The State of the Republicans: 2013

The end of the Romney campaign ushered in a new era for the Republicans…. apparently. They insisted they must change. Their appeal must broaden. Their hate-filled, politics of over-the-top Glenn Beck style fear had to go. They had to be presentable. Change or die! The old days of a Party of old, white, male, Christian, heterosexual, angry-at-everyone-who-isn’t-EXACTLY-like-them, funded by big corporations had to go. And so we were informed that a new breed of Republicans would appear. Ready to present a reformed GOP to the electorate. They were radically different from their predecessors.

So how’s that going?

Well, in November 2012, the residents of Texas’ first district re-elected Louie Gohmert for a fifth term in the House of Reps. If the Republicans are intending to break from the past, surely we’d expect Gohmert to perhaps be a little more moderate than his more radical Tea-Party-esque contemporaries. That’s what we’d expect. However, when asked about his opposition to any gun control legislation, Gohmert gave this rather odd answer:

“In fact, I had this discussion with some wonderful, caring Democrats earlier this week on the issue of, well, they said “surely you could agree to limit the number of rounds in a magazine, couldn’t you? How would that be problematic?”

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit ; it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?

There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.

- You read right. In a discussion about gun control, Gohmert managed to take a shot at same-sex marriage, by employing the insufferably weak slippery slope fallacy. I cannot work out which is more impressive; his ability to link gun control and same-sex marriage… two completely separate issues that in no way overlap, or his intense lack of sensibility in recognising that there is no reason to believe a slippery slope with either of the issues he’s commenting on. I could equally say “If we let women vote, what next, letting camels vote?” or “If we ban cocaine, why not ban cough medicine? Where does it end!!” It’s absurd and it is baseless. He isn’t the only Republican to use this fallacy recently. John Cornyn, the new Senate Minority Whip said:

“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right…. Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”

- Yes. the Republican Senate Minority Whip has just compared a loving couple wishing to express that love via marriage, and wishing only to be considered equal under law….. to a man marrying a turtle. That’s the standard of top Republicans in 2013.

Back to Gohmert. The man who tried to link gay marriage to gun control, also claimed that the liberals are going to make Churches:

….hire whatever Satan-worshiper, whatever cross-dresser you think might be immoral, that’s against your religious belief. You are going to be forced to abandon your religious beliefs, and we’ve been seeing that with some of the requirements under Obamacare.

- Yes! Someone had to say it! Obamacare is simply a mask to make Churches hire cross-dressing Satan-Worshippers! It’s SO obvious. Wake up America!
The fact that this man gets the privilege to vote on gun legislation; a vote on the safety of your children in school, would be laughable if it weren’t so utterly terrifying.

Bobby Jindal won a 2nd term as Louisiana Governor in 2011. Since then, he’s been rather excitable at promoting misleading figures to promote an agenda of fear. Whilst one fifth of all residents of Louisiana lack health insurance, Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid expansion, claiming it would cost Louisiana $1bn over the next ten years. Quite where he gets this figure from, I’m not sure. Especially given that a Department of Health Report noted that Louisiana would actually save around $400mn over the next ten years, by expanding Medicaid. He appears to have invented his own figure, to scare people. Despite this, and despite a petition signed by…

Advocates for Louisiana Public Healthcare.

Advocacy Center.

Capitol City Family Health Center.

Capital City Alliance.

Citizens United for In-Home Support.

Coalition of HIV/AIDS Nonprofits and Governmental Entities.

Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Harvard Law School.

Children’s Defense Fund-Louisiana.

Children’s Bureau of New Orleans.

DEAF Louisiana.

Doctors for America.

Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance, Northeast Louisiana.

Health Law Advocates of Louisiana.

HOPE For Homeless.
Along with 30 other groups, and countless more individual signatures….. Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid.

And then there is the apparent darling of the Republicans new bid for power in 2016; Marco Rubio.

“We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.”

- Here, Rubio is subtly promoting the myth that America was founded a Christian nation, and that religion must be considered part of the fabric. A subtle hint that non-belief, cannot be considered an American value. Thus, in a single, tiny quote, we see the saviour of the Republicans alienate anyone who isn’t slightly obsessed with ‘God’ being a key component to Patriotism. So that’s 15% of Americans who claim no religion. That’s a lot of people to alienate, for a man promoted as the key to solving the Republican Party’s problem of appealing to minorities. Rubio is following the conservative trend of telling people who should and shouldn’t qualify as ‘American’. This in itself, is divisive.

Rubio also still appeals to tradition when dealing with same-sex marriage, insisting that marriage cannot be redefined. Seemingly ignoring all evidence that the current definition of marriage, is just one that has evolved over time, based on modern Christian understanding of the term, and differs from other cultures entirely. So, that’s gay people alienated, as well as non-believers.

Brand new Senator for Senator for Arizona, assuming office in 2013, Jeff Flake also doesn’t like the idea of two people in love getting married. Whilst despising ‘big government’ and the intrusion of the State into people’s lives, Flake voted in favour of a Federal Marriage Amendment, Constitutionally banning same-sex marriage. For someone so obsessed for getting government out of people’s private lives, Flake seems more than happy to use government power to ban love.

Back to Rubio. As well as not particularly liking gay people, Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act, stating:

“I have concerns regarding the conferring of criminal jurisdiction to some Indian tribal governments over all persons in Indian country, including non-Indians.”

- Essentially, a non-Native American male being tried under the law for sexually assaulting a Native American woman, concerns Rubio, because he doesn’t trust Indian Tribal Governments. And yet, he puts his full faith in the States to fund programs properly:

“These funding decisions should be left up to the state-based coalitions that understand local needs best.”

- So trustworthy are local areas in dealing with domestic abuse cases, that due to budget cuts, the Topeka, Kansas City Council and Mayor actually repealed the Domestic Abuse law, in a bid to start a bit of a war with the County Prosecutor. This came about after Shawnee County D.A Chad Taylor, moved to stop investigating domestic violence entirely due to budget cuts. This meant that the City of Topeka would have to take up the cases, which they couldn’t afford to do either. So their Council voted to repeal the domestic abuse act. Which, forced it back into the hands of Shawnee County. Taylor said:

“My office now retains sole authority to prosecute domestic battery misdemeanors and will take on this responsibility so as to better protect and serve our community. We will do so with less staff, less resources, and severe constraints on our ability to effectively seek justice.”

Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence said:

“I really do not understand this. It’s really outrageous that they’re playing with family safety to see who blinks first. People could die while they’re waiting to straighten this out.”

- All of this comes down to budget cuts. Shawnee County DA Chad Taylor refused to prosecute domestic violence cases, after facing a 10% budget cut, despite half of all cases being domestic abuse cases, which increased substantially in the past three years, without any extra funding from the County. How very trustworthy! Interestingly, Rubio voted against the Budget Control Act in 2011, and the Fiscal Cliff 2012. Rubio evidently trusts the localities to make funding decisions, which is much easier, if those localities don’t have any funds in the first place.

Rubio isn’t the only Republican with odd reasons for voting against the Violence Against Women Act. Steve Stockman, Representative of Texas’ 36th District announced his shameful reasons for voting against:

“This is a truly bad bill. This is helping the liberals, this is horrible. Unbelievable. What really bothers—it’s called a women’s act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that—how is that a woman?”

Stockman also voted to repeal Federal laws that ban guns in schools. Why so? Well, given that among his campaign contributors are the ‘National Association for Gun Rights’ and ‘Gun Owners of America’, it perhaps isn’t that surprising that Stockman feels the need to put their interests above the safety of children. Just to make sure we all understand where his allegiances lie, here is incredibly ridiculous, almost comical campaign bumper sticker, tweeted for the World to see, by the man himself.

- I’m not sure if Stockman is calling for semi-automatic rifles to be inserted into the vaginas of every pregnant woman. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The scientifically illiterate are still abundant in the Republican Party. Marco Rubio once announced that he didn’t know if the Earth was made in 6 days or not, and that we’re never likely to know. But Georgia’s 10th District Rep. Paul Broun (planning to run for Senate in 2014) and, quite horrifyingly, serving on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology once took Rubio’s toying with Creationism one step further:

Earth is about 9,000 years old, it was created in six days as we know them”

- Broun also said of embryology, genetics, evolution, and the Big Bang theory:

“they’re lies straight from the Pit of Hell … lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

- Broun also said of climate change:

“Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”[

- Echoing his scientific illiteracy, Broun gives us enlightening views on politics, when brief mention of a National Security Force by President Obama, before the 2008 election:

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force, I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may _ may not, I hope not _ but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

- Yes. A US Representative, thinks the Earth was made in 6 days, evolution is a lie from the pit of hell, climate change isn’t man made, and convinced President Obama was going to create his own Hitler Youth, to take over America and create a Marxist haven.

Now to move on from bat-shit crazy, to slightly less crazy, Paul Ryan. The spritely Paul Ryan. You may think he’s irrelevant as a symbol of this great new era for Republicans, given that his ticket lost the Presidential election. But let’s not forget that Ryan is the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, in 2013. A pretty important position. He’s also Wisconsin’s 1st District House Representative. He looks young, he seemed fresh, he wasn’t the grey haired typical old Republican. Nor was he the gun tottin’ Sarah Palin slightly vacant Republican. He was paraded on the networks as a hero of fiscal conservativism, brave to speak out against Obama overspending! His brand new House Republican Budget released in March this year, which the brave, fiscally conservative hero claims will:

“end cronyism, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and returns the federal government to its proper sphere of activity”

- So it is worthwhile to note that the anti-big government, pro-deficit reduction Paul Ryan voted for the two Bush tax cuts (both considered a great failure, and added significantly to the deficit), the $700 bailout of the banks, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, whilst voting against Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Most of Paul Ryan’s economic voting record, has added significantly to the National deficit.
His House Republicans Budget, unveiled by Republicans on March 12, noted that $931 billion of the creatively accounted $4.6tn apparently savable over the next ten years, will come from counting the savings from ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars…. wars that Paul Ryan voted for in the first place. Economically, Paul Ryan doesn’t know where he stands.
Socially, despite absolutely no evidence to back up its claims, in 2009 Paul Ryan cosponsored the ‘Sanctity of Life Act’. A very odd little Act that sought to protect fertilised eggs, stating that the eggs:

“shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood”

Ryan also believes that abortion, in all cases, including rape and incest, should be made illegal, and States given the right to criminally prosecute women who have abortions, including for rape and incest.

Before being elected as Senator for South Carolina in 2013, Tim Scott was House Representative for South Carolina’s first district. During his time in the House, Scott cosponsored a truly horrifying Bill that would deny food stamps to poorest families, if a family member was taking part in strike action. The right to strike – a key component of a democratic society – used by the weak against the powerful, used to secure freedoms and security for generations, Tim Scott voted to essentially end. Threatening the poorest people in society; you either strike, or you eat. Scott is also convinced that the private health care system in the US is the greatest in the World, and that the Health Reforms of 2010 should be repealed. This is no surprise given that one of his main campaign contributors, has been Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the health insurance company. Among other campaign contributions, he has received donations from Goldman Sachs. Tim Scott is a politician, for the wealthy, by the wealthy. The Insurance Industry Candidate.
Speaking of complete contempt for the less wealthy, Mark Meadows, a member of the January 2013 intake for The House, and Tea Party favourite, representing North Carolina’s 11th District voted against the Sandy Relief Fund.

Dean Heller, the Senator for Nevada, who will hold that position until 2019, voted against the Health Care Reform, and against Fair Minimum Wage Act. Heller has also voted against subsidising renewable energy, whilst voting to support development of oil, gas and coal…. two of his top campaign contributors, are Alliance Resource, and Murray Energy…. two coal companies.

So, gay marriage leading to marrying an animal, Church’s having to hire crossdressing Satan-worshippers, manipulating figures to suit an agenda, a refusal to expand Medicaid to help the most vulnerable, evolution a myth from the pits of hell, refusal to protect victims of domestic abuse, including transgendered people, a desire to see women who have been raped imprisoned for having an abortion, guns in schools funded by the gun lobby, Obama trying to raise an army to enforce a Marxist Utopia, anti-renewable energy, candidates wishing to disenfranchise poor people and their right to strike, and wishing to repeal health reform whilst taking campaign contributions from the wealthiest insurance companies in the country.

This new Republican breed sound, and act, and speak, eerily familiar to the old breed.

The Ultimate Daily Mail Story:

Constructing the perfect Daily Mail article is an art form. Many have tried it. They’ve included homophobic rants by Richard Littlejohn, they’ve included attempts to subtly hint that all benefit claimants may be capable of killing children. The ingredients that go into the Daily Mail mixing bowl of bullshit news, include familiar topics like the evils of immigration, the evils of the NHS, the evils of scroungers, the evils of unions, the evils of Labour, how Thatcher saved the entire Milky Way, the evils of socialists, which celebrity looks fat today, kids in danger from the evils of teachers; but it’s rare to see so many ingredients that go into so many different Mail stories, rolled into just one story. It’s almost impressive. Which is why when it does happen, we should sit back, and appreciate it.

Enter Martin Robinson, a Daily Mail columnist, who has already written six Thatcher related articles today alone. One of which, is as close to the perfect Daily Mail article as you’re ever likely to find. It starts with this catchy little headline:

- Note the ingredients used, in just one headling: The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, and Teachers. Heroic, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Underneath the headline, we are presented with this little gem:

- So, that’s: The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, and Ed Miliband.

The story was presented with this completely irrelevant picture:

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, and a half naked lady.

The second picture of the Story was this:

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union.

The story included the following:

“Craig Parr is employed at Labour leader Ed Miliband’s old school and has worked with the youngest and most impressionable pupils there, while the other teaches troubled and vulnerable children. ”

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union, Kids in danger.

And it goes on, to link one man and one woman to the entire Labour Party:

“The teacher at Haverstock School in north London – nicknamed ‘Labour’s Eton’ – was pictured parading with a sick placard which read: ‘Rejoice. Thatcher is dead.’ “

“The school, situated in the fashionable London district of Camden, has been described as a finishing school for the Labour politicians of the future.”

- This is about as relevant as saying… “…the teacher, who once walked past a man who looked a bit like Ed Miliband, but has no other relevant connection whatsoever to the Labour leader….“

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady The Soviet Union, Kids in danger, The Labour Party.

“On Facebook she appears in photographs holding a hammer and sickle flag and posing alongside the former Cabinet Minister Tony Benn.”

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady The Soviet Union, Kids in danger, The Labour Party, Tony Benn.

And it goes on even more:

“The 27-year-old special needs teacher and union activist…”

“Mr Parr is a member of the Lambeth branch of the National Union of Teachers and has previously urged fellow teachers to strike.”

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union, kids in danger, The Labour Party, Tony Benn, Unions.

Douglas Carswell, Tory MP for Clacton in Essex, said: ‘We must not have teachers working in schools with young people at the public’s expense who think it’s acceptable to behave like this. Such behaviour is wrong.’

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union, kids in danger, The Labour Party, Tony Benn Unions, the taxpaying public.

And on….

Mr Parr, a member of the Socialist Workers Party, joined Haverstock School in September last year and was given the sensitive role of teaching children with special needs.

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union, kids in danger, The Labour Party, Tony Benn, Unions, the taxpaying public, dangerous Socialists.

And on….

“Mr Parr, a member of Schools OUT, an association for gay and lesbian teachers, said pupils should be given a ‘balanced view’ of the world.”

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union, kids in danger, The Labour Party, Tony Benn, Unions, the taxpaying public, dangerous Socialists, Homosexuality.

Finishing off, with a nice bit of angry far-right commentators, commenting about how Hitler was actually a Socialist (he wasn’t), and how deluded, dangerous, physically unnattractive Marxists with slightly bigger taxpayer funded breasts are targeting YOUR children!:

- The NHS, Breasts, Thatcher, Hitler, Teachers, Ed Miliband, a half naked lady, The Soviet Union, kids in danger, The Labour Party, Tony Benn, Unions, the taxpaying public, dangerous Socialists, Homosexuality, angry, paranoid right wingers.

So there you have it. The quintessential guide to writing the perfect Daily Mail article, courtesy of Martin Robinson, managing to mix all the ingredients into one story. An artist maybe. Or like a right winged modern day Buddha reaching the heights of Daily Mail Nirvana. Though, I have to say, I’m supremely disappointed that there is no mention of illegal immigrants or the EU. Perhaps it’s not the perfect Daily Mail article afterall, but it’s certainly as close as one is ever likely to find. Until tomorrow’s edition.

Margaret Thatcher

“I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.”
Martin Luther King

It would be wrong to claim that a person is deserving of our unquestioning respect, simply because they’ve died. We do not have to respect Margaret Thatcher as a politician, or a person. I have very little respect for her as either. We should however consider the tone of our comments on her death, if only for the sake of her family. We do this, because we are decent people. The openly “dance on her grave” barrage of hate aimed at her today, for all to see, so publicly, is another legacy of her awful ‘no such thing as society‘ legacy.

It does no good to publicly celebrate the death of person, regardless of how divisive or even how evil they were (parading the body of Gaddafi around on TV was horrific). The person is dead. They are not going to see the comments. It is irrelevant to them. The only people who will notably suffer from the comments, are the family of the person who has died. She has family, and grandkids who shouldn’t have to be exposed to some outward display of public joy and declarations of “dancing on the grave” of their grandma. Gloating and demeaning, is giving up the moral high ground to the people who created a society based on suspicion, fear, greed, selfishness, human values replaced by commercial values, me-me-me, and uninformed vitriol in the first place.
It also feeds the right winged trolls. As we see with the insufferably irritating, and vacuous Louise “You shouldn’t drink coffee from Starbucks if you have ANY issue with modern Capitalism” Mensch:

- Apparently, subtly hinting that anyone on any sort of Welfare could be capable of murdering their family, is fine by Tories. Saying “I don’t like Thatcher” makes you Socialist scum.
It is worrying that dissent in any form, will be seen as a show of ‘disrespect‘, by ‘spiteful lefties‘. Anything short of portraying her as some great figure, putting ‘great‘ back into ‘Great Britain‘ or anything equally as meaningless and clearly contradictory to reality, will be seen as simply worthless vitriol from bitter socialists. This cannot happen.

There is a notable difference it seems to me, between demanding street parties and grave dancing, to openly criticising her and her shamefully awful legacy. The latter, should be just as open as it is for those who seem to be bombarding the airwaves with talk of how she was some sort of God-like saviour. She was a political figure, a public figure, a divisive figure, we cannot and should not shut off criticism, especially at a time when her legacy is up for grabs, and will most certainly be leaped on by the right winged media wishing to portray an angelic, hero of freedom.

