If you have comments I am happy to hear them - they don't have to be positive, but please, polite and constructive ... thanks.
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ElleFranWilliams8@gmail.com
(in reverse order ... 30 back to 1)
- Where did my courage go?
- The Seeds of Despair
- Pull up the ladder, lads!
- Tapping into old mates (that have made the bigtime!)
- Observations from a mongrel's perspective
- The invasion of the NHS by hostile forces
- Don't go to A&E, go see your GP; Don't see your GP, phone a specialist !
- Palestine and Northern Ireland - My joint soapboxes for today
- The Peaky Blinders of Westminster
- Growing old in 2023
- The Special One is such a nuisance!It certainly pays to be 'careless'.
- Taking on the Russians and the Chinese - it would be great misdirection!
13 Where has the 350,000,000 PER WEEK gone?
14 Not Anarchy, just every man for himself - starting at the top!
15 The King and his £150 million plus tax bill
16 The politics of football - When players 'vote with their feet'
17 Stop them putting more oil on the fires
18 In Praise of Colour
19 Returning to the Dark Ages
20 There's Party Politics and Party Politics ... Incitement to racial hatred as seen through the eyes of history
21 Why are all the real fighting Corbynistas outside Parliament?
22 Where is the modern day equivalent of 'The Brave New World'?
23 Shamima Begum ... Isn't 'the groomed' always the victim?
24 A Healthy Mix!
25 The first death knell to Silicon Valley: Technology good ... Manufacturing bad!
26 Palestine is not Nazi Germany but the Zionist Government in Jerusalem is acting like it is!
27 The sorry state of policing in the UK
28 Spring just doesn't seem to have the same effect this year!
29. When horror strikes - try verse! .... That's another fine mess!
30. Sir Kier 'comes out' ! The position is already filled!
31. Plus ce change, eh!!!! And we even have a Charles on the throne ... how spookie is that!
32. Women in Trade Unions
33. Nowadays it is only necessary to suggest an 'ism'.
34. Rest in Peace, Sinead
35. So does any of this ring alarm bells?
36. Suella and the Third Reich
37. The Gangs of Jerusalem
38. Has humanity learned nothing?
39. So the State has voted its right to check your bank accounts!
40. Nothing religious about this campaign
41. If ony Politicians were Football Managers!
42. Bandits or pickpockets?
43. Joseph Biden the modern day Pontius Pilate
44. Give me your children ....
45. To Trump or not to Trump?
TO TRUMP OR NOT TO TRUMP?
THATCHER WAS 'A GROCER'S DAUGHTER'!
?
Is it not grotesque that in an era where humanity has never had the ability to be more in touch, in communication, in dialogue with almost everybody else on the planet, that there is no dialogue, no acceptance, and no attempt to give up greed and acquisition for peace and humanity.
It is not even necessary to pick up a telephone (red or otherwise) nowadays to contact and converse with other parts of the globe because we are permanently able to be in somebody else’s office – or living room – at the press of a key. So it is not inability that stops people in power finding solutions, it is something within their very being – greed, self-interest, cowardice … and the big one … slavery! Too many people making the big decisions that have a profound effect on the hopes, dreams … indeed the very lives … of ordinary people around the world are ‘owned’ by others. People they have … just like Dorian Gray … sold their soul to. For money. For endorsement. For a promise for the future.
Ironically perhaps two of the few people that in modern times could be said to be ‘their own person’ (for good or ill) were probably in simplistic terms capable of being diagnosed as ‘insane’, ‘psychiatrically challenged’. Of course I refer to the old Boedicea incarnate, Margaret Thatcher, and the President as was, and the President could be, Donald Trump.
They could both be considered dangerous because they did not think like rational people. There were differences, of course, not least in the fact that Thatcher was very measured (though equally dangerous) in what she said, and Trump opens his mouth and anything might come out of it … but with their over-riding ambition for power and a place in history are very similar. They both have another similarity … their zeal to do the outrageous and ‘to win’ is increased exponentially by efforts to contain them, ridicule them, say them ‘nay’.
I have heard – not only from within the United States but from around the rest of the world – that Trump is ‘one of the people’ and it seems the more bizarre he gets the more ‘like the people’ he is thought to become. It is merely a comparison with ‘the norm’ … since ‘the norm’ in too many countries – that have not suffered coups (violent or peaceful) – is for those calling the shots to be almost exclusively from the ranks of those that ‘have’ rather than those that ‘have little’ … of course none from those that ‘have not’! Those that ‘have’ can buy, schmooze, blackmail their way into power, and have been at school with, in the golf club with, or share the same circle of friends with those that can ‘get them there’. They will have the right connections for whom it is in their best interests to keep them there – or at least people like them. Those who ‘have little’ have few of those avenues open to them … save blackmail, one might suppose! Those who ‘have not’ have increasingly lost the will to change the system because nobody works for them anyway. They have ceased to vote because they see it as irrelevant, let alone try to oppose or amend the system. In these days of increased ‘gagging’ in parts of the world where ‘free speech’ has been sacrosanct (such as the UK) it takes even more determination (guts and bile probably!) to try to oppose. Such countries – allegedly ‘free’ – would have one believe that other parts of the world are run by their ‘secret services’, but it is really just a case of how much, how open, how advertised are the departments within governments who check for opposite thinking, and definitely opposite saying and writing.
Hence somebody like Trump – who has had, and apparently now owes, billions of dollars, appeals to the masses because ‘the establishment’ are working against him. The fact that he is a rogue and a liar, a manipulator and has absolutely no ability to be diplomatic is forgotten because he is seen as almost a comic figure thumbing his nose at the people who are permanently treading people’s faces down into the dirt.
Quite how Trump would fare with his finger on the button of destruction is hard to predict. He has an inbuilt sense of self-preservation – which might extend outwards to the nation and the world, and it would seem the voters in the US are willing to take that chance.
cont....
Not that I am complaining … far be it from me to support or encourage a close alliance between Britain and the United States since both are unreliable – when it suits either or both, they will definitely err on the side of the most violent solution – if it gains them the most long term. Like Soloman’s suggestion to the two women that the most practical way to decide whose baby it was was to cut the baby in half … I am pretty sure that the US would take that advice if they could be sure that they would get the bigger or most profitable half. The UK would see that it was a pretty bloody poor suggestion, but its politicians would be in hock to the company that made the knife, and would have lost any empathy with either mother, or would see the baby as merely being another drain on society and would agree wholeheartedly. If the mother was foreign, or poor, or had the wrong antecedents, then well … one less, eh!
So I don’t wave any flag for either of the candidates in the US elections. I see absolutely why so many people I speak to, listen to and read, are in the Trump camp … as being ‘one of the people’. And yes, who could possibly want to vote to carry on the mandate of Biden – who did nothing to be applauded, and plenty to castigate. Apparently Trump is going to put an end to the Israeli annihilation of the Palestinian people and write in big letters that Netanyahu is guilty of genocide and ethnic cleansing and has exploited his position by deliberately blurring the edges between Zionism and Judaism. Well that is apparently what he is going to do. I have not heard him actually say any of that, but it may well be right – and I applaud it if it is so … but to have a Netanyahu in Jerusalem, a Putin in Moscow and a Trump in Washington … might sound great to the flag waving, gun-toting, might is right (or left!) in the US (or people world-wide who are taken with having ‘a commoner’ once again in the White House) but since this would be Trump’s second stint and it didn’t go all that well before … I am not too optimistic.
Still … C’est la vie! Sod it …. No … I refuse to join the ‘What’evs’ school of thought …. To be perfectly honest at the moment … sorry America …but I don’t care who is your next President … anybody … anybody that will stop the slaughter of Palestine, and will prove to the US that the are NOT supreme in the UN, and that they can use their veto all they like, but to do so will add them to the list of those cast out. No country should have the right to veto and in doing so endorse the slaughter of a whole nation for no reason apart from greed, cowardice and self-interest.
I
NOW .... GIVE ME YOUR CHILDREN ....
Not content with condoning, supporting and encouraging the slaughter of multi-thousands of children in Gaza and Rafah, now our Prime Minister and probably our would-be Prime Minister, Sir Kier Starmer (since he seems to be content to follow in the footsteps of Rishi Sunak et al) has decided to sacrifice the youth of this country too. I suppose it shows an even-handedness but not one that is likely to be applauded by many of the parents in the land.
I am not sure who he is trying to attract or mollify, but I would have thought that even the middle class Tory voters who think it is their earned 'duty' and 'right' now to vote Tory would consider sacrificing their teenage children as a price too high to pay to 'conform'.
Not content with forcing families in alarming numbers to resort to food banks, having killed off a sufficiently high number of the elderly by mismanaging CoVid, and taking a hatchet to the National Health Service, the new way forward is to get rid of the teenagers by introducing conscription. I guess if we are being governed from Jerusalem, that is not a surprise, since Israel has had enforced National Service for both sexes for years - allegedly because they were a 'threatened species'. Well we now now who were the 'threatened' and who were the 'threats'.
I would be horrified if many ... indeed any ... families voted for a Party that advocated such a law. You'd really have to have a sadistic streak in you to wave your child off to such an uncertain fate. It is one thing to be smoozed by the adverts for the Army, Navy and Air Force when they are promising you 'skills training', 'travel', 'lots of mates', 'an 'alternative family' ... but the 21st Century also offers you the chance to support countries that annihilate whole families - babies, children, grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, .... It doesn't matter apparently. Just kill 'em or force them out ... or better still force them out, then kill them. That is the kind of regime that this country now supports and gives succour to. That is the kind of regime that our young people will be 'serving to protect' and 'servng to endorse'.
JOSEPH BIDEN THE MODERN
DAY PONTIUS PILATE?
I know that Joe Biden professes to be a Roman Catholic and I have absolutely no problem with that being from a staunch Irish Catholic-steeped background myself. However …. He is, one could say, the 21st century equivalent of Pontius Pilate.
Now, whether one views Jesus Christ as the Messiah, or a prophet, or merely an historical figure, he existed lived some 2000 odd years ago. Not so far back in the grand scheme of things given the age of the universe.
Ironically the events of two millennia ago took place in and around Jerusalem. Pilate was warned by his wife to ‘have no truck with that man’ … (or words to that effect) and not to ‘get involved’. If you substitute the wife, for the mass of people warning their President ‘not to aid and abet’ then there is a common theme. The storyline is very similar. The biggest difference, one would have to flag up, however, is that Jesus Christ was but one man … in the Biden’s modern equivalent the death toll is already over 30,000.
But .. Pilate went ahead. Alright he didn’t actually go out with nails in hand and commit murder himself, but he ‘washed his hands’ of the crime, and still sent his soldiers out to do the bidding of those people hyping up the crowds. Incidentally the big wheels, the rich, the powerful, the movers and shakers of the time, who were afraid that they were being demoted because suddenly the ‘Jews’ might be getting their ‘promised’ king … God forbid that their race should be run, and somebody else – even if it was written in their texts and their scriptures – rain on their parade.
Biden is certainly letting lose the dogs of war, arming with not only military hardware, but actual and moral support for the murderers of Palestine holding court in the Knesset. Like Pilate, Biden might not himself be on the battlefield (albeit a very uneven battlefield, with babies, children, women, the elderly and the infirm on the one side, and the might of Mossad, the Israeli army, the ‘settlers' and the fanatical zealots stopping aid lorries on the other!) but he is providing the moral, practical and financial buffering that makes it all seem ‘kosher’.
cont .../ next column
Well ... either this Government truly just wants to wave the white flag - and who could blame them - or they want to take a sabattical while somebody else picks up the pieces they have created, who can say. Certainly they have had the benefit of a 'nice little earner' for the past decade, and maybe they have caused sufficient mayhem and will drift off into the comfort of their second or third home, in some corner of the globe and have a good laugh. Maybe the more brazen ones will take their seats in
I do feel it only right to point out that in the UK, Margaret Thatcher landed the United Kingdom in an idiotic war with a country on the other side of the globe not for any real reason, but simply because it was a distraction from what was happening elsewhere, and … frankly … because she could! It was only that the rest of the world did not give a damn about whether the Falkland Islanders saluted the flag of Great Britain, or Argentina that stopped the whole thing escalating. Namely … in simplistic terms … kept the United States from wading in. It was too close to them, and Britain is only an ally with a ‘special relationship’ when it suits.
Both nations are as proved by history warring nations. They have in the past seen it as their role in the world to not just play umpire, or referee, but to wade in …on whatever side perhaps suits their ideology, their alliances or … their national coffers. They will rarely go to war if it will impede trade, or big conglomerates’ (who are lobbyists, funders, special friends) interests in mining, arms, cheap labour or if it will ‘let in’ other countries that are permanently these days vieing for such relationships in resource-rich/money poor parts of the world.
cont.....
the House of Lords - continuing to take our money. Whichever of those choices they opt for, by now I think it must be obvious that they do not want to win the forthcoming election. If they do, then the annoucement of National Service is bizarre! Surely even their most ardent supporters don't want their kids slaughtered on the battle field or supposedly 'peace keeping' in countires where we are at the same time supplying the weapons and supporting the perpetrators? No, like always, they have made the mess, and now they will move away, and wait for somebody else to pick up the pieces. Then when all is back relatively in order again, people will be bored, and will think 'wouldn't it be nice to have a change?'. They will have forgotten the past, and back they come again .... HOWEVER .... LET ME BE THE BEARER OF BAD TIDINGS .. ... THERE IS NOW NOBODY TO PICK UP THE PIECES! The bridesmaid waiting to catch the bouquet is damaged goods. There is no integrity, no ability, no machinery to keep the wheels turning .... They sold their souls to the highest bidder and the devil adores the chaos ...
So … the Scribes and Pharisees ‘influenced’ Pilate (despite his wife’s warning) to let lose the dogs of war.
There is nothing ‘kosher’ about any of the bloodshed taking place in Gaza. So many enlightened and unblinkered Jewish people around the globe will tell you that. The atrocities are being orchestrated by Zionists – who may just incidentally be Jewish - who are engaging in exactly what Hitler tried (and he was condemned by all sane people around the globe) ethnic cleansing and annihilation of an entire race of people. Ironically people with the more or less the same background, history, geography and culture as themselves. Arguably all Semites.
So yes … the parallel between Joseph Biden, President of the United States of America and Pontius Pilate is in mathematical terms Q.E.D. Quad erat demonstrandum! Proven. Distance does not in this century give any alibi … Biden does not need like Pilate to be there putting his fingers in his ears to the advice of his wife, nor privately finding the whole debacle abhorrent but yet saying ‘on your own head be it’ … Joseph can be thousands of miles away and still be just as responsible for the massacre of the innocent – innocents, indeed, that have not deliberately sacrificed themselves for the ‘good of mankind’. Babies, infants maimed, blown up, set fire to, legless, headless, buried under rubble …. That Joseph is on your conscience.
BANDITS OR PICKPOCKETS?
I am grateful to an enlightened man, Nick Clark (known only to me by name, but I know that he is on the side of the angels because his politics are more than sound!) for reminding me that I should have concentrated more on my Irish language lessons in the past.
Nick quite rightly correlated the Irish Gaelic ‘toraidhe’ and its abbreviation Torai - or Toraithe - with the current Government. Indeed I guess I would just add the corollary that since the so-called ‘opposition’ has allied itself so comfortably with the Government, I would include them under the same banner. The only point of issue I would raise in using the term to describe either ‘party’ is that the term used to apply to ‘wanted’ bandits, i.e. ‘wanted’ . Obviously in years gone by, that meant ‘wanted’ by the forces of law and order. Taken at face value, however, I would have to argue that I cannot see anything about the word ‘wanted’ that describes how most of us feel about either the Government or the so-called ‘Opposition’. Frankly, ‘wanted’ – they ain’t!!!
They are certainly bandits insofar as they act outside the law, break the law with impunity, rarely getting sanctioned, and if so, then the impact on them is both slight and momentary. They are ‘out’ one minute and ‘back’ the next. They cheat with impunity, they lie with every sentence, and they appropriate public money as if it is their own.
In the past, there has been a version of ‘checks and balances’ with at least the semblance of an ‘Opposition’ to baa and hiss appropriately and to offer an alternative come an election, but at any future election, we will perhaps be offered the choice between the ‘Toraidhe’ and the ‘piocadh pṓca’.
Whilst I am holding out no justification or excuse for the ‘toraidhe’, the ‘bandit’, they at least are what they say/said on the tin. The piocadh poca’, the pickpocket, is clandestine, your friend until he steals your wallet, or your mobile phone, or your umbrella. There is something ‘less professional’ and ‘honest’ about the pickpocket.
However, before people think I have taken leave of my sense and am getting nostalgic for the good old self-serving, thieving Tories, I should add that a lot of those described as toraidhe’ in Ireland in the past, were on the side of the people, and their politics were sound. That cannot be said of our own version today. Tories are not on the side of the people, and their politics is as sound as a cracked bell.
cont.... above ...
IF ONLY POLITICIANS WERE
FOOTBALL MANAGERS!
So on a rainy Wednesday evening after a hard days work earning too little and battling traffic or waiting for trains, or standing all the way from Kings Cross you accept that it is your civic duty to go and put a cross on a small unpleasant piece of paper. You look for your identification to make sure that you are who you said you are and trundle off to the nearest school or other public building that has been designated ‘the poling station’. When there, even outside you might encounter a couple of by now cold, wet and desperate people who are insistent that you identify your voting number so that they can report back to ‘the campaign organisers’ that ‘their people’ don’t need chivvying – or even escorting. Times are hard and every vote counts!
Then when you have run the gauntlet of those restricted to the outside of the building you enter and have to produce your documentation again for the ‘official’ who dutifully – with a pen – draws a line through your name so that you cannot vote twice … even though you have been even reluctant to vote once … given that by the year of Our Lord 2024 there is absolutely no difference between either of the two so-called parties. You could very easily have said ‘Sod the lot of you … the only party you lot recognise are those illegal and illicit ones that only you can enjoy yourselves. You banned everybody else’s gatherings! But you have got this far … so grit your teeth and put a cross somewhere on the scrap of paper.
You see the names. You see the name of the Party that the candidate alleges he/she represents and you wonder just what happened? How did they all go so very wrong? What happened to the promises that they made last time? Why are they all so far up the bottoms of corporations, billionaires, financial institutions and wide boys that they have forgotten that it is you that is paying their wages.
As well as that, you nearly cry because the Party that you thought you supported is now so far removed from what you hoped they would be that the gulf is so wide you could be forgiven for voting in quite the opposite direction. But then you come to your senses and see that the only difference is that ‘the other lot’ are more honest. They have never misled you, promised to be on your side, or pretended that they knew your struggles and your aspirations. So you have a choice. An honest Party that only thinks of themselves and will vote in any way that keeps the purse strings in the hands of the ‘haves’ and blames the ‘have nots’ for all the ills that befall the country. Or a dishonest Party that has taken your vote, chased you out by completely changing their policies mid-term, suspended or expelled you for ‘objecting’ or even ‘querying’ their highhandedness. Or AN Other … the lone voice crying in the wilderness Vote for Me … the others are tossers!
cont .....
However, having disparaged both main political parties – though really that is one and the same ‘party’ in essence, I am getting anxious that too many people are saying that ‘they have nobody to vote for’ so ‘won’t bother’. People died to gain votes for ordinary people, for non-landowners, for women, so it is not an option to not vote. There will be alternative independent candidates, and there will be candidates from new and burgeoning left of centre parties standing in many constituencies. If enough of them get into the sheep’s enclosure, they can collectively baa loud enough to make a difference – or certainly more difference than if people don’t vote at all, and leave us with more of the same. Even the Tories don’t really want to win this time round – they would rather, as they have done before, leave it for a few years for some other party to clear up their mess and give them a nice new environment to move back into. Unfortunately, there is now NO OPPOSITION to go back in and house-clean. The party that calls itself ‘the opposition’ is neither an opposition, nor competent, because they are owned by outsiders. By foreign governments, by major corporations, by monied individuals, and hence they have sold their souls already and accepted their thirty pieces of silver. They have traded in their integrity and cheated their constituents because of greed, or cowardice, or in many cases just ignorance, lack of political nous, or self-preservation.
DO VOTE …. DO VOTE …. DO VOTE …. DO VOTE….. DO VOTE….. DO VOTE ….. DO VOTE ….. DO VOTE ….
cont....
However that ‘Other’ might be a fascist in disguise, or somebody who hates you even though they don’t know you because though you are born here you are not the right colour, or the right religion, or the right sexual orientation … or just because you are poor and not ‘standing on your own two feet’ and not allegedly costing ‘them’ money.
The sod of all that is that we can vote for ‘the independent’ and our consciences will feel easier, but whatever their intentions, once inside the great blender that purports to be the representative of ‘the people’ … in case you forget, that’s you and me … their votes only really salve their own consciences, and will prove that they are willing to do what it says on the tin. They will vote as you would have voted. But they will be outvoted by the Party Machines. Their vote will be subsumed into the great mishmash of ‘ye’s and ‘nays’ … the nays being very appropriate nowadays since it is the sound of the donkey – the ass. The asses who are so far up the arses of their funders - those promising them a nice seat of the board afterwards if they play their cards right (and it is usually Right!) – that they could not vote properly if their life depended upon it. Because unfortunately their future already does.
