared, the issue of whether we are currently represented by the will of the people is moot.
Tuesday 24 May 2016
Ken Loach on austerity - and a stinging rebuke for Sarah Montague and r4today.
Radio 4 excerpt Today Programme 23rd May 2016
Ken Loach - national treasure - delivers an epic smackdown to Sarah Montague and the Today Programme. Listen using the above link - while it lasts.
Sarah Montague:
"Of course, there is huge public support for what the government has done. The polls suggest that there is very strong popular support not least for the benefit cap."
Ken Loach:
"Maybe because people listen to the Today programme too much. If you had to get out amongst the people who are in the food banks who are supporting those who are there - people who would not eat unless there were people providing charity - who have to choose between their heating and their food - I think you'd find that there's a great disgust and despair that we live like that in this country now."
50 years after Cathy Come Home and he is still having to make films like this.
Ken Loach - national treasure - delivers an epic smackdown to Sarah Montague and the Today Programme. Listen using the above link - while it lasts.
Sarah Montague:
"Of course, there is huge public support for what the government has done. The polls suggest that there is very strong popular support not least for the benefit cap."
Ken Loach:
"Maybe because people listen to the Today programme too much. If you had to get out amongst the people who are in the food banks who are supporting those who are there - people who would not eat unless there were people providing charity - who have to choose between their heating and their food - I think you'd find that there's a great disgust and despair that we live like that in this country now."
50 years after Cathy Come Home and he is still having to make films like this.
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