I therefore find it equally as disrespectful for Downing Street to have released this horrendously provocative statement:

We have lost a great leader, a great prime minister and a great Briton.
As our first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country, and I believe she’ll go down as the greatest British peacetime prime minister.
Her legacy will be the fact she served her country so well, she saved our country and that she showed immense courage in doing so. And people will be learning about what she did and her achievements in decades, probably for centuries to come

- This quote shows a complete lack of shame for the millions of people who suffered immensely because of her. It threads perfectly into the Tory-lack-of-shame-tapestry with how they have treated every minority in this country since 2010. The Downing Street statement is a right winged version of “We’ll dance on her grave” aimed at those they continue to despise, and punish every day. The unjustifiable needless rise in suicide rates, in homelessness, in child poverty, in poverty in general was horrifically high by the time she left office. The catastrophic nature of Thatcherite deregulated finance that Tories are now trying to “fix” by demonising the poorest and most vulnerable. To ignore this, to ignore the suffering inflicted upon the nation under the Thatcher government, simply to make a right winged point is as disrespectful to the families of those who suffered losses to suicide, the misery caused by the Hillsborough cover up, those who suffered through the nasty little Section 28, the dreadful poll tax concept that eventually brought her down, those who lost their homes and their livelihoods that she cruelly named “the enemy within“, those who will never be able to afford a home now, a huge inequality gap, those who died during her time supporting Pinochet; horribly disrespectful from Downing Street. People may well have benefited from her reforms. But a lot of people suffered horrendously, and they should be afforded respect also. They should also be freely entitled to speak out. Let’s not forget that whilst Thatcher spent the final months of her life in the expensive Ritz, many of the people left broken by her policies are now struggling to deal with the fact that they have a spare room tax to deal with. Judging a Prime Ministerial legacy should be based on how the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable were improved, not on how rich the richest were able to become. The Thatcher sycophants will inevitably demand uniformity of ‘respect‘ for her as a person. This is unnecessary, and is completely wrong to demand.
When the riots kicked off in London in 2010, A study by the business information group Experian found that inner city poorer areas are not equipped to deal with economic shocks like that of austerity, because they are still dealing with the after effects of the economic shocks of the 1980s. It found that Elmbridge in Surrey was the least likely to be affected by austerity, coincidentally, Elmbridge in Surrey was labelled as the town with the highest quality of life by a Halifax Estate Agency, and the “Beverly Hills of England” by the Daily Mail. Let’s not rewrite history to present her as a hero.

Let’s not dance to the death of a person. Save it, help to defeat her horrific ideology. Dance at the death of Thatcherism.

No one is denying that she changed Britain entirely. She was a towering figure. She climbed to the top of a male dominated profession, and for that, she is pretty special. I confess I have abandoned much of my socialist zeal from my younger days, however, my principles still lead me to stand firmly against everything she stood for. I have nothing but contempt for her politics.

But on the day of her death, I feel for her family. That’s about all.

George Osborne’s Credit Rating Words of Wisdom:

“We will safeguard Britain’s credit rating with a credible plan to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit over a Parliament…”
- The Conservative Party Manifesto 2010.

This evening – a day after it was noted that Osborne will embarrassingly reveal that borrowing this year will go up – Moody’s Ratings Agency has downgraded the UK’s credit rating from AAA to AA1. Moody’s stated the reason for the downgrade was:

The key interrelated drivers of today’s action are:

1. The continuing weakness in the UK’s medium-term growth outlook, with a period of sluggish growth which Moody’s now expects will extend into the second half of the decade;

2. The challenges that subdued medium-term growth prospects pose to the government’s fiscal consolidation programme, which will now extend well into the next parliament;

3. And, as a consequence of the UK’s high and rising debt burden, a deterioration in the shock-absorption capacity of the government’s balance sheet, which is unlikely to reverse before 2016.

The problem Moody’s sees, is lack of growth. The government have relied too heavily on austerity, and not on growth in any meaningful way. And austerity, without growth, is a failure. Austerity may work at times of prosperity, but when wages are worthless, when growth is stagnant or receding, it simply fails. It has failed again. Therefore, the Chancellor has failed. Moody’s continues:

When Moody’s changed the outlook on the UK’s rating to negative in February 2012, the rating agency cited concerns over the increased uncertainty regarding the pace of fiscal consolidation due to materially weaker growth prospects, which contributed to higher than previously expected projections for the deficit, and consequently also an expected rise in the debt burden.

- Here, they are clear. Moody’s is concerned that continued austerity, despite “weaker” (a euphemism, for no growth, stagnation, and recession) growth than ‘expected’, has led to rising debts. It failed miserably. The statement from Moody’s is one long winded way of saying, the Tory plan A failed. It will continue to fail.

So what was the Chancellor’s response to the news that his plan has failed? Well, he seems to be under the impression that the downgrade simply means he’s doing a wonderful job, his plan is working, and will continue without any changes to it whatsoever:

Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.

We will go on delivering the plan that has cut the deficit by a quarter, and given us record low interest rates and record numbers of jobs.

- Let’s be clear, ‘record number of jobs’ simply means, people working, regardless of whether they are paid or not. Unpaid work, to me, is not “employment”. Nor is anyone “employing” you if your jobseekers allowance is only being paid under the condition that you stack shelves for multinational companies using free labour. There are still 2,500,000 unemployed, chasing 500,000 jobs. That’s not a record number. Of the 500,000 jobs the Government claimed to have created, 1 in 5 of those are on unpaid work schemes, and most still claim jobseekers allowance. You know, the people forced to work for multinational Companies, who apparently do not have to rent their labour (this is reprehensible Capitalism, but not unexpected from the Tory Party), because the government claims to be paying their wage, through unemployment benefit. People on ‘job hunt workshops’ receiving no pay or training are also counted. So let’s be clear; the Chancellor just invents whatever he feels comfortable with at the time, to make himself sound impressive. The problem is, sometimes those invented comforts come back to bite you.

The Chancellor is missing the point and completely ignoring what Moody’s actually said. They do not believe that austerity, at a time when growth is slow or regressing has worked. In fact, it has made matters work. That has been the legacy of the past three years of Tory government. Osborne insisting he will continue on this path, suggests he thinks his policy has worked; that a downgrade simply confirms his plan is the right one. So let’s take a look at his thoughts on the Credit Rating over the past few years:

George Osborne’s Words of Wisdom

When Standard and Poor’s first put the UK on a watch list for our Credit Rating, the then Opposition Chancellor George Osborne made his feelings known about what should happen, even for being on the list, to the Labour Government:

“It’s now clear that Britain’s economic reputation is on the line at the next general election, another reason for bringing the date forward and having that election now… For the first time since these ratings began in 1978, the outlook for British debt has been downgraded from stable to negative.”

- Please note, that before today’s Downgrade, Moody’s put the UK back on negative outlook in February 2012. On Osborne’s watch.

Also when in opposition, the Chancellor told us just what losing the AAA Credit Rating would mean for the entire nation, and particularly the Government:

“….now Britain faces the humiliating possibility of losing its international credit rating.”

Also pre-election, Osborne lets us know that investment into the UK would be very difficult if the Credit Rating was downgraded:

“What investor is going to come to the UK when they fear a downgrade of our credit-rating and a collapse of confidence?”

It seems in opposition, the Chancellor could not keep quiet about just how important it was to keep our AAA Credit Rating, at the risk of the destruction of the entire Nation! And how only he could stop the doom!

one of the things I’m very keen on doing, and that’s putting it mildly, is to preserve Britain’s international credit rating. You know it’s absolutely essential we don’t have the downgrade that hangs over the country at the moment.”

In 2011, the Chancellor was keen to tell us how great his policies are, and how safe they have made us! HURRAH!

“Our credit rating had been put on negative watch. Now, however, thanks to the policies of this coalition Government, Britain has economic stability again.”

- That was mid-2011. By early 2012, we were back on negative watch again. Thanks Coalition!

in 2010, he gave us a benchmark by which to judge him as a Chancellor. He also gave us strong assurances of what the Coalition “WILL” do.

“Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain’s credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success. Protecting the credit rating will not be easy… The pace of fiscal consolidation will be co-ordinated with monetary policy. And we WILL protect Britain’s credit rating and international reputation.”

July 2012, Osborne tells us just how important retaining the AAA Credit Rating is:

“A reminder that despite the economic problems we face, the world has confidence that we are dealing with them”.

Moody’s is of course, untrustworthy and rather awful at what they do, given that a couple of weeks before its predictable death, AIG was rated AAA by Moody’s. That however, misses the point. George Osborne is the man who held the judgements of Credit Ratings Agencies up to be important references on how well a Government is performing economically, using them to continuously attack the Labour Government. He must face his own words. His own words, that simply add to his loss of all credibility this evening.

We must add ‘Downgraded Credit Rating’ to the list of Osborne’s failures as Chancellor. And the list is pretty long for a Chancellor who hasn’t yet been in the job for three years. The failure stems from the fallacy, that by cutting the public sector, the private sector would sweep up all those lost jobs. By taking money away from the poorest, and giving tax breaks to the wealthiest, we’d see new businesses everywhere, and job creation in abundance! Of course, none of that actually happened, or anything like it. Instead we have recessions, falling wages, people kicked out of their homes for having a spare room, banks not lending, the unemployed in payless jobs for multinationals, rising child poverty, borrowing and the deficit rising, and now a downgraded Credit Rating.

The Chancellor has to be sacked. His list of failings is immense. By contrast, Andrew Lansley was sacked as Health Minister, simply for not ‘explaining’ the NHS reforms adequately enough. The problem the Prime Minister has with Osborne, is that sacking the Chancellor, is an admission that the economic plan set forth from the moment they were elected, has failed.

If the Tories and Lib Dems thought they had inherited a mess in 2010, it is going to be a hell of a lot worse for those elected in 2015.

- So, given that over the past four years he has insisted that our Country is doomed if we lose Triple A, that it’s a complete embarrassment, that the Government of the time should call an election due to the economic failure they preside over simply for being ‘watched’ and not downgraded, that his policies saved the credit rating, and then as that rating is downgraded today, insists its just proof that his plan has worked……. how on earth is this man still the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Surely by his own standards, he has failed miserably?

The Cruelty of the Bedroom Tax

It is my understanding, that civilised society should be judged on how it looks after its most vulnerable, rather than how big a tax break it can offer its wealthiest. Apparently the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party take the opposite view. As the Bedroom Tax takes vitally needed money out of the pockets of 400,000 families with disabled children; our wondrous government will at the same time be handing a tax cut to 8,000 millionaires, giving them an average £107,000 more. This, alongside the Welfare Uprating Bill; essentially a huge cut to Jobseeker’s Allowance, Maternity Pay, Child Benefit and Income Support; all to pay for huge tax breaks for the wealthiest, means that whilst parents of disabled children will miss meals, and be unable to heat their homes; the millionaire Cabinet will be able to go shopping for new Yachts.

Where was the moral outrage from Tory supporters who now yell “Putting your kids in two separate rooms is an insult to the tax payer!!!” before the Tory Party actually mentioned it? Feigned outrage again.

Kicking people out of their homes seems like an easy solution, to rich men pacing the corridors of Whitehall, or maybe it isn’t even a thought whilst the millionaire Prime Minister spends £680,000 of taxpayers money making Downing Street look a bit nicer inside, including refurbishing the kitchen. But to the people who are settled, who are part of the community, whose children play on the street with their friends (i’m fully aware that children leading happy lives, is not something Liberal Democrats or Tories are really too concerned about, given the horrifically increasing rates of child poverty they have created). They are destroying homes, and applying unnecessary pressure to families already struggling to cope. The Bedroom Tax can be described as nothing more than heartless.

The IFS estimated that 3.5 million children in the UK live in poverty. The also estimate that this is set to rise steeply. 14% of children in poverty go without a warm coat during winter. 26% of parents whose children are in poverty, skip meals through lack of money even though 61% of parents of children in poverty, have at least one person in work. And now, if those people also claim housing benefit to help make life even a little more bearable, they will lose more money, or be forced to move home.

As we know, the ‘Bedroom Tax’ refers to the reduction in housing benefits for anyone who has a spare room in their council house. The idea is, people will downsize to a smaller house, or have their housing benefit cut by 14 per cent for people seen to have one spare room and 25 per cent for those with two or more. The cruelty is intense.

Whilst the most vulnerable, with very little money, and living every day wondering if they’ll eat stand to lose their home or even more money, the Chancellor will be reflecting on his “tough decisions” from his 215 acre estate, given to him to live in, free of charge, in Dorneywood….. here:

Then there is ‘Baron’ Freud (I know what you’re thinking, he’s sure to be in touch with common folk). He is Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Freud is in control of Welfare Reform. All of this, is his doing. Here is where ‘Baron Freud’ lives:

- I wonder how many rooms in this massive mansion are underused. Or, how much land accompanies it, on which homes, blocks of flats, shops, businesses could be built if ‘Baron’ (seriously, he’s a Baron) Freud downsized to a property that wasn’t too big for his needs.

These are the people who run your lives. Multi-millionaires, in mansions, unsurprisingly cutting taxes for multi-millionaires, in mansions. This is Versailles. The Court of King Louis XIV Cameron.

According to the Government’s figures, 660,000 households will be affected by the changes, and of that, 420,000 are households including someone with a disability. Low income households, who have faced a plethora of cuts since the start of this monstrous Coalition, now facing a huge cut to their welfare payments.

The point of this article is to get the Bedroom Tax down from numbers (Clegg justifies his support for this idea, with numbers), and back to individual cases. People.

ITV broadcast the story of Tony, Diann, their three year old daughter Shanice, and their 15 year old daughter Stephanie. Stephanie has 1p36 deletion syndrome, and a mental age of four. She struggles with words, and mobility. All three bedrooms in their house are currently occupied. Stephanie requires her own room, because she wakes up around 5am and can become loud and violent due to her illness. But under the rules of the ‘Bedroom Tax’, the two daughters will be required to share a bedroom, because they’re both under 16. That, or face a huge cut to their Housing benefit payment. They will be deemed to have a spare room. Tony and Diann say the cut would mean cutting down on meals.

Maria Brabiner has lived in her home since 1978. It is indescribably cruel of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to wish to see her kicked out of the security of the house she has made a home, all because of a spare room. Do you know why she now has a spare room? It is because her mother, whom lived in the room, died recently. Miss Brabiner said:

“I’m scared of what’s going to happen to me, I’m worried about whether my electric will be cut off, whether my gas will be cut off.

- This economic violence, by perhaps the two nastiest Parties we have seen in the UK, is being forced upon a woman whose mother has recently died, and whose house is more than just a house; it is a home. Worse still, it is being forced on her, by a Cabinet of multi-millionaires, with multiple houses that remain unoccupied and included acres of land that could be used to build new houses on.

Terry Avery is unable to use the left side of his body, after a severe stroke left him needing a wheelchair. He sleeps in a separate room from his wife, because of his situation. Under the ‘Bedroom Tax’, the room Terry sleeps in, is considered ‘spare’. Which means, he and his wife either move out, or not eat. Or a third choice; Karen, Terry’s wife would have to sleep on the floor, in absolutely no room. Karen says:

“With the hospital bed, lift, chest of drawers and turning space for his wheelchair there is no space for a wardrobe which is kept in my bedroom. There is not even room for me to sleep on the floor comfortably, which I would have to do as there is no room for a second bed or mattress.”

Julia Jones is 59, and has worked since she was 15. Her husband David contracted bowel cancer four years ago. Six months after having a irreversible colostomy he returned to work. Two years later, he contracted brain cancer and sadly passed away seven weeks later. Julia is now alone. During David’s illness, Julia rejected care allowance, and spent all of her time and money looking after him. They were given the home she now lives in, because it was easy for David to get around in. David’s ashes are buried in the garden, under a rose bush planted especially for his. Here is Julia’s plea to the millionaire Prime Minister:

“The most powerful men in the country imply we are scum so we must be scum.
Do you not consider that I would give everything for my husband to be alive, me to not have incapacitating pain and we could both be the hard workers we once were? I live in small 1 1/2 bed bungalow that was built for older people. It is supported elderly living so I feel safe. It could not house a family as under 55s are not allowed.
You now want to take my home from me. The home that literally made my fingers bleed cleaning as it had been neglected for 20 years when we moved here. You want me to leave my husband’s ashes, my neighbours who take me shopping and give me some form of social life? I have no family, we could not have children.
I am living without heating at present so how can I pay what I do not have to stay in my home?”

- This is the cost, when we bring it down to a human level, of the Tory and Lib Dem Bedroom Tax. The entire debate should be framed around the most vulnerable cases, those who stand to lose the most, not just in terms of money, but in living standard, and the brutality of stripping someone, a family, children away from the home that they call their own, and the community that they love.

In the Chancellor’s own Constituency, Tim Pinder, chief executive at Cheshire Peaks and Plains Housing Trust – a housing association said:

“Many of our customers are determined to stay in their homes despite the changes, but we fear this may lead to significant financial hardship. For some households this could mean having to choose between feeding their families and heating their homes.”

- It is just another ill thought out, nasty policy, from an incompetent and nasty government.

Over two thirds of those affected, have a household income of less than £150 a week. Apparently The Liberal Democrats feel that’s too much money. They should have less. 72% of those affected, have a member of the household with a disability of major health concern. 5% of those affected, have a spare bedroom for the carer who occasionally has to stay over. 9% use the spare room to store equipment for a disability. These people are all affected by the cruelty of the Bedroom Tax.

The human cost of cruel Conservative and Liberal Democrat policies, is heart breaking. It follows the narrative that has sprung to the front of political discourse since 2010; that the poor, the most vulnerable, the disabled must be stigmatised and demonised. It is a horrid tactic that takes the focus away from the people who caused the economic mess in the first place; very very wealthy individuals and friends of the Tory Party. We note this week, that Anthony Jenkins, the boss of Barclays, was paid more than 80 times the salary of the lowest paid. Whilst Jenkins makes £1,100,000 basic salary, alongside £4,400,000 share award, and £363,000 pension contribution, the lowest paid makes just £13,500 a year. Couple that, with the announcement that Barclays intends to cut 3700 jobs, and you start to see a bit of a problem.