So … Good luck with the next election… But still vote … or at least turn up at the voting station and make some kind of statement of disgust. They would like you not to vote, and for centuries only those with money could vote, and for women it took even longer to prove they were intelligent enough, worthy enough, mattered enough to have an opinion … so people actually died to gain you the vote … so whoever you vote for, whatever the disinclination to give any of them the satisfaction of taking part in the debacle, it is essential that they don’t get in by default. None of them. Vote for the candidate closest to your way of thinking. Remember … if you Vote Tory, you will get what they say on the tin, but it might not be what benefits you … well let me rephrase that, it probably won’t be what benefits you. But if you vote Labour, then who know what they will do once elected. Their current Leader is controlled by others, and is a dictator within his own party … indeed he thinks it is his OWN Party … so what the candidate says, may not be what the candidates chooses once elected.
The choice is yours …. But use your feet to walk there, your hand to make a cross, and your head to differentiate between fact and fiction. Do not vote by rote! What you ‘always did’ and what your parents/family ‘always did’ does not hold sway nowadays. It is all smoking mirrors and only the street smart will defeat the wide boys in the City and in the crooked realm of politics.
NOTHING RELIGIOUS ABOUT THIS CAMPAIGN!
So the Israeli butchers have decided to go for a change of scene. They have turned their bombs in the direction of no other than the West Bank and Bethlehem - on of all days Christmas Day. How deliberate must that be!
How thumbing of their noses can that be when rumour and probably Wikipaedia claims that Joe Biden 'is only the second Roman Catholic President of the US '- the first being John F Kennedy. Is it intentional? A deliberate attempt to escalate any religious hostilitity? If Biden - or Pope Francis - or ... well I'd say the British Government, but their only God is Money so at least religious bias cannot really be directed at them! ... decide now to really get irate and protest, then it will just be seen that Biden has ignored all desecration, anniilation, massacre of people up to now because they are Moslem, but once the wrath and terror of Israel is turned on Christians, then he sings from quite a different hymn sheet. Once again, they are building a religious dimension to the 'war' which is quite false and deliberate.
Please, President Biden, use this outrage as a reason to oppose ALL AGGRESION in the Holy Land - not because Bethlehem has now been attacked on Christmas Day, but because Israel's actions are entirely wrong and the Knesset are deliberately building in a religious factor which does not exist. They are completely mercenary and self-serving.
Although I see that it would be labelled as entirely self-centred and hypocrotical to react to Israel's genocide now, that does not give an excuses for doing nothing! Please show some courage and charity, some sense of justice and humanity and acknowledge that the Israelis are purely aggressors, and their motivation is self-serving and ... genocidal. Siimply land-grab and ethnic cleansing. They are not 'hitting back at Hamas'. Hamas are not in the West Bank! Even if they were - do you not think that to chose Christmas Day was just coincidence? They are not only aggressors, but barbaric and calculating aggressors. Their motivation is simply to grab territory, not to 'defend' themselves' or 'to hit back at Hamas.
SO THE STATE HAS VOTED ITS RIGHT TO CHECK YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS ….
The British Government, aided and abetted by the so-called ‘Opposition’ has singularly failed to stop the cheating and theft from ordinary British tax payers by big business, major corporations, tax evaders – indeed it has done everything in its power to encourage and aid and abet them. However, they have decided to make a stand and have voted to stop any kind of reneging and hiding of assets and wealth by … well by those receiving any kind of State benefit.
They are going to ensure that the old receiving State Pensions, people with Disabilities, the Poorest of Society on benefits, are not just pretending that they are poor! They have decided, apparently, that they need to take a stand and ensure that the ‘scroungers’ in Society are not ‘cheating’ and conning the rest of us. Those receiving State money … (whose money?) … may, after all, like Delboy Trotter in Mandela House really have ‘miilllliyons’ hidden away in their Couts bank accounts. They may have a great stash of cash being looked after in Switzerland by the gnomes of Europe! Or in the Caymen Islands, the Isle of Man …. Oh sorry that would be ‘the other lot’ …. The ones voting to ‘check’ on the probity of those who had little to begin with, and now have far less thanks to the Government’s (and Opposition’s) mis-management of the economy by both ineptitude and deliberate self-enhancement. Not to ignore the increasingly returning championing of class-bias.
Yes, the Government has voted their right to access your bank account – presumably to assess whether ‘they’ think you have ‘sufficient’ in savings to relieve them of their responsibility to pay you anything. That of course ignoring the fact that the nation has paid national insurance, income tax and rates and taxes … well now I guess it is council tax, but as my Gran would have said …. Same meat, different gravy! They have paid for those ‘hand-outs’ over years of working hard, and frequently enabling those ‘corporations’, entrepreneurs, big businesses to earn those big profits on which they are failing to pay tax – though frequently they are paying hand outs, or inducements, or perks, or promises of future employment to those in so-called Power who are making decisions which affect their wealth and prospects. Politics seems to be one of the only professions where you can apparently serve two masters – both diametrically opposed to one another, and get paid by both!
They are desperate to see that their buddies in big business, or major contributors to their campaigning coffers, don’t get any nasty laws past which expects them to actually pay their legitimate and appropriate share of the tax bill. To fail to be diligent and prevent any such move would be foolish because, frankly, one doesn’t bite the hand that feeds you. Let’s be clear, If we thought that we were ‘that hand’ because we elected them and pay their wages (N.B. over £80,000 per annum just to warm a seat and say nothing in the House of Commons, another £150,000 plus or so when you join the merry-go-round and get given some kind of ministry, or shadow ministry). , then it merely shows how foolish and wrong we are and always have been. Apparently their real ‘employers’, are those who can be part of the you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours pantomime.
cont...... next column
HAS HUMANITY LEANRED NOTHING?
How can they not see past the bile
And see the face of babe and child
The cruel and ruthless face of greed
Has usurped the cloak of ancient creed
To dupe the nation is bad enough
But to fool the world is dangerous stuff
Like Ghengis Khan or the Hun Atilla
THE GANGS OF JERUSALAM
The Gangs of New York v. The Gangs of Jerusalem!
What are the differences between inner-city Gangs embarking on warfare to extend their ‘territory’ and the Israeli Government’s determination to seize the land and homes of its neighbours, the Palestinians?
There are a few: Notably … mostly, Gangs target other gang members – they do not often deliberately set out to pick people at random within the territory that they have chosen to sequester! There are ‘casualties’ because of accident, or cock up, or somebody ‘going rogue’, but generally speaking there is some kind of known ‘target’ and some kind of ‘discernment’ as to who that target is. That is decidedly not the case for the Israelis.
Gangs wage ‘war’ using their own ‘gang members’. The Israeli Government uses their entire population by creating a climate of hatred, of assumed ‘might is right’, of perpetuating their claim that it is somehow a ‘religious war’ and it is ‘Jew versus Muslim’. They arm civilians, they encourage settlers who have a vested interest in gaining the targeted land to take direct action, making it not a crime to attack, steal, kill, maim men, women and children, but almost their ‘duty’ and a mark of their solidarity with ‘the cause’. Not just the superiority of one race over another, but denying the right of the ‘enemy’ to exist at all.
cont.... above
SUELLA AND HER THIRD REICH
So Suella Braverman has decided that 'it could be an offence to save a Palestinian flag' .....
Well, even in the year of Our Lord 2023 it cannot YET surely be an offence' just on her say so?
'Could' be an offence' ... Well so could waving an anti-Tory plackard, or asking for the dissolution of Parliament on the grounds that it is incompetent, but as of now .... Well .. It can only be an 'offence' if .... the judiciary join the deeply offensive racist rhetoric and tub thumping . I am not saying it will not - we already have the very dubious evidence of a flawed Police force to make us realise that we are living in dangerous times. BUT we must hope for better from those who actually know and administer 'the Law' as it is written, not as some despot and power-crazy woman with a chip on her shoulder and an ever-expanding ego dictates!
The very inability to see the lack of judgement entailed in demonising Russia and lauding Israel and weeping and wailing over Ukraine and condeming Palestine is not just offensive on humanitarian grounds, but is a mystery to anybody with a modicum of common sense. How can the nation tolerate a 'M'inister with such a degree of bile and ego, and who has the political leanings of a Third Reich officer.
cont.... next column (above)
So, let's have a catch-up? What's the prognosis?
Does any of this seem to ring alarm bells?
So forgive me for mentioning the ‘C’ word in mid-September, but the schools are back, Strictly Come Dancing is about to begin – so ‘that season’ must be on its way. All I can say is that it could be quite a ‘quiet’ festive season, couldn’t it!
If CoVid made it ‘different’ at the time, at least there was a bit of ‘a war-time’ spirit and ‘knuckle down’ element to that – a kind of temporary quarantine. For heaven sake we were even thanking the NHS rather than rubbishing them and telling them that they were being greedy expecting to earn a liveable wage! The epidemic we have now is far more invasive and debilitating, since it eats at the psyche and the very essence of happiness and despair: What is that epidemic? Poverty, need, and despair!
As the state of the country descends ever more into chaos and despondency, and the summer leaves us, the prospect of Christmas 2023 hones on the horizon. The prospect perhaps leaves us not so much unprepared as confident that we are about to have our noses rubbed in the fact that money is/will be/ in short supply, and what is there will be needed to pay mortgages, rent, and essentials. Not this year finding the spare cash for the latest toy fads for the kids or big shopping sprees at Hamleys, or constant arrivals of Amazon Prime vans at the door. Certainly no surprise trips to Lapland – maybe even an ostentatious display of twinkling Christmas tree or Santa’s Sleigh might be just too stark a reminder of what is not possible.
For those who would remind us that the stable nativity scene is, in any case, more appropriate and that the rest is flimflam and we would be missing nothing, I can say to a huge extent I probably agree. The cause of the situation is greed. One of the acknowledged seven DEADLY sins - and one that is proving truly deadly for too many - but ironically and unfortunately not the SINNERS!
However, the cause of the situation is neither Christian, nor humanitarian, acceptable within any of the tenets of any of the World religions …. The cause of the situation is greed. There is a relentless pursuit of profit and self-protection: ring-fencing the wealthy from any form of fair contribution towards the good of the wider community.
The irony of it all is that – ultimately – it will be self-destructive. Most of those that are twitchy about paying their proper way, driving ordinary citizens into penury, ultimately are dependent upon the goodwill of those very people for their on-going prospects! Who buys their goods? Who travels on their transport? Who eats/drinks/stays in their hotels? Who buys their media? Who spends money on their platforms? Who uses their search engines? Who puts their fuel in their cars?
If those who will have nothing more to lose stop buying – either in defiance, or because the barrel has just run dry – then where do their profits come from then?
As for the Government who aids and abets these calumnies and takes the kick-backs, the lucrative second and third jobs, the promised ‘little earner’ when their political life has run its course, well they should bear in mind that they are already in breach of their commitment to do what they were elected to do. To look after the best interests of those who elected them. They were NOT elected by corporations, by tycoons, by foreign Governments …. Every additional vote for, decision to, negation of a move that would be beneficial to ORDINARY PEOPLE is another proof of their dereliction of duty and their disloyalty to the undertakings that they made when they were given the trust of the people. It is theft of every penny that they have claimed in wages, in vast expenses – both legitimate and fiddled - and in kick-backs that have come as a result of the position they have been elected into.
There are three groups that are more responsible for the current disastrous situation and some may be surprised that one of those I am not including is the ‘Tory Government’. One can take it as read that they would have been looking after the best interests of their special interest groups when elected so they are just running true to form.
No ,the three groups are:
First … The Ultra-Rich - who resent paying a pittance of their wealth in fair taxes. So many of them expect special treatment by the State – since they get it wherever else they go. Don’t you know that Gods, Royalty, VIPs don’t carry a wallet because money is vulgar.
Equation:
To gather in = good;
to give it out = bad.
REST IN PEACE, SINEAD
Sinead O’Connor
........ would be the first to admit that she was sometimes rebellious because she saw it as her role in life to be the spokesperson for the silent. She had the ‘floor’, because her talent was undeniable, and so it was within her remit to use her voice, not only to sing, but to protest.
Ireland was a land totally dominated by the Catholic Church – whether one was Catholic or not – a bit like a Middle Eastern state now controlled by the Taliban. There was no real differentiation between the laws of the land, and the laws of the Church, because, like a hard-line Muslim state today, the State was the Church.
Priests and nuns were the arbiters of what was ‘acceptable’ and what was not. The Convent schools were harsh in their regimen, but nowhere near as harsh as the Christian Brother Schools where the boys were 'moulded'. They would have taught the training establishments for the SAS a thing or two!
There were National Schools for those that preferred (or were not acceptable to) the Convent Schools, but it made little difference, because the laws of the country followed the laws of the Catholic Church in any case.
Now … I was educated – from the age of 4 to 16 – in Convent Schools, and in many cases by nuns who had themselves come through the Irish system of discipline, sanctity, purity and obedience. I can easily see how debilitating and rebellion-provoking a person like Sinead O’Connor would have found it.
If she took her protests, her ‘shenanigans’ (as many people would have described it) sometimes too far, then it came with the circumstances, the passion, the realisation that she had the floor, and she was going to make the most of it.
Yes, I’d say some of her whackier ideas did her cause less credit – the whole ‘bishop’ phase, for instance! – but for all I know she may have had a rational reason for that too. Her fight for the right of her nation to be governed in the normal way by secular rather than religious dogma is exactly the same now as those of us who oppose, on behalf of the women of Afghanistan, the imposition of ultra Muslim ideology (and man-made extensions of Muslim ideology) on the female populace in that country. We see it as a diminution of their human rights, anathema to fair and just governance. Back in the day then … that was Ireland.
NOWADAYS IT IS ONLY NECESSARY TO SUGGEST AN 'ISM'
In modern times to manufacture a protest movement against any kind of real or manufactured slur or prejudice is both easy and foolproof. The real opposition to 'Corbyn' was around his monetary policies, taxation and redistribution of wealth. It had nothing at all really to do with any kind of racial, or religious 'isms'. But they rightly saw that the modern jugular is 'racism' . The most sensitive charge has always been 'anti-semitism- not only because of history, but also because all politicians are sensitive about the Jewish vote - worldwide and because it is really difficult for non-Jews to understand the difference between Judaism and Zionism.
Women in Trades Union
According to Helen O’Connor in The Morning Star, ‘Women are walking away from Union membership in their droves’ . Of the 200,000 who dropped out of Union membership in 2022, 120,000 of them were women.
From way back it has always been difficult to recruit and retain women in the Trade Union movement. This has many reasons – some their own fault, some the fault of the Trades Union, some the fault of the employers, and some the fault of their ‘significant others’.
Women working in the ‘public sector’ or major industry were always more likely to join a union because it was more ‘normal’. Staff were recruited as a matter of course and it was in everybody’s best interest because there was safety and power in numbers.
It was also more possible to do something about a cause or a grievance more immediately and far less scary to take up an issue mob-handed. Generally also it has to be acknowledged that the Unions themselves were better able, and more geared up take on employers in arenas that they knew and understood. The ‘private sector’ could be a very different animal – and a far more difficult battlefield.
Private employers often vetoed – and continue to do so (though since they see the Unions unfortunately as less powerful these days they have stopped being quite so paranoid) Union membership. It was definitely not encouraged. If they didn’t positively argue against it, to be a pioneer would take a very strong willed and dynamic person (probably not a newly appointed or employed woman!) since it would be tantamount to jumping into the abyss or off a cliff with no certainty of a parachute or a soft landing.
Women starting a new job – part time, full time, or career - are unlikely as a first thought to seek out a union to join … of their own volition. If she started work in the public sector, or a ‘unionised’ industry, then she would likely be ‘approached’ by somebody to join. If, on the other hand, she started work for a private company (however big) she would seldom see the need, or take the time to pick up a phone and actively seek out a Union to join. Even if the opportunity arose, and they were not anti-Union, or had been in a union previously, they would still have to consider costs versus benefits. Women earned considerably less – both within the same roles, workplaces, professions, and because so many are not in ‘career’ jobs, merely jobs that ‘fit in’ with their other responsibilities. To pay union dues has to be weighed against the probability of need and benefit.
Women are quite often working part time, and their work is – still in many places - considered – even by their partners – as ‘less important’ and just to bolster the household income or for ‘pin money’.
Unions over the past many years – since their decapitation and hog-tieing by successive governments – have not really been seen as ‘up for the fight’, nor have they been always ready to fight causes – certainly not individual causes. They have not only had a bad press, but they have had a bad press and – to the naked eye – not a great deal of success. More often, apart from in the public sector: nurses, teachers, etc. the issues of women workers have concerned an individual, or a few, or one location … with the ‘fight’ even then (if any) being taken on by a voluntary ‘steward’ or ‘representative’, who was just flying by the seat of their pants, in an environment that could be unhealthy for themselves from a promotion, or reputation, perspective. They may or may not ‘like’ or ‘agree’ with the appellant, or the cause; they may be apprehensive over how their role may be viewed by their bosses. With large, public sector or service industries, negotiating and representing was frequently done by, or overseen by, paid TU negotiators or officials. They had no sword of Damocles hovering over their heads, they were trained, supported and win, lose or draw, they could just move on to the next battle.
It is obvious that not every workplace can have a ‘paid official’ on site, but twisting somebody’s arm to step up to the role of ‘Trade Union Rep’ comes with a hole raft of if, buts and maybes. That person might be terrified or easily intimidated. On the other hand, they may be aggressive or undiplomatic. It is very easy to make somebody’s situation worse rather than better. Not everybody is equipped – even if they volunteer and there is a dearth of volunteers – to represent a person, or a group of staff’s, best interests. Some people leave Trade Unions not because of a political shift, or because they suddenly become a Thatcherite Tory, but because they lose their jobs because John Smith screwed up their disciplinary hearing, or Mike Davis, the ‘steward’ thought they were being ‘over-sensitive’ because somebody smacked their bum in the canteen queue.
If you add on all the people who have died, or been laid off, or gone self-employed, or totally changed profession or career during the past couple of years due to CoVid, and lock-down, maybe it is not all down to ‘disillusionment’? What is important is that people outside the Unions are SUPPORTIVE of the Unions rather than allow the Government and the media to stir up people’s resentment. People are in favour of the nurses’ pay demands; they do understand the rail workers trying to prevent a deterioration of safe working practices.
NOTHING has changed apparently in four centuries!
This was so spookily appropriate, I just had to pass it on ....
If you read the following .... which Oliver Cromwell wrote four centuries ago when he decided that 'Parliament' was just not worth a light and were all just feathering their own nests .... you will all be amazed, despite technology, massive amounts of new knowledge ... how little we have really grown as a nation ... perhaps as a world.
Cromwell might have seemed boring to me as a school child, and Charlie was so much more romantic and I do believe I was taught that Charles was good, Cromwell was bad ... but that may have been because I was educated at a convent school and Charles was Catholic, and Cromwell was not ... so Q.E.D. there was no question who was 'good' and who was ... 'needing redemption'. So ... I will accept the bias.
However, I deviate from my story ... but reading now what Cromwell said ... well he must have truly had a crystal ball ... If you have not lost interest, and can bear to read on .... have it in mind that this was written in 1653. Plus ca change ... and all that!!!!
"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
"
With thanks to Bob Dylan!!! Ever the Protestor!
Where have all the warriors gone,
Long time passing.
Where have all the warriors gone,
All gone away.
Where have all the advocates gone
Long time silent
Where have all the advocates gone
Not here today.
Where has the compassion gone
Long time missing
Where has the compassion gone
‘Who cares’ they say!
Where have all the Skinners gone
Of all hope bereft
Where have all the Bevans gone
There’s so little left
cont..../
The position is already filled!
So Sir Kier Starmer (I will give him his full name today because I am feeling magnanimous!) has decided that he is a ‘Conservative’. That is ‘unfortunate’ for two reasons: First, they already have a whole gaggle of self-serving, largely incompetent, callous knaves to choose from, and second, he has probably served his purpose for them and for Jerusalem already.
However, that having been said, it truly must be something of an epiphany for him … to be able to ‘come out’ and wear his colours with pride! Perhaps less so for the rest of us. It is like Boy George suddenly announcing to the world that he is gay … as opposed to Jimmy Saville, who accepted honours from State and Papacy … or Prince Andrew who the country bailed out to the tune of multi millions of pounds whilst pretending to be what they are not … blameless.
He should, though, at the same time, ‘come out’ as a liar, a fraud and a killer of dreams. Had he stood up in a court of law and spouted the lies that he hid behind to get himself ‘elected’, and better people ‘denigrated, ostracised, suspended and expelled’ he would have been guilty of perjury. I understand that lawyers constantly need their clients to ‘lie’ in order to persuade juries that they are not scumbags, violators, thieves and murderers, so perhaps it becomes an occupational hazard. Certainly truth has become a somewhat distant memory for Sir Kier Starmer, as has any kind of association with his previous – one would have to now suspect also spurious - involvement in the world of ‘Human Rights’. It can be looked on in the same light as Imelda Marcos hating shoes, and Hitler converting to Judaism. If it was anything at all, it was a nightmare, a sudden attack of conscience that was offensive to them in the cold light of day.