This is what Tories do. We shouldn’t be surprised. They are a modern day nobility. The most vulnerable will always suffer under the nobility. When we elect a Conservative government, we must expect heartless policies, rising child poverty, a distinct lack of empathy, and a woefully underfunded NHS. That’s just what Conservatives do. So Progressives must focus their anger at the Liberal Democrats. It is shameful for a ‘progressive’ party to have so utterly abused the votes of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 by supporting policies that I would take a confident bet that less than 1% of Lib Dem voters would ever have supported. They cannot be allowed to forget the scale of the betrayal they have inflicted. This week really does sum up exactly what the Liberal Democrat Party has become, the moment Nick Clegg showed vigorous support for the Bedroom Tax.

For a party that apparently bases itself on getting government out of the lives of the individual; in a few months we’ve had Conservative MP Alec Shelbrooke wishing to tell Welfare claimants where they can spend their money (whilst himself, claiming tax payer funded expenses to pay for his licence fee, a bunch of Tory MPs telling you that you don’t deserve the same Rights as them if you happen to be gay and now a Tory coming into your home, checking who’s in the bedrooms, forcing your disabled partner with all his/her equipment to move back to one room with you, and telling you to pack up and move out if you dislike it. These people thrive on government interference. These are very wealthy, very privileged people and with that, has come the most cruel government the UK has seen in a very long time. When we speak of the nasty party, we must include the Liberal Democrats in that.

The incoherent case against same-sex marriage

There is a rather beautiful story that emerged from Chinese State of Chu during the Zhou dynasty, in which a wonderful male writer named Pan Zhang meets and falls in love with another male named Wang Zhongxian. The people of the town in which they lived adored the two. A contemporary writer writes that the two are:

“affectionate as husband and wife, sharing the same coverlet and pillow with unbounded intimacy for one another”

The story continues, that the two die on the same day, holding each other, and when they’re buried, a tree grew from their grave spot, and the twigs entwined.
It has only been since Western progressions into China, that homosexuality has been considered wrong.

No horrendous Church or vicious Mosque owns the definition of marriage. They appropriated the institution, and created their own definition. This is absolutely not a definition we must all consider unquestionable. Every argument I have yet come across, has a religious element. And it’s easy to understand why;

The only reason gay people have been oppressed so viciously over the years, is because of religion. Absolutely no other reason. How absurd that a bronze aged book of fairy tales about a paranoid sky dictator has that sort of power to stigmatise an entire group of people that otherwise would not have to suffer such stigma, and bullying, and fear. For that alone, I think it’s vital to utterly despise religion and speak out against it at every possible opportunity.

We must not be led to believe that the Church has a rightful monopoly on what constitutes marriage.

The House of Commons today is alive with bigoted and homophobic Tory MPs insisting that they aren’t bigoted nor homophobic, whilst presenting arguments against gay marriage that curiously follow rather bigoted strands of ‘reasoning’ (and I use that term in its loosest possible form). The Supreme Court of the United States is working to decide whether to uphold the Christian fundamentalist “Defence of Marriage Act”, that has no basis in reasonable discussion, and is entirely the realm of mystical fairy tales. If the Supreme Court upholds DOMA, Secularism takes another battering from the unconstitutional, Christian Far Right. I will try to briefly address a few of the ludicrous arguments being put forth by the regressive homophobes in the Tory Party and the Republican Party.

“You cannot redefine marriage.”
This argument relies solely on the idea that the institution of marriage has absolutely always followed the same defining route. It simply hasn’t. We know that marriage has changed radically over the years, and has different meanings to different cultures. We know that the old noble families of Europe insisted on marriage in order to cement or strengthen social and economic status. Rarely was marriage anything to do with love.

For much of human history, we have had marriage. Granted, it hasn’t always been called marriage, but the naming is irrelevant, the coming together of two people in a shared bond has always existed; the name simply evolved alongside the institution. Stone aged marriage is now referred to as ‘pair bonding’. It was used to provide a stable social structure, though it seems love may have played a part given that social status was not yet a defining feature of human society.

Hebrew society engaged in polygamy much of the time, it certainly wasn’t frowned upon. Monogamy in a marriage is a pretty new development. We know that the Islamic Prophet Mohamad married Aisha when she was 6 years old. In Ancient Rome, marriage was civil, it was not overtly religious. In India, if the bride was born when Mars and Saturn are “under the 7th house”, she is considered cursed and could end up murdering her husband. And so to break the curse, the bride must first marry a tree, the tree is then destroyed, and the bride is free from the curse forever. In the Tidong community in Northern Borneo, after marriage, the couple must not urinate for three days. Marriage is not official within the Neur tribe in Sudan, until the bride has had two children.

In 1061, Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz were married in Rairiz de Veiga in Spain, by a Priest.

It was only in 1967, that the US allowed interracial marriage. By 1910, Arizona, California, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah had all banned interracial marriage. And what was used to justify anti-miscegenation laws in the US? You wont be surprised to hear that it was the Bible. Christian groups opposed to interracial marriage would often cite the story of Phinehas and the Curse of Ham.

The Judge presiding over the case of the Loving’s; an interracial couple that this Judge sentenced to jail for marrying, stated:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

- Religion. Specifically, Christianity… has always been used to justify control over whom should be allowed to love who. The Conservatives in the Commons today are doing the same thing. They wish to control love.

As suggested with the story of Pan Zhang, Same-sex unions have always existed. They are not a new thing. They have only recently come to be demonised, and that is down purely to the Church. The great cancer on the face of society.
We know for example, that at least 13 Roman Emperors were either bi-sexual or exclusively homosexual. We know that Nero married a male in a very public ceremony. We know that the Ancient American Indians practiced a form of same-sex union known as ‘Two Spirit’ relationships, in which anthropologist Brian Gilley said:

In many tribes, individuals who entered into same-sex relationships were considered holy and treated with utmost respect and acceptance

So the ‘definition’ of marriage varies widely, from culture, and history. What the modern Church and its Tory bigots actually mean is, it wishes complete control over what marriage SHOULD mean, according to their very narrow doctrines. That, only their World view is acceptable. That, rights should be approved by them first.

“It is unnatural!”
This is used against homosexuality in general. It is based solely on sexual and biological ignorance, promoted by faith. Since a review by Canadian researcher and biologist Bruce Bagemihl in 1999, it has been widely understood that at least 1,500 species have been shown to exhibit homosexual tendencies. At least 10% of the population of domesticated sheep, are exclusively homosexual. A study in London by M.J Cole noted that homosexual behaviour in Giraffes tends to be more common than heterosexual behaviour. The African Lion has been noted to have homosexual tendencies.
Dr. Jerome Goldstein, Director of the San Francisco Clinical Research Center, says:

“Sexual orientation is not a matter of choice, it is primarily neurobiological at birth”

Goldstein continues:

“Using volumetric studies, there have been findings of significant cerebral amygdala size differences between homosexual and heterosexual subjects. Sex dimorphic connections were found among homosexual participants in these studies.”

In fact, there is not one reputable scientific source that will in any way, suggest that sexuality is merely a choice. There is not one reputable scientific source that will say: “You know, turns out Leviticus was right”. None. This includes:
The American Psychiatric Association,
The World Health Organisation,
The American Psychological Association,
The American Medical Association,
The Academy of Pediatrics,
The UK Royal College of Psychiatrists
Council on Child and Adolescent Health,
The British Psychological Society,
The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy…..
…. all of these intensely reputable sources, with a wealth of research and evidence, will all tell you that sexuality, is part of a natural spectrum. There is no debate here. The UK Royal College of Psychiatrists released a statement to:

“clarify that homsexuality is not a psychiatric disorder. There is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Furthermore, so-called treatments of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish.”

Now, there is only one species that has Gods. There is only one species that has homophobic tendencies. And there is only one species that has marriage. So which is the more unnatural?
Sexuality is a spectrum. It is not simply “gay and straight” with one being “right” and the other being “unnatural”. Sexuality therefore is not a choice. Building on that idea, Alfred Kinsey, the great biologist noted:

“Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual. The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories… The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.”

- To deny this fundamental fact of nature, i’m afraid, is not just very uneducated, it is unnatural.

A wonderful in-depth study by Binbin Wang et al, found that allele types differed greatly between homosexual men and heterosexual men. A further study by Sven Bocklandt et al, found that mothers of gay sons, have higher rates of extreme skewing of X-Chromosome inactivation, than those without gay sons. All the evidence points to genetics playing a role in sexuality. Therefore, it is very very natural. Christianity on the other hand….. a social construct. Absolutely nothing to do with genetics. Completely man made. Unnatural.

And let us also not forget that whilst being told by the religious that “Homosexuality is unnatural”, they spend Easter Sunday celebrating the coming back to life of a dead man, who sacrificed himself to himself, to atone for the sins that he himself created. Nature is the best!

“Marriage is about procreation! Gay people can’t procreate!”
Charles Cooper, the Attorney defending California’s ban on gay marriage stated:

“the central purpose of marriage in virtually all societies and at all times has been to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring stable unions to increase the likelihood that any offspring will be raised by the man and woman who brought them into the world.”

- Curiously, Cooper hasn’t yet called for infertile couples to be banned from marriage, or couples that don’t want children, or the elderly. By his logic, we should ban all of those groups from marriage. But we don’t. We don’t because we believe marriage is about love, and the right to express that love. It is not simply a means to create offspring. If you believe your marriage is purely about reproduction, then your mechanical relationship is rather miserable in itself. “I married this woman, purely to reproduce”. How romantic.
Wedding vows would certainly be interesting if those who claim marriage is purely for procreation have their way: “To have, and to hold, and to fuck, and NOTHING else! Get fucking! WE NEED TO POPULATE THE EARTH BECAUSE OF THE GAYS!”
Cooper went on to say that legalising gay marriage, would result in the human race dying out. This guy is an ACTUAL Attorney. A guy who presumes, apparently, that in legalising same sex marriage, the entire human race will all at once decide that they are gay, and stop reproducing. A guy who believes that by banning same sex marriage, homosexual people will happily marry someone of the opposite sex and have lots of babies. The anti-same sex marriage lobby, are a parody.

“The Bible does not permit same sex relationships.”
Well, then, let’s be consistent.  2 Cor. 6:14 tells me that a non-Christian is not allowed to marry a Christian (this is far more defining, than what the Bible says about gay marriage). Genesis 20:1-14 tells me it’s perfectly acceptable in God’s eyes, to marry your sister. Deut. 21:11-13 tells me it’s perfectly acceptable, when taking people hostage, to search out a hostage you find attractive, and marry her, as long as I shave her head first (she has no choice in this, obviously). I Corinthians 14:34-35 tells me that a husband should not allow his wife to have any opinions. Deut. 22:28 tells me that if I pay some silver to my rape victim, I am legally entitled to marry her. Again, she has no choice in this. Judges 21:7-23 tells me I can take the female children of families that i’ve slaughtered, and keep them for myself to marry. WHOOP! Leviticus 12:5 tells me that if my wife gives birth to a girl, she must spend two weeks in isolation because she’s a dirty bitch. Exodus 21:10 tells me that it’s perfectly acceptable to have more than one wife (Polygamous, and chauvinistic all at once)
So…… marry your sister, marry your hostage, marry several women, marry your rape victim, beat your wife if she offers an opinion, and marry the children of families you’ve just slaughtered. But NEVER let a gay couple marry.The Bible says very little on the subject of homosexuality. But if we are to condemn homosexual relationships based on the Bible, we must be consistent and reflect on absolutely every precedent the Bible sets out in relation to marriage. To do otherwise, would be widely hypocritical.

“What about my religious freedoms?”
I have honestly never heard anyone describe how letting two people in love marry, will destroy their right to believe in whatever God they choose. So it’s pretty difficult to answer this, given that it’s an empty and meaningless question. This victim mentality, expressed against a victimless backdrop, is worthy of absolutely no respect.

Giving a group of people rights that you yourself have always had, does not take anything away from you. It is absurd to suggest it does. I am almost convinced that those who spout the “you’re taking away my religious freedoms” argument are under the rather odd impression that allowing gay people to marry, would mean they themselves are forced to marry a gay person.

Please feel free to enlighten me, as to which religious freedoms you will lose, if a gay couple that you’ve never met, and will never meet, get married without your knowledge?

“Legalising same-sex marriage? Why not legalise incest? Or marrying your dog?”
- This is perhaps the most ridiculous of all arguments. A slippery slope fallacy of the worst kind. If homosexual marriage leads to marrying your dog, or your daughter, then we must accept that heterosexual marriage lead to homosexual marriage, and so in fact the very institution of marriage itself, starts the ball rolling down the slippery slope. It is a silly argument. It is the equivalent of insisting that eating pork, will eventually lead to eating humans. Why let gay people vote? We may as well let your dog vote, right? It is a disgusting argument, to suggest that a loving relationship between two men, or between two women is morally equivalent to incest. And yet, this intense logical fallacy is being used constantly by our Parliamentary representatives in the House of Commons today. How shameful. Canada legalised same-sex marriage in 2005, and in the eight years that has passed, no one is marrying their goat.

For a Conservative Party and a Republican, who base their entire existence on ‘freedom’, and getting government out of people’s lives, the 100+ British Conservative MPs willing to withhold the right to love, and a Republican Party willing to use government to tell an individual he or she is not allowed to marry the person that they love, has to be the most vicious form of government oppression that exists in a liberal secular democracy.

The choice to become Christian is just that; a choice. Sexuality is a spectrum based on genetic and hormonal differences, that is not in any way about choice. Therefore, sexuality, like skin colour, comes with inalienable rights, that choosing to be Christian, simply doesn’t. A choice is entirely different from genetic traits.

Your choice to become a Christian does not bestow upon you a right to inhibit the rights of others.

There is no debate here. It isn’t two rational sides conflicting. It is the side of rationality and sensible, evidence based point of view, against homophobes. Their arguments are so very weak, their points are useless, and so the conclusion we can come to is that they simply do not like homosexuality. To oppose the right for two people in love to get married, based solely on their sexuality, is bigoted and nothing else. The suggestion of ‘separate but equal’ is the cry of the regressives. It is a nice little sound bite that masks the intent; segregation. Segregation is, and always will be wrong.

The Terrible Tory Week

“No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party.”
- Aneurin Bevan

It’s an odd feeling, to not be shocked when seeing the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the United Kingdom, bursting into fits of laughter over the fact that the Shadow Chancellor has a stammer. It doesn’t shock me. My initial reaction when watching, was one of “typical”. Their lack of compassion is not only repulsive when it appears on the surface, but it is even more so when reflected in their policies. I expect insensitivity, racism, sexism, homophobic, anti-disabled rhetoric and policy from them. They represent, in so many ways, the problem that – in the words of Glen from The Thick of It – the born-to-rule-pony-fuckers are to this country; evidenced further by today’s Autumn Statement.

Screams of joy reverberated throughout the Tory back benches today as the Chancellor announced that certain benefits would rise way below the rate of inflation over the next three years, amounting to a real terms cut. The idea of a single mum struggling to put food on the table is what keeps these bastards going, much like the idea of laughing at someone with a handicap. The cut pays for their tax breaks.

The Autumn Statement can be summed up quite simply; the rich don’t have enough money and should be given more…. the poor have too much money and should have it taken away. Actually, it can be summed up with even fewer words; the Tory extreme economic agenda has failed. Miserably.

Jobseeker’s Allowance,
Employment and support allowance,
Income support,
Maternity,
Paternity
Adoption pay,
Child Benefit….
Will all rise by just 1% over the next four years. That is effectively a massive cut. But that’s not all. The link to inflation will be broken with a new ‘Welfare Uprating Bill’ to be introduced shortly. The reason for this is that current legislation means certain benefits, by law, much rise in line with prices. By effectively abolishing this, using new legislation, it means that any future link between benefits and inflation, must be introduced through new legislation, four years from now, in 2016. I cannot imagine a future Tory government agreeing to that idea. The link between welfare and inflation may now be lost forever. A massive change to the welfare system. A system of protection for the most vulnerable, destroyed in one sentence of an Autumn Statement, by far-right economic agenda that did not gain a mandate in 2010.

Further, the link to inflation using the CPI instead of the far more generous RPI was reason enough for the Institute For Fiscal Studies to claim responsible for a projected rise in child poverty. Osborne has removed it entirely. For child poverty, the removal of the link to inflation at all, is a massive blow.

Osbourne used the predictably right winged example of scroungers, or “people in bed, whilst hard workers are out earning” to justify the cut. I’m not sure how that justifies a cut in maternity allowance. Child benefit affects ‘hard working’ people as well as the unemployed. And the unemployed is not simply another word for scrounger. They are unemployed, because the most incompetent government in living memory actively sought to plunge the country into a double dip recession, followed by a stagnant economy. They are the pawns in the Tory game. And they are being punished for it. Meanwhile, whilst Starbucks are in the news for both aggressively avoiding tax, and punishing their workers with contract changes…….. corporation tax is slashed by a further 1%. Welcome to Corporate England. Apparently having the lowest Corporate tax rate in the G7 was not enough. It needs to be lower. Much lower….. a quarter lower since they came to power, just two Make no mistake, the Autumn Statement was a huge hand out to the wealthiest, and a huge grab from the most vulnerable. By 2016, the annual loss per family with two children, will be £315.40 a year.

George Osborne stood up to the dispatch box to announce that his plan has not worked. But to fix the plan that has not worked, he announced more of the same failed policies. Austerity will now last until 2017-2018. A year longer than previously stated. In March the OBR predicted that the UK economy would grow by 0.8% this year. The Chancellor today announced that the OBR had revised that, and the economy will have infact shrunk by 0.1% this year.
In fact, the OBR is excellent at getting figures widely wrong. Here, OBR forecasts for 2012 over the past two years:

June 2010 – 2.8% growth for 2012.

November 2010 – 2.6% growth for 2012.

March 2011 – 2.5% growth for 2012.

November 2011 – 0.7% growth for 2012.

March 2012 – 0.8% growth in 2012.

December 2012 – -0.1% growth in 2012.
How are the OBR taken seriously? Why do the media insist on quoting them, they are simply adding to the horrendous incompetencies of perhaps the most delusional and incompetent Chancellor in history.

Further, GDP growth has now been downgraded every year until 2018.
Unemployment is set to rise alongside.
In fact, here are the Governments own stats on unemployment (downgraded, like every thing else Osborne has predicted).

What this shows is unemployment will not be down to 2011 levels until 2016. This cannot be blamed on Labour any more, nor is it natural. It is by design.
And here is the evidence that the highest burden, will be placed on the

We must also point out that whilst the Tory benches cheered with delight at the £5bn promised for infrastructure programs (an admittance that government investment CAN work), they appear to have ignored that two years ago, £22bn cut in investment projects, and has just announced a further 1% cut in departmental budgets.

Here is how the OBR predicts the changes through the Autumn Statement will fall.

- It shows a horribly regressive pattern, with the bottom 10th of Britain losing 1.75% of their net income. The bottom 3 deciles, getting just horrendously hit by Osborne’s destructive and failing policies. Whilst the middle income bracket also tend to lose out, they lose out far less…… those be the swing voters. The lowest 10th, have actually seen their net income fall over the entire past decade. Now, it will fall again. This, Osborne claims is Britain “on the right track”. According to Poverty UK the “income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined.”

When 2015 comes around, we can expect Tory supporters of economic neoliberalism to vote Tory regardless of the fact that their agenda has led to a rise in the National debt, a rise in borrowing, a rise in unemployment, and, well, no positives whatsoever. But those on the centre and centre-left politically should never forget that none of this would be possible without the Liberal Democrats. They should be destroyed at the next election.

Secession from the Union can only happen by violent revolution.

Today, citizens in 20 States over in the US have petitioned the White House’s ‘We Are The People’ site to secede from the Union, based on their continued bitterness that their preferred candidate-for-insanity didn’t win the election.
Amusingly, the secession petitions carry with them a quote from the Declaration:

“…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government…”

- Deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. Well, the governed just democratically chose not to give any power to your candidate. Deal with it. That’s democracy. The form of government has not become destructive to that end. You lost. Democracy doesn’t mean you must win, all the time. If you want to secede, because you lost the election, then you absolutely do not understand democracy or America. It really is amazing what a bunch of regressive idiots will do when a man with dark skin is in the White House.

It is interesting to me, that New York has a petition. It has a couple of thousand signatures so far. What a curious understanding of democracy. Their State voted Democrat. The majority of those in New York, are Democrat. So, if a vote was theoretically put to New York State legislature, based on the will of the people, it would lose. What would secessionists then say? Secede, but only the conservative areas of New York? It really is absurd reasoning… again.

They are unhappy that they have been democratically defeated. So, they’re calling for a new democracy. Because apparently that’s what democracy means. If you don’t win, no longer observe the rules of democracy. But call for a new democracy. Based entirely on you winning. Essentially, secede, until you win. Eventually it’ll come down to individual homes. And then their wife will vote against them. And so they’ll secede from the home.

Granted it’s a very small number of Americans that have actually signed the petition. Just to give you some perspective, my article titled Bad day for bigots has so far today received 11,327 views. The State of South Carolina’s petition for secession so far has 10,722 signatures. 4,679,230 people live in the State of South Carolina. So, that’s 0.22% of the population of South Carolina calling for secession. Not even half of 1%. And less than the amount of people who have viewed one article of mine, in less than 12 hours. If we take Texas, which has the most signatures for secession so far with 67,834, and we note that the population of Texas is currently 25,674,681, we see that a weak 0.26% of the Texan population; just over a quarter of 1%… calling for secession. So, a very small number, by anyone’s standards. Unlike this guy, who thinks it’s practically the entire population, and has curiously “never happened before”:

(Posting Tweets is becoming somewhat of a fun new game for me).

Judging from secession tweets currently occupying Twitter, it would seem that they are citing States Rights (that old chessnut) derived from the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment States:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

- The inference being, that the Federal government under Obama has wrestled too much power away from the States. Oddly, there weren’t too many calls for secession from right winged Americans when Reagan massively expanded Federal payroll, tripled the National Debt, raised taxes in ’82, ’83, ’84, and sold arms to Iran, all whilst covertly funding terrorists throughout Latin America. But I suppose that’s hypocrisy for you.

The Tenth Amendment is quite clear. But it is not the final say the Founders had on the matter of the supremacy of law in the US. Article 6 states:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

- Essentially, Federal law is supreme. State law does not override Federal law. Regardless of the ‘Constitution of Laws of any State’, Federal law is supreme. If Congress votes, and the President signs, and the judges see no unconstitutional problem with the law, then whatever bitter and angry ‘Confederates’ think about the law, it does not change the fact that they must abide by it. In the same way that whilst I dislike the changes the Conservative Party over here have implemented with regards the NHS…. I can’t suddenly call for the city of Leicester to secede from the UK. Well, I could… but i’d be wrong. My side of the argument lost the election in 2010. I have to accept that.

The great enlightenment thinkers that provided the US Constitution certainly realised that there may well be some people, after an election goes against them, that might demand secession. And so Article 1 Section 10 of the Constitution states:

“No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or Confederation. No state shall, without the consent of Congress, keep troops, or ships of war in times of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power, or engage in war unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger.”

- Obviously a State, to succeed alone, would have to enter into treaty’s or alliances, or Confederation. Thus breaking the guide set out by the Constitution. The Founders anticipated secessionist nonsense. And they reiterated it AGAIN with Article 4 Section 3:

“Congress will make rules and regulations for territories and for property of the federal government.

- The Federal government owns the land. Specifically, Congress. Congress is empowered by the Constitution, and so cannot act outside of its power. Thus, any secession acted through Congress would be illegal and unconstitutional, rendering it meaningless.
As if that isn’t enough restrictions on right winged States-Rights advocates, then perhaps Article 1 Section 8 Clause 18, which garnered a lot of debate during its ratification process that including it in the Constitution would grant too much power to the Federal Government above the States. Hamilton and Madison argued for its inclusion. And it got included.

The Congress shall have Power – To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

- Hamilton used this clause to defend his Bank of America (arguably the biggest centralisation of power in US history).

States, through their representatives to Congress, give up certain State powers when they vote to ratify certain Federal Laws. Those laws that haven’t been given up to Congress, stay within the remit of the States. That is my reading of the entire subject of States Rights. Talk of secession is not only illegal and unconstitutional; it is based on a very simplistic and flawed reading of the Constitution and the motives of the Founders in particular. More than that; it is based on the undemocratic hysterics of “our candidate didn’t win, so we don’t recognise the outcome”.

These people, the very same people who insist on telling everyone what a ‘real’ American is. If you’re Atheist, you’re not a ‘real’ American. If you’re socialist, you’re not a ‘real’ American. If you support gay marriage or abortion, you’re not a ‘real’ American….. are now showing just how American they are, by demanding to leave the Union, simply because they very democratic principles that America was built on, did not turn up the result they wanted. They should be ashamed.

If they feel disenfranchised, then become politically active. Run for office. If your position isn’t gaining enough support……. maybe that’s because people don’t agree with it. Again, that’s democracy. There’s only so many times you can secede from all forms of social governance, before you’re on your own…. living in a Hobbesian hell hole. Grunting, as you chase your prey, with a spear. The point being, eventually, your point of view is not going to be the most popular. This is how democracy works.

I imagine a seceded Tea Party Confederacy would be pretty hellish. Walmart and Starbucks would be the two parties fighting for power. Leave your house and walk out onto the road? Pay for it! Everything is private! Including the roads you walk on. Don’t have police insurance? Well then your property will be robbed, tough. The land of the free! Unless you’re gay. Which would obviously be outlawed, as a sin against the word of the Lord. The land of the free! Where you have the democratic right to vote…. for a conservative…. You get the idea.

Now, obviously the Constitution sets out how States must act when in Union. There is no legal framework for secession, nor is secession legal. But, once seceded (violently), the States obviously wouldn’t have to abide by US law. The problem for them is, they absolutely cannot secede. Their legislatures are bound by oath to fully support the rules set out within it, and the land belongs to the Federal Government. They therefore, can only secede after declaring war.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution

- James Madison, writing in the Federalist Papers Number 44 progresses this point:

The members of the federal government will have no agency in carrying the State constitutions into effect. The members and officers of the State governments, on the contrary, will have an essential agency in giving effect to the federal Constitution.

- State officers must abide by the Constitution. They are compelled by its powers. Therefore, given that the Constitution limits States rights, and places Federal law as supreme, and compels representatives in Congress and State Legislatures to abide by it, by oath, it follows that secession cannot be brought about by legal nor peaceful means. The only way these people can secede, is violent overthrow of their State legislature. And to do that, simply because your candidate lost an election, is abhorrent.

I wrote my political thesis on President Lincoln’s relationship to the pro-slavery movement coming out of the South. And what stands out more than anything, as it does today, is that hysterical right winged lunacy pushed Lincoln into a vehement abolish-slavery position that he absolutely did not support in the run up to his first election win. He simply expressed his intention to prevent the spread of slavery westward, thereby keeping Congress 50% free, 50% slave. The Confederacy did not just want to preserve their right to hold human beings as slaves, they wanted to expand it as far as possible. Lincoln was worried that slavery would be Nationalised. He did not wish to outlaw slavery in the South, until pushed to it, by a manic, overly paranoid Confederacy. An over paranoid Confederacy, that whilst completely discredited, is still in part using the same hysterical tactics it used 150 years ago.

The reason they wish to secede this time is simple; they didn’t win an election.

Bad day for bigots

The Twittersphere is alive today, as it was last night, with the incoherent, fact-less ramblings of the bigots trying to grasp what happened to their crusade to turn America back sixty years. And we know why.
Obama wins the Presidency.
Tammy Baldwin is elected first openly gay Senator, for Wisconsin.
Gay marriage is legalised in Maine and Maryland by popular vote.
And recreational use of maurijuana is part legalised in Colorado and Washington State.
For liberal America, this has been a great day for progress.
It is, however, the worst nightmare for crackpot conservatives, whose bullshit amplifier; Fox News has spent the past four years referring to anyone slightly left of Hitler, as Communist, Marxist, Nazi, Muslim, anti-white, anti-American, Socialist, terrorist sympathisers in a seemingly ineffective attempt to scare people on a constant basis. Nevertheless, some people are hanging on to the bigotry that was dealt such a swift blow last night. Here are a few of my personal favourites:

- Hitler? Really? We are seriously suggesting President Obama….is similar…. to Adolf Hitler? REALLY?
As pointed out in an earlier article, it is incredibly easy to draw tenuous comparisons between any politician and Adolf Hitler. For example, the first thing Hitler did on coming to power, was to completely destroy all union power. Similarly, Mitt Romney pledged his total support for Ohio’s anti-union laws, he has also claimed that teachers unions ‘deaden’ student achievement. Clearly this means that Romney is a nazi who wants to kill 6,000,000 Jews and enslave the World. And by clearly, I mean…. not at all, because it’s massively fucking irrational.

Normally i’d ignore this, but I thought – perhaps naively – that I might engage one of these insane right wingers in order to try and figure out why Obama is basically Hitler. So I did. I asked why Obama is a ‘socialist’ or a ‘nazi’. The response? ….

- Oh, well that clears it up! Obama is like Hitler because Europe is too used to America being the backbone of our defence. How could I not have seen this before? Obamanazi!

The ramblings continued:

- His first comment is of course ludicrous. The point being, that taxing the wealthy is somehow punishment. The ignorance comes from the fact that this mentality basis itself on the idea that success, is entirely individual. It chooses to ignore the public schools that pay teachers next to nothing to produce an educated workforce, or the public funded roads that the successful use to transport, the police protecting their property. Tax is the price you pay for belonging to a civilised society. The most fundamental principle of which, is protection of the most vulnerable. It is not punishing success, it is helping to maintain the ladder for future generations to climb, rather than kicking it away so that people like Mitt Romney can afford a new yacht. Capitalism is by far the best method to allocate resources efficiently. But at its core, it is amoral. You regulate, and you tax, to prevent it from becoming immoral.
Onto the second point………Just like Hitler! Lying means he is just like Hitler. I cannot remember a time when a politician didn’t lie a little. Even before Hitler. There is quite obviously a different motive for someone to relate a politician they dislike, using a rather weak link, to Hitler. It is to perpetuate irrational fear. Nothing more. So I pointed out the massive inconsistencies in the Romney campaign rhetoric; which as pointed out in a previous article on here, is full of horrid little manipulations…… to which I was given the incredible reply:

- Yup. It is perfectly acceptable for a Presidential challenger to lie and manipulate, purely because he isn’t President yet. It is perfectly acceptable, apparently, for someone to manipulate you, to practically steal your democratic right to vote, on the basis of bullshit. That’s absolutely fine apparently, as long as he’s a contender.

He then finished his term as King of Bullshit Mountain, at about 1am British time, with this little gem:

- Naturally, a few hours after he posted this, I am smug.

A few other glorious tweets from the crazed American Right Wing:

- Right Winged American Patriotism. Swear allegiance to the Constitution and the democracy it so beautifully created….. unless things don’t go your way. And then, invoke the memory of slavery. Brilliant life choice.

- So, that’s half the American electorate who, according to Romney, are government dependent, and one girl who wants an abortion. Seems legit.

- Anti-homosexuality tweet from Christian fundamentalist group with very little support. Thankfully, there are very few anti-homosexuality tweets out there, when Tammy Baldwin had been pronounced the winner for the Wisconsin Senate seat. 99% of tweets were congratulatory, and supportive, hailing progress.

- God wanted you to vote Romney. Jesus is a massive fan of private health insurance.

- Okay…. Mein Fuhrer, suggests Hitler. Hitler was of course in control of a Party whose main goal was a State based on Nationalist principles built on the idea of a superior race. The economy was used to promote the image of the power of the State through the military. It was vehemently opposed to communism; a system based on the idea of total egalitarianism in which an economy reflects the necessity to disintegrate class structures, and has absolutely nothing to do with race, the military, the myth of the ‘Nation’ or anything else that a Nazi government desires. And yet, this crazed Right Winger merges the two polar opposite concepts, into one. And what’s the reason? Again, scare tactics. In reality, President Obama is can in no reasonable way be described as either a nazi, or a communist (even if Glenn Beck tells you differently).

- All true. Except…

Prime Minister, not President.

HE, is a SHE.

She is an Atheist.

- So in fact, none of it is true. But a career at Fox News seems imminent for this young lady, whose ‘make-shit-up’ strategy fits their profile perfectly.
Also, Australia has universal healthcare, no death penalty, evolution is taught in pretty much all schools, creationism is rejected, and compulsory voting. Sounds like an ideal country for right winged anti-universal healthcare, anti-atheism, creationist, death penalty supporting bat-shit crazy Republicans.

So, Romney concedes defeat. Fox News concedes that Obama won fairly. Even Donald Trump isn’t questioning the outcome. Lawyers aren’t questioning the outcome. No one is seriously questioning the outcome. Because that would be ridiculous. Unless of course, you’re an overly dramatic Republican, in denial, in which case….

- I don’t understand what God has to do with this? Are rational thinking people a threat? Let’s not forget that Jefferson was a Deist who did not believe in a personal God who intervenes in human affairs. Benjamin Franklin was an Atheist. And the Constitution and Declaration are specifically pro-enlightenment, and anti-religion in their content. The World is a much better place because of secularism and the ideals of the Englightenment.

- What I have learnt from this entire election from social media, is that the more vehement right winged Americans; whilst acting Patriotic, are actually very very undemocratic, very despotic, and only like it when they have power or their poisonous and largely discredited ideas control everything. They cannot accept defeat. They threaten. They scare. Their rhetoric is baseless but full of fear. They have no concept of ‘socialism’. If they truly understood it, they would accept that no President can be regarded as ‘Socialist’ since the beginning of the Union. Probably closest, was Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, every 20th Century Republican pre-Reagan, would be considered ‘socialist’ by todays’ Right winged American standards. To associate universal healthcare with the sort of feared Socialist totalitarian dictatorships of old, is disingenuous and a manipulation of facts (the fact being, that every industrialised country with a nationalised health service, out performs the US private system by a huge margin on every important measure; child mortality, life expectancy, per capita cost). Obama is simply a conservative in the old Disraeli tradition. One Nation Conservatism. He is in no way a socialist. He is just not a free market fundamentalist that appears to have infected the Republican Party as of late.
America, according to these people should always be ruled by overly religious, bigoted, free-market-fundamentalists….. nothing else is acceptable, and if America doesn’t vote in line with that, then they get angry, and threatening, and violent.

I am happy and relieved that the majority of the American public, have voted to defeat such a venomous ideology. They have quite overwhelmingly voted for progress, for tolerance, for dignity and for the majority rather than the wealthy few. Something we in Britain seem to have chosen to ignore, in 2010.

Four more years.

Election Day 2012

It is telling, just how desperate Republicans have become at this time, when ex Republican presidential candidate, endorser of Santorum, and ex-Reagan secretary for Planning and Budget in the Department of Education posts an article on his facebook wall accusing Obama of being a Marxist simply for using the term ‘Forward’:

The intense lack of focus on issues, on offering any sort of solutions is telling. Bauer offers nothing. No new ideas, no ingenuity. Simple, and ridiculous weak attacks on wording.
Bauer is a Christian. Deeply Christian. He believes secularism is destroying Christian values. In an article for ‘Campaign for Working Families’ Bauer states:

“The removal of the only reference to God from the Democratic Party platform is telling. Under Barack Obama the Democratic Party has become more secular and more hostile to faith-based voters. On issues ranging from the sanctity of life to traditional marriage, Obama’s Democratic Party has embraced positions contrary to the values of heartland America, values rooted in our Judeo-Christian traditions and expressed in our founding documents. Values voters will respond in November.”

Now, leaving aside the fact that America’s founding documents are a symbol of secularism and the Enlightenment… not Christian values; if we’re judging people by their wording, as Bauer did by posting that article, he must be consistent, here’s a speech from Hitler, in 1933:

“Today they say that Christianity is in danger, that the Catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about Christianity; I confess that I will never ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity.”

- Sounds a lot like every speech Bauer ever makes. If he has the nerve to suggest Obama is a Marxist because he used the term ‘forward’ in his campaign, then we must be consistent and say that Gary L Bauer is a Nazi. Probably Hitler himself. See how easy it is? This has been the Republican strategy for about four years.

Onto the main topic of this article.
Today is election day in the US. And whilst most of the World cannot fathom why any reasonable human being would vote for a bigoted and economically illiterate Romney Presidency; the polls are pretty even. I even heard a suggestion that New Hampshire might be the State to play kingmaker.