So Sir Kier (very likely some time soon to be Lord Kier of … Trumpton … or some such!) I truly hope you live long enough to understand the cost of your self-propulsion into the annals of history. I think we, though, may be more content with the way you will be portrayed. In 300 years, the likelihood is that your bones will not be dug up under a Leicester car park, but he, like you, let his ambition destroy lives. I doubt, though, that you will truly change the course of history and certainly not for the better. As a Conservative who has come out of the closet, there will be more of the ‘common folk’ to boo and hiss, than the rich and powerful that you sought to emulate and appease.
So please do tie your colours to Ted Heath’s mast .. and Bliar’s entourage and join the ranks of the chameleons. Thatcher who I detested was, frankly, worth twenty of you, since she at no time pretended to be what she was not, and always, always, looked out for the people she preferred to call her own … anybody but the ‘common people’.
cont/ .....
That's another fine mess!
They hankered for more ordered times
When people knew their place
When they could strut and pose and shine
And while away their days.
They rued the day that workers thought
That they could change their lot
When that dread word ‘equality’ chimed
And minions their place forgot.
Divide and conquer became the way
To drive the buggers back
To make them think that they could join
The rich and lordly pack.
You must not be a frightful drag
A drain on high-born loungers
You really need to buy not rent
Denounce those useless scroungers!
But how can these things happen here?
We thought we’d all sit pretty
We’ve made a balls up of it all
Where do we look for pity?
Spring just doesn't seem to do it for me this year!
An ode for what might have been!
Should I despair or scream in rage
To see the land in such a mess
There were such dreams for the brand-new age
But now there’s only things to depress
A land of despair in a world of chaos
The best of times, were close at hand
When life would be good, a hope for all
When people flocked to join the band
And rallied to the Socialist call
A Party of hope in a world of chaos
But who was to know the power of greed
We should have known, expect the con
But to suffer a shot from the devil’s seed
And watch the lemmings follow on
A people of despair in a world of chaos
Will someone please put back the clock
Make a nightmare once again a dream
Murderers must stand trial in a dock
For turning that dream into a silent scream
A Party dead; a Country going; a world soon gone!
cont.... above
The sorry state of policing in the UK
There has been a proposal to disband the police force as we know it because it is ‘unfit for purpose’. I hear what they say, and having lived, experienced, the corruption of the force in the capital over many decades, I can fully appreciate where the suggestion comes from. My only hesitation is in how – with a free for all and a lawless state – can we keep people and property safe? Even with the forces for law and order – corrupt as they may be in some places – crime, violence, vandalism is rife almost everywhere. It has become ‘the norm’ that there is a percentage of ‘society’ that has grown to believe that it is their right or their preference to act thus.
I gathered from the several advocates for the dissolution of a Force, that perhaps some kind of ‘citizens’ army’ would be preferable. I know it worked for Charles Bronson in the films, but I have my doubts as to what kind of ‘volunteer’ might come forward to offer their services? The behind the curtains Mrs. Bucket or Victor Meldrew are one thing, and I am sure the Neighbourhood Watch service is of value as the eyes and ears of the street, but what of 'real crime'? A self-proclaimed ‘vigilante’ band of saviours? Perhaps even those same – or similar – individuals who we currently pay not only to protect the law, but also apparently to flout and abuse it too for their own profit and gratification as well? Murder, rape, violence, drug dealing, racial abuse, violence, disrespect and corruption in some forces come with the unform. And we are told - even from the horse's mouth - that what we see is just the tip of the iceberg.
Do we have successful examples? Historically, the picture is not encouraging. Pre-Peel the land was certainly not violence or theft free - nor was it at all just! With men, women children sentenced for stealing bread, or sent to the colonies for minor offences while people with money got away literally with murder.
In more recent times, the policing and punishing of people in Northern Ireland by the paramilitary organisations was probably very effective - if you ignore the violence by the military, paramilitary and RUC forces themselves, of course. There is no greater deterent than fear of retribution from a force that you know has no aversion to doling out extreme measures.
However it was draconian in the extreme and any form of vigilante policing will inevitably bring out the worst in any group. It will attract the bully, the racist, the sadist, the Colonel Blimp, the disciplinarian. We would likely end up with a need for a force to police and rein in the vigilante force.
In my experience, only a small proportion of men (and some women) go into the police force because they are bad, mad or dangerous to know. They become that way because like all little boys (which is why it is generally speaking a bigger problem for male officers) they join a gang and are groomed via canteen culture. You join, or you don't belong. Too few are brave enough to be different, to be themselves, to risk being ridiculed, ostracised or threatened. They know the power of their 'comrades' (and I use that term with regret!) and they know what they are capable of.
cont.... above
Palestine is not Nazi Germany but the Zionist Government in Jerusalem is acting like it is!
Whatever the failure up to now of any of the World's supposedly safeguarding institutions, the UN, the EU, etc. to condemn the barbarity and land-grabbing behaviour of Israel, surely with this proposal to legalise State murder by introducing the Death Penalty just for Palestinians they cannot fail but be condemned by the World and thereby accrue sanctions.
Not that the whole of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is not in itself barbaric and indefensible, but such a measure added to their Statute Book would surely be a step too far for global justice?
It is easy for those who are being straightjacketed and made to walk on eggshells by the deliberately promulgated confusion over 'Judaism' and 'Zionism', but surely for any body that calls itself civilised and humanitarian, the proposal must be completely anathema.
Palestinians are killed daily by the Israeli army, by Israeli settlers - many of whom have been 'shipped in' from countries where they were not in any kind of distress, victimisation, threat or want. There appears to be no sanction against 'open season' for arson, violence, murder, terrorising of men, women and children in order to drive them from their homes and cultivated lands. Where else would such behaviour be tolerated by World Opinion!
It harps back to a colonial past where nobody''s land was safe from invasion, usurpation and destruction. It had been hoped that the world had moved on. If one reads the newspapers, believes the world media, then it has. Because Russia is rightly condemned for 'invading' Ukraine ... a land grab. What is the difference?
cont/ above
THE FIRST DEATH KNELL TO SILICON VALLEY : TECHNOLOGY GOOD ... MANUFACTURING BAD ..
As the fairy story goes, Once upon a time ... I worked for too many years for a University of Technology under the Vice Chancellorship of a man who had got his 'Sir' courtesy of a Labour Government, and his 'Lord' thanks to Mrs. T ... so I guess like St. Paul, he must have had something of an epiphany somewhere along the line. Anyway ... In my then role as Leader of a combined TU negotiating committee, which covered all levels of staff from Professors to more important domestic, technical and maintenance staff, I had a discussion as to why Mrs. T was throwing all UK manufact uring into the dustbin. I was told that it was passé. Let other countries get their hands dirty, the UK would concentrate on 'the financial sector' and 'the Cambridge equivalent of Silicon Valley. That kind of shortsightedness , fed by bigotry, personal, political and professional ambition and self-promotion is horrifying.
So now Silicon Valley is imploding ... with the second biggest financial provider going bust, and the real worry that many of the technology companies in the UK will go with it - unless they are bailed out by the Government.... i.e. by the public. Yes, the public whose jobs went with those decisions, the public who are desperately living with the consequences of the Government's more recent decisions - their inadequacy, greed and self-serving hypocrisy..
cont ... above
A HEALTHY MIX!
George, go out and play, don’t be a mole
A mother tells her son
Come to the table, eat proper food
- you’ll be sorry later on
Don’t stare at that laptop screen
just give your brain a rest
There’s lots of fun beyond this door
Get some exercise – that’s best!
You mostly spend your days alone
and grunt instead of speak
You were such a happy little boy
But now you’re such a geek!
You can’t eat pizza every day
your health will be much greater
If you just take a little walk
You’ll feel better for it later
What happened to that cricket bat
When did you last just run?
The swimming pool is open now
Go out and get some sun.
SHAMIMA BEGUM - Isn't the 'groomed' always the victim?
SHEMINA BEGUM ... Let me begin by saying that watching the documentary and the interviews with Shamima on the television, I found myself not ‘taking to her’. I was not even sold on her ‘honesty’ though it must be hard to be completely ‘honest’ when so much depends upon saying the ‘right’ thing … not necessarily the truthful thing, but the thing that people need to hear in order to be moved by your story.
From the viewpoint of this article, that is good … because I am therefore not being influenced by her personally but purely by how I view the Government’s reaction to her and her situation.
Shamima Begum was one of three very publicised fifteen year old girls who travelled to Syria in 2015. According to the televised documentary on her case, presumably to resurrect her story because of her on-going appeals against the refusal of the British Government to allow her to return HOME, there were other similar girls who had already gone before her that had not made the news. Indeed again according to the documentary, it was at the cajoling, eulogising and enticing of one such ‘friend’ that persuaded the girls to travel in the first place, virtually with the clothes they stood up in.
At 15, they were at a very impressionable age – an age at which they would not be allowed to marry, to join the armed forces, to drive a car, to be automatically tried and convicted as an ‘adult’. It was also an age when - were they in story books rather than horror stories - they may well have ‘run off to join the circus’, or in previous times, if they were boys, ‘run off to sea’. How many young people are living out on the streets having run away from home well before they are capable of doing so and ended up exploited, abused, criminalised … and dead.
They were also living in a society that was at one and the same time their home and what was to far too many of the rest of the population merely their ‘temporary accommodation’. A place they had no ‘right’ to call home … “No, but really where do you COME from?” If that can come from the Royal Family what security, what permanence can adolescent pre-adults have on the streets of London.
Though the part of London that they lived in meant that they were surrounded by people of South East Asian descent, that would be both a blessing and a curse. They would be permanently part of an entrenched and doctrinaire community – with high expectations of their young people. At the same time, the world outside that community is exactly that … outside. It would be disingenuous to not acknowledge that there was – and is - hostility and racism everywhere in the UK . One need only take into consideration the vitriolic reporting, the Government rhetoric, the outrages committed towards asylum seekers to realise that then and now there is nothing to make the label ‘home’ relatable to too many people – even people born in this country. Sometimes people whose parents were also born in this country! They look different, they worship differently, so therefore they are ‘not one of us’. As well, the ceaseless wars and constant adverse media bias was and is not helpful in overcoming prejudice and only makes it too easy for those of an already prejudiced and aggressive – fascist ‘- persuasion to polarise opinion and make people ‘take sides’.
Even for adults, whilst not condoning violence, people with an ancestry in another part of the globe, or an active attachment to a particular religion, must inevitably find a pull and an empathy with those allegedly ‘fighting to preserve’ their country or their religion. At the same time they must try to distance themselves from the brutality and violence.
I can have a fellow feeling with that. As a person with a very Irish background and a real empathy and kinship with that side of my family, though born in the UK, I was well able to empathise with the grievances of the IRA whilst hating the violence and their way of pursuing their claims. They were people who felt that the UK had ‘invaded’ and ‘stolen’ the six counties comprising Northern Ireland and that their predecessors had capitulated in their earlier attempts to ‘win back’ the whole of Ireland when they had already gained control of the other 26 counties. It is as inbred as the draw that, say, real cockneys – born within the sound of Bow bells – have towards their heritage as true Londoners, as scousers feel for Liverpool, as the English felt in fighting against a German invasion.
So there must be an understandable pull that many Moslems – young and old – must feel which can be exploited and ‘groomed’ for nefarious (both idealogical and carnal motives). Those people with age, with experience, with responsibilities, with financial commitments, have other balances. They are far better able to balance the odds and to make a judgement on the ‘romance’ of running away to join the ‘resistance’ . What chance have 15 year old girls surrounded in the UK by prejudice and the restraints on their freedom from their parents, due to their age, due to their religion, due to their lack of choice.
cont.../above
WHERE IS THE MODERN DAY EQUIVALENT OF ‘THE BRAVE NEW WORLD’?
Once people sought the ‘brave new world’ where life would be kind – or at least kinder. Even if the sensible did not really see money falling out of the skies, they did think that if they worked hard, that they could at least be in charge of their own destiny. The sadness in 2023 is that people still see the UK as ‘a place to forge a new life’ and a place to escape to. Is that not the saddest thing of all? What does ‘sanctuary’ look like today in this new millennium?
Centuries ago, people sailed from across the globe to America or ‘the new world’ because it was a land of opportunity and equality. If you worked hard regardless of your birth, your ‘station in life’, your level of education, you could – purely on merit – arrive at a quality of life that was comfortable and that you – and your family, both then and to come - could be proud of.
Centuries ago, however, in the ‘educated’ and 'masterful' realm that had invaded and ‘civilised’ and held sway over half the globe, the ‘have nots’ were being sentenced to ‘deportation’ for the most trivial of ‘crimes’. The ‘haves’ were ‘deporting’ men, women and children who had been driven to stealing and poaching in order to feed themselves and their families to ‘the colonies’ on the other side of the globe to punish them for daring to take from their betters, from the ‘haves’ . The law makers and law inforcers – from Parliament to the Magistrates – were the same people who owned the land, and hence the tenancies, the work opportunities and the working conditions. No trade unions, little education, few alternatives, and precious few avenues to change one’s lot and none to protest effectively. The wealthy not only owned the lands, their tenancies, their very existence but were ultimately both judge and jury. They saw it as their duty to ‘rid’ the country of such scoundrels. Even though that left the real arch-villains in situ like the fox in charge of the chicken coop!
Today, people sail for ‘this new world’ of ‘Britain’ in the hope that it is a land of opportunity and if they work hard they can escape war, starvation, pestilence, persecution and racism. Sometimes just – how unforgivable – to seek the possibility to afford a decent life for themselves and their families living in abject poverty back in lands often those same lands exploited and then abandoned by the affluent nations through history who took what they could and then cut and run.
Today, the ‘haves’ – ironically and illogically sometimes even the children of those earlier immigrants – want to send these modern day migrants off to far flung lands (indeed to lands that within the recent past have been devastated by wars, civil unrest and mayhem) or have them perish deliberately un-rescued in hostile, freezing waters of a stretch of sea sometimes within sight of land.
There is a question to answer here. Has ‘education’, ‘sophistication’, ‘financial betterment’, ‘history’, ‘genealogy’ been detrimental rather than beneficial to civilisation. Of course not – as a general premise! BUT certainly it can be true that for too many they learn the wrong things from those benefits. They learn what is good for them … and they learn that to share diminishes them in material terms. They convince themselves that – despite their own past, despite the fact that their own destiny has been shaped by luck, by violence, by trauma, by deceit and sometimes by murder and theft – now that they have reached a personally satisfactory place on the ladder of life – or the life-raft – they can and will make sure that nobody rocks that boat or threatens their claim to superiority.
cont... above ...
Why are all the real fighting Corbynistas outside Parliament?
They are so confident in the US and UK's commitment to their first love .... money .... that they have thumbed their noses and decided to test their power by bombing the West Bank on Christmas Day. I hope that it maybe gave some respite to othe besieged and desperate people of Gaza (though they may have attacked on both fronts - they are arrogant and enough!)
No, no Hamas as 'the target'. This was something entirely different. This had to be deliberately provocative to prove the hold they have over the US and the UK. A deliberate attack on the heart of the Christian community on Christmas Day, and the bombing of the centre of the Christian faith, Bethlehem on the most holy day in the Christian calendar.
Deliberate timing? Ignorant coincidence? Thumbing their nose and showing how little they care for anythiing, anyone? It certainly underlines - thank goodness - that 'Religion' is not really a factor in this 'genocide'. They are not Jews fighting for Judah, they are Zionists fighting for greed and power. There is not a relligious bone in Netanyahu's body! Nor those that are blindly following him and believing his meglomaniacal Hitler-like vitriol.
It is no worse, of course, to bomb Bethlehem than Gaza, but it does show how secure Netanyahu is in the hold that he has over the US. If Russia, for instance, deliberately bombed The Temple Mount, or the Wailing Wall the World (and mostly the hypocrits in the US and the UK) would rightly condemn them. So ... No, nothing 'religious' about this 'war'. Their only 'God' is Power!
If we thought that after an election we could rid ourselves of self-servers and people with an exalted view of their own rights and station in life, then we have to think again. Currently those waiting in the wings are the same people with different coats on … they may purport to wear a different colour rosette, but what was once red, has turned not just pink, but purple. They are Tories in deed if not in name, and are merely warming seats on the Left side of the House of Commons because they were at one time of the opinion that that was their best first step on to the gravy train.
The figures for votes in issues that affected the nation the most are woeful! I could raise some kind of admiration for those that actually voted WITH the Government on questions that were decidedly hard medicine for their constituents, and their voters. Or far, far worse their endorsement of the continuing death knell delivered for those living and dying under the constant bombardment ordered by ethnic cleansers and fascist land-grabbers. Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not in agreement with or understanding of them, BUT AT LEAST THEY HAD THE COURAGE to come out of the closet, show their faces and let us see their true colours. They said we know men, women and children are being slaughtered in their thousands, but I don’t care. That is at least a deliberate siding with the devil. In my view, far worse are those who had no such courage. To feebly follow the lead of a discredited ‘Leader’ who was financed into power by the representatives of those very fascists and who has been the puppet of ex-politicians who have in any case their own sins of aiding and abetting war and death to atone for and ABSTAIN! Where is the honour, the courage, the right to call oneself an ’elected representative’ in that? They are an abomination. They are cowards and are taking money, status under false pretences. How dare they pretend to ‘represent’ anybody when they cannot even represent themselves. Don’t tell me that all those ‘abstainers’ actually agree with the killing of children and the mass destruction of a whole region in order to move outsiders from other wealthy, peaceful, first-world countries into their homes? It is ludicrous and if it was not so barbaric it would be laughable. I have no idea how they look at themselves in a mirror, or look at their children without wanting to curl up in horror and shame. I hope none of them expect to get re-elected. When they are old and retired and look back on their cowardice will they want to reach for the bottle or the arsenic!
And now they are voting to search the bank accounts of their own electorate – in case somebody has a few pounds tucked away which would mean that they were not entitled to the meagre sums of pensions and benefits that many citizens have paid for over their fifty plus years of working. Can I remind the Government that they themselves ….let me qualify that the machinery of Government …. has no money of its own. It does not earn money. It only takes money. That having been said, individual members of the Government have too much money, and are overpaid for the poor and incompetent job they do, and might consider adjusting their views on taxation – for themselves, their extended families, and those on the periphery who work on the basis with them of ‘you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’!
CONT...
The fascist powers prove heartless killer
The need to own, oppress, subjugate
Should surely be our embryo state
Should humans now not have outgrown
The urge to kill, to take, to own!
cont....
How it is possible for a Government with the support of nations, with money pouring in from duped people around the globe, with a secret service so admired that it is mimicked and used in fiction, and with weapons, expertise and goodwill pouring in from all corners of the globe to be thought to be ‘at risk’ from a benighted population who have been corralled like prisoners in Guantanamo Bay with permanent restrictions placed upon their lives, their livelihoods, and their sense of security it is difficult to come to terms with. Yet the international press, too many Governments and too many World representatives, from the Pope to the UN seem to have swallowed the cover story!
Gangs do not have such power over foreign nations that they can simultaneously work on the annihilation of their neighbour and at the same time completely change the political climate in a democracy by slander, by misrepresentation, by bribery, by threat, by flattery simultaneously trying to ruin the reputation, and careers of people in order to insure that ‘sympathetic’ people are in charge. People who will continue to look out for the financial, military and strategic best interests of Israel - locally and internationally.
cont .....
I must presume that she would support he calousness of a Government cavallierly commandeering the assets of Asians - throwing them out of Kenya ? The forced migration of peoples in South East Asia? .... One who would presumably condone the Black Hole of Calcutta, Black Friday and a free for all if Spain decides it would rather likibraltar back?
After all it must be the case that 'might has right'? Or in most cases 'Money' and 'you scratch my back I'll scratch yours' has right ....
Beware, though Suella, and the US, that the Jewish vote can swing both ways ... Most Jewish people are affronted by being associated with attrocities supposedly committed in their name .... not in the name of Judaism but simply in the name of Zionism - which is becoming synonimus with Fascism ironically in these modern times ...
*************************************************************
cont ....
We could all be rich if we lived that way, I suppose, but most of us have too much conscience and humanity. Take for instance, those who expect others to bow down to them, whilst at the same time they sue ‘the nation’ – an on its knees National Health Service - when they don’t get handed a contract – because obviously they should get it, because look who is requesting it! Yes, I guess I am talking about the Virgin man. Or those with the big mouths who constantly knock the working man because ‘it only needs hard work and graft’ and then moves to Monaco to avoid paying taxes … sounds like the Sugar man to me! And so many more … including our own not-so-illustrious Prime Minister and so many of his colleagues, allies and family members with their tax havens and their international residencies.