I laid out in a previous article Why the Romney economic plan based on ‘job creators’ is a manipulation of fact and devoid of all reason. Today i’d quite like to lay out the accomplishments of President Obama. We know he hasn’t always been the President that expectation demanded of him back in 2008, but that’s not to say he hasn’t achieved a heck of a lot of good, and progress in the past four years despite two years of Republican (and right winged Christian) attempts to derail his agenda at every possible opportunity; usually without regard for the national interest.

Obama’s biggest achievement must be the Healthcare Act. Now that the fear has died down… fear created and perpetuated by a Republican Party that consider anything slightly left of Mussolini to be “Socialism”, people seem to be starting to like the idea of ‘Obamacare’. Of course, it isn’t ideal. The ideal is universal healthcare. We can bicker about “Omg it’s socialism!!!” all we want. We can even bicker about if government is capable of providing healthcare, on a very fundamental basis if we want. But we must look at the facts. Here is what the World Health Organisation says about two systems. The American private insurer system (before Obamacare), and the British National Healthcare system.

Life Expectancy M/F
USA: 76/81
UK: 78/82

Distribution of causes of death among children aged <5 years (%)
USA – Injuries: 22
UK – Injuries: 4

Case detection rate for all forms of tuberculosis (%):
UK: 94
USA: 89

Under-five mortality rate (probability of dying by age 5 per 1000 live births):
UK: 5
USA 8

Adult mortality rate (probability of dying between 15 and 60 years per 1000):
UK: 77
USA: 106

Per capita total expenditure on health at average exchange rate (US$):
UK: 3285
USA: 7410

General government expenditure on health as a percentage of total government expenditure:
UK: 15.1%
USA: 18.7%

A quick analysis suggests that the UK pays less per capita, our government spends less on our health system than the US, and yet we have “Socialised” healthcare, we’re living longer, and our children are less likely to die at a young age. And yet, all of this is grossly overlooked in favour of ideological dogma regardless of how backward, and ultimately deadly it is. And it isn’t just the UK, look to Sweden, Norway, and any other industrialised, civil society with a universal healthcare model, and you will see similar results. A private healthcare system is not only horrendously barbaric, it doesn’t work.
Obama has made progress in correcting that problem.
For all their concern about the deficit, Republicans choose to ignore the FACT that the Congressional Budget Office stated that ‘Obamacare’ will reduce the deficit. Here, see for yourself: CBO Report. To repeal it, would cost around $230bn. Another CBO report states that in the next ten years, ‘Obamacare’ will cover a further 33,000,000 Americans who otherwise would have no coverage (the very idea of not being covered for healthcare, baffles and disgusts me). Here, see for yourself CBO Report. NOT ONLY THAT but ‘Obamacare’ incentivises small businesses by offering a 50% tax credit, if they insure their workers.
Republicans adding to the deficit, whilst making life harder for average people, whilst enriching wealthy insurers, whilst ignoring small businesses? SURELY NOT!

Republican interest and ‘disgust’ at the size of the Obama stimulus slowly verge on hypocritical when we see who was actually anti-stimulus. Take this man, for example:

This is former House of Reps Republican in Delaware, Mike Castle. He voted to kill the stimulus bill, the health reform bill, financial regulation reform etc etc etc. On the stimulus package, Mike Castle said this:

“We cannot spend our way back to economic prosperity,”

He hates the idea of a stimulating the economy! Doesn’t think government should stimulate the economy. So, obviously he’s going to be consistent in his condemnation, right? Well, no.
… Castle then accepted $5,230,610 of stimulus money, stating:

These grants, totaling more than $5 million, will help the invaluable organizations and programs which are working to help the homeless, hungry, and those facing economic hardship throughout the State.

- Suddenly, government CAN help to eleviate poverty, and hunger, and provide help to the most vulnerable. Republicans oppose programs in order to entice their over privileged support base, and then cowardly support the program when it might win them some votes among the less wealthy in their constituencies.

Every Romney/Republican Speech is a vomit inducing display of feigned patrotism. …. “What would I do?.. Well i’d make America great again!” It seems, if you lack any detailed plan for running the highest office on the planet, then the next best thing is to win over idiots, with sentimental nonsense.

Economically, whilst it’s slow, the US economy is growing. If we contrast that with the austerity lead (Romney-esque) governments across the World, we see a different story. Austerity has failed everywhere. The UK has had to endure three years of it, and so far we’ve had another huge recession (the biggest since the 1950s) no growth over the entire year, and horribly stagnating wages. It fails. The opposite is true of the Obama economy. It is moving in the right direction. If you think slow Keynesian inspired growth is bad, then you’re REALLY going to hate Romney inspired recession.

Taxes too high? Well, if you’re a Republican prone to ‘make shit up’ then yes. But, if you rely on evidence, as the Washington Post did, you will see that:

“A USA Today analysis found last year that if we include everything — federal, state, and local taxes, including income, property, sales, and other taxes — the percentage of personal income that’s paid in taxes is still at its lowest level since 1950.”

And since when has it become acceptable, and in fact, preferable, for a ‘business minded’ person to be a President? Businesses are run for profit. People are very much a secondary concern. Democratic accountability does not exist in a business setting. I cannot vote for who runs the gas and electricity companies. I can move to another. Yet, there are very few, and all of them offer poor service. The object is money. It is profit. People become statistics. The interest of business leaders, is to enrich themselves. They are economically illiterate, and dangerous. Their word, it seems, is taken as gospal. This couldn’t be proven any more than in the UK. In 2010, before the general election, 35 of the Nation’s top business leaders signed a petition in support of the Chancellor George Osborne’s austerity plan. They said, quite amusingly:

There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery. Business is amoral. It is regulated it prevent it becoming immoral. Business minds are self interest. This, of course, is not always a terrible thing. A majority of the time, it works. But at its most fundamental, it is dangerous.

The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.

- Two and a half years later, the ‘pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget’ has absolutely choked off recovery. The private sector has not generated any additional jobs. We hit another recession. And wages stagnated. This is the legacy of listening to those with a ‘business’ mind when it comes to national governance.

The repealing of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell must rank up there with great liberal policies, alongside civil rights legislation of the 1960s (which of course, conservatives opposed). Obama also admitted, tacitly, that he is no longer opposed to gay marriage. This was a risky move, but showed courage and conviction, when faced with such hostile bigotry. Whilst in Michigan, I saw a Republican billboard with “Obama supports gay marriage, and abortion…. do you?” And I thought…. Yes. I do. Because i’m not a crazed Christian bigoted fundamentalist from the 4th Century. To prevent full rights to loving couples, based soley on a very fundamental and selective view of a Biblical passage is so thoroughly beyond the realm of reason, it should be ridiculed, and argued against, and kept as far away from public policy as possible. If we are to continue to believe that the concept of marriage is based entirely on Biblical principles, then, like with Bauer, we must be consistent:
Republicans must be against marriage, if the woman isn’t a virgin. As advocated in Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to have multiple concubines as justified in 2 Sam 5:13 and
2 Chron 11:21.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his kidnapped captive (though, only after shaving her head, obviously) as permitted in Deut. 21:11-13.
Republicans must support the right for a man to trade his wife, as property. As advocated in RUTH 4:5-10.
Republicans must support the right for a man to marry his rape victim, if he pays for her: Deut. 22:28.
Let’s be consistent Republicans!

Gaddafi. Bin Laden. Weakened Mubarak’s position by telling him to reform, or step down. Has not jumped into conflict with Iran, relying instead on diplomacy, but also strong with providing sanctions on Iran by signing into law a bill to punish companies aiding Iran’s petroleum sector.

Between 2010 and 2011, Obama increased Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 26%. Conversely, Paul Ryan suggested cutting aid to Veterans who do not suffer from combat caused medical problems. Essentially, Republicans (strong national defence) are happy to use you to defend the country, and then forget about you when you get home, and paint you as a drain on the economy. Let’s not forget that those cuts to Veterans benefits would be paid for, by a massive tax cut for the wealthiest.

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act, EPA restrictions on toxic pollution. Omnibus Public Lands Management Act expanding wilderness protection. Cancelled anti-ballistic missile systems set to be placed in Czech and Poland, saving $1.4bn. Kickstarted renewable energy research through stimulus funding on unprecedented scale. Used diplomacy to convince BP to put aside a $20 billion fund for victims of Gulf oil spill, without any power to force them to do so. Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act provides coverage for 4 million more children by raising taxes on tobacco. And for me, one of the most overlooked and yet most vital advancements the US has to thank President Obama for, is the ending of Bush-era restrictions on stem cell research. This is perhaps the most important scientific area of research at the moment. For Republicans to deny it, is a disgrace.

President Obama has achieved a lot in four years, despite Republicans opposing absolutely everything, and ensuring the word ‘Socialism’ is forever attached to anything Obama says or does. It is of course a basic misunderstanding of what Socialism is. The definition becomes irrelevant because the word is enough to strike irrational fear. The use of terms like ‘Socialism’ or the obsession with dethroning the President by suggesting his isn’t American, or any other empty attack point goes to prove nothing more than the fact that the Republican Party has absolutely no solution for any problem. It just wants power.

I cannot believe a country that has come so far forward in four years, would elect to fall twenty years into the past.
This is why I am certain President Obama should be given four more years.

EDIT: And has now been given four more years. Excellent choice America.

“The role of oxygen atoms in supply side economics”

The title of this blog is meaningless. It was composed by cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett to highlight scientific reductionism; the abandonment of theory, laws, interactions, and deeper understanding of the connections between chemistry, physics, and biology and even social sciences in an attempt to unify them all into a category, which almost always leads to the idea of social Darwinism. What Dennett is saying, is that to break down theories to their bare minimum, and then to attach them to other broken down bare minimum theories in an attempt to unify them, is meaningless at best, and very dangerous at worst.

Recently, the musician Frank Turner revealed that whilst his fans quite enjoy his apparently left leaning political ideals – he is actually a Libertarian. He accuses people of not understanding politics, if they believe that from this, he is a Republican/Tory. He also claims that Fascism, is a Left wing phenomena. Here:

“To start with, most people don’t seem to understand what the difference between left and right is. For example, the BNP are a hard left party.”

- For those of you who don’t know, the BNP (British National Party) is a fascist political party based on race. It has ties to neo-nazi groups, and its leader Nick Griffin once said:

Without the White race, nothing matters. Other right-wing parties believe that the answer to the race question is integration and a futile attempt to create ‘Black Britons’, while we affirm that non-Whites have no place here at all and will not rest until every last one has left our land.”

- He also denies the holocaust happened, believes that there is a Jewish conspiracy to destroy White Europeans, and is good friends with David Duke. For all intents and purposes, the BNP is a neo-nazi. Fascist, at the very least. Which suggests that Frank Turner believes that Fascism is a product of the Left.

This idea – that ‘National Socialism’ or Fascism are products of the Left – is not new. It represents a deeply reductionist understanding of the political spectrum, dismissing all theory and motive, and ending up with ‘well the Nazi’s controlled the State centrally. And enacted some social protections. As did Communist regimes. Therefore, the Nazi’s are a left wing party‘. It is a very very weak understanding of the difference between Right and Left. For the record, I do not place Fascism on the far right. I think the ‘right’ has changed incalculably over the years. And that both Right and Left are almost entirely different to their early 20th century counterparts. As noted in my previous article, the conservatism of Disraeli is similar to the social democratic principles of a politician like Barack Obama today; of which most of those on the right would consider ‘socialist’, whilst 100 years ago, would certainly not have been. The right has (for the sake of argument, though this assertion is debatable also) become a beacon of free market ideals, mixed with a dose of patriotism/nationalism. In that sense, it is not libertarian, as it seeks to strengthen national borders, rather than diminish them. Libertarianism is specifically the free, unhindered movement of labour, capital and goods. It recognises no national borders.

It is fair to say that Fascism and Socialism may have traits in common; central economic planning for example. But, then, so does Libertarianism and Communism; no government, free association, no borders. But the motives and the differences in organisation are enough to render them entirely at odds. The same is true of Fascism and the Far Left.

Turner seems to be suggesting that central economic planning, means far left. Theory, motive, and overriding political aims are ignored entirely. It is supremely reductionist and ignorant. The blurred lines between left and right when it comes to totalitarian dictatorships are often exploited by both sides. Ignore theory, and motive for just a second, and you can come up with all sorts of comparisons.
We can say that Hitler centralised power, providing a dictatorship of the German people. Marxist-Leninism calls for a similar ruler and control over the economy.
We could say that the Nazi’s use of the term ‘work shy’, followed by punishment for refusing jobs, is eerily similar to right winged austerity rhetoric coming out of the Republican/Tory camp.
We could also point out that Thatcher took on, and crushed the power of the trade unions in the 1980s, as did Reagan. Similarly, after coming to power Hitler banned trade unionism entirely.
Both comparisons miss the point; the reason Fascism differs entirely from the far left, is because it bases its entire being, its essence on a community based on race/nationality. The driving force of history, to Fascists, is shared heritage that must be preserved and perpetuated. The central economy of Fascist States thus works to this end and nothing else. When Hitler replaced the trade union movement and imprisoned German socialist leaders in the mid-30s, he created a new movement in order to control the working classes. He called this the ‘German Labour Force’. The name is significant. Before this, the trade union movement and the German communist/socialist groups associated with it, were international in their scope. They supported their comrades around the World. There were not understood in terms of national borders. Suddenly, they became the ‘German’ labour force. Their whole point, was advancement of the nation state. Alongside this new movement cloaked in patriotism, was a list of ‘un-german activities’. This included striking. Anyone who turned down a job in both the public or private sector was named ‘work shy’ and imprisoned. 8.3% of the unemployed were conscripted. It is important to note that a Fascist State depends on the strength of its armed forces, this is Nationalism, not socialism. Here is a song sung by the new ‘German Labour Force’….

“We demand from ourselves service to the end, even when no eyes are upon us.
We know that we should love our Fatherland more than our own life.
We vow that no one shall outdo us in loyalty,
That our life shall be one great labour service for Germany.
So in this solemn hour we pray for blessing on the oath we take,
We thank thee, Fuhrer, that we have now seen thee,
Do thou behold us as thine own creation?
May our hearts ever beat with thy heart’s pulses, Our lives find inspiration in thy love,
Behold us here! Thy Germany are we.”

- This highlights, again, the difference between Fascism and the far left. The far left bases its existence on class. It stands to obliterate class, ending in a completely classless society. Class is the driving force. Race, nationality, religion, sexuality and most other social constructs are not important. This is in stark contrast to what we see in this song. The German Labour Force had a purpose. That purpose was the advancement of the nation. The line: “We know that we should love our Fatherland more than our own life” is the key to the difference between Fascism and the far-left. The far-left is more often than not, completely obliterated by Fascist forces. The Fascism of Hitler attempted to destroy the far-left…. the Fascism of Saddam attempted to destroy the far-left. Fascism cannot abide the far-left. The two are vehemently opposed.

The Nazi Charter of Labour does not grant total control over the means of production to the workers, as you would expect if the Nazi’s truly were a party of the far-left. Instead, it states that the ‘leader of the enterprise’ (also known as the employer:

“……..makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise.”

- This, along with the banning of trade unions, cut wages (from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an hour for skilled labour, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labour), the banning of strikes, the outlawing of collective bargaining, and the move to make the labour force a cog in the Nationalist machinery suggests unequivically that referring to the Nazi’s as a far-left party, could not be more ignorant of historical fact and the environment in which the left had to exist under a Nazi leadership.

Let us also not forget who supported, and who opposed Fascism. Communists and Socialists across the World opposed the Nazi’s. Between 1933 and 1939 150,000 Communists were imprisoned by the Nazis purely for being Far-left. A further 30,000 were executed. The oldest Communist party in Germany, the KDP started in 1919 (the biggest outside of Russia) was declared illegal by Hitler in 1933. All Communist publications were closed down. Other Socialist groups – The Baum Group, Red Orchestra, Home Front, the Uhrig Group – were routinely terrorised by the Nazis, imprisoned and executed. In 1944, there was a workers uprising in an attempt to inspire a socialist revolution, in which 200,000 workers were arrested. This isn’t far-left.
And yet, the support seemed to come not only from the Catholic Church, but also from big business. The Fascists in Spain were being aided by Ford and DuPont. Standard Oil also worked with Franco. US Steel and Alcoa supplied the Fascists with steel.
An exert from the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974 stated:

In Germany, for example, General Motors and Ford became an integral part of the Nazi war efforts. GM’s plants in Germany built thousands of bomber and jet fighter propulsion systems for the Luftwaffe at the same time that its American plants produced aircraft engines for the U.S. Army Air Corps….
Ford was also active in Nazi Germany’s prewar preparations. In 1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin whose “real purpose,” according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was producing “troop transport-type” vehicles for the Wehrmacht. That year Ford’s chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle (first class).
On the ground, GM and Ford subsidiaries built nearly 90 percent of the armored “mule” 3-ton half-trucks and more than 70 percent of the Reich’s medium and heavy-duty trucks. These vehicles, according to American intelligence reports, served as “the backbone of the German Army transportation system.”….
After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing… Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne.

- Are we saying that GM, and Ford are also far-left? Seriously?

Glenn Beck once claimed that ‘social justice’ was a term used by both the left and the Nazis, in an attempt to draw links between the two. And yet, one of the main strands of Nazism; harsh restrictions on trade unionism was adopted by the American Right Wing of which Beck belongs. It is illegal in the US for unions to ask other unions to picket alongside them. In 2001 a contractor named Ruzicka Electric hired to build a student centre at Lindenwood University were picketed by the union representing their staff for paying too low wages. In support of the union, other unions working at Lindenwood picketed alongside them. The Eighth Court and Supreme Court ruled that:

The picketing will be unlawful if there is an expectation or a hope or a desire that employees of the secondary employer will be induced or encouraged to take concerted action to quit working behind the picket line…Ruzicka Electric presented evidence that Local 1 agents, acting as observers at the neutral gate, engaged in picketing activity, asking neutral employees to refuse to work. If believed, this evidence establishes Local 1 engaged in unlawful secondary activity.

- It is thus illegal to ‘expect’ or ‘hope’ that another union might picket alongside your union. If Beck was truly anti-Nazi, he would recognise that limits to unionism is not only undemocratic, it is totalitarian in principle.

Motive is the key.

Economic centralising is meaningless without a purpose. The purpose of the Fascist centralised state is perpetuation of the Nation based on perceived heritage – be it race, religion, or any other man-made social phenomena that they claim is a natural way to order society. All economic planning in a Fascist centralised economy is geared toward the advancement of the Nation. It is a war economy. By contrast Left wing economic centralisation does not hold the Nation, or race to be a great natural truth that must be protected and advanced. It works to create a more equal society based on wealth distribution. It is international in its approach to social relations, and has absolutely no regard for perceived social heritage.

The Nazi’s certainly pushed social policies, and abhorred Capitalism when it suited them (we can call this left wing, if we wish), but they also promoted Nationalistic principles (we can call this right wing, if we wish). We can find Left leaning policies and rhetoric coming out of Fascist States, we can just as easily find Right leaning policy and rhetoric coming out of Fascist States.

Turner, whilst insisting that it is the rest of the World that doesn’t particularly understand political spectrum, makes a hugely ironic mistake. In an interview with ‘Moon and Back music’, he says:

“I consider myself a libertarian”

And yet, in 2011, in an interview with ‘Huck Magazine’ he says:

“I’ve got no problem with using taxes to pay for essential things like defence or the basics of a healthcare system.”

- It is my understanding of Libertarianism, that they believe taxation to be evil. A Libertarian system would include no taxation whatsoever. No healthcare system. No publicly funded anything. Libertarianism calls for free association without state coercion. It is the belief that taxation is theft (seriously ridiculous) and all government should be voluntarily funded, rather than collectively (because collective = evil). It is based on the premise that all wealth is individually obtained, and that the owner of wealth has no duty toward the rest of society. It is the ultimate in Hobbesian hell. A Libertarian’s fundamental beliefs are that individuals should be free to acquire property, without any State coercion, and form voluntary associations paid for by the individuals within the group, if they wish. The moment you believe in a tax payer funded program of any sort, you are not a Libertarian. Frank Turner is not a Libertarian, if he believes in any sort of state funded ‘basics of a healthcare system’. He’s just a little more Right Winged than Thatcher.

Turner makes the very fundamental mistake that a lot of commentators make when they attempt to attribute labels to political ideas; they reduce the complexity of methods and motives and aims and the roles of institutions, down to their simplest explanations. They do this, because they fail to note that ideology is dogmatic; free from the context in which they are placed. Whether a country be rich, poor, racist, liberal, democratic or totalitarian…. to ideologues, it doesn’t matter. We see this in the way that Communism was forced upon a largely unprepared agricultural Russia in 1917. The Nazi’s were neither a party of the left, nor the right. They incorporated methods for both, their motives were strictly Nationalistic, their aims were oppressive if they came into conflict with anti-Nationalist forces. This is neither a doctrine permitted by Marxism, or promoted by Friedman-ite New Right. Whilst the far-left strives for human equality, Nazism strived for human inequality in which the group (white German’s in this case) are superior.

Frank Turner, does not understand the very basics of political thought.

During the Bush years, Keith Olberman of MSNBC called Bush a Fascist. During Obama’s Presidency, Fox News have attempted to draw links between Obama and Fascism. It is simply propaganda in a simplistic attempt to discredit the Right or the Left, using very loose comparisons lacking any sort of context, without much thought and absolutely no analysis, drawn from flawed reductionism.

The myth of the job creators

This is my second time in the US. I’m currently in a house in Michigan, reading a leaflet posted through the door from the Romney campaign. The right winged rhetoric is as poignant on every line of text as it has ever been. I’m not sure why we call it right winged. Prior to the Thatcherite revolution, the right were markedly more Keynesian than anything else. One nation conservatism was far closer to what Barack Obama is today, than the conservatism of Mitt Romney. Most one nation conservatives believed the rich had a moral duty to protect the poor. Disraeli passed a plethora of social reform; the Employers and Workmen Act made it possible for employees to sue their employers if the employer broke a contract. The Factory Act expanded regulation beyond anything seen before; it prevented children under 10 being employed, it set maximum working hours for women, and it set compulsory education for children up to 10 years old. The Public Health Act set minimum requirements for house building including running water and internal drainage. Disraeli was a Conservative Prime Minister. Can you imagine Mitt Romney proposing any sort of tough regulation on the extremities of Capitalism? In the eyes of the 21st century right wing; Disraeli was a terrible socialist. In the eyes of the 21st century right wing; every President pre-Reagan, was a terrible socialist.
The point being, Conservative governments have not always been addicted to horrendous free market anti-government dogma.

The leaflet posted through the door makes clear several times that Romney is committed to free market fundamentalism. His is simply an extension of new right thinking. He isn’t new, he isn’t presenting a credible plan for growth. He is rehashing the same tired old Friedman-ite economic philosophy that has dominated Western thought for the past thirty years, and has failed miserably every time. It fails, because it is ideology set apart from, and applied to a nation regardless of the contemporary economic or social context. We see the failure again in the UK. Since coming to power the epitome of new right economic thinking have forced through economic austerity leading necessarily to high unemployment, stagnating wages, rising poverty rates, increased gap between rich and poor, and most tellingly of all; the biggest double dip recession since the 1950s. That is the legacy of the myth of the job creators.

We have called it supply-side, we have called it trickle-down, now the rhetoric has moved on to labeling anyone with money as a ‘job creator’. This is a fallacious argument for several reasons…

I recently started up my own small business. As you’d expect, business isn’t exactly booming in the current climate. The reason for this lack of business isn’t the fact that I need a tax break. I really don’t. The reason for that is the fact that by cutting social programmes that helped those on low and middle incomes, the people and families affected no longer have enough, if any disposable income to spend on little luxuries. Instead, they work to survive and nothing else. Three years ago, a family with a teenager who went to college, could rely on the Educational Maintenance Allowance given to students who stay on into higher education for their food, and their travel. I know this, because I received EMA. It paid my petrol to and from college every day, as well as my food. I also worked part time in the evenings and at weekends, for extra money to spend on luxuries…. like the kind offered by my Photography business. Luxuries keep a consumer economy running. By taking away EMA, that little bit extra is lost from the pockets of the young. Which means they spend less. Which has a knock on effect in which businesses take less money, because there is less money. And so they lay off employees. Who are now on unemployment benefits. But unemployment benefits that have been cut. So they have less money again. And so the cycle continues.The point being, my business, whilst it is staying afloat, is struggling not because I need a tax cut, but because demand has been completely wiped out.

By giving me a tax cut, the new right is expecting me to help fill the employment gap created when it cuts ‘government’. The problem with this idea is again, related to demand. Why on earth would I employ somebody new? There is not enough demand currently for me to fill. The extra money i’d save in tax reductions would simply soon be lost, plus a little more, to the cost of employing someone, to help cope with demand that isn’t there. I am not going to ‘create jobs’ with saved tax money. Nor am I going to expand. It may give an advantage to large business, who by their very nature, don’t need a dose of corporate socialism. Employing new people, especially for small businesses, is a measure of last resort. A tax break for the lower and middle classes – the masses – will help to stimulate demand, as do effective governmental programmes aimed at elevating the burden of necessities – soaring gas and electric costs; education costs, petrol, healthcare costs (of which a universal system, is by far the most advantageous for a growing, civilised society). Taxing the wealthy, to pay for programmes that benefit the middle and lower classes, benefits everyone economically whilst building a compassionate society. It is the only possible way forward. We must not fall for the rhetoric of “all the best people will leave”. No they wont. It takes a lot to up and move country. Uprooting your children from schools, leaving your family and friends. It is a big life changing decision.

The myth of the job creators is as evident in the US as it is in the UK. Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan once stated:

The other thing, in the tax side is permanent tax increases on job creators doesn’t work to grow the economy. It’s actually fueling the uncertainty that is hurting job growth right now. And don’t forget the fact that most small businesses file taxes as individuals. So, when you are raising these top tax rates, you’re raising taxes on these job creators where more than half of Americans get their jobs from in this country.

- The key to this quote is “when you’re raising these top tax rates”….. Top tax rates.
Similarly, over at Romney/Ryan headquarters, Fox News said of the proposed Obama top rate of tax hike to 39.6%:

….a clear majority of all small business profits face taxation at this top marginal income tax rate.

- It simply isn’t true.
According to the non-partisan ‘Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ and backed up by ‘Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’, only 1.9% of small businesses make enough profit to fall into either of the top two income tax brackets. Visually, it looks like this:

So, let’s move my small business to the US. If suddenly, I am making $300,000 a year, by raising my rate by 4%, I will be paying about $6000 a year more. I’m not sure that would prevent me from hiring someone new, given that demand is high enough for me to be earning so much in the first place. Raising the top rate of tax, does not affect job creation. If it were the case that lower taxes on the wealthy lead necessarily to job creation, and higher taxes killed jobs, as suggested by Ryan and Fox, then we would today be absolutely fine for jobs. The opposite is true. Here is the evidence:

- Note how low the top rate of tax will STILL be, after the President’s proposed tax rise in 2013. Note also, that between 1993, and 2000, the top rate of tax was …. 39.6%… exactly as the President has proposed for 2013. The period between 1993 and 2000 was the largest period of US growth in history. Note also just how high the top rate was under Reagan. Prior to Reagan, in order to be eligible for a tax cut, a company would be required to use a portion of its profits to reinvest. Reagan put a stop to that, and gave a tax break up front. The companies thus invested elsewhere (offshore) and got the tax cut in the US. Isn’t ‘freedom’ wonderful?

The irrational phobia of ‘big government’ is a jobs killer. The Romney leaflet makes clear that government does not create wealth. This is disingenuous at best, and horribly dismissive of the millions of Americans that help drive the economy forward from the public sector. Schools create inquisitive minds and help to create an equipped workforce that both intellectually and materially drives the economy. Road building, property protection (being a policeman, is a job), fire protection and so on, all help to create an environment for which capitalism can flourish. It is true that the Government should not be the main force for economic growth. But they help, they protect, and they foster private growth. Without the government, we would belong to a Hobbesian hell hole. Libertarianism is as dangerous as Communism.

Evidence suggests that when the top rate of tax is higher, so is growth. When it is lower, economic inequality grows, not the economy.

Romney has pledged to reduce tax rates by 20%. It is no surprised that whilst market fundamentalists hail this as the beginning of an economic miracle, those who rely on evidence and analysis paint a different picture. According to a report by The Brookings Institution, the Romney tax plan would see taxpayers who earn over $1,000,000 given an extra 8.3% after tax; an average tax cut of $175,000, whilst taxpayers earning less than $30,000 would see a tax rise of about 0.9%; an average rise of $130. They go further:

“Offsetting the $360 billion in revenue losses necessitates a reduction of roughly 65 percent of available tax expenditures. Such a reduction by itself would be unprecedented, and would require deep reductions in many popular tax benefits ranging from the mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the deduction for charitable contributions, and benefits for low- and middle-income families and children like the EITC
and child tax credit.”

- The Romney/Ryan tax plan, is based on fundamentalist dogma devoid of all context, and based on an even more extreme form of failed economics. We see market fundamentalism, and austerity programmes failing all across Europe. Romney seems to be ignorant to the plight of those living under deep austerity, choosing instead to emulate it in America. It doesn’t work.

It is more evident to me being here, that the Right-leaning US electorate ignore evidence of what actually works, and instead choose to cling to outdated dogma – government bad/private business great – borne out of the fear of the big bad tyrannical government. Government is portrayed as the enemy, out to destroy your freedom, maliciously rubbing their hands whilst the country burns. It is the reason the US has resisted universal healthcare, despite the FACT that nations with universal healthcare continuously – as I noted here – out-perform the US in all healthcare league tables. To the US, Disraeli inspired conservatism is apparently Marxism. Any form of government help, is Marxism. They have chosen to ignore what actually works, in order to fight a misplaced war on what they perceive as Marxism. It is terrifyingly inaccurate and ignorant, as well as fundamentalist.

It is simply not true that those who enjoy profits that place them in the top rate of tax bracket, are job creators. They ride the tide of demand. The term ‘job creator’ is a deliberate attempt to create an almost moral argument for extending and perpetuating economic privileges for the very wealthy, without providing any evidence that it is beneficial for the rest of us. Manipulative language apparently negates the necessity for a reasoned argument. For free market fundamentalists; manipulative language is all they have ever had.

Demand creates jobs. Not tax cuts for the wealthy.

Losing the Left.

I don’t understand the Left wing any more. I consider myself on the Left and yet on foreign policy especially, I am labelled a neo-con (as well as an Imperialist who clearly loves to see the bodies of dead Iraqis – seriously, I get that a lot). But I have reasons why I believe my foreign policy views – namely, pro-Iraq/Afghanistan wars, and anti (in its current form)-Palestinian statehood are markedly Left leaning in comparison to those who consider themselves to be on the Galloway-esque anti-war left side of the isle. Those who vehemently opposed the Iraq war, now corner the debate. We are not allowed to present another case, without a barrage of ad hominem attacks.

It would appear to me that the Left wing has been horribly hijacked by the anti-war left. Anti-war is now synonymous with the left wing, though it seems hopelessly insincere in its apparent concern for the innocent people of Iraq and Afghanistan, or mistreated Gazan’s. It is only concerned, when the West is involved. It is anti-Western, anti-American, and based on that framework. The anti-war Left march through the streets of London against intervention in Iraq or Afghanistan. But when the Taliban unleashed the harshest form of Sharia in history; closing theatres, banning music and TV, and restricting an otherwise progressive and liberalised Afghanistan population of women who had embraced ‘Westernised’ fashion and culture, to their homes, behind veils, and enforced it through cruel punishments and barbaric 7th century ‘justice’ publicly executing women in the street…. the anti-war Left is eerily silent.

Which makes me wonder…. what is the point of the Left internationally any more? What do they stand for? They have become non-interventionist, based on the ‘sovereignty’ of National borders, regardless of the horrors within those borders…. which is a traditional conservative approach to foreign policy historically (George Bush, incidentally, before 9/11 was a non-interventionist conservative).

But beneath the thin veil of concern and care, lies a rabid anti-Americanism. With this spirit of anti-Americanism comes the usual suspects within a rhetorical framework of rough conjecture and just outright conspiratorial lunacy that undermines the Left substantially. The rhetorical framework is simple:
America – World’s largest terrorist organisation.
Military industrial complex.
Oil.
War criminals.
Imperialism.
Those are the five main components of anti-war rhetoric. And they have become synonymous with left wing rhetoric. There is no room for debate. All debate must be based on that framework. The framework itself, seems untouchable. They express outrage at the foreign policy of the Bush Administration, referring to the former President rather ridiculously as a new Hitler or they call for Blair to be tried as a war criminal, and then laugh without irony as manic right wingers refer to Obama as Stalin. Both are ludicrous positions to hold. Their anti-Bush, anti-Blair, anti-American, everything-the-West-does-is-for-oil, with a “the enemy of Bush/Blair/America is my friend” position on every conflict lacks context, lacks understanding of the situation at hand, the history of the events that lead to conflict, and quite tellingly of all, the anti-war left fails to provide any substantial alternative for military action against a country like Iraq under Saddam or Afghanistan under Mullah Omar. They are anti-sanctions and anti-intervention. What answer do they provide? Nothing.

I happen to believe that liberal democracy, secularism – along with rights that absolutely transcend cultures, the abuses of which cannot be defended in any meaningful way – is something to be fought for, and supported by those who can. The Left must support and defend those who fight for freedoms across the World. We must not forgive Fascism simply because it is shrouded in ‘faith’.

Their idols are familiar to us all, and yet severely lacking in integrity. I could again point to the inadequacies of Michael Moore and why his diatribes are damaging to the left due to their fundamental inconsistencies, manipulations, and out right lies. I have already done this once and so wont go into detail, though it can be seen here. I will however reiterate a point I made in that article, that Moore and the Left use to justify their non-interventionist position, it being that Saddam posed no threat to the US, and had never attacked the US. Moore makes this claim in Fahrenheit 9/11. It is often said that Iraq was a war of aggression against a nation that posed no threat. There are two worrying points to be made here:
Firstly, It is simply not true that Saddam posed no threat or hadn’t attacked the US. The suggestion that Saddam’s Iraq were innocent victims of an aggressive imperialist state, is nonsense, and yet no one actually knows this. In the 1980s Saddam had protected terrorist Abu Nidal. Seven Americans died when Nidal’s men, on Nidal’s orders attacked Pan AM Flight 73 in 1986. Nidal killed Israelis, and was one of the World’s most wanted terrorists. He also lived in Iraq from 1999 until his death in 2002. There is absolutely no way Saddam did not know about this. Iraq under Saddam, as posited by Samir al-Khalil in ‘Republic of Fear’ was a State in perpetual terror and very closely monitored by the government.
Did Saddam have ties to Bin Laden? There is no evidence to suggest that’s true. Was his regime a threat in others ways as well as providing support to Nidal? Yes. Uday Hussain’s media organisation printed constant threats, promoting attacks on the lives of any British or American civilians that Iraqi’s might come in contact with:

“American and British interests, embassies, and naval ships in the Arab region should be the targets of military operations and commando attacks by Arab political forces.”

- The fact is, Saddam’s regime, as a Nation was not powerful enough to attack the UK or US. They didn’t have the means, they didn’t have the WMDs. But they had the power and the network to finance and control terrorist attacks, to support terrorists like Nidal, and to promote fascist intolerence and violence against anyone who wasn’t like them.
They killed 5000 in Halabja. They’re responsible for 40,000 more deaths, of their own people. This regime was totalitarian, dangerous, murderous, and fascist.

Let us also not forget that whilst the anti-war Left insist that the Iraq war was ‘illegal’ because it had no UNSC backing (given that the security council insisted on recognising the Khmer Rouge as the rightful rulers of Cambodia, for twenty years after the genocide, they’re hardly to be considered the guardians of law…. and also, they’re not the guardians of law… they are a policy making body), we cannot ignore the fact that as part of the Genocide Convention, the UN had a duty to step in and remove Saddam from power. It is a legal obligation, in the midst of, or after a genocide has taken place. Which in Iraq, it had. Article II of the Act states:

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

- Parts A, B, C Saddam had met.
Article IV states:

Article IV: Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.

Article VIII states:

Article VIII: Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III.

- It is my opinion, that genocide is the responsibility of the entire World, to put an end to. It is also my opinion that a leader loses his right to sovereignty the moment he commits genocide.

The Anti-War Left was again eerily silent in trying to enforce the UN Genocide Convention’s wishes whilst Saddam was wiping out the Kurdish minority in Halabja. And again with the Marsh Arabs. Two genocides they ignored. It is shameful but it is defended by a simplistic attack on the US. “They funded Saddam”. Well then they have a duty more so than any, to put a stop to it.