Second … The Opposition Party – and to some extent the current ordinary members of what still has the temerity to call itself ‘the Labour Party.’ They have given succour and support to the most important ally that was available to enable all of this destruction to continue. They have either been incredibly stupid or incredibly self-serving to continue to support an obvious charlatan and hatchet man. A leader of dubious ability, charisma or principle who from the outset was compromised by his acceptance of a ‘list of expectations’ from a foreign government – for the relatively paltry sum of £50,000 to ‘see off Jeremy Corbyn. That foreign government an active and on-going fascist regime pursuing an ethnic cleansing and land-stripping exercise against its neighbours, and unforgivably masking its charges against those that oppose them by depicting them as anti-Semitic. If that dubious mainstay was not enough, he was also ‘advised’, ‘mentored’, ‘coached’, ‘Svengalied’ by an avowed fan of Margaret Thatcher, a war-mongering ex-politician (who, incidentally might be included in ‘Group One’ as well, since he is certainly not short of a copper or two).
Who knows why ‘the acolytes’ – mostly silent and unquoted - have been stalwart in appearing to support the Leader. It is a question only they can answer. One can of course surmise. To preserve their political health and look to their future status? To not end up at the end of a bitter, personal tirade of Press and media abuse like others have before? Perhaps it is not a betrayal of beliefs – maybe they just never had any? Maybe they are career politicians who stood as Labour candidates simply because that seemed the most likely choice of party and seat to win at that time in that election?
After all the adviser to the Leader had used that very same strategy some years before, and look how that had turned out? From ‘Labour because I have more chance of winning because the Tory seats are spoken for by those from Harrow/Eton/Winchester’ ultimately to Prime Minister is not bad going, especially if one amasses a vast fortune in money, property and opportunities to add to those along the way. Perhaps to lose credibility, your moral compass, any sign of a conscience is not so high a price to pay. The war-dead have paid a higher price, I suppose.
But back to the Leader’s acolytes, in the process they have reeked vengeance on good people – their colleagues, their friends, their mentors. They are cowards or they are Tories. The one thing that they certainly are not are LABOUR PARTY supporters, and most decidedly do not have one ounce of true Labour Party doctrine n their make-up.
And: The third group? The Media. Who could leave them out of the equation. Of course to a great extent their involvement is already dictated by the fact that so many of their owners can be found in Group One (The Billionaires). Their empires were used to press their personal agendas. The power of media and the increasing inability of too many professional journalists to be impartial, or to press a view that was contrary to their ownership, made it more possible for the Government to ensure that the State television options were ‘singing from its correct hymn sheet’ and not going off message. Journalists lost their courage, their principal raison d’etre – to tell people the facts.
A few remain – isolated and independent – hardly any within the in-house Press cohorts – and our hearts, hopes and best wishes go out to them – and helpfully for some trying to plough an independent furrow, perhaps our financial contributions too!
Before people get on their high horse, l should state out and proud that I am more Irish than English, I was brought up, and remain a practising Roman Catholic, and, as aforesaid, was educated by ‘the nuns’ during all of my formative years. Now I grant you that could speak in favour of my ‘impartiality’ or against it, but I would need you to accept that, since I was a gobby little tyke and not one to be easily kept in my box, I fared reasonably well through those years!
So, Sinead, you mad thing, rest in peace. Keep an eye on proceedings from your perch, but you need no longer shave your head to diminish your beauty (and you were beautiful – indeed if I were that way inclined, I could fancy you myself – both your face and your mind!) since wherever you are, I have no doubt that physical looks will be of little consequence. Either of no matter, or no mind.
cont....
The BoD were willing backers because of their links with the Knesset and Jeremy Corbyn's support for the Palestinians. Some people were naively 'used' to bolster the anti-semitic lobby - people with limited powers of political discernment perhaps - some to get back into the shop window, some because they genuinely failed to understand the situation.
But others were quite well aware but still willingly joined the witch-hunt because they understood the impact tax reforms, and a true socialist government could have on their own personal wealth. It was imperataive that they stop it - by fair means and foul - and to that end they used willing and gullible patsies - and easily flattered puppets, like Starmer, Hodge, Watson, et al to work on their behalf. Those of us who are not Anti-Semite, but are pro-Socialist - and we are many - have been sold down the river not only by other people's protection of their own status quo, or their naivete, but also by the fact that our current political system makes it almost impossible to alter the status quo, and it will get worse as laws change to make it illegal to protest, to dissent, to oppose ...
cont....
Yes, we need people in Unions so that those demonstrations of intent are worthy of noting, but more we need to not go back to a climate of anti-Union because the media, the Government, told people that they should be anti-union. Build up numbers, of course, for the sake of solidarity but please can the Unions concentrate on looking after the staff at the grassroots level, with their individual grievances and challenges. That will stop the exodus, and also encourage more women to see that there is a point in it all. Even if their men find it disconcerting, distracting, and time-consuming for them to become involved …. Heaven forbid ACTIVE!
In a climate of ‘I’m all right, Jack’ it is always going to be more difficult to recruit into a Union, and if people join and then find that it is not worth the money, because by and large nobody supports them, or believes them, or ‘thinks they have a good enough case’, or doesn’t return their call, or sympathises but does nothing, (all of which has happened more frequently than one would like to hope) then frankly ‘what’s in it for them?’ becomes the genuine question.
If you add on the fact that so many lay union reps are men, and that quite often women’s issues might include, for instance, sexual harassment, there is – or can be perceived – as a ‘comradery’ between men that sees some things as ‘trivial’ and ‘making a fuss over nothing’ which translates into a ‘negotiation’ which seems frivolous and dismissive to the woman involved.
have heard male lay trade union representatives telling women who complain about twanging bra straps or uncalled for remarks to ‘grow up’, or ‘where’s your sense of humour’, or ‘you should be flattered, he doesn’t do that to me!”
So … my credentials? First, I am a woman … good start. I have been a Union member; I have recruited and set up a Union Branch, I have worked both as an unpaid rep and as an official; I have been the Chair of a multi-Union negotiating team, as a National Officer – even as President of a Branch – of a major union. Additionally, I have seen the workings of a major union from the inside, having been a paid employee of a national union.
Nobody could wish to be more positive about women in Unions than me, but it is, frankly, hit or miss, whether one gets good service, or less good service – or to be brutally honest, frankly, bloody awful service. Which begs the question, whether anybody, man, woman, or monkey would remain paying subs and in membership of an organisation that was not really working in their best interests? To fight at national level is essential, but it is sometimes grassroots level that affects people the most, and which, in turn, demonstrates to non-members that it is after all worth paying the subs and running the gauntlet of your anti-union father, husband, partner or boyfriend!
Women’s ‘causes’ are not always seen as important – unless the battle is a head to head battle with an employer. A major issue, an issue that will affect industry-wide or nation-wide. An issue that becomes a fight Union to Employer, rather than at the end of the day focussing on the worker who raised the issue.
Whilst it is quite understood that the Union must win the major war, it still needs to show concern and interest in the individual worker/management skirmish because like small acorns, that issue may be something that affects a lot of women – women who are not in the union, but who might be, given the right incentive. –
Women are also ‘discouraged’ because by and large they feel they have more immediate things to do: give birth, rear children, put food on the table, support men, stay safe while out, keep their children safe, penny-pinch, run a household, look after elderly parents, look after children or partners with disabilities … and all with less pay, less consideration, and a society that still by and large is skewed and out of kilter as far as equality is concerned.
Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d, are yourselves gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.In the name of God, go!”
Oliver Cromwell – April 20, 1653
Thanks Ollie, I couldn't have put it better myself ....!!!!
AND WE EVEN HAVE A CHARLES ON THE THRONE .... HOW SPOOKY IS THAT!!!!
Where has the Opposition gone?
Once so keen, so vibrant
Where have the ideals all gone
Nowhere seen today.
Where have all the members gone?
Joined in their thousands
Where have all the members gone
Lost by Starmer every one!
cont....
She aspired for better, and fought her own battle, giving two fingers to Labour supporters like me and many others that you have so deftly ‘turned’, as well as the misanthropic members of her own party that thought themselves superior and at first a joke. They will spit you out, as they did her, and you will be of no use to the Knesset either – because your race will have been run, your usefulness no more … like yesterday’s fish and chip paper … which is also a thing of the past!
Since the world you have created cannot function without working people – who are the real wealth creators – it is only a matter of time before the whole pack of cards comes tumbling down. Many will have learned to live on meagre, some will have deserved to be welcomed by the knitters sitting by the guillotine since they tried their best to withstand the tide, but there will be those who are traitors to one, and outsiders to the other, and for whom nobody will cry at their demise.
That is not a ‘threat’, since I am not in favour of violence, neither from State nor populace, and in any case, I prefer to hope and pray that God pays his debts without money.
There is no knight in armour bright
To ride to save our bacon
With a Judas kiss, that knight betrayed
The chance of glory taken.
But never mind, you made your choice
And now you’ve time to ponder
Upon the wreck that is the realm
That is now rent asunder!
What of that dear sceptred isle
The Women's Institute brightly hail
Jerusalem’s no friend of ours -
Cos they forced the frauds to bail!
With coins so bright to tempt the man
He fell at the first hurdle
And now he has destroyed the plan
Our blood he’s left to curdle!
But never mind, we have the King
Who is safe inside his palace
With millions in his greedy mitts
He's drunk the sovereign chalice!
We screwed the globe, and took their land
We then told Europe ‘beat it’
Arse-licked the rich, and kicked the poor
The gruel is served …. , now eat it!
I don't have a miracle answer, and I am not saying that to seek an alternative is not right, but as much as I see the sense, also - now that I am aged, and have worked around people across the board, from children to recidivist prisoners, my entire working life - I would worry about the consequences. That we were going out of the frying pan into the fire. Better sort out what we have perhaps? It shouldn't be difficult ... after all we pay them. They work for us.
The answer would be in better recruiting, training, supervision, and even more so a certainty that unacceptable behaviour would be reported, and punished with appropriate severity and speed. The fact that they are entitled to a pension after a relative few years, would be the biggest stick and carrot, as would a register - similar to the sex offenders register - which would make it difficult for those in public office who committed an anti-social, sexual, racial, violent offence to work in a role with close contact with the general public. They are paid by us, their pensions are paid by us, so in essence we are their employers and we should have a right to say who we are safe employing and who we are not.
So, I am not taking issue with the piece, but would just like to be more clear as to the alternative. The who, the how, would do the recruiting, the selection, the training, the supervision, the 'policing' of the 'force'. Whether they are a public force, paid or like the Territorials volunteers (to some extent) all those responsibilities would still apply. Local forces were seen as the way forward, and to some extent they work . But there is no doubt that there are some forces with a truly bad reputation - and not simply because of scale. - Those forces that 'mix' with gangsters and high levels of violent crime, gang crime, and organised crime, become a gang in themselves. Other places, the system works perfectly well. Ever was it thus.
cont..../
The difference is that too many governments are being held to ransom by a misguided fear that they will be accused of letting down those that were so badly and diabolically mistreated by Hitler and the nazi regime. That makes it a fearsome thing to condemn the fascist State of Israel for emulating that discrimination - which is then outrageously exploited to keep the World at bay. It is time to say enough has already been too much.
The small beginnings in that grocery store in Ireland began the boycott of South African goods which ultimately led eventually to the end of Apartheid, It is surely now obvious to anybody that has no bias and only sees the injustice of the situation that something has to be done. It is essential that the WORLD, Global organisations, nations, governments, populations stop believing that they will somehow be forgetting the past wrongs done to the Jewish people by allowing the Zionist government in Jerusalem to continue to murder, maim, and destroy the homes of men, women and children. It is NOT a religious 'war' ... it is pure ethnic cleansing and land-grab pure and simple. It is only being tolerated and excused because of people's understandable and righteous conscience about what happened in WW2.
To have major decisions in the hands of people who can only work with their own agenda - whatever that agenda may be - is a recipe for disaster. The public vote for an MP ... an MP who then forgets who, why and on whose behalf they were elected because they become subsumed in a party political 'in-crowd' like some kind of public school clique or neighbourhood gang, whereby you are either 'with us' or ... like Corbyn sent to Coventry (sorry Coventry, and indeed my admiration for Zarah Sultana knows no bounds!) and vilified. The country is not governed by politicals- whatever they may be - but by the people who fund, control, flatter, threaten, own those politicals. The people with only one aim, to protect their own best interests and to hell with the rest . After all they almost all have funds, houses, interests, lives elsewhere, so it they screw up everything in the UK, what the hell!
George gave her his most haughty stare
and gave a heavy sigh
Must we go through this again
Last time I made you cry!
But Mum you stopped me long ago
from playing in the park
You said bad people stalked out there
with warnings always stark
And so I never met with friends
unless inside school gates
I just stopped playing any games
or meeting with my mates
So now I am too old to boss
and now I am obese
I cannot go outside to play
Cos ‘friends’ just only tease!
cont ....
If those 15 year old girls were being deliberately ‘groomed’ and ‘enticed’ by, or through, a ‘friend’ who may or may not have been writing and ‘enticing’ of her own volition (or it may not have been ‘the friend’ at all) then it is perfectly easy to see the likely pressures, the excitement of secrecy, the offer of ‘something new’ that came with that.
It is pure speculation on my part by those girls might have eventually have been expected to marry according to their parents’ decision and choice in any case. Then … well, one may marry a stranger either way. At least this way offered excitement, freedom, adventure. It would be wrong to ignore the fact that they may well have been running away from, as well as running away to, something.
As importantly – perhaps even more importantly - surely the ‘grooming’ itself has been ignored here as a ‘crime’. Had she been ‘groomed’, exploited, sexually abused by somebody ‘on line’ in, say, Wolverhampton, held captive, given birth to three children – all of whom had died - would she not have been ‘the victim’? All the country’s sympathy, understanding and outrage would have been poured out on her behalf and against the perpetrator.
Now we are told that she is ‘no longer a British citizen’. They are not saying that she is a Syrian citizen, they are saying that she is – by virtue of her antecedents – a citizen of Bangladesh. That is bizarre and very dangerous a concept.
It is also where she went to … and to whom she went is it not? Was she capable of ‘treason’, of ‘joining the enemy’ at 15? What would be the situation if, say, a young girl in … say, Cheltenham … had been ‘groomed’ by a person in, say, Utah to join the, say, Mormon Church and marry a person already with a couple of wives … Would she have her citizenship revoked and be told that bigamy was against the law both in the US and in the UK, and because her parents or grandparents were originally from, say, Poland … she was de facto a Polish citizen. Irrespective of whether Poland wanted to accept her or not.
Were that to be extrapolated further, I might approve. If one was saying that, for instance, that if Suella Braverman was deemed to be responsible for ‘kidnap’ and ‘false imprisonment’ of refugees and ‘transporting them overseas against their will’ then since her roots were in Kenya or Mauritius, then she should go back to one of those locations, or if Priti Patel had publicly sought the death of desperate people sailing across the treacherous English Channel by saying that they should not be rescued, then I would be all for her being declared a citizen of Uganda since her parents were from there. I would be more sympathetic with the ruling … but it would equally be WRONG. However much I might like the idea.
We cannot just arbitrarily decide that somebody belongs elsewhere – somewhere they have never been – because they step out of line. That is a very enticing, but dodgy path to walk down.
Beware anybody of Irish, West Indian, South East Asian, Inuit descent who gets to be a nuisance shoplifting or not paying parking fines you may well end up on a boat like they did years ago when people were transported for stealing a loaf of bread or a chicken. Then the chicken may have been from the farmyard, today it may be from Tesco, but after all a chicken is a chicken. If one is deciding that people need ‘dumping somewhere’ and need to be ‘somebody else’s’ problem, who knows with the right Government, the right legal system, the right climate of opinion, anything is possible … protesting may well be the next thing to be criminalised and outlawed …! Oh, sorry, I forgot that is already a plan of the Government is it not? How close can we come to a fascist state before all those who fought against Hitler will have died in vain. Beware of the wolf already in the hen house.
cont....
The shareholder in the mine considers himself far superior and more important than the miner. The investor in, say, BP, thinks himself far superior and more important than the worker on the oilrig. To them, money is the ruling factor and they lose sight of the certainty that without the worker on the rig, the oil would remain in the ground and their investment would be like a bad choice on a roulette wheel. Dead money. Wealth, and ‘status’ distorts the picture and turns nobodies into self-proclaimed somebodies.
The same is true with politicians. Politicians forget that they are public servants. They are there because they were put there by the public. They are not there on merit. They are sometimes not even there on brains. They are frequently not even there on political acumen. Mostly they are there to keep somebody else out, rather than to get them in! Their self-satisfaction and imagined superiority is self-delusion. But then they join the club of ‘self-preservation’ and become like a hedgehog or porcupine with spines that ward off all attackers, despite the fact that the body is infested with fleas and mites and that the real destruction will come from within rather than without.
Politics is now a dirty word and what is more politicians – of all colours – are too frequently either cowards, or rogues, or both. There is no way of telling when one puts a cross on a piece of paper what the true ‘politics’ of that candidate is. They can write what they like, they can be endorsed by blue or red, but once ‘in the hallowed halls’ of Parliament they do whatever their lobbyists, their funders, their winers and diners, their cronies, their accountants, their investments, their alliances, their aversions, cause them to do and they are as quick to turn on their own as to defend the indefensible. It becomes a ‘cartel’, and too often the ‘debates’ of any merit are often witnessed by half a dozen people and a bored speaker. Whereas the debates that bring out the troops – such as Prime Minister’s Question Time – and those that are ‘personal’ or involve their own advancement or lack of – become like some kind of schoolyard name calling and bullying exercise. People should realise that by and large they earn their money easy, and increasingly are not held responsible for their failures, or their misdemeanours – even crimes – and merely ‘step down’, and wait for the merry-go-round to go full circle. Since most of them have skeletons in their closet or bodies waiting to turn into skeletons, each and every one of them will hit the newspaper headlines, and be the subject of criticism before very long. They need only wait and be nice to the right people – and keep taking the money!
I am getting more and more perplexed at the workings of the pro-Corbyn minds remaining within what was the Labour Party. Many of them I still wish to believe in as being on the side of the just ... i.e. the side of what was the real Labour electorate. However ... I now am at a loss to know who is doing the most damage. I know where I am with Shamer and his lackeys but I cannot for the life of me understand how some of the suppose 'good' 'true' Socialist MPs can remain working under the Shamer banner. For instance:
Labour MP John McDonnell said blocking Mr Corbyn (from standing as a candidate in Islington North) was “a mistake” because being a broad church respecting different perspectives was part of the party’s “normative values”.
Well it might have been a 'broad church' once upon a time, but it is decidedly not a broad church any more. Anybody - outside the PLP apparently - who disagrees gets 'suspended', 'expelled', 'ostracised'. That being the case I can only assume that those (apart from Jeremy Corbyn who has been roundly sent off to purdah) must either be 'agreeing' with Shamer, or walking such a fine line that they are allowed to remain 'representing the Party' (whatever Party that is at the moment).
John McDonnell goes on to say ...."Sir Keir does not personally have the authority to block Mr Corbyn, who remains a Labour Party member, from applying to be his constituency’s candidate — and nobody doubts that local members would reselect him given the choice.
I guess his next statement explains that the 'rest' must be either all turncoats away from what anybody outside the confines of Labour Party HQs thought were the tenets of the Party or are all cowards or protectors of their own position to the detriment of those who elected them.
According to McDonnell "If he puts himself forward, it is likely the party’s national executive committee would intervene to veto his candidacy, presenting him with a choice on whether to drop the bid or stand as an independent.
So where are the real dissenting voices - there must be some, surely? Why are they not jumping up and down? It takes about ten minutes for the Tories to 'oust' a Leader and to land us with yet another version of incompetence, so we must assume that they all sing from the same hymn sheet otherwise - like so many of the rest of us, why have they not CROSSED THE FLOOR and declared their disaffection with what is now a sham Opposition Party and second-string Tory Party.
cont .../above
cont...../
If the 'titular leader' cannot personally cut Corbyn off and tell his local party who they can nominate as their candidate, how comes there is even a debate about it? What kind of lever does the man have that he can personally apparently just 'dictate'. He surely showed no ability to 'be dynamic' or 'dictatorial' when taking direction from the BoD and/or Bliar et al.
The NEC are now as culpable as Shamer is/was for destroying the Party, almost bankrupting it of both money and members, and turning it into a two-bit circus with no acts only clowns. The 'socialist' faction of the PLP should by now have at least demonstrated their good faith with those who have been 'expelled' for holding the views that they profess to hold.
It gets worse, because according to Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn has no intention of standing as an Independent Candidate.
If he thinks he is going to stand as a Labour Candidate he can think again, because even if he is 'reluctantly' allowed to stand by Starmer as the official candidate (unlikely his backers would no be pleased) Corbyn won't really be standing as a Labour Party candidate. Unless he is deaf, daft and blind he surely must know now that the Labour Party no longer exists. We out here in the real world know that only too well because we have walked or been flung out for supporting the real Party - and indeed himself. We continue to fight as best we can without the platform that the NEC, the PLP et al have to make public statements, and vote with their feet. How many of us by now would have crossed the floor, stood up for their electorate, stood up for the real Labour principles - principles pre-Starmer and pre the inteference by outside forces (literally) with vested interest. If Corbyn stands as an official candidate he will be standing for the Tory B team. For the Party controlled by the Board of Deputies, by Tory Bliar, or anybody else that comes along. Who knows .... Once there is that on the CV it is very difficult to undo the message to everybody else that they are anybody's for the right price.
There's Party Politics ... and Party Politics ... Incitement to racial hatred seen through the eyes of history ...
(Cr)uella Braverman, Home Secretary …. “The British public deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion of our Southern coast and which party is not. Some 40,000 people have arrived on the south coast this year alone. For many of them that was facilitated by criminal gangs so let us not pretend that they are all refugees; some of them are actual members of criminal gangs so let us not all pretend that they are all refugees in distress. The whole country knows that is not true.” (Cru)Suella Braverman, Conservative Government, supposed civilised, enlightened and British educated Home Secretary …
Cruella Braverman on Twitter …. “I condemn the appalling disorder in Knowsley last night. THE ALLEGED BEHAVIOUR OF SOME ASYLUM SEEKERS is never an excuse for violence and intimidation. Thank you to Mersey Police officers for keeping everybody safe.
The hypocrisy and down right cheek of this … person … I refuse to acknowledge her as an example of my sex … knows no bounds. She stokes it, gives it justification, incites it and then uses her so-called ‘thank you’ to the police and the ‘condemnation’ of such a horror to once again shift the blame to the victims.
There is a crime of inciting violence, and this person is not fit to be a citizen, let alone a Member of Parliament, let alone a Minister, let alone the bloody Home Secretary. Who are we going to get next? We have had some real humdingers in Ministerial posts during this Government, but some of them have been clowns, and some of them cheaters, and some of them tax dodgers, but surely it is something else to have a Home Secretary who adds fuel to an already dangerous fire, just to play Party politics.
Since we are playing Party Politics and apparently have the right to throw mud around and question people’s motivation and authenticity all I can say is that I am glad that her parents were allowed to come from Mauritius and Kenya to share the benefits of a Welfare State thanks to former real Labour Party constructed Welfare State from Mauritius and Kenya. Since she is, as Wikipaedia informs me, named after Suella in ‘Dallas’ … perhaps she sees herself as a real diva!
If people think it is wrong to get ‘personal’ and quote ‘antecedents’, then like children in the playground my only mitigation is that ‘she started it, miss!’ As well, as the daughter of an Irish mother who also lived with the doors closed, the signs on the windows of 'no dogs, no Blacks, no Irish' I too can understand the plight of the 'refugee' ... and my parent, and her parents, were presumably 'financial migrants' and not fleeing from terror, starvation and disease.
Returning to the Dark Ages
Apparently Lee Anderson, MP has told The Spectator (so they must have reported him accurately since he is Tory so one of their own) that the Government should reinstate capital punishment.
Apparently his reasoning for this is that "nobody has committed a crime after being executed. It has a 100% success rate."
I guess you cannot argue with that … unless you consider the fact that on that basis the State would be eligible for execution for the ‘murder’ of Timothy Evans and others wrongly executed simply because he was illiterate and unable to hold his own against the bureaucracy of the legal system and the State.
Though his current ‘leader’ The Rt. Hon. Rishi Sunak, MP., PM., says that ‘this is not his own view’ (though he still made him Deputy Chair of the Tory Party’) it is left to conjecture whether he should have made such an appointment under the circumstances. Either he is fit to be Deputy Leader despite that, or is that really Rishi Sunak’s views, but he does not have the courage to state it outright?
Whether this week’s Prime Minister personally believes that or not, apparently other members of the Conservative Party have leapt to Lee Anderson’s support and declared their hand in the debate arguing for a return to murder by State decree.
The reason that Brendan Clarke-Smith gives for this is that “I am one of those people who supports capital punishment. Whilst it may appear that calls for capital punishment are an extreme position to take, Anderson’s views have deep roots in the history of Britain.”
Well, that’s a very dangerous precedent to set, is it not?
On the same basis, let’s bring back bear baiting, deportation of children for stealing food, the Bow Street Runners, beheading aristocrats for adultery, disagreeing with ‘the monarch’, having a religion that is currently out of favour, misogyny, votes only for land owners, women unentitled to their own financial security, votes only for men; votes only for land owners, pauper schools, workhouses, slavery, highway men, crusades, colonisation, conscription, imprisonment in the tower, religious persecution, child labour, lethal working practices, Divine Right of Kings…. The list is not pretty and has no order of importance, nor date order … but very much a first sortie into things that are ‘imprinted on our past’ and ‘have deep roots in the history of Britain’
If that is the calibre of MPs that are currently ‘representing’ people in Westminster, then he had better add on to his list of ‘justifiable crimes meriting execution’ civil disobedience and anarchy. None of the present Parliament (with a very few exceptions) have any right to call themselves ‘elected representatives’ since they have proved only too well that they only ‘represent’ themselves. If they declared a return to Capital punishment for ‘defrauding’ the public purse, for ‘masquerading as public servants’, for incompetence leading to millions of deaths (i.e. murders) then I would have to at least consider the justification of Lee Anderson’s proposal. But even then, perhaps, I think humanity must have moved on somewhat from State murder.
He'll be advocating the cutting off of hands for people with their hands in the till or fraud next .... No on second thoughts, for too many of his colleagues that might be a step too close to disaster!
In praise of colour
My roots are green, my face is white
My vote is red, my team is blue
My family have a rainbow hue
The past is not a useful school
past generations not defined
or in spectrum lines confined
My forebears in from far-flung lands
driven travellers in from East, far West
no influence outweighed the rest
My world now has different sights.
with colours bright and views sincere
Old I may be, but my mind is clear
I really hope I’ll live to know
a world, like petals on a flower
where colours all have equal power
I myself am truly blessed
Since I have family of different hue
with black and white, and coffee too!
Even my own past generations
too easily forgot their ‘stranger’ label
with words and deeds meant to disable
You eat with your eyes, with
No colour? stroganoff is merely stew
despite chef’s Michelin star and cordon’ blue!
They say variety is the spice of life
but then colour must be the coverall of variety
No colour? Life’s just boredom and sobriety!
STOP THEM PUTTING MORE FUEL ON THE FIRE!
So two stories caught my eye today … thanks and acknowledgement to both The Canary and Nick Dearden at Global Justice Now … First, the record profits for BP and Second - chronologically, but not in imporance - the forest fires in Chile that have devastated nearly 700,000 acres of land.
So, BP’s record profits were reported as £23 billion ….. yes that is UK billions, i.e. £23,000,000,000,000. Yes, 23 million million. twelve noughts .... They gave their ‘best’ shareholders a mere £12.5,000,000,000,000.
The devastating fires in Chile caused by climate change will devastate the lives of people there beyond measure – and without a change of priorities (and a willingness to accept responsibility led by a change of heart) – permanently until it is a mere dustbowl.
The skewed morality of these two events – which, naturally, the ‘deniers’ will say are totally unrelated - is self-evident to anybody who does not have a twisted, selfish sense of their own divine right to plunder.
The likes of BP are the modern equivalent of vandals and pirates …. But on a scale that the marauders of old would have found Utopian! Since these companies have a whole plethora of ‘scientists’ ‘boffins’ ‘experts’ advising them on where they can ‘find’ deposits and where the next profitable place to defile might be, then they are, one supposes, not averse to ‘science’ and ‘investigation’ and are not part of the flat earth society. If you exclude ignorance, then the only excuse left for ignoring the obvious effects of global warming is …. One of the seven deadly sins … Greed.
I fail to see why the normal laws prohibiting ‘pollution’ or any act that ‘endangers’ the lives of others does not apply? It worked for Erin Brockovich and she was starting from scratch. Those trying to change the face of industrial, commercial and corporate greed are already starting off with a whole raft of eminent scientists, researchers, documented evidence and probably two-thirds of the globe’s population as their supporters or even their witnesses.
The environmental organisations trying vainly to stem the tide are being inhibited by the lack of endeavour by individual nations and individual governments … let alone the collective will of the international community. Governments are in thrall to the money makers. They are in the pockets of the corporations and are risking the planet because of their collective cowardice and their individual self-interest.
Russia quite rightly had to pay $1.12 billion for their responsibility for the Chernobyl disaster. All right (to be accurate, since we are talking in two currencies) I need to explain that, yes, that is dollars, so ONLY 1.12 000,000 dollars). ...i.e. six zeros ... Which is still not chicken feed.
Even on a minute scale (in relative terms) in the UK, the water companies in recent times have collectively paid out £54.3 million (just six zeros!) in fines for contaminating rivers and they have had to pay up.
cont... above
The Politics of Football
When players 'vote with their feet'
cont....
I am certainly not playing down the importance of maintaining the purity of the rivers – and my stomach churns as much as anybody else at the thought of raw sewage sludging off into the rivers and directly into the sea – but we are talking here about the future of the very planet. Life as we know it here on earth! Why are the polluters of the globe not being chased/fined/exposed the same as local contaminators?
Following the Exxon Valdes disaster in 1989 the company was fined $150 million. Because they were ‘good chaps’ and ‘cooperated’ in the clean-up operation, they were let of $125 million of that … yippee doo! What kind of justice is that? If your neighbour rams his car into your bay window, but then helps pick up the bricks and sweep the debris, does the insurance company then say ‘that’s OK because you helped in the clean-up and have promised to get your brakes fixed, you need only pay one sixth of the repair bill?
It should be internationally banned for those making strategic decisions in Government, both nationally and internationally, to have a vested interest in industries and/or corporate businesses which they might be deemed to be compromised by. They should either have to forego them, or acknowledge the conflict of interest and abstain. If in the UK, MPs had to give up/sell/forego all commercial and financial interest in companies and corporations, I wonder how many MPs we’d still have in Westminster? Not many on the Conservative side of the House, and probably too few also in the rest of the building. I suppose though, their lack of real honour and principle would mean that they would merely pass the shares to their wives/mistresses/partners/children .. or have them secretly paid into an off shore account, or via one of their ‘other’ homes overseas.
The international governing bodies are well able, if they choose, to underline the fact that Climate Change is not a figment of somebody’s imagination, the icecap is melting, the seasons are changing, places are burning, places are flooding, and like the flat earth society they can no longer pretend it is not happening or it is ‘a lie’.
The oil companies are going back to fossil fuel exploration because they are greedy and ‘all right Jack’ and the polluters are continuing to pollute because there is no proper meaningful dictat from anywhere that compels them to stop, or even demands an adequate penalty if they continue. They will make maximum profits regardless, until they are STOPPED. Short of forming their own armies, none of them could actually FLOUT an international law if the International bodies were united and solid in their condemnation and policing of offending. Until such time as this happens, then the international law makers and international governments are as guilty as the corporations of the calamities and disasters resulting from their actions and cowardice.
Here endeth the sermon for today … ! But beware … disaster could come to cinema close to you any time soon.
I am on another tack today ... some might say, same meat, different gravy, however. I am still concerned with the impact of too much money, too little commitment to the rest of society. Usually my target – because they are so deserving – are politicians. All shades, all sexes, all social classes because once they take the ‘oath’ to serve for far too many, all commitment to those who put them there goes completely out of the window.
But today I turn my attention to the other national passion ... Football!
Now before people think that I am some old misery who is anti-football, anti-sport, anti-everything that everybody else loves, I should say that I do follow football. I have my trials and tribulations, but that is understandable since I am a Spurs supporter. I should explain ... My family was split down the middle, more or less. Some supported Cambridge in the boat-race, Arsenal as a local team, and voted Conservative ...(I know,I know ... but don’t blame me .... I was part of the ‘other faction’). We supported Oxford in the boat-race, chose Spurs as the local team, and voted Labour ... or as it must be to me now L****r. So this is not a diatribe about the waste of money, or the idolatry of deifying people who can kick a plastic ovoid about ... Well partly it is, but, I guess, the specifics, rather than the general premis.
I heard the other day Sean Dyche - who has just taken over from Frank Lampard as Manager of Everton - saying quite candidly after his first match that his players had ‘admitted to him that they had not played for the previous manager’. Almost too aptly to prove the point, he was being interviewed after they had just played a blinder and beaten the current Premiership leaders, Arsenal (no this is a serious piece, I won’t punch the air!) despite Everton having been teetering around the drop zone and far too close for their fans’ liking to oblivion and relegation
What kind of indictment is that of a privileged and idolised group of men. We are talking here about players who are earning up to £130,000 PER WEEK. Before people jump up and down, I know that some of the rest of the squad do not earn that much, but even the lowest ranking earns £2,500 per week. I know too that they have a short working life span, that they don’t just work for the 90 minutes that people see them on the pitch, and must train, keep fit, perhaps even move away from their families ... but still ... I cannot escape the undeniable facts:
People who go to watch Everton games will pay anything up to £50 for a ticket. Even Juniors pay up to £25 to watch a game. For somebody on what this Government laughingly calls a basic LIVING WAGE they would have to work for almost a whole day to even take one of their children to see a match. This is less a moan about the price of tickets – with clubs spending hundreds of millions of pounds on one player, paying hundreds of ancillary staff, upkeep of premises – and hopefully taxes – it is an expensive business, only for the mega rich. But my beef, therefore, is with some (SOME) players. cont.... above
cont....
If a jockey deliberately lost a race, if a boxer deliberately threw a fight, and they were found out, they would be permanently struck off and could not compete again. If an individual footballer, rugby player, cricketer deliberately altered the result of a match because they were gamblers, or ‘owned’ by outside influences, they would never play again.
How is it any different when the whole team deliberately ‘don’t work for’ a win because they have a problem with the manager, or would prefer another manager, or don’t like his system or his disciplining, or his training, or he told somebody off, or didn’t tell somebody off? Has the crowd paid their £20, £30, £40, £50 +++ for a ‘good’ match, or a sham?
The players’ dispute – whether genuine or petulant – is not the fault of the fans and for some the only pleasure they have in their lives at the moment might be looking at the scores on a Saturday and sitting and watching Match of the Day ... and seeing that their team won. If they didn’t win, at least they gave it their all ... they didn’t ‘not play for the manager’.
So ... Just like politicians who have a ‘duty’ to not abuse their position, or seek their own betterment to the disadvantage of those who support their team. MP's 'wages' come out of the public purse. Footballers would have no career if clubs had no fans. Anybody earning money – especially that kind of money - primarily from the public - should not 'decide' whether ‘they play to their potential. In other words as far as fans are concerned do they ‘play fair or not’. That is cheating – and basically theft. They are defrauding people who have paid a huge proportion of otheir limited money to watch a game and support a team.
For instance, if you compared percentages of pay between a basic paid worker and 'the football star', working on hourly rates, a fan's ticket would cost £2,708. Plus half as much again to take just one child ... So the equivalent of about £5000 for ninety minutes of ‘entertainment’. If the team gets beaten fair and square, well everybody has an off day and you win some, you lose some. BUT if the team is making some kind of protest ... that is definitely not ‘fair and square’. And definitely not ‘fair and square’ to the fans.
So, footballers, don’t be like too many politicians and use your position to rip off people who can nowadays sometimes find it difficult to put food on the table. Think how hard it must be for them to have to tell their kids that they cannot afford for them to go to a match, to have new boots, to travel to and from junior squad training facilities .... let alone sit with them whilst they watch Match of the Day and see their team lose or play badly ‘because the team has an issue with the manager’. Is that the fault of the fans?
Come on now. We had a fair play campaign in recent times. ‘Fair’ should include the fans as well. As well, like racism, homophobia, misogyny, surely not cheating the fans ought to be a mantra that doesn’t need spelling out. Maybe it should be the norm, not just an option
THE KING AND HIS
£150 MILLION
TAX BILL ...
to pay, or not to pay ... Would that be a question Inland Revenue would ask you?
"Tax evasion/phony contracts/mugging/burglary ... Just a difference in appliction rather than intent."
Whatever of the unsavoury and unnecessary practice of 'crowning' somebody 'King or Queen', this has in any case far too frequently been the result of a bloody battle with 'claimants' paying social climbers and sycophants to favour them over some other opportunist rival.
This particular dynasty seems to have no real claim, nor purpose as far as I can see at all. They are neither use nor ornament. The claim that they bring in revenue with 'tourists' is both bogus and spurious since other countries now outrank the UK in visitors without having to advertise some kind of fairy tale pomp and ceremony. As well, you would have to offset that 'gain' in tourists against what they cost. Then you would have to ask yourself whether this particular 'dynasty' is really a good advertisement for the country? Even if there was - or should ever be - 'the divine right of kings', then since most of the monarchs have seized the 'kingdom', by killing thousands - sometimes their own kith and kin, sometimes even (allegedlly!!!) children - or invaded the country, or simply married the right person what is 'divine' about them? The amount of wealth that should require one to pay over £150 million IN TAXES is immoral when people are dying in 'their' 'kingdom' for lack of food, health care, warmth or committing suicide from sheer desperation.
The fact that the royal purse is seen as 'deserved' income is bizarre.
Try explaining to a nurse, a careworker, a paramedic, a rubbish collector, a factory worker, a shop assistant working all hours, that swannig off up and down the country and flying off in the Royal Jet, or on the Royal Yacht (which isn't any longer adequate so can we please have a new one!) is 'deserved' inome. It is an insult to our intelligence. I don't care how many 'hours/days' they spend in Royal visits ... is that job either NECESSARY or worth their 'wages'?
The fact they have now started an embarrassing internecine war, and at least one of their number should be indicted for criminal behaviour and be on a Sex Offenders' Register, is another compelling argument against their position. I too find it disgusting that one of the 'allegations' made brother on father/brother is that or Racism. This is bizarre in the extreme when two thirds of their 'subjects' must be black, or brown, or as their father would have said 'sllitty eyed'!)
I also take exception (whatever of one's views about wars, and recent wars in particular) to the fact that one of the few that has actually fought in uniform has now had his right to wear military uniform taken away by somebody that has never fired a peashooter in anger in his life, though he may have thrown a paperweight at 'minions', I don't know. To show good grace, I should add that the 'sex offender' flew a helicopter during the Falklands War.
So by my reckoning, the time is now more than right as. the walrus said (ironically) 'to talk of many thiings .... including, apparently, 'cabbages and kings' .... I have nothing against cabbages, however so they are safe from my venom! So ... not quite off with their heads ... but we need to cut off their privileges and their freebooting. We should no more facilitate pay-offs to avoid criminal charges, pay for flitting about with mistresses, for multiple houses, for hundred of staff and minions..
We need to reclaim those 'palaces/castles that are not their personal property (they do have some, though bought with what money I am not really sure since most of them don't have 'other jobs' except being Royals but I guess if they were 'descendents' of past 'royals' (which is a mute point) then who knows what access they had to other people's money and lands before!).
We would, though, have to be 'bloomin' sure that this Government was not just going to divert those monies into the coffers for reallocation to their personal bank accounts or to the bank accounts of their cronies in exchange for spurious and phony 'contracts'. They and the Royals seem to be cut with the same cloth. Freeloading seems to come with their mother's milk and is treated as some kind of 'job' in its own right. I guess it has developed like the kids in inner cities and areas with now little to lose are likely to treat other people's money and possessions as fair game for mugging and burglary. Just a difference in appliction rather than intent.
NOT ANARCHY, JUST EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF - STARTING AT THE TOP!
what we have is not anarchy, but certainly each man for himself .... starting at the top!
Where has the £350,000,000 PER WEEK gone?
Rishi Sunak has told the country that we cannot afford to pay the nurses a proper wage, and indeed that they are out of order for taking action to try to acquire a living wage when probably only the Members of Parliament, the Millionaires and the Celebrities can afford to eat, heat and treat their illnesses.
I have only one real question to ask with regard to that? What happened to the £350 Million PER WEEK that if we didn’t pay to Brussels, we could spend on the NHS?
Even if a small majority were influenced sufficiently by the words of a consumate liar and voted to leave a body that had been the means of some really important safeguards of human and employment rights over the years, that majority was enough to let Boris, Nigel, the people who found the EU tax restrictions, and ‘interfering’ too big a curb on their blossoming wealth, have their way and take the country out of Europe.
Of course the fact that they then were inept in negotiating the divorce did not help, and monies are still due, but £350,000,000 per WEEK is one hell of a lot of money to ‘forget’. Even if, according to those who try to ameliorate the obvious Borisism, the sum was closer to £250,000,000 PER WEEK, where is that money going now?
It either was a downright lie (all right from a person with a proven track record for untruths, half truths and downright porkies) or somebody has or is misappropriating that money.
My calculator – which is probably a Tory – cannot give me an answer that I understand to the sum £250,000,000 times 52, but I suspect it would not take much of it to pay the nurses an extra couple of quid an hour to save people’s lives, staunch people’s blood, mop up people’s vomit, wipe people’s shit, and put up with politicians earning a basic salary of £84,000 for an MP and £151,000 in addition for somebody like Rishi Sunak to tell them ‘they are not worth more money’.
I would say that I do not know how he/they (cos they all appear to be cut from the same cloth) can look at themselves in the mirror, but I do know. They can do so because they operate a ‘them and us’ strategy. What goes to us, cannot go to themselves and their cronies. Whilst it is fine for them to make the ultimate gesture and ‘sack’ one of their own for fiddling his taxes, I would have to ask if he was sacked because he ‘fiddled’ or because he got found out?