Interestingly, genocide most certainly took place in Bosnia in the 90s. And Britain’s initial non-interventionist policy cost lives. When we did eventually come to a consensus to intervene, a lot of the damage had been done. The US Ambassador to Nato, Robert Hunter noted:

“The failure of Nato to reach agreement on serious military action, can be attributed to the efforts of one allied nation: Great Britain.”

- The source of that failure by the UK, was the government’s non-intervention ideals of the time. That’s right. The anti-war left won, on this occasion. Rifkind, the Defence, and then Foreign secretary at the time, had the nerve when confronted by Bob Dole – a man injured during WWII, to say:

“You Americans don’t know the horrors of war”

- Anti-war, ignorant, and anti-American all in one. The Anti-war Left must be proud.

Whilst we were dithering over intervention policy, Srebrenica suffered 8000 deaths. Described by the International Criminal Tribunal as:

“They [members of the Bosnian Serb army] stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.”

- How on Earth is this any different from what Saddam was doing, and how does anyone read it without a desperate need to stop it? The Al-Anfal Campaign; including mass executions, chemical attacks, and an attempt at wiping out an entire group of people (again, genocide and again, entirely ignored by the anti-war left) is no different to the massacres committed in Bosnia.

Non-interventionism has its consequences also. For those insisting that those of us who supported the invasion are responsible for innocent deaths, I say; you are no different. You were indirectly arguing for the prolonging of one of the worst dictatorships the World has known, in the name of some very insular version of “peace” that you have going on. It is a weakness of the mind to tell me how many innocent people died, whilst not considering how many would have continued to be tortured and killed had the regime been allowed to remain. Unless of course, you believe Saddam may have had a change of heart, and stopped his reign of murder. In which case, you’re deluded.

The left has to make a choice; does it support and defend liberal democracy, or does it tacitly, and blindly allow fascism simply because we ‘must respect other cultures’? Because right now, in the aftermath of Iraq, and with the growth of anti-war sentiment it seems to me that the anti-fascist left of the 1970s and 1980s, the guys who marched arm in arm outside the American embassy in London with Kurdish anti-Saddam rebels, the guys who wanted Saddam deposed as opposed to supported and propped up by the West, have become the 21st century fascist apologetics, and have abandoned their Kurdish allies. They make every excuse for horrifying acts of human rights abuses, all in their quest to insist that Blair is a modern day Hitler. They storm the streets as part of the ‘Unite Against Fascism’ movement in which they oppose home grown fascism in the guise of the utterly putrid EDL, yet have absolutely no concern with the growing Taliban fascist insurgency in Afghanistan. Nor do the UAF seem to equate the sentiments of militant Islam (and to an extent, ‘moderate’ Islam) with Fascism.
As noted in a previous article on the links between Islam and Fascism, I wrote;
If you go to the UAF website and search “Tommy Robinson” the leader of the EDL, you get countless articles attacking him. And rightly so. The man is a nazi. But, if you type the name “Anjem Choudhary“, you get no results whatsoever. Choudary is an anti-Westerner (but who doesn’t live in Islamic fundamentalist countries, choosing instead to live in the West he so hates) who will refer to Muslims in war torn countries as “brothers and sisters“. I hear that a lot. It’s a rather curious sentiment, because these people didn’t seem to quick to jump to the difference of the “brothers and sisters” when Iraq was run by the Hussein crime family. Or when Afghanistan was under the heavy hand of the Taliban. I am lead to the conclusion that the terms “brothers and sisters”, used as some sort of show of solidarity, is a mask. It seems to show support for individuals, yet what it is actually suggesting is that when you’re killed or tortured under a Islamic fundamentalist regime, it is fine, because you are simply a sacrifice in the name of the perpetuation of Islamic rule. Motive is important here. When Islamic regimes kill their own people, and their “brothers” in the UK keep quiet, the regimes notice that they can get away with it. No one seems to care. We must ‘respect’ the cultural differences that lead to genocide. When Saddam took out Halabja, there was very little condemnation in Western countries. No huge anti-Saddam protests through London. Saddam killed thousands on purpose. If an American bomb hits the wrong target, and kills innocents; suddenly Muslims in the UK come out in force against Western “imperialism“. Here is what Choudhary said on BBC Hardtalk:

Look, at the end of the day innocent people—when we say ‘innocent people’ we mean Muslims—as far as non-Muslims are concerned they have not accepted Islam and as far as we are concerned that is a crime against God.

- Fascism. But not according to the UAF.

The situation under Saddam. In 2002, an EU sponsored resolution adopted by the Commission for Human Rights noted:

“….systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.”

- Apparently not enough to warrant an overthrow, according to the anti-war Left. Maybe some more from the Commission on Human Rights might sway them?:

“….summary and arbitrary executions… and the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances.”

- The use of rape. Rape. As a Political tool.
So, that’s……. rape, genocide, torture, enforced disappearances, threats, and the murder of children. But apparently, still not enough to warrant overthrowing. And yet, the anti-war left cry “peace” whilst ignoring all of it. Disgusting.

We often hear Iraq described as a ‘sovereign nation’ whose sovereignty was invaded by America. But as a leftie, I’d say sovereignty comes with responsibilities. The responsibility not to kill 40,000 of your own people. The responsibility not to have the entire population living in fear and suspicion. Once those responsibilities have been endlessly breached, once every UN resolution has been pissed on, then you lose your right to sovereignty. There was no country on Earth, in 2003, whose leader had lost his right to sovereignty more than Saddam Hussain.

And then there’s George Galloway. Hero of the ‘Stop The War Coalition’. His appearance in front of the US Senate is legendary. And yet, as apologists for fascist regimes go, he tops the list.

Galloway said in 2010 that he was always opposed to the Saddam regime. And yet, he’s on video meeting Saddam and saying

“I salute your courage, your strength, and everyone I have spoken to about meeting you wanted me to convey our heartfelt support”.

His idea of what makes a terrorist is simple. US/UK/UN = terrorists. Anything else = bravery. This apparent ‘bravery’ includes the blowing up of the UN building in Baghdad with military grade explosives, which was one of the “operations” of the “resistance” that Galloway called heroic. And who claimed responsibility for that attack? Abu al-Zarqawi. This operation killed de Mello. One of the World’s great humanitarians. And Zarqawi had him killed, not for his support of any war, but simply because he helped free East Timor from fundamentalist hands. Or in the words of the great “resistance”……. “a crusader that extracted part of Islamic land”. This has nothing to do with ‘imperialism’ (by the way, referring to a conquered area as ‘Islamic land’ is the very epitome of ‘imperialism’) or oil…. it is to do with mad religious fanatics who cannot cope with modernity, and liberalism because it threatens the power of their crazed religion. The great ‘resistence’ lead by al-Zarqawi also included the execution of US peace corps hero Laurence Foley. A man who dedicated his life to international aid work in India, in the Phillipines, in Bolivia, Peru, Zimbabwe, and Jordan. Galloway should be ashamed. But that isn’t all he should be ashamed of.
Galloway’s praising of the operations that killed American Soldier Casey Sheehan (calling them the ‘resistance’ again….. following the usual US/UK/UN = bad, anything else=bravery logic), and then going on anti-war marches with the kids mother, is a disgrace. And yet, that still isn’t all he should be ashamed of. As if being an apologetic for the ‘courage’ of Saddam, or the ‘bravery’ of people like al-Zarqawi wasn’t enough….

….Let’s also not forget that Galloway has been a long time supporter of Assad. He made a speech in Syria in which he said the Syrians were lucky to have Assad and their great democracy. Seriously. Syria was ranked second bottom for political freedoms in the World at this point. This was in the year before Lebanon gained some independence from the Syrian occupation. Galloway was referring to an illegal occupation force in the region as a ‘great democracy’. America helped to push through a UN resolution calling for the Syrians to pull out of Lebanon. I ask, who were the terrorists and resistance in that conflict?

More left leaning anti-war intellectuals choose to ignore Moore as a ‘film maker’ who needs to sensationalise. The problem is, he presents as fact, and a crowd who are just itching for some form of anti-American sentiment to latch onto, have found it, without questioning it. The anti-war intellectual class seem to be more inclined to give their ultimate praise to someone like Noam Chomsky. He’s a sort of hero of the university anti-war left.

At university, during a talk on ‘credible sources’ for thesis writing, our Professor told us that quoting Michael Moore would obviously not be acceptable, but quoting Chomsky would. I asked why. Chomsky to me seems to be a ‘thinking man’s’ Michael Moore. A bit more in-depth analysis, though still (if not more so than Moore) supremely misleading, and deliberately excluding facts, a man who absolutely cannot apply context to any situation beyond “American imperialism, for oil” and who has not written a single critical piece on the Saddam regime, nor the Taliban regime, a man who long ago became a holocaust denier, and apologist for the most evil regimes on Earth. Chomsky simply chooses to spout any mindless and ultimately inaccurate scare tactic to engage the already anti-American left into thinking they’ve found a faultless intellectual hero who wouldn’t lie to them. It is of course, nonsense. He has frequently lied. Let me give you an example.
We often criticise the far right for their irritatingly uniformed promotion of holocaust denial. Nick Griffin of the BNP famously decided the West had drastically over estimated the number of those killed in gas chambers in Nazi Germany, as part of a propaganda machine. We note holocaust denial as being a strong far right principle. But the left should also look closer to home. Chomsky presents sources as ‘credible’ and it seems to make his writing more plausible, and yet he once cited in an essay written at a time when the Khmer Rouge had killed at least 1,000,000 people

The response to the three books under review nicely illustrates this selection process. Hildebrand and Porter present a carefully documented study of the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it, giving a very favorable picture of their programs and policies, based on a wide range of sources.”

- The cited authors in question once stated that:

“the notion that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea adopted a policy of physically eliminating whole classes of people was a myth fostered primarily by the authors of a Readers Digest book.”

- The problem here is that, they were entirely wrong. What Chomsky called “a carefully documented study” and “based on a wide range of sources” was actually based on a couple of visits to Cambodia, and their sources were almost entirely based on official Khmer Rough sources. A few years later, George Porter accepted he was wrong, and that the Khmer Rouge were responsible for millions of deaths. Chomsky never admitted his mistake in citing such weak authors. Chomsky goes on to defend the book, and seems to suggest a media conspiracy to keep it hidden from public view (rather than the fact that its premise, was based on really terrible research):

Published last year, and well received by the journal of the Asia Society, it has not been reviewed in the Times, New York Review or any mass-media publication, nor used as the basis for editorial comment, with one exception. The Wall Street Journal acknowledged its existence in an editorial entitled “Cambodia Good Guys”, which dismissed contemptuously the very idea that the Khmer Rouge could play a constructive role, as well as the notion that the United States had a major hand in the destruction, death and turmoil of wartime and postwar Cambodia.

- This one quote represents to me, the very epitome of what is wrong with the left wing today. It has become so manically anti-American that it has become an apologist for some of the most horrific totalitarian regimes on the planet, and that really doesn’t sit well with me. Chomsky is ignoring the millions of people who were systematically wiped out by the Khmer Rouge, as opposed to fighting them, as a left wing should be. This trend continued right up until today.
Similarly, in the “New War Against Terror” lecture in 2001 to M.I.T that:

Western civilization is anticipating the slaughter of, well do the arithmetic, 3-4 million people or something like that [in Afghanistan]… Looks like what’s happening is some sort of silent genocide… we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder 3 or 4 million people.

- In fact, Unicef claimed the opposite. They point out that the intervention saved the lives of around 112,000 lives of children at risk from Taliban killings in the east of Afghanistan, whilst saving millions who would have otherwise died of starvation due to bad harvests that the Taliban had absolutely no plan for. Catherine Bertini, executive director of the UN World Food Program told the World that famine would be avoided because of the massive amounts of wheat (the biggest delivery in history) that year. During the war, the Taliban banned the World Food Program from the country for more than three months, creating conditions in which 6 million people were in dire need of food.
Bertini (not part of some hideous Western conspiracy to hide the Chomsky-truth) continues:

“There will be deaths, because the country was in a pre-famine condition this summer before the war started. But it will be isolated, and not large-scale.”

- Chomsky, again, doesn’t admit that he was wrong. His comments are still used as some sort of proof of the destructive nature of the US, yet the massive amount of aid that went into providing 90,000 tonnes of wheat, preventing a famine, goes unrecognised. The left should be proud of that achievement.
We should not take a man seriously, who, in the middle of his book “The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism: The Political Economy of Human Rights” states that:

“Washington has become the torture and political murder capital of the world”.

- How ignorant. How conspiratorial and desperately narrow-minded. And mostly, how shameful.

Michael Moore – Apologist for Saddam, claiming he was no threat, had never threatened an American or attacked America. Anti-American undertones to all political diatribe.
Galloway – Apologise for Saddam, terrorists like al-Zarqawi and heads of State like Assad. Anti-American undertones to all political diatribe.
Chomsky – Apologist for the Khmer Rouge and completely ignorant of the extremities of fascist governments. Anti-American undertones to all political diatribe.
These are the heroes of the anti-war Left.

The heroes on the anti-war Left; whether they be a film maker who just emits facts to create entertainment, or be they ‘intellectuals’ who use weak research to boost their credentials, and over exaggerations to scare people, have made me deeply disenfranchised with the Left when it comes to foreign policy. What use is the Left if it spends its time only criticising its own governments (which is perfectly acceptable, and necessary; providing its criticisms are factual and not simply a manipulatory more intellectually sounding critique based on conspiracy, weak research, and ‘entertainment’) , without providing any sort of context for each individual conflict and burying them all under the same banner of ‘imperialism’ and ‘oil’. What use if the Left if it ignores the plight of millions of people enduring their entire lives under totalitarian and deeply fascist systems. Where is the solidarity? The sense of brotherhood? Why have the Left become increasingly Nationalistic in their sense of justice? “Sovereign nation”, “our troops”… all rhetorical devices to mask the horrendous human rights violations, on such grand scales, committed by the very nations they wish we just left alone, and understood the ‘cultural differences’ between us. Again, the Left needs to make a choice…. do we support democratic principles and provide our backing for democratic uprisings and revolutions (we can do this, without demanding military intervention; a point that seems to allude the anti-war left who insist I am calling for the bombing of every non-democratic state on the planet), or do we keep hailing those who are simply apologists for totalitarian regimes as our political heroes. Do we accept democracy is necessary, or do we ‘understand’ that regimes on the far extremes are ‘culturally’ acceptable (despite the majority of the populations of those countries living in perpetual fear of torture and death). Reinhold Niebuhr, the great American leftie (but neo-con by today’s anti-war Left standards) once said, quite rightly:

“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

- The Left, by my standards must fight for democracy; because in doing so it fights for justice, human decency, and political freedoms that we have always so strongly advocated. We must abhor Chomsky’s defence of the Khmer Rouge, we must shudder with disdain at Galloway telling Saddam that we admire him. We must fight to keep religion out of politics. It is poison. And we must never, as a Left wing that believes in social justice and humanitarian principles, allow a Taliban regime to control Afghanistan ever again. We must be the side that fights for democratic rights, social rights – regardless of race, gender, and sexuality – and economic protections. We must criticise our governments where necessary, but also be absolutely strong and resolute in our opposition to all forms of fascism, and determined to see it eradicated. That must be the call of the Left in the 21st Century. Not anti-war, for the sake of being anti-American.

We do not hear the positives that came from the war. We do not hear of the wonderful work being undertaken by Left Wing groups in Iraq now determined to create a stable, liberal, democratic society.
Yanar Mohammed, the Iraqi Feminist and head of “Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq” moved back to Iraq after self imposed exile for fear of her life, after the invasion by coalition troops. Her group now fights against sexual slavery and forced prostitution. It provides safe houses for victims of domestic abuse and those threatened with honour killings. She claims to have saved 30 women from honour killings. Under Saddam, those 30 killings would have taken place, and there would be nowhere for victims of domestic abuse or sexual slavery inside Iraq to turn to. At Saddam’s trial, a woman who didn’t wish to be identified testified against the Dictator, stating:

“I was beaten up and tortured by electrical shocks, I begged them, but they hit with their pistols. They made me put my legs up. There were five or more, and they treated me like a banquet.

The woman was 16 at the time. Where were the cries of outrage from the anti-war Left? From an apparently caring Left? How many actually knew of this?
Yanar Mohammed is pushing for the de-baathistisation of the Country’s attitudes to women. Another step in the right direction, and a signal that Iraq is far better off without Saddam or the Baath Party. The international Left should be recognising people like Yanar Mohammed and helping her cause, rather than focusing on endless criticism of America.

Azzam Alwash is the director of “Nature Iraq“, the Country’s first and only Environmental organisation. He is working to restore the marshes of Southern Iraq. The beautiful region, full of wildlife and natural wonder, considered by some to be the “cradle of civilisation” and the Garden of Eden, was destroyed by Saddam. The Marsh Arabs had supported a Shiite uprising against Saddam in the early 1990s. The marsh Arabs had lived in floating huts on a plethora of canals that were divided between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Saddam had thousands of the marsh Arabs tortured and killed, and their livestock slaughtered. The huts were burned, and the water was poisoned. As many as 500,000 fled the attack. Land mines were placed in and around the marshes to make sure no one would go back. For centuries the marshes of Southern Iraq were teeming with wildlife and aquatic life. After 1990, it was baron, drained, poisoned, and covered in land mines. The UN in 2001 named it as one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time. Alwash intends to re-flood the marshes and restore the wildlife. This would not have been possible under Saddam. Alwash would most likely have been tortured and killed for even suggesting it. The south was one of the places that the Iraqi people were delighted to welcome coalition troops in 2003.

So, if the anti-war Left want to describe me as a neo-con, then I wear that badge with honour, whilst knowing that my anti-fascism is far more in keeping with the traditional resolute left wing solidarity with the most oppressed people in the World, than the apologists who make excuses and lies for the atrocities committed by the governments they work so tirelessly to protect.