Too many of them have claimed for things, fiddled things, salted away assets, given contracts to their relatives, their friends – or simply people who can do them a favour in return. They are by and large operating as a cartel. They only have one mission in life and that is to make sure that when they step away from ‘office’ they do so with as much money as they can, with as many people that owe them a favour as they can, and maybe a title for ‘services rendered’. Services rendered, you understand, to the Party, to the System, to the Machinery of Government … definitely not Services rendered to the people they were elected by. People that they undertook to ‘represent’. What a laugh that is! I could count probably on the fingers of two .. maybe three … perhaps four … hands how many of them that can actually say they thought of those voters when they voted in the House. Did they vote in line with their conscience, or did they merely vote in line with the dictats of their Party, and in their own best interests.
That goes for both – indeed all – sides of the House. The Government is at least true to its own acquisitive and elitist mantra, looking after the Business Community, the wealthy, the corporate world. Who have the Opposition been true to? Nobody. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
So, please … could somebody ask Corporate Business and all those that got huge pay outs with phoney contracts during CoVid to please let us have back the … OK … I’ll go with the lower figure … I’ll accept that it should have been £350,000,000 on the side of the bus and not £350,000,000 … So let us have back the £1.3E 10 .... whatever that is? So many digits I suppose it is not computable or one just cannot fit it onto the page!
Taking on the Russians and the Chinese - it would be great misdirection!
Bournemouth East MP, ex-soldier, and bullish Tory, Tobias Ellwood, knows just how we should deal with those dratted Russians … and the Chinese … and anybody else that deserves a bloody nose!
There is something very dangerous in little boys who never grow up from believing that there is fun in saying ‘bang-bang’ and watching their playmates pretending to ‘die’. If those little boys then join the military forces they can be a hazard to life, limb, and as Miss World contestants were known for saying before such pageants became passé …’World Peace’.
We apparently have a guru who is perfectly happy to advise on how to ‘put it up ‘em’ … (I suspect, though, that he is more Colonel Mannering than Corporal Jones!). According to The Canary (and his own Twitter page) Bournemouth East MP, ex-soldier, and hawk Tobias Ellwood thinks he has the ideal solution to the dangers facing the world today.
His masterplan includes not only arming the Ukraine army with 300 tanks but then - amongst other things: building an arms factory in Poland, declaring our intention of securing the complete expulsion of Russian forces from all-Ukrainian territory, as well as insisting that the port of Odessa be declared a ‘UN Safe Haven’.
Those things are in themselves already likely to accelerate, promulgate and broaden the war. Russia would have no alternative but to respond in kind – using whatever weapons and force they could muster, having been given carte blanche by an international threat. That would not only be even more horrendous for the Ukrainian people and those neighbouring countries who are already giving sanctuary to the refugees, but would significantly raise a danger alert for the whole globe with the possibility of WW3 and a nuclear threat and/or retaliation.
Such a set of escalating moves would inevitably spread the war.
An international (or British, or just Ellwood’s!) decision to build an arms factory in Poland would surely mean that Poland itself would need to agree, which would mean that they had deliberately joined the war against Russia. It would also make it a very obvious early target. Yes, it would split the Russian war arena, but does that help or hinder the people of Poland?
As for the ‘complete expulsion of Russian forces’ – that is presumably with the involvement of an international force? If the Ukrainians were able to do that alone, they would have done so already. Perhaps as an ex-soldier he believes that the British Army alone is equipped and mandated on its own initiative to ‘go it alone’ with the Ukrainians who are (despite reports to the contrary) losing vast numbers of soldiers and being overrun by the far superior forces of Russia? Frankly if he thinks that the British Government can ‘equip’ the forces in the same way that they have in the recent past, and that they can allocate ‘contracts’ to ‘friends of friends, relatives of relatives, via the old boys’ network’ or on a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ basis as they did with CoVid, then the tanks will have cardboard bodies, the guns will fire a message saying ‘bang’, and the real orders may be available sometime in the next decade.
However, all that may be just dangerous sabre rattling – which hopefully only a back-bench Tory in a safe seat in a seaside town with, perhaps, a lot of elderly Tory voting, ex-military types can think is anything but an attempt to court a few column inches in the Torygraph or S*n. However, he doesn’t stop there. We must apparently – at the same time – risk antagonising China and we must start a secondary conflict in the Far East.
According to Ellwood, we must cultivate and court Taiwan because China is obviously a danger to the world and since the Island of Taiwan is a thorn in Beijing’s flesh, along with Hong Kong, we need to poke that tiger as well. To help in that endeavour, we need to utilise the Chinese diaspora around the globe - a bit like the US using the ex-pat Cubans to proselytise the wickedness of Castro’s regime after the Bay of Pigs brinkmanship. Closer to home there would be a corollary in the way that Kier Starmer at the bidding of the Board of Deputies has tried – and in some cases succeeded – in persuading Jewish people and people naturally sympathetic and horrified by the holocaust that the whole of the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party was awash with anti-Semites so that they could deflate the revulsion that was naturally being stirred up because of Israel’s land-grab in Palestine.
So, according to the MP for Bournemouth East, we obviously need to go on the offensive against both these ginormous powers simultaneously. He believes them to be upstarts holding the world to ransom and we need presumably to ‘nullify the threat’.
The thought of people holding such jingoistic – and frankly crass and naïve - attitudes being part of any Government is frankly terrifying but at this present time when decisions coming out of Westminster already seem … what’s the word that American’s use … ‘flakey’ is terrifying. We have had too many knee-jerk announcements, which have proved both ill-thought out and/or erroneous. Frequently the Government ‘team’ of – which are in any case nowadays transitory – seem to each plough their own furrow without really understanding the ramifications for others. It is unclear if they consult anybody, but if they ‘consult’ the likes of Tobias Ellwood already in their ranks, then we need not worry about saving the NHS, or charges for heating our homes … we will either have bigger threats or we will have no threats because a nuclear war will solve all our problems. Not quite, though, in the way that one might wish. To make matters worse, there is no ‘Opposition’ party. The group of MPs who call themselves ‘Labour’ have been gagged by the man who calls himself ‘Leader’ – presumably by whoever is pulling his strings. It is very likely the known war-monger who has a history of taking the country into wars that solve nothing and cost millions of lives.
I guess it is inevitable that the military arena will attract some people who thrive on conflict. However hard they may try, it is almost impossible to weed out potential psychopaths and people with extremist jingoistic views. That having been said, now that people are not actually ‘conscripted’ (yet) most of those who join the Army, Navy or Airforce are seduced by the Government advertising which tells them that they can ‘find comradeship’, ‘see the world’, ‘learn a trade’, ‘gain a new ‘family’, ‘go to secret places’, ‘not be one of the crowd’, ‘leave the mundane behind’. They are not really thinking past that, since most/all of the young people today have had no experience of actual WAR. Most of the boys and girls being asked to enlist were not born until after any kind of serious conflict situations.
Professional soldiers have made their choice – and may well be completely comfortable with that choice - but when they ‘retire’, ‘leave’, and are part of the Government of the country, then their responsibility for thinking before they open their mouths is not only paramount, but should be mandatory. That having been said, it would not be so deadly if they were surrounded by competence, honesty and diplomacy.
If the Government was to believe that they could ‘distract’ attention from their own cock-ups and limitations by following Tobias Elland’s ‘bovva-boy’ plan then there are some that might see that as a reasonable price to pay because their decision making up to now must lead one to believe that they do not ‘forward plan’ … they apply a band-aid rather than stem a haemorrhage.
It would be useful if this Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party could grasp the reality that currently his Government cannot even run the country successfully, cannot create, fund, nurture services (even those they have inherited) here at home, so the chances of the incompetent, self-serving, untrustworthy gang of despots leading the world into WW3 would be quite significantly dangerous if he’s mad suggestions were followed.
However, I grant you, it must be very hard for somebody with a dictatorial, regimented, military background to not want to rejoin the excitement of playing tin soldiers and saying ‘bang-bang’. If the ‘enemy’ are ‘Johnnie Foreigner’ then they are fair game. After all we are England (and I really mean England) we are supreme and we have ruled the world. We have taught them a good many lessons in the past, and if those lily-livered pacifists and left-wing Communist sympathisers would shut up – or be shut up – we could, and would do so again.
There is something truly terrifying nowadays in this country. Those in Government at the top of the tree are only interested in their own financial advancement, and those ‘in the ranks’ show their ineptness by opening their mouths without putting their brains into gear. And yet they get elected!
People who advocate for anything other than preserving the status quo, are targeted for abuse. They have to preserve at all costs the unalienable right of the haves to have, and the have nots to remain quiet and docile.
It is annoying that it is becoming an uphill battle to keep the nation’s focus off incompetence here at home and concentrated on tanks for Ukraine and how the Chinese were responsible for CoVid. In the UK, when Ellwood is suggesting we spend billions, one could be forgiven for wondering if from a Tory (extremist hopefully!) point of view a War would (a) take people’s minds off the chaos at home; (b) would mean a reintroduction of conscription (getting young men and women off the streets, giving people something else to worry about); (c) conjure up the ‘war time spirit’ that united people and government; (d) meant that special taxation could be introduced; extravagancies explained; old grievances forgotten. United against the common enemy!
WW3 will not be like that. WW3 could be a nuclear war. Anderson shelters and gas masks, and ARP wardens and the war time spirit with Adele instead of Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll meet again’ is not going to cut it. Even if the country/the continent/the world is not annihilated in the actual blast(s), then like Chernobyl, the ramifications and fall out will endure and maim, destroy and kill everything and everyone eventually in any case.
Thanks Tobias. Don’t call us. We’ll call you! Not ….
Just a cheeky bit of advertising before the end of the financial year
Books by Elle Fran Williams
Try: A Duty to Protect
(when children are let down by those who should be their safety blanket
http://www/amazon.co.uk/dp/B089RDLR8L
It certainly pays to be 'Careless'!
So the man made a mistake. He was ‘careless’. No harm done. I guess the only ‘sin’ he committed was getting found out! But never mind, to err is human. But only perhaps for the 'have's, not the ;'have nots'. If you are one of the 'in crowd' then I suppose some/most/all of the rules need not apply to you. Laws, rules, dictats are only there for lesser mortals.. They have now begun to think of themselves as 'divine', perhaps. Like the Divine Right of Kings. Maybe now they have the God-given right to do precisely as they please.
When Parliament sits in their mostly empty seats discussing the amount that it is 'affordable' to pay essential and dedicated workers, and whether those dedicated and essential workers should have the right to protest against those decisions, the ordinary MP's are doing so on basic pay from April of £84,000 or so. For 'the Ministers' you can add on to that their 'Ministerial Salaries. For instance, a Cabinet Minister add on £67,500, making a grand total of £151,000). If I try to do the sums that means that 121 Ministers cost £18,271,000 per annum. 650 MPs cost 55,600,000. So our wage bill (on a (C)onservative estimate is about £74,000,000. (Plus 'those expenses' of course'. Plus the subsidised meals, plus the payments to their 'staff' not infrequently their relatives. No wonder the poor dears need to fiddle their expenses!)
These amounts, you follow, come out of the 'public purse'. Paid out of the taxes of those lesser mortals who they are so miserly to. On the other hand, they sit there in their droves to discuss their own pay rises and their expenses and to save one another's skins, or to hurl abuse at one another.
If one bears in mind the amount of money – in the billions – that was creamed off into the pockets of family members, family friends, ‘old’ alumni, people they owed a favour to, or wanted a favour from – then their right to pontificate and decide on people’s level of existence becomes not just despicable, but indecent.
There have been any number of ordinary people that have been sentenced to some kind of punishment – even jail – for crimes and misdemeanours relating to tax, National Insurance and benefit fraud – even just not paying a television license to a State run-Government lacky which purports to be a purveyor of ‘news’. Indeed it claims to be ‘our’ BBC….!
That being the case, it is indeed a peculiar system that allows people who make the rules, to be judged to be ‘merely careless’ when they break the rules.
If Nadhim Zahawi had run a corner shop, or a hairdressers or a Take Away, would his failure to declare the right figures for his tax returns have been considered ‘careless and not deliberate’? If that 'corner shop, hairdressers, or take away was as lucrative as Mr. Zahawi's property empire and they were not competent, should they not have given responsibility for their 'tax returns' and financial matters over to a professional? If not, maybe HMRC’s arbitrators have maybe told him that ‘careless’ was not good enough, and ‘not deliberate’ was not an excuse. There is an arrogance and a persistence in the attitude of MPs – and Ministers – to believe that they are somehow above the law. Is the trigger perhaps in the title HMRC? Since we are not in Tudor times, or even the Stuart era, 'His Majesty' is really no longer ''in charge' is he? It is no longer the monarch's 'revenue'. I guess in reality it is now the Governments (well I know it is ours really, but that has not stopped them appropriating (and misappropriating much else) so it is now the CPRC ... Conservative Party's Revenue and Customs. Since they are the Government, and there is no Opposition to speak of, one cannot even describe it as Parliament's Revenue & Customs.
Nadhim Zahami may well be an incompetent mathematical lightweight, but if that is the case then that has not stood in his way outside his duty to his current employer (us), since he is believed to be one of the richest people in the House of Commons. If he does not have an accountant – or a firm of accountants – then can I suggest that he is either too mean, too arrogant, or too feckless to run his affairs properly – and indeed I would go so far as to say that I don’t believe it. Either he instructed somebody to ‘be careless’, or he needs to change his accountants, because ‘careless’ is not – in his position – a sufficiently acceptable excuse!
We certainly pay him enough to employ somebody to get it right. When he was Chancellor his salary was a mere £155,000 per annum . I can fully understand how that was difficult for a person with a net worth of anything from £30 million to £100 million to live on. That must be why he needed to claim (from us) £5,882 for his energy bills. … Oh sorry he refunded that because it turned out that the bill included heating his riding school stables and yard manager’s mobile home! … Silly Billy … but we can all make mistakes …. There you go again … another ‘Careless’ miscalculation on the part of a person who had the finances of the entire nation in his charge!
Now he has the perfect role for a ‘wheeler/Dealer’. He is Chairman of the Conservative Party (yes, that’s right the Club for all the Wheeler/Dealers!) and something that sounds like a ‘roving commission’ …. A Minister without Portfolio. Well I hope he gets a portfolio soon because without a portfolio, he seems to be unable to keep his figures and his responsibilities in anything like the correct order. If he got a portfolio, or an abacus, or a conscience, he might in future be less ‘careless’. But then … he is just one of many. I guess, if you don’t laugh, you cry.
The 'Special One is such a Nuisance!
Master and Goffer .... but Daddy looks decidedly unamused by whatever has tickled his creation's fancy.
Daddy would rather, of course, not be 'behind the scenes' especially since his creation by the look on his face is such a disappointment to him. If he was doing what he was intended to do, what would be the need for the House of Commons, let alone the Press to keep referring and quoting that other wretched man. If they keep stoking the flames of his popularity he'll never fade from public attention. He will be like 'The Special One' .... No ... not Jose! ... But the initial is the same ... He who shall not be named .... but they will KEEP naming him! What is the matter with them all.
Have they no nous ... no idea of 'politics'. Daddy keeps hoping that the eejits will realise that there is no such thing as 'bad publicity' ... (He should know, he got plenty and here he still is '.... rich, famous, travelling the world as a ... as a peace-maker ... Best not reflect on that one the irony is just too brain sapping. Even he could see the funny side of that one!) Another week of mentions, insults and complaints by Ministers - even in Prime Minister's Question Time against (he who should be nameless!). After all who was he now! A back-bencher with no mandate ... What was his name again ... Oh yes the other JC ... Jeremy Corbyn ... The Opposition Party will soon be using the BC - AD - BC timeline for plotting their reign, their rain, and their downfall! ...Before Christ, Anno Domini, Before Corbyn. ...
Pity it would be counterproductive to send in the troops!
.
I just couldn't resist pinching this one ... its U.S. ... but rings so true .... I'd say soon to visit a doctor's surgery near you ... but I'd be too late ... it is already in your neighbourhood, folks!
(courtesy with thanks to The Heinlein Society)
SUCH A FRUSTRATING TIME TO GET OLD!
Since passing my three score years and ten
I wonder if, and how and when
I ever found time to work and strive
To keep myself and the kids alive.
I ‘commuted’, toiled; I cooked and scoured,
I was super-charged and battery powered
I coped with tears and spills and fights
With teenager tantrums, sleepless nights.
But now no work, no kids, no chores
No noise, no rows, no slamming doors
It could have been a peaceful life
But God thought best to add more strife
He or she … pitched my senior years
To coincide with current awful fears
Of climate change and world distress
With Governments all in a mess
But still, thank God, my brain's still sharp
I can rage and thunder, moan and carp
with no social meeja to rant and heckle?
I'd find myself a mindless wreckle! (oops! sorry)
Image courtesy of Kenny Eliason, Upsplash .... thank you!
The Peaky Blinders of Westminster
Sufficient money to send a boy to Eton or Harrow is as defining as insufficient measures to address poverty and inequality. The result can be one ‘child entitled by birth’ or one ‘child committed to anger’.
I am not – or have not been – one who can just bear to just wring my hands and declare ‘woe is me, we are all undone!’ Even if things looked dire – the betrayal of Bliar, the fiasco of BREXIT – it has always been necessary to ‘pick oneself up, dust oneself off, and start all over again’. But it is certainly proving harder than ever before since this new millennium is plunging into the abyss instead of soaring with enlightenment and sanity!
It is, I guess, written in the stars. Most people are predictable. We are at core either acquisitive or compassionate. Whether born or made, as adults we are what we are. As the Jesuits would say, give me a man till he’s seven, and I’ll give you the man for life. People can change, but it sometimes takes a catastrophe or a Saul on the road to Damascus moment – when life, death, horror, terror, or plain old despair makes them look themselves in the face and decide that they are just not nice people.
So there is no point in believing that any of the present senior Tories are going to be embarrassed or seriously affected by what the rest of humanity would find cringeworthy and wish to hide ourselves off in a dark room and avoid eye contact with anybody. They have proved how resilient they are to criticism, even ridicule … I guess it makes it easier if you are still laughing all the way to the bank.
Was Boris in any way really disadvantaged by the fact that even his own supporters must have been cringing with embarrassment as one faux pas after another reached the ears of the country? Even the almost exclusively Tory Press who are patently and almost brazenly biased towards his Government found the stories just too juicy, too silly, too … clownish … too newsworthy for the dormant ‘journalist’ inside them all not to break free - albeit for a few brief moments. No, of course Boris wasn’t really seriously affected – and he was right, because even now there are people who would take him back like a shot … and definitely there were people who were clamouring for him to replace Lizzie.
I know that women do not fair well in British politics – with the exception of Maggie, and all that proved is that if you play the man’s game, and are – by nature or nurture – a complex amalgam of Hitler, Miss Jean Brodie and Dame Edna Everidge then the boys brought up by nannies, in prep schools, and then Eton, Harrow or Winchester will – despite themselves – allow themselves to be whipped, mocked, brow-beaten and chivvied into obedience. She was a one off! It was not difficult to see off the Mays and the Truss’s who were both just stop-gaps anyway, and there to take the flak until the heat died down and a proper ‘man’ could ride forth and see them off and they could return to the proper order of things. The country governed by a properly Right Wing Tory Party, and that Party led by a man. To have – in the days of universal clamour for equality – a man with a immigrant background was a bonus. A man with an immigrant background with the right attitude towards not only personal wealth, but towards personal wealth and protection of that wealth was a bonus.
Was anybody really surprised that one of the Tory philandering buffoons who had made so many cock-ups ended in reality television? Remember it had served Nadine Dorries very well. She had previously buggered off to the jungle despite it being during the Parliamentary term, and despite the fact that she was still being paid by us to be where she was supposed to be? It apparently worked and did not hamper her career because for her absenteeism since she had been promoted until last September to be the Minister of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Within the Tory mind of ‘wha’evs’ that figures, I guess!)? … So was it not totally predictable that this other Tory cock-up was fully prepared to eat camel’s penis in the jungle? Unless he was extraordinarily obtuse Matt Hancock must have known that he was tailor made for humiliation! He must have realised that he was going to be earmarked for as many disgusting ‘challenges’ as he could be voted to endure. He had surely proved to many people that he deserved no better. And yet he was prepared to take the money, and court the publicity – good, bad or ego-busting publicity. It is the nature of the beast that people - too many people - are seduced by their own publicity and once in the limelight cannot bear to walk away irrespective of the guffaws, the laughter, the shame that they carry with them.
We had been paying Hancock megabucks as an MP and as a Minister, so it was not that he was likely to be down on his uppers. No, too many go into politics for the wrong reasons, and once across the threshold the very kudos that goes with what should be a responsible and revered task is lost and sacrificed on the altar of power and self-delusion. It is hard to give up, and there are a hundred ways for ‘celebrity’ to be courted during, and after their fifteen minutes of fame, and it seems that no avenue is too slapstick or humiliating to provide a way to extend their time in the spotlight. Whether that ‘spotlight’ is cringeworthy or uplifting.
He merely represented the mindset of too many Members of Parliament who are led to believe that they are themselves the important person. Not the role that they have been elected to play. The person who has been chosen – despite their rhetoric on the hustings and in their walk-abouts – too often gets the wrong end of the stick. They forget two important things: First, the voters actually just voted against somebody else and second, they voted for somebody to speak FOR them, their elected ‘representative’ not for that somebody to feather their own nest, build a media career or give two fingers to them once they have their bum fixed firmly to a seat in the House of Commons (during whichever days they choose to occupy it – in some cases very few).