Aidan Burley and the curse of the nasty Party

The Olympic opening ceremony was a spectacular representation of the progress from industrialism to, well, Dizzie Rascal apparently. I adored it. There cannot be many more years go by without Danny Boyle not becoming Sir Danny Boyle. Boyle’s opening ceremony expressed progression. He not-so-subtly directed the audience left ward. Though it seems to have angered the Right Wing. And rightly so. It was a kick in the teeth to everything they stand for. It was a display of the achievements of the Left in this country. Tory MP Aidan Burley tweeted during the opening ceremony with the following:

This is the same Aidan Burley who was sacked as Parliamentary Private Secretary after attending a Nazi themed stag party, in which he himself hired Third Reich outfits and toasted the groom with nazi salutes. Burley’s credibility as a political commentator to be taken seriously, is hardly rousing.
Unfortunately for Burley, the NHS (opposed by the Tories), Welfare (opposed by the Tories, at every level), and union advancements to fairer work conditions (opposed by the Tories), minimum wage(opposed by the Tories) and maternity pay(opposed by the Tories) is modern Britain for the majority of the people living here. It isn’t champagne, nazi themed stag do’s and taxpayer funded moat cleaning for the majority. It is multicultural, it is black, white, gay, straight, female, male and everything else. It is dole queues, and a lack of hope – largely the result of the policies of his Party. It isn’t just a golf course is Kent with wealthy businessmen and a group wank over their new yacht. I cannot imagine Burley is going to last much longer as an MP.

Boris Johnson has said there was nothing left winged about it, Cameron has called Burley an idiot for suggesting it. They are both wrong. Burley is right. It was left leaning in nature. That’s why I loved it. To suggest the glorification of the NHS, of union advancements and of the suffragettes were not left leaning, is to suggest that the Tory Party had either supported all of those things, or played a part in them. This would be disingenuous and they know it. It works to the Tory Party’s advantage if they show how much they just love the NHS, if they keep quiet and reluctantly support the show of union advancement. Why let them have that? They achieved none of it. They fought it at every opportunity. So yes, the Olympic Opening Ceremony declared what every decent Brit cherishes; and none of it came from the Conservative Party.

So everyone from the far left to the Prime Minister weighed in on this, attacking Burley for his tweet, and telling us all how wrong he was. That he should apologise. An embarrassment to the Tory Party. And I think that’s a mistake we on the Left make far too often.

Burley is a Tory that has contempt for anyone that isn’t like him. But he isn’t alone. He is a regular Tory. They all think like him, the rest of them just have the sense to stay quiet. Or, Burley just has the balls to say exactly what he thinks. This is troubling, because come election time (as in 2010) the Tories can present themselves as new, cuddly, loving, ‘compassionate conservatives’, that the NHS is safe in their hands, that their budget will deliver growth and help for ‘hard working families’, that the likes of Burley do not represent the whole Party; because any outward display of their true colours is quickly silenced, not just by their Party superiors, but by the left. We demand apologies. This is in fact the British Left shooting themselves square in the foot, because it allows the Tory Party to engage with mass thought and mould communication around it. If we did not complain so loudly, the Tory Party would doubtlessly show themselves for the awful bigoted bunch of over privileged toffs that they have always been, rendering them unelectable. We now know that the NHS was not safe in their hands. We now know that listening to the advice of Britain’s biggest businesses when they supported the Chancellors plans to cut, cut, cut, was a massive lapse of National judgement in collectively believing they wanted to actually help the country rather than line their own pockets…. we know this, because it has failed miserably. We now know that they had planned to raise VAT yet cut Corporation tax and other wealthy taxes. We now know that many of their associates working for them keep their money in offshore accounts whilst shamelessly attacking anyone on welfare. The attacks on welfare are easy. These people do not fund the Tory Party, so they are unneeded; the country hates benefit cheats, because the media completely over hypes the situation, whilst the biggest cons – the tax avoiders who fund, work for, and appear in the cabinet (see George Osborne) sit comfortably dividing and conquering. But…. let them speak, their one weakness, their regressive attitudes to absolutely everything, and they will fall.

Burley later attacked the decision to allow Dizzee Rascal to perform. He wasn’t sure why we allowed rap music to feature. A further attack on multiculturalism. Clearly Burley isn’t aware that Dizzee Rascal has four number 1 hits, a Mercury Music award, NME awards, BET awards, has worked to encourage youth voting, and is internationally known. This isn’t an obscure musician. This is a guy who epitomises a certain age group, a certain social and economic background, and has shot to the top. He is also from the East End, not far from the Olympic village. A global musical star, from that area. Seems like the right choice to me. Who would Burley choose instead?

The two fundamental belief that drive everything the Tory Party stand for, that I despise are:
1) The rich are ‘job creators’.
2) Unless you are white, heterosexual, English born, and have a mind for business, wearing a suit the moment you were born; you are different, and different = wrong.
Give them the opportunity, and they will express both of these dangerous ideas time and time again. They will play on prejudices to make sure their obvious bigotry is somewhat clouded – i.e- mention constantly how awful people on welfare are. Deflect the negativity onto those who have no real political representation. And it works, because a pessimistic population has no time to look into these claims, as everyone is working more, for less, thanks to Tory economic policy.

The Tories are rather good at covering their inherent prejudices. If we take the case of Chris Grayling, the Minister for Work and Pensions; this man is a compulsive liar. But he backtracks. Or his lies are just forgotten; glossed over by the Tory spin machine. Usually compulsive liars; those whose lies become a sort of way of life, are nothing to worry about. But when they hold incredibly important offices with the responsibilities of those of Grayling, we must all be concerned. I would go so far as to suggest he has one of the most profound records of fabrication in any government of the post war era.
As shadow minister for work and pensions, Grayling pushed the lie that £2.5bn was lost to benefit fraud in 2006 by stating:

…billions of pounds are still being lost to fraud.”

- Actually, less than a billion was lost to fraud in 2006. The National Audit Office who actually released these figures said that £690m was lost to fraud. Chris Grayling has never admitted his mistake here. It is also extremely odd that he seems to take offence at the morality of misspent taxpayers money, given that his Parliamentary expenses receipts show that he bought a flat in Central London, less than 17 miles from his constituency home, using tax payers money, and then renovated said flat, with tax payers money, claiming almost £2000 alone for refurbishing the bathroom. One wonders what taxpayers are getting out of the fact that he can have a more luxurious shit every morning? Or what taxpayers are getting out of his lovely new £1,341 kitchen And one wonders how this is any different to a single mother getting a few £ extra out of the system every week. In fact, it is worse, because Grayling is on a salary of £64,000 and has a house that was worth £600,000 in 2000, and two buy to let properties in London. Grayling spread the cost of the renovations on his flat over two years (one year would have gone over the maximum allowed by Parliament) claiming:

…..decorator has been very ill and didn’t invoice me until now.

Grayling, is a hypocritical, lying turd.
After saying that he supported the right for B&B owners to not allow gay couples to stay in their B&B, he backtracked, stating:

I am sorry if what I said gave the wrong impression, I certainly didn’t intend to offend anyone… I voted for gay rights.

- Humble apology. Though a complete fabrication. If we look at his voting record on gay rights we find that….
Civil Partnerships – Grayling voted against.
Fertility Treatment for Gay Couples – Grayling voted against.
The Repeal of Section 28 – Grayling did not show up to vote.
The Right for Gay Couples to Adopt – Grayling voted against.
- He couldn’t have lied more if he tried. There are more examples of Chris Grayling’s lies, blogged several times. The most prolific, and where I started my research is here.

We know where their hatred lies. Burley disliked the left wing attitude that the Olympic opening ceremony took on. That includes the trade unionism. Is it any surprise a Tory Party member – whose current cabinet is made up almost exclusively of millionaires – dislikes a movement that protects those who do not have a voice in Parliament? We are all playing the Corporate game. They want you to work longer, for less pay, whilst the guys at the top do less, for more. Here is a government that have led the country into the biggest double dip recession in decades. They have blamed the unions, Labour, the snow, the royal wedding. All whilst giving the wealthiest a huge tax cut. It is easy. There aren’t many public services – Sure Start, libraries, youth centres – that would ever likely benefit Conservatives, so swap them for a wealthy tax cut, and they’re all happy. It seems we have become a country that judges its success on how well we treat the wealthiest. The balance is tipped in the wrong direction and it has all but destroyed the economy.
In two short years the UK has gone from signs of growth and recovery (1.2% in the first quarter of 2010 – Labour’s last few months – staggering given the recession that we’d just come out of), to a shocking -0.7% drop in growth. There is no one left to blame. The economics of ‘businesses and rich people create jobs’ is a myth. Demand creates jobs, and by stripping the economy of demand as part of their unfortunately named “Budget for Growth” in 2010, the Tories have been given the harsh reality of making sure they only look after the people who fund them. Because let’s not forget that as part of Grayling’s flagship ‘back to work’ programme, the company Deloitte Ingeous was awarded 7 out of 40 contracts to get people back to work…… this comes after the same Deloitte Ingeous donated £28,000 to Grayling in 2009. The same back to work programme that found a certain Mr Stephen Hill fit for work.

Stephen Hill had been referred to a Fit For Work assessment by the private healthcare company Atos, after signing up for Disability Living Allowance whilst waiting for tests on his heart. Despite the fact that doctors had diagnosed him with heart failure, he was still found “fit for work”. He appealed, and won. But the Department sent him another letter demanding a second assessment, this time whilst he was waiting for heart surgery. The assessor commented:

“Significant disability due to cardiovascular problems seems unlikely.”

Stephen Hill died a couple of weeks later. Atos have just won £587mn worth of new contracts to carry out assessments.
Welcome to Corporate England, and the joys of private healthcare companies.

A country works best with a healthy national health service to ensure healthy members of an economic community. It works best with a safety net to catch those who fall, or who cannot help themselves. JK Rowling famously defended the welfare state with this rather beautiful summation of how it works:

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

It works best when those who benefitted the most from a healthy public sector – roads, health, education – do not burn the ladder up which they climbed for future generations, as the Tory Party is doing now. It works best when we fight to protect the most vulnerable, not to force them to work in order for unemployment figures to look better on tomorrow’s newspaper. It works best when we focus on how our Nation treats our poorest, and not how many yachts our richest can now afford.

Back to Burley. He is not alone in his contempt. Along with Grayling’s apparent dislike of homosexuality (and the disabled, claiming 75% of those on disability, were “skiving”), and the entire policy of forcing those with quite blatant disabilities back into work just to improve employment figures, whilst using the new found revenue flow to fund tax cuts for wealthy donors, other Tory’s have been quick to show, and then hide their true colours these past few years.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, a noble post, stood up in Parliament, and referred to gay Labour MP Chris Bryant as a “Pantomime dame”, followed by a sickening smurk and a barrage of laughter from his pompous back benchers.

“There is a real danger that the abolition of section 28 will lead to the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as morally equivalent to marriage.“

- Theresa May, the Equalities Minister. Seriously.

“if there’s anybody who should fuck off it’s the Muslims who do this sort of thing.”

- Tory MP Philip Davies, after an act of vandalism which was later proven to have not involved any Muslims at all.

“Feminists are now amongst the most obnoxious bigots.’

- Tory MP Dominic Raab.
This is the same Dominic Raab who complained about tax payers money should not be spent on Government staff who are working on union projects. And yet, doesn’t seem to have a problem with millions of £ in taxpayers money being given to previously mentioned companies like Atos. Raab appears to rabidly dislike Unions marching, but has no problem with a company like Care UK majorly benefiting from changes to the NHS at a time when they donated £21,000 to the private office of the health secretary. Raab seems to have no problem with his party choosing Philip Green to head the “efficiency of government spending review” despite himself keeping his multi-millions in offshore accounts, being accused of excessive pay by awarding himself a dividend of £1.2bn, whilst his company avoided £125mn in tax payable to the UK, whilst also being accused of treating workers poorly by using sweatshops. By the way, the money spent on union planning that Raab is so angry about, came to £6mn. That’s about 20 times less than Philip Green’s company alone avoided in taxes. We see where Raab’s priorities lie. Alongside the rest of the Tory Party; with Corporate England.

So you see, it is wrong of us to insist on silencing Tory prejudice. It is inherent to them. They are the party of big business and bigotry. The nasty party. They haven’t changed, nor will they. Shouting abuse at Aidan Burley will not make him change his views that multiculturalism is anti-British, or that the NHS, the suffragettes, and the union movement are all disastrous. He, and his wealthy colleagues are simply playing a Corporate game with the lives of ordinary people. We should leave them to spurt their occasional venom at anyone who isn’t like them. It does the right wing no favours, and can only turn voter after voter off ever voting for these putrid little scumbags ever again.

And maybe, just maybe…. the ‘left wing’ aspects of the Olympic opening ceremony were used, because they are the things the British are most proud of.

The November 30th Strikes

Conservative Party hypocrisy reached a new high today, when The Sun published an article in which David Cameron calls on public sector workers to defy their unions, by not going on strike on November 30th. The phrase the Prime Minister used, which really quite sums up the sort of post-modern irony that seems to run the veins of the Coalition, was a beautiful:

“most did not vote for this”

He is of course referring to the vote for public sector strike action on the 30th November over pension reform.

Unison vote: 245,358 voted in favour, 70,253 against.
National Association of Probation Officers Union: 80% vote for strike action.
The National Union of Teachers: 92% in favour.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union: 4 to 1 in favour.
Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP): 86% In favour.
Society of Radiographers (SOR): 84% in favour.
Association of Educational Psychologists (AEP): 64% in favour.
Among others.
Over three million will strike. The Prime Minister believes it is illegitimate to strike, because most public sector workers didn’t vote in the ballot. This of course, simply adds to the breathtaking level of hypocrisy in the Prime Minister’s already weak argument.

It is true that most public sector workers didn’t vote. Even so, the unions that did have a huge turnout, were almost identical in respect to results, as those with low turnouts. For example, whilst Unite only managed a 31% turnout with a result of 75% in favour; the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) managed to get 66% turnout with a result of 86% in favour. Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) managed a turnout of 66.3% and a vote of 79.19% in favour. I’d say it’s pretty conclusive. But it strikes me as insanely ironic that Cameron would even have the nerve to bring up democratic legitimacy. The irony is beautiful. The turnout for the public sector strike vote among unions was around 27%. Pretty small overall. That being said, only about 2% actually voted against strikes. A stark contrast to the 67.6% of people who voted for any Party other than the Conservative Party in 2010. If we’re talking legitimacy after a vote, I’m pretty sure I know which is truly illegitimate, given the scale of reform since 2010.Let’s apply Cameron’s wording to the election and its aftermath:

The tripling of Tuition fees.

“most did not vote for this”

The abolition of 150 PCTs/Control of budget handed over to GP consortiums.

“most did not vote for this”

Rise in VAT, which the Tories said “We have no plans for” and the Lib Dems described as a “Tory bombshell waiting to be dropped”.

“most did not vote for this”

Radical pension changes.

“most did not vote for this”

On the last point, the radical pension changes can not in any light be considered ‘fair’. If we look at what the Government is saying; that a teacher retiring on £37,000 will now get a pension of £25,000, as opposed to £19,100 under the current scheme… sounds like a pretty good deal. But here’s the problem; for a pension of £25,000, the NUT says a teacher would have to work to 68, rather than 60 for the pension of £19000. What this means is if a teacher were to retire at 60 under the new proposals, he/she would receive £13,800…… £5300. Work for eight years longer, pay more, get less. That’s the new scheme.

Danny Alexander told the House of Commons on the 2nd November:

“Yes, we are asking public service workers to contribute more. Yes, we are asking them to work longer, along with the rest of society, but we are offering the chance of a significantly better pension at the end of it for many low and middle income earners.”

- Interestingly, this is nonsense. The document that Alexander is referring to, is the ‘Public Sector Pensions: good pensions that last’ (what a vomit-inducing title), in it we are given the example of a 40 year old male civil servant with 18 years of service, and would only have to work 18 months more – to the age of 61 years and 6 months – to get his existing pension deal. If he were to retire at 67, he’d have £3700 more than under the current scheme. Here’s where it is nonsense. Channel 4 pointed out that if you use the calculator on the Civil Service website, that man would actually only take home £2,567 more. 30% less than Alexander suggested. To even get near to the same pension as they’re currently due, the average civil service worker would have to work close to five years more than now. In contrast, Downing Street has been redecorated to the tune of £680,000 of public money, since May 2010. Just saying….

Baroness Warsi warned:

“Millions of public sector workers could be forced to strike against their will.”

- Oh the hypocrisy. Thousands of students will now face crippling debts, against their will. A report on Radio Leicester this morning highlighted the problem caused by deep austerity (remember, MOST voted against deep austerity in 2010) by showing that since this time last year, homeless rates have tripled in Leicester. Libraries have closed against their will. By June, 240,000 public sector workers had lost their jobs, against their will. GPs are being handed 80% of an NHS budget, against their will. Baroness Warsi really is a disaster.

Overall, the government intends to increase public sector pension contributions by 3.5% by 2015. The TUC says that this amounts to a 3% wage cut. They call it, a tax on working in the public sector. It essentially raises around £3bn a year. Coincidentally, the Chancellor ruled out a tax on bankers bonuses, that would have raised £2bn a year.

It would appear that the Coalition don’t understand. The High Pay Commission this week found that Executive pay is astronomically high, rising hugely even during recession, whilst the rest of the Country had to deal with rising inflation and flatlining wages, followed now by public sector pension attacks and the burden of the nation’s debt placed onto the shoulders of the Nation’s 18 year olds. Barclay’s bank saw its Chief Executive pay increase 5000% in 30 years, whilst its average employee saw his/her pay increase just 3 fold. In 1980, the average pay of the man at the top was 13 times more than the average employee…. now, it’s 169 times more. Collective, The report ends with:

“Stratospheric increases in pay are damaging the economy – distorting markets, draining talent from key sectors and rewarding failure. There appears to be little truth in the myth that pay must escalate to halt a talent drain in executives.”

- Executive pay is in no way linked to company performance. For example, as share index of FTSE 100 companies rose just 7%, average pay for bosses rose 32%, average pay for their employees rose just 2%. Renumeration committees are sordid little greed affairs, and it all remains very very private. It is wrong. So, given that Chief Execs. of financial institutions; a sector that caused the entire globe to become engulfed in the flames of sovereign debt crises, have been given massive tax breaks, and have seen their pay increase beyond anyone’s idea of a reasonable level whilst they ride the tide of consumer demand calling themselves, quite amusingly, “job creators” at every possible turn to defend their obscene life styles, knowing full well they have a plethora of multi-millionaires in the Cabinet to defend them…… the rest of the working World is expected to sit down, shut up, and take the Tory-led economic raping like a good little bitch.

The 0.1% at the very top, are taking even more, funded by cuts to wages like that of the public sector pension reforms. Teachers and nurses are funding the luxurious lifestyles of Britain’s banking chiefs. The Government absolutely fully supports this.

This is why I fully support the strikes next week.