There seems to be a pattern that reasserts itself in politics – which is probably a micro-scoped view of life – over the ages. Wealth has always dictated power, and as we know power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The difference now is that – in principle – there should be more scrutiny, more scope for seeing, reading, understanding the situation. We have what would have been unimaginable centuries ago: an ability to watch, to spectate directly the workings of power, to witness the very moment when lives are altered, for better, for worse by those five or six disparate souls listening to a lone voice in a vast chamber with the poor old Speaker the only one who has to be there.
Whereas in former times men pursued riches buying and selling human beings, now men pursue riches by buying influence. They buy the decision makers. It is easier, requires less logistical manoeuvring – and is clandestine and even when exposed appears less open to condemnation – whether by rules governing Parliament, or by the Press and voters themselves. The ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ trading that goes on seems to have no negatives, just multiple positives. Not only are the ‘arrangements’, frequently actually courted by those being ‘bought’, ‘used’, ‘prostituted’, but also for the ‘purchaser’ it is fool-proof. Should anybody get a conscience, cold feet, or just get greedy, the worm is already on the hook and must keep dangling in the river however ferocious or heated the current gets since modern society expects no better of commerce and big business, but however much the ‘worm’ would like it otherwise, they are public servants, and therefore the public will be ‘outraged’ and condemning of their behaviour … for a short while anyway. The Press, even if it is momentarily hostile, is fickle and like the old newspapers which were ‘tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ today’s media is transitory and there will be another story tomorrow, or a new slant, or public attention can be diverted elsewhere – preferably towards the ‘opposition’ … assuming there is one.
When MPs’ and Ministers’ opinions – and crucially their votes – are no longer their own, then nobody is safe. Friend, foe, colleague, Party leader, constituent, campaigner – Party manifesto, Party ethos. A puppet must do – can only do – what the puppet master says. The limbs only move when the puppet master pulls the strings. The dummy only speaks when the ventriloquist speaks the words … however distorted, and however untruthful and even unintelligent. A gottle of gear, is the best he/she can manage … under the circumstances.
Unfortunately all this comes at a time when those ‘decision makers’ – in many parts of the world, but not least in the United Kingdom - are not only quite willing to be ‘bought’, and ‘prostituted’, but also less able, less suited to the role, and more incompetent. Sometimes the ‘incompetence’ is a smokescreen, but sometimes it is real because one has to be truly interested in a ‘career’ to do it justice, and politics is simply a means to an end for too many present day legislators. Their own means, their own end.
There are some whose ‘incompetence’ – ‘buffoonery’ – cleverly masks a real understanding of what is important – to them. To ‘their own people’ – their class, their business associates, their families, their futures. Not really – or rarely ever - to those who they have undertaken to serve, preserve and represent. There are others – the Svengali victims – who have either bought into the ‘club’ theory or the ‘gang’ theory. You either crave club membership, or you fear gang retribution. Once you are in, you are in.
PALESTINE AND NORTHERN IRELAND
I’m off on a different soap box today …. Well two different soapboxes, actually!
Soapbox One: Palestine
Soapbox Two: Northern Ireland
The subjects are separate but have a good deal of linkage! For me to be ‘open’ and ‘upfront’, I have to declare two allegiances:
First to the Palestinian cause which I see as a no-brainer. How can it be right for people’s homes to be bulldozed, men women and children killed, maimed, imprisoned, in order to give that land to ‘interlopers’ … people certainly not from within Palestine … indeed often not even long-term residents of Israel itself, but new arrivals from around the globe, the four corners of the world, who decide it might be nice to ‘return’ to their ‘spiritual home’.
Second, my head may be English, but my heart is probably Irish! There is an awful lot of Irish blood coursing through my veins, and the ‘Irish’ influences were always far greater. I put it down to a lineage of debaters, of writers, of barristers, of academics …. of raconteurs. But it could also just be the many, many years spent at Irish dancing classes and competing in the very hostile world of international competition! So there …
I have laid my cards on the table so if you read on, do not get irate with me if you have an affinity for fascism, colonialism, or … well … I guess right wing politics.
I am instinctively drawn to the underdog. That should explain why I see both the subjects of today’s Blog as being inextricably linked – at least in my mind. Palestine and Northern Ireland.
It is not just my personal ‘quirk’ that links them. Today there are numerous groups operating in the Republic of Ireland supporting the Palestinian cause. But there is a precedent for this.
It is well known that the very embryo of the ultimately very successful boycotting of South African goods began in the Republic of Ireland, with a mere handful of shop workers (in Dunne’s Stores) who refused to handle South African produce. Little acorns to oak trees can offer some proof that every victory must start somewhere! So, Ireland has a past and a present when it comes to affinity with national and international injustices. They don’t always get it right, but generally speaking – the people if not necessarily the Government! - provides the norm that they side with the underdog … the victim, the David fighting the Goliath.
For some time during the dreadful years of the Apartheid in South Africa, I worked for Peter Benenson, the co-founder of Amnesty International in his Mitre Court and Crane Court premises in The Inner Temple, in London. I was also a ‘mail drop’ for letters to and from people trying not only to survive, but also to fight to alter an unforgivably unjust regime.
So the tradition of support for the oppressed continues in Ireland. There are myriad groups in the Republic of Ireland with links to Gaza and the people of Palestine.
That does not exactly ‘link’ my two mitherings today, but it does in a way at least make them ‘sympatico’. History links the two nations.
PALESTINE:
Hope upon hope! “It is possible that the World Court is likely to rule that every Israeli action in Palestine since 1967 has been illegal – the strongest UN indictment yet. But I don’t expect change under Israel’s new extreme-right government”. So says Ramzy Baroud in The Morning Star. …. (Though, as a person with a long memory and increasing lack of faith, I am well past taking it as a done deal even for the UN … by the way, that’s me, not Ramzy!)
No, I won’t hold my breath for a change of heart or conscience in Jerusalem, but it has always been far more of a sadness (and indeed outrage) to me that the rest of the world were either blinded, or bribed, or terrified of saying that the situation in Gaza had to be both to be acknowledged and condemned. Instead, up to now, it has seemed that international law - although not necessarily international opinion – sided with the aggressor. The motivation seemed only too obvious to people with any kind of sense of justice or humanity. It must be a reluctance to upset the Zionists in Jerusalem. That is further compounded by the corollary not to upset the important Jewish vote which is seen as important in many/most/all nations. With politicians, it was not a surprise that they should be ‘pragmatic’. To be self-serving and fence-sitting is more prudent. The clever re-branding by supporters of the Knesset to hi-jack a purely land grab, ethnic cleansing genocide and give it an anti-Semite twist was both clever and very successful.
Here in the UK, it affected politics drastically. It demolished a political Party, it divided the Jewish community, it enabled people seeking personal advancement and ‘limelight’ to come out from the wings, from retirement, from obscurity and not only call ‘foul’ but also denigrate others into the bargain. But, sorry, I have lost my sense of proportion. As angry as I feel about the political situation here in the UK that has left us with a Government that is self-serving and unprincipled, as well as incompetent. As distressed as I am that it has left us with a situation where that Government is aided and abetted by an Opposition sharing the same hymn sheet. As fed up as I am that though it is in a different key, the tune is precisely the same … even if it is discordant to the ears and causes madness. All that pales into insignificance because far, far worse is the truth that people are dying, becoming homeless, stateless, imprisoned, orphans, widows, childless in Palestine every day, and up to now nobody in a position to do anything has given a damn …
So .. please, International Court. It is really not a question of ‘whether’ it is right – you already know the answer to that. No it is just a question of ‘courage’ and ‘balls’ to state the truth. The situation in Palestine is not only an indictment of the Zionist Government in Jerusalem, but it is also a disgrace that those supposedly ‘policing’ justice in the world have been so cowardly. It is time to come out from under the duvet.
THE CONTINUING FIASCO IN NORTHERN IRELAND:
The second piece of news was that the representative of the British Government has stamped his feet and banned the leader of the ruling Party in the Northern Ireland Parliament from attending the talks which are essential to try to get the Stormont Parliament functioning again.
Despite it being imperative that some kind of agreement is reached, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr. Chris Heaton-Harris has decided to go into ‘dictat’ mood and has said that “it would not have been wise to invite Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald to Wednesday’s meeting with the British Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, because she is a “representative of a parliament in an EU member state.” It seems that arrogance and pomposity is still more important than solving the deep and serious problems in Northern Ireland.
I am assuming that Mr. Chris Heaton-Harris has not just gone rogue and made a unilateral decision on such a major matter without consultation, so one must assume that the ‘order’ has come from James Cleverly himself – or even the higher up the chain of command.
It was a negotiating fiasco by the present Government that landed the Province with the chaos that they have now. Northern Ireland face the same financial and recession problems as the rest of the UK, with the additional limitation of ‘the border’. Much trading, employment, commerce, was cross-border with the Republic. Nothing was achieved in negotiations to alleviate the problems caused by that obstacle, with the UK negotiators failing to find an appropriate (much less advantageous) agreement with the EU for post Brexit. The border issue was purely the result of poor – inept – negotiating and resulted in a decision which was not in anybody’s best interests. It was a humiliation and embarrassment for the UK Government, but more than that it was an abandonment of the people in Northern Ireland. The UK was like the mother in the story of Soloman who thought it was a sound solution to cut the baby in half.
Rioting has been on-going sporadically since March and with a region that has seen more than its fair share of violence and bloodshed any lack of full commitment to find a solution is both unhelpful and unwelcome.
The unresolved border issue, and the lack of an N.I. regional governing body leaves them in a kind of limbo. If unrest is stoked up by an increased number of residents seeing the benefits of a united Ireland, particularly with a small majority having voted ‘Remain’ in the Brexit referendum, it is self-evident that any lack of continued ‘order’ and ‘normality’ will increase people’s anxiety and lead not to apathy, but to possible unrest.
only spoke to those they found to their liking or spoke the same language, or held the same beliefs or had not got one over on them in the past!
It is understandable that the British Government is vexed that it is being asked to sit down and talk with people that it has had ‘issues’ with in the past, and indeed has not fared all that well against, but we are not talking here about a gangland squabble over ‘turf’ or even about a territory that is of supreme importance to the Government on the mainland. If that were the case, it would have argued better or been more diplomatic when negotiating Brexit. No, to sit down and talk with ‘the old enemy, Sinn Fein – particular with them now being the elected ruling group in the Province – is not comfortable. To have a ‘representative’ of a parliament in an EU state’ there as well – when the EU too is no longer a ‘friend’, is, I can see, an embarrassment. If you add on the fact that the other negotiator at the table is the Government former ‘ally’ the DUP is no longer a comfort. The DUP were ‘bought’ before to save the Government’s blushes, but things have not gone quite as amicably since then. Personnel change, copy books get blotted, people renege on deals … it’s a cut-throat life in politics!
So I hope that the British Government will reconsider their ‘ban’ which could put a spanner in the works. One would hope it is not a dictat out of spleen or embarrassment – or worse still plain vindictiveness but it does seem less than diplomatic and statesman-like to ‘ban’ the leading party from having its own ‘President’ at the negotiating table. Leaders of countries sit down and discuss and negotiate with people they don’t approve of all the time. People they fear. People they hate - even people they are at war with. World leaders may think their opposite number is ‘the devil incarnate’ or are ‘as mad as a hatter’ but that is not the point. The issues are bigger than the personnel. All the personnel. Wars would be endless if people only negotiated with those they found to their liking or spoke the same language, or had not bloodied their noses in the past.
I hope that vanity gets laid aside, and sense prevails. Sword rattling is all right in the school playground with rulers, but frankly this Government has enough to do to keep their own heads above water politically and do not really need to manufacture an in passe in N.I. when all around the UK people are reaching the end of their tether even without the additional ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ that people are having to live with in Northern Ireland.
That having been said, I have often of late wondered here whether no Government might not be better than this Government! Just a passing thought. I’m not really advocating anarchy … not really …. I don’t think. But sometimes it is a very close-run thing!
DON'T GO TO A&E, GO SEE YOUR GP
SORRY, I'LL SAY THAT AGAIN ..
DON'T GO SEE YOUR GP, PHONE A SPECIALIST!
Thanks to The Canary .... for their piece today ....
Wes Streeting has apparently solved the problem of the over-use of A & E departments ... Don't go there, see your GP. Don't consult your GP, go straight to a Specialist ... Sound logical? Sounds typical gerimandering to me! Seems like using an elastoplast over an amputation. But is that naivete or arrogance? .
Apparently according to Wes Streeting, the bridesmaid waiting to catch the Health Minister’s bouquet after the next election … (sorry! I just had a Homer Simpson moment … doh!).
Wes says that A&E departments will be fine if we all just book an appointment with our GP instead of turning up at A&E. Also … if we have a rash, or a pain in our rear end, or some other worry, we should just be able to pick up a phone or email directly to the relative specialist at the hospital and self-refer.
I am sorry … what planet is the man living on!
The report below is a perfectly true re-run of an actual telephone interaction between myself and my surgery recent times:
(Setting the scene!) …. Location: My living room, circa 2022, Tuesday morning about 10 a.m. …. That information is given just to help you ‘visualise’! Me on the telephone to my surgery:
Purpose of call: I have moved address and I have registered with a new doctor. I only need to arrange a repeat prescription. Apparently since I am a new patient I need to ‘see a doctor first’ before they can willy-nilly re-prescribe anything. (My ‘interpretation’ not the receptionist’s exact words!)… Fair enough! I fully understand, we cannot have people getting prescribed medication when there is not a real need, or there is any danger of prescribing drugs to undesirables, or merely a waste of resources. I am quite happy to comply. So … So far, so good.
However apparently one cannot just book an appointment at any old time and now is not the right time. Appointments are only allocated first thing in the morning. I should telephone ‘after 8 in the morning’. I am further told that it needs to be as early as possible, because appointments get booked up quite quickly. Fair enough.
So … the next morning I dial the number. The answering machine kicks in extremely quickly – to save everybody’s time – and tells me that I am already 14th in the queue It is now only 8.07 … but, well … fair dues … people were obviously off the mark quicker than myself and maybe some were emergencies … (though according to the ‘speel’ by the answering robot, those people should have gone to A&E … but who am I to lecture!) I hang up. It is not urgent. I will try tomorrow.
Next morning … 8.03 … same process. I was 8th in the queue.
Next morning … same process. All right I was a bit tardy that morning, I’d taken longer in the shower than I had meant … it was 8.11 … I was this time 30th in the queue … but since it is now getting a bit silly and I needed the prescription, I decided that I would ‘potter’ but stay on the line and await my turn. Across the forty minutes or so, I gradually moved up the pecking order … until at last I was ‘Number One in the queue’. I was pleased I had hung on in there!
It was then that the truth hit me. The actual ‘staff’ were now by this time far too busy or perhaps too embarrassed to be on the line and the bad news had been left to the robot …. ‘All appointments had now been booked’ and once again the instruction that ‘if it was urgent I should ring 111, or go to A&E’. However this time there was an alternative suggestion … “I could ‘go on line’ and get advice from the practice staff” This turned out not to be medical staff, but admin staff, the receptionists, etc. none of whom, (when I did as instructed), were in a position to authorise a repeat medication without I saw a doctor first. (It was not an ‘emergency’ and I was ‘not worried and needed advice’ so neither 111 nor A&E seemed appropriate) …. So I am advised …. please telephone ‘in the morning at 8 a.m. to book an appointment.
It was a kind of parallel universe …. Not quite Groundhog day, but close!
So … if West Streeting thinks it is a practical alternative (for either patient or doctor) to ‘see your GP rather than go to A&E’ he does not live in my universe. Doctor’s appointments are already like gold-dust and more often than not, if it is something that needs ‘further investigation’ or is ‘worrying’ they are not in a position to do more than refer to a hospital anyway.
Which brings us on to Wes’s other brilliant ‘suggestion’ … a patient’s self- referral to a hospital expert. It is difficult enough to get a timely referral to a ‘specialist’ via a GP who has been able to give the hospital and the Specialist the benefit of their professional opinion that the patient NEEDS their investigation and is deserving of their time and their expensive diagnosis and intervention.
How irreverent is it of a Specialist’s expensive training, dedication, expertise and worth to expect them to accept what are, in reality, ‘Walk in’ patients? Those patients will be screened by a whole raft of admin and clerical staff before they can get as far as a Specialist who can make a judgement as to whether they are the right person with the right specialty; whether the case is one that they want to spend time on … ever, or anytime soon; or whether it is more appropriate that they ‘go see their GP’ first … Where is the time saved? How are hospital staff assisted?
What is going to be the benefit to a person who rings up as ‘Joe Bloggs’ and says ‘I have a bump on the back of my head (apparently the very affliction that gave Wes the brilliant idea that he we should all just ‘self-refer’) when Joe gets short shrift from a medical secretary or receptionist anxious to protect the Specialist from such unsolicited callers! It also flies in the face of Wes’s other suggestion that people should go see their GP and not go to the hospital. Were I one who sees the worst – the vanity – in people, I might wonder whether Wes wanted to save his own time rather than his GP’s time. I might even wonder why he is suggesting that we all go to see our GPs rather the hospital, but he prefers to shun the diagnosis of his own GP and go straight to a hospital?
I might even – were I ultra-negative - wonder whether he thought as a Parliamentarian – indeed as the Health Minister in waiting - he might have the divine right to go straight ‘to the top’ rather than following his own recommendation? Maybe he saw it as his prerogative to out the monkey and go straight to the organ grinder! But then that would be both presumptuous and arrogant wouldn’t it?
Since I am who I am, and I am a self-confessed decrier of all that has befallen a party that I have voted for, campaigned for, supported my entire adult life, I cannot help but add my own corollary to the above suggestion.
I am not sure that any of Sir Kier’s merry men (and women) have the right to be either ‘presumptuous’ or ‘arrogant’. It wouldn’t become them with all that has transpired in recent years. I am not sure they have earned that right to be smug or beyond reproach given their record of lies, character assassination, sell-outs and complicity with a Government hell-bent on taking us back to fiefdom!
I have no idea what universe the man is living in, but it is not mine.
A GP is paid by the NHS (maybe not enough, I don’t know I am not in a position to say) per registered patient, per interaction, per inoculation, per attendee at clinic, per flu/CoVid/Shingles/TB/etc jab, not to mention any that people need for trips abroad and for any ‘signatures’ that are needed for passports, official documents, etc. They are already restricted to giving 8 minutes per patient, seeing some patients by video link, and even consulting, diagnosing and prescribing over the phone … how is it helping anybody to overload them even more?
Wes Streeting – if he were the new Health Minister – should most definitely not be be proposing patchwork repairs … even if those repairs were worthy and practicable … which they are not!
Why does he not state that the Government (this one or the next) must put more money into the whole system, recruit, pay, nurture, expand and fund the present NHS appropriately. Why does he not see that it is both unworthy and juvenile to use the calamitous state of an institution that was the envy of the world as an opportunity for pontifications and sound bites, that make himself look ridiculous and prove that any incoming Government formed form the current Labour Party would be merely a slightly pinker Tory party – but ironically one with less courage and dedication to its own cause. At least the Tories know who they are prioritising … Labour lost their identity a while back – to all our cost.
So please get some balls, and come forward with a proper defence of the NHS rather than suggest impractical solutions which are good ‘sound bites’ but are as impracticable as using a pair of scissors on a meadow.
In short, thanks Wes, but no thanks. Don’t call us. We’ll call you! Maybe? Nah!
THE INVASION OF THE NHS BY HOSTILE FORCES
The truth is that there is a war going on and like many invasions this involves a pincer movement. It all stems from the same old Tory philosophy ... the world revolves around money. There is no opportunity for private wealth acquisition in a 'National Health Service' ... hence the original doctors fought so hard against it way back at its inception. The truth of their prediction that they were PERSONALLY better off 'private' and independent became abundantly clear when the system changed and the medical practices became 'funded' rather than employees of the NHS. Then they could 'bill' the NHS for everything from jabs, to screening, from 8 minute appointments to counting every single person on their register whether they ever set foot inside the surgery or not. It was almost as good as the dentists! Indeed better in some ways because they had to keep a foot in both camps, and thus benefit from both. It was then that the newer generation of medics within General Practice who had been straightjacketed within a State service saw the other side of the rainbow - the freedom and independence of their predecessors pre-NHS. That change in the fundamental way that a front line medical service was funded spawned the first step in the re-privatisation of the NHS by stealth.
Most of this Government is solely influenced by the acquisition of wealth and self promotion. Thank you voters! Our self-serving Government has been handed the keys to the whole emporium! The whole country is available to fill their shopping trolley!
There is a 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' philosophy that underpins much of 'business' today - and has done across the ages. The good old fashioned time-proven 'barter system''. But these 'traders' are not prudently and efficiently swapping the necessities of life. This sole purpose of this 'bartering' is for their own and their cronies mutual self-interest - and frankly sod the rest - including those that elected them and pay their wages. More fool them to have believed the blarney!
To them, a State run health service was a 'lost opportunity'. They could not help themselves plotting a 'take-over bid'. It was and is like the overthrow of the State ... A coup d'etat! The junta have moved in and the tanks are on the move!
The current 'army' will use any means at their disposal. The only objective is to succeed. Nothing is off--limits. Deliberate starvation of funds, victimisation, defamation, plotting, sabotage, infiltration, and ultimately invasion by foreign troops - sector by sector - pharmaceutical company by pharmaceutical company - to weaken and finally overcome.
Like all targets for invasion, the plan is textbook. All that is needed is a good strategic brain - like Napoleon or Montgomery. I'd say Churchill, but it would be too close to home since the then Tory government had an intense dislike for, and a complete opposition to, the whole concept of a 'free' NHS. To look after 'the great unwashed' from cradle to grave for FREE was a concept beyond the grasp of an elite used to privilege and power. Certainly a humanitarian step too far for those whose mind only revolved around actual money changing hands and the ability to gain personal financial advantage whilst keeping the peasants in their place. The notion that the service would not be 'free' but simply funded on a contributory basis by the people, for the people (to quote another advocate for independence) was too difficult to grasp and was totally lost on them because it was not going directly into their own coffers.
Much of this superiority and necessity to 'blame the victim' - the service user - rather than accept Government responsibility is mirrored today in too many statements by too many Ministers (albeit some here today-gone tomorrow!) in this present Government. Many of those in Ministerial roles only too clearly echo the Thatcherite philosophy that 'people could feed their children, cope better, save more if they spent less on cigarettes, alcohol, take-aways, budgeted wisely and 'learned how to cook efficiently'. The arrogance of that charge can only truly be appreciated when one considers the expenses claims, the subsidised eateries and the fact that even an ordinary MPs salary is about £7,000 per month, or £84,000 per annum. Worse even, since Ministers are the ones generally making the pontifications, they earn considerably more. Take Therese Coffey, for instance, who was at one time Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and now Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (so presumably now paid no less!) was as of October, 2022, earned £12,000 per month, or £149,450 per annum. That was her 'Basic wage' and did not take into account 'expenses', or 'perks' or 'considerations'. At the same time, those people she and her fellow Ministers and MPs were voting against and criticising were struggling on a minimum wage of £1800 per month or less.
If you factor in the refusal of Parliament to make zero hours contracts and such hideously unacceptable practices unlawful, with people paid 'as and when required' and at the whim of their employers (many of whom are already defrauding the country by tax evasion) then even that £1800 per month becomes completely arbitrary. Where is the stability? Where is the possibility to budget or plan on such a basis? All that being the case, even leaving aside the 'expenses', the 'subsidies', the amount of schmoozing and 'entertaining' that Parliamentarians get (not to mention the kick-backs and 'incentives' to vote a certain way) politicians must be either blinkered, in denial or just plain callous to even dare to comment, let alone condemn.
We cannot expect a change in attitude to a State-run service while we still have a Government whose whole philosophy is built around ‘God helps them that helps themselves’ … We need for the general public (who pays their wages) to see that to step back into a system where people are weighing up their need to go to a doctor (or worse to take their child to the doctor) against whether they can afford to pay the electricity bill or the rent is retrograde and barbaric. We, as a nation, know better than that, and since we have once prided ourselves on being a humanitarian, sophisticated and first-world country we need to do something about it. And fast!
Beautiful illustration once again courtesy of Jodie Harburt, whose work is available via her Etsy shop ....
Where did my courage go?
I know - not being extra-terrestrial or a robot - that since I am knocking on in years, am arthritic and creaky, slower and more crotchety, I am definitely not 'what I was'. Yes, all right! Let's call a spade a spade, and not a bloody shovel! I'll accept that I am losing physical strength and likely as not with my hair now silver instead of brown (or blonde or red, or copper ... or shaved ... or whatever ... as the mood took me in my 'youf') ... that more than a few brain cells have probably packed their bags and as the song goes 'headed for the coast' along the way. That having been acknowledged, I reluctantly accepted that I had probably said goodbye to my sharpness, my mental edge, my pithy turn of phrase, my keen and incisive mind. They had all very likely gone off on permanent vacation with my teeth and my vigour. But ... C'est la vie! We are all only mortal ....
No ... I was not offended or discombobulated when all that came to pass ....with one huge exception! I thought I might at least be left with my courage! I even thought that it might increase with age, since by now what do I care about the views of critics, knockers or abusers, whether verbal, physical or mental. What are they all to me? Sticks and stones may break my bones, etc. etc. ....
WRONG .... Far worse has happened .... I have become an OSTRICH! A truly unwelcome flaw ... an embarrassment.
I thought that my old self would have continued to be courageous and stalwart and ballsy and even brash ... Now 'retired' (more or less) with only herself to please, no more books to promote, she would at last be let lose to reek vengeance on unworthy politicians, selfish tax evaders, ethnic cleansers and bigots. She would crush the defilers of the nation from her armchair with her pen, her keyboard and her caustic tongue.
That person - not the ostrich - would have yelled at the screen, railed at the newspaper article, written to the editor, telephoned the TV company. This person - my current self - cannot help but change channels, not buy newspapers, choose my social media sites and generally be a proper coward.
It was bad enough when I had to avoid the Tories, and of course the likes of Farage, etc. but when I had to block my ears to the Shamer, and Hodge, and Watson, and too many of the people I had thought spoke the same language as me, they became a real source of affliction. Then low and behold back bounce into the limelight the Campbells and the Mandelsons ... closely followed by the nobodies - the non-politicians - the arrogant and loud mouth TV personalities and journos like Morgan and Riley etc. If you throw in the Corbyn assassins like Sugar and too many of the acting brigade (with notable exceptions I grant you!) who thought their acting, singing, dancing, anchoring, game-show hosting occupations made their 'opinions' on anything from politics to the royals to Ukraine, to Palestine, to Scottish Nationalism to ... well anything ... vital for the nation to know, then I KNEW really that there was nothing in any of the media that was was good for my mental health.
The Seeds of Despair
Today is a day to be cherished; Yesterday a day to forget
Tomorrow a day to be valiant. Life is, in essence, a debt.
A debt that we owe to the former - a prize we must always insure
A challenge that they never dreamed of - A future that could be no more.
We must for good of the future be careful. We must for the past now atone
We must for the present stay watchful. This planet is merely on loan.
No one can think themselves blameless; No one can think themselves clear
Condemned in the dock altogether and all but the baby should fear.
The world was left in our keeping with all that was healthy and sound
With greed and with violence we wrecked it. Soon nothing but waste will be found.
We plundered, marauded and pillaged, 'til nothing was left in the can.
We drilled and we dug and we looted, fighting both nature and man.
Be wise before history condemns us - whether God be a factor or no
Whether Science is right about matter, the end could be deadly and slow.
We used to be fearful of others; we feared the bomb and the gun
Today we must change our attention - this foe is a different one.
The modern day bomber or martyr thrives 'cos people feel need
As nation upon nation is victim, the root of the matter is greed.
The zealot uses need for recruitment when people feel badly betrayed
by life, and by fate and by rulers; no wonder they look for a trade.
There's no recruiting of people with plenty. No enticement where parity’s felt
When people feel worthwhile and cherished, revolution is a word never spelt.
Illustration courtesy of Jodie Harburt .... with gratitude for her reminders of the debt we owe to nature and the planet.
PULL UP THE LADDER, LADS!
The following will be viewed by some – perhaps even many – as a divisive and even discriminatory tirade. As a committed egalitarian and non-racist, I have to merely say that it is what it is!
Margaret Thatcher was a grocer’s daughter. She became the scourge of what she would have considered to be ‘the great unwashed’. Having ‘risen’ up the ranks, as a woman and as a Tory, she was determined that if she could do it, then if people failed, it was down to them. There was to be no such thing as a ‘free lunch’ …. Not even a free third of a pint of warm – sometimes even slightly off - milk to keep the infant classes in schools healthy in mind and body. If their parents couldn’t afford to feed them, then frankly why did they have them? Each family was an island but there was to be no emergency ferry service with ‘supplies’ … unless of course as part of ‘free enterprise’ those supplies were bought and paid for at source.
At the self-same time
that she spearheaded the dissolution of ‘Council Houses’ she was fostering the future indebtedness of working people by insisting that people were failing – were a drain on society – if they did not own their own houses. Even refusing to allow Councils to plough the proceeds back into replenishing alternative accommodation for those who patently could never – perhaps should never – be in a position to fit her mould of perfection.
The world and its mother was encouraged, therefore to live on ‘credit’. But that made more money for ‘the finance industry’. That, after all, was the UK’s ‘calling’. They were to be the ‘bankers’ for the world. Sod Wall Street, or any other interloper trying to muscle in on the world of ‘finance’. How dare they try to intrude on the sacrosanct God-given right of Threadneedle Street and the City of London to dictate the money-markets. That was ‘our’ calling. That and ‘clean’ industry … the fast growing, intellectual, entrepreneurial world of computers and miraculous electronics. Cambridge was the place! Forget Silicon Valley – they were merely second rate intellectuals and blow-ins. ‘Dirty’ industry was to be wound down. Leave that to other nations that had not led the way in democracy, innovation … superiority.
So, having previously survived Enoch Powell and Oswald Mosley Mark II and his stoking up of racial hatred, the nation was looking around for another group to castigate, to scapegoat, to lambast as ‘failures’ and drains on society. Those that heeded her call and bought into her ideology then were persuaded that they had joined ‘the middle class’ … maybe not yet the ‘upper class’ despite being ‘land owners’ or at least ‘home owners’ … and so it was beholden upon them to vote Tory. Only the Working Class voted ‘Labour’. They had ‘bettered themselves’ so they had earned the right A rite of passage!
That still left plenty people, however, who were now epitomised by the oh so true Two Ronnies sketch … I look down on him, because …. Etc. The manual workers, or people who had worked in industries that were no longer ‘clean’ enough for the Thatcher philosophy. The unemployed. The unwaged. Sometimes those who couldn’t work. Wouldn’t work. For those who could not ‘get on their bikes’ and seek work – because their roots were too deep, their responsibilities too great, their health (physical or mental) was too precarious. Embarrassment and shame made it easy then to find new avenues to vent anger and blame. ‘Those bloody immigrants’. The ones who were taking jobs, places in schools, on doctors' lists, on public transport. It was very easy for the right-wing Press to stoke up division by failing to point out the undeniable fact that those people flocking into the country had been actively recruited - bribed, schmoozed and enticed - to work in fields that were crying out for candidates because none of those ‘home-grown’ workers were either suitable or interested.
But that, as they say, is history. Back to today. As of ten days ago, 2023. 23 years ago we moved into a new millennium> It was a time that people had looked forward to with hope and relief. A millennium that said good by to too many wars – including World Wars – plagues, disasters, the Cold War when people were convinced any minute that one super power or other was going to blow the world to oblivion. A new start. A joyous new beginning. (For those too young to remember, the actual ‘January 1st 2000’ was a day that arrived – and passed – in trepidation. It had been ‘predicted’ and believed by many and stoked by the Press, that for some reason all the computers would object to the new order of things, and that the electronic auto-pilot systems of aeroplanes would go haywire and those that were en route would fall from the skies. But needless to say, they didn’t.)
But since then, it has not been the aeroplanes that have seen disastrous falls but life on earth as we know it…. Or certainly as we knew it.
Today we have the descendants of the early Thatcherites – descendants of working people – who penny pinch on Universal Credit and vote down pay rises for hard working, deserving, food-bank dependent citizens whilst voting their own pay rises, claim obscene amounts of ‘expenses’ and take kick-backs for their ‘votes’. We have the descendants of immigrants who braved the Enoch Powell years, the discrimination, the abuse, who are the ones demanding that we ‘pull up the ladder’ and ‘transport’ people or let people drown in the Channel. Back then too, money equalled power and selfishness and greed. What we thought we had now was sophistication, insight, a greater understanding of the world – of humanity and equality. One would have hoped that education, travel and technology might have taught us something. Could we ever have foreseen the country – a so-called educated, humanitarian 'first-world' country - returning to a Government-dictated policy that saw people shipped off ‘over there’ … somewhere … anywhere. ‘Put on a plane’ and flown half way across the world to a country that they, nor we, have any connection to. In – I would have said less enlightened times, but I would be wrong – men, women, children were ‘transported’ – anywhere – somewhere – out of here - for stealing bread or anything else trivial that a rich ‘man’ – always a man – said was ‘criminal’.
I’d ask for those milking the proceeds in Parliament with their undeserved salaries, their unjustified expenses, their inability to consider the needs and wishes of the people who elected them, to be ‘exiled’ … but most of them have ‘exiles’ of their own that they can run off to or know a lot of people with an island or a second third or fourth home in some idyllic part of the globe that they can tap into ‘for services rendered’. It is the least that the billionaires can do to thank them for their loyalty and prudent voting over the years.
Tapping into old ‘mates’ who have made the ‘big time’.
(Written at a time when BoJo was the honcho .... but the names may change but the sentiment lingers on!)
Hello again Cocker … I was delighted – if slightly gobsmacked – to hear that the tossers in our wonderful Conservative Parliamentary Party had decided to make you the chuffing Top Dog! As our great unwashed would say … Wha’ the fuck were they thinking! But then maybe they don’t know you quite as well as I do, now do they? I’m amazed that they haven’t seen through you by now, but perhaps given the old boys’ network it’s a case of wise monkeys, eh!
Still … their loss, eh! Now, apologies for being off your radar for … now how long is it, must be fifteen, no, perhaps even eighteen years … but don’t let’s think in terms of bad pennies, we’re fellow club members after all. No, let’s look back … way back … when you were a freeloader … well you still are a bit of a freeloader … but maybe then a smaller scale freeloader, unlike now when the whole country is your smorgesboard! Then you had an opinion of yourself that seemed, frankly, comical. How wrong were we all!
Well, mate … is it all right to call the you ‘mate’ … well even if it isn’t, I guess such considerations are only important to those who don’t KNOW you, and who understand that you might have blagged your way right to the top of the Party tree, but deep down you are still a crook – a shyster, a con artist. If you’d been born to a different family and hadn’t been with me at Eton you could have been born in Brixton or Toxteth … you would have been called a hustler … destined for jail … you’d likely be in Pentonville now, not Parliament ….. Still
Let’s not dwell on the past … I was bitter, of course I was … jealous, maybe. After all, you’re not brain of Britain, not George Clooney, not Pavarotti … no real skills or talents … but … well, enough of all that … Good to catch up with you again.
So … down to business! I guess you knew there would always be a day of reckoning … but nothing too lethal or even costly for you – not your money after all … So, I have a proposition for you … I have a company that could use a leg up … I could supply … well, whatever it is that needs supplying … I’m not fussy …leave that to me … I’m what you might call an ‘entrepreneur’ … well maybe not me, but I know people, who know people, who know people … like I know you, eh! Don’t need to agree on the minutiae of the how, when, etc. Leave that to me …
But, matey, if you were inclined to find more reasons to decline, than to accept my suggestion, I think you’d be rather silly. Nobody knows more about you than we do … your old mates. Believe me, we’re better with you than against you, eh?
But obviously no threats needed here amongst ‘friends’ … just think, as a real hustler, this is right up your street, now isn’t it!
Observations from a mongrel's perspective
The notices in the windows from long ago ‘No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs’ may well now be gone and the world pretends to divorce itself from such signs of ignorance. But has that kind of thinking really been removed, or just driven under cover. It is just not considered ‘suitable’ anymore. That does not mean that it does not exist. People are just more sophisticated nowadays, and discrimination is usually subtler, not advertised. Those bigots who are blatant and ‘out of the closet’ with their racist banners and open aggression are ‘condemned’ by the media and society, whilst that same media distorts the truth, printing bias, innuendo, half-truths and downright lies. And ‘Society’ continues to be led by the nose by those who purport to be ‘informing’ and ‘educating’.
The truth is that everybody – individuals and groups – still need to find somebody to label as ‘lesser mortals: uglier, stupider, poorer, more cowardly, less talented. It is the only way that people can sometimes excuse their own lack of pride in what they have achieved. For many, how ever much they have, is not enough. Is not enough because their neighbour has more. Is not enough because their parents expected more. Is not enough because the hierarchy, the old boy’s network, the class divide means they are ‘not the right sort’. It is not enough because their colour, their sex, their sexual orientation, their disability, even their lack of physical beauty, means that that they are judged ‘not suitable’ with no thought to testing their intelligence, their ability, their durability, their loyalty, their personality. The various examples of that good old ‘glass ceiling’ will always be there.
None of us – in nature – can really choose our place of birth, our parents, our genealogy … even our timeframe. Whether one is an atheist, or a devoutly religious theist, it is not within the remit, the capacity of anybody to make a ‘choice’. We can only try to work with the hand we are dealt.
We can educate ourselves – perhaps. Maybe not. Does that not in itself depend on where one is born, and to whom? I may be supremely intelligent, or quick on the up-take, born to a tribe in the jungle or an aborigine family pre-colonisation, and I will have the learning of centuries of truths handed down through the generations. I will be far better able to survive, to thrive, to understand the natural world, the seasons … even the nature of man and beast. But that knowledge will not have been gleaned from books – but from living, from surviving, from loving, from appreciating, from … an appreciation of what is.
I will not have been exposed to ‘book learning’, or mass-education via technology, and global access. I will not have been affected and influenced by an ever-expanding need to possess, to acquire the wherewithal to enable me to devote my time to enjoyment, to titillation, to … inertia. To have it all, with the least possible input on my own part. The answer to that question that many people have asked over the centuries: “Does the world owe you a living?” …. For too many of us, the answer is “Yes, it most decidedly does”.
I am lucky. I was born and brought up in a then very ‘Irish’ part of North London - which is now so yuppified that it is unrecognisable – and spent much of my childhood in Tipperary, in Ireland. And yes it really did seem a long way there … with no cars, no planes, changing trains at Crewe, and passengers sharing the ferry boats with the livestock below decks! But I remember it all fondly. I knew of the discrimination … not least towards my Irish mother from her London-born in-laws. They had been nurtured in an environment that saw nothing wrong in labelling Jews as ‘Jew Boys’. My grandmother’s family dog was loved and treasured, but because he was black, he was naturally named ‘Nigger’. The name being almost a term of endearment!
In my adult life, I found it both ironic and laughable – though probably pathetic as well – to learn via genealogy that my great grandfather – i.e. my very racist, Jew-boy despising grandmother’s father – was indeed not called ‘Moss’ at all, but ‘Moskavitch’ and he had come into the UK as a result of the pogram from Eastern Europe, had moved to Shoreditch in the East end of London, and become 'a native'! That story was never EVER told to the best of my knowledge, and certainly not used as part of the family history.
Despite that, saints be praised, I seemed to have come through childhood and teenage years untainted – and though it caused a good deal of eyebrow raising – my first real boyfriend was not English, not Irish, but Cypriot. In the cause of being truthful, I have to admit that the family – bigots and non-bigots alike - became very much under his spell too and were completely on his side when I decided that he was not the one for me to marry. Familiarity in that case certainly did not breed contempt … quite the reverse. Though I am sure that ‘foreigners’, whether Cypriot or Irish, or Asians or Jamaicans, were still just as much ‘interlopers’ in the broader populace. Just not those that were personally ‘known’ to the family.
It is important to say here that ‘prejudice’ was not confined to ‘interlopers’ from ‘overseas’ … I had two uncles who were Scottish, and it seemed to me, as an onlooker, that they had to permanently drown their ostracisation with alcohol and that it was only the fact that they had both served in very bloody and well-known arenas of conflict during the war – one in Burma, and one in North Africa – that gave them marginal protection against the onslaught of the predominantly matriarchal regime that ruled within their own homes. It was perhaps even true that their Amazonian wives of Camden were more difficult to survive than the worst that Japanese and Germans could throw at them!
I am perfectly sure that my grandmother – unless death has taught her anything at all – will be turning in her grave to realise that she has spawned a whole dynasty of multi-cultural, multi-hued descendants. Though I – through fate and not through discrimination – married a man born in the UK to white English and white Welsh parents, my children have done me proud by marrying or loving the people they chose – irrespective of background, race, antecedents, wealth, health or background. So I have beautiful grandchildren of all shades who are supremely innovative, talented, creative and enterprising. More than that they are nice people – kind, sociable, generous human beings. So what does that say about ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ … I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I guess I have to be grateful for both, since they – and I – are the result of both. Good, bad and indifferent ‘genes’, prejudiced, generous, inclusive mind sets, love of learning or love of life, education or illiteracy … All a result of the mish-mash of genes. My Irish ancestry were probably originally French, my English ancestry were probably originally Russian. My children’s ancestry were therefore that mish-mash plus, Welsh and whatever was in their father’s make-up. My grand-children’s ancestry is therefore all of those plus Grenadian, Jamaican, Trinidadian, Asian. I couldn’t be more relieved to be ‘multi-cultural’. It must have been so draining to be permanently condemning and hostile, especially when people kept proving themselves to be ‘just people’ and no more, no less dishonest, uncivilised, lazy, aggressive than yourself. And in many cases nicer by a long chalk!