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.

Panic Petrol: A Tory blunder

On Question Time this week, the frankly embarrassing Liberal Democrat Minister for Children and Families, Sarah Teather blamed the Unions for the panic buying of petrol that we’ve seen this week in the UK. In typical Tory fashion, she could think of no other reason why people might rush to the petrol pumps, than to blame the Unions for actually doing nothing of any significance. Unite has ruled out strike action over easter. The union seems more likely to focus on talks, than threats. All the fear, has come directly from Downing Street.

I take a different view, and I think, a view shared by those of us who aren’t living in Tory-land.

Today has been damning for the Tories in this whole dispute, because whilst on Question Time, Teather seemed disgusted by the suggestion that this was all political on the part of the government, a memo has been leaked from Downing Street stating:

“This is our Thatcher moment. In order to defeat the coming miners’ strike, she stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour Party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers’ strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed.”

- This is about as damning as it gets. A lady suffers 40% burns, because the Tories want to win political points over Labour? Playground politics turned tragic.

I think there are three reasons why the Government issued several warnings in the press this week regarding the possibility of a strike, and Teather played along with it on Question Time. When asked who is to blame for the panic buying, she said “The Unions are to blame, for calling this strike“. Now, the Union hasn’t called a strike. In fact, as we speak, there is very little chance of their actually being a strike. Sarah Teather played the typical Conservative line; blame unions at all costs. Which includes lying. Teather is in the cabinet, she knows the unions have not called a strike, so why say it? This is reason one. Conservatives are usually very good at making unions look bad. This was another opportunity. During the public sector pension strike, Conservatives issues statement after statement about how hard working families are struggling, how private sector pensions are much lower than public sector, how economic times are woeful, and how the unions are making it worse. All of which, have been absolutely caused by Tory/Lib Dem economic austerity failure. The message seems to be “We expect you to just sit back and take it“. For Liberal Democrats, this is utterly disgraceful. For Tories, we know this is what they do. We know that even if economically speaking, the Country was strong, Tories would do the same thing. Slash, burn, destroy, and immiserate.

So, point 1) Take another opportunity to make the unions look bad; link the Labour party to the unions.

On the second point, and I think the most significant. The OECD pointed out that in the last quarter of 2011, the economy shrank by 0.3%. The OECD then pointed out early this week, that they believe the first quarter of 2012 will see a drop of 0.1% in growth. This means the UK is in recession. This is a terrible indictment on the absolute failure of austerity. They cannot blame Labour for this anymore. They cannot blame the snow. They cannot blame unions. They cannot blame Europe. The Tories and the Lib Dems only have themselves to blame. The “budget for growth”. Remember that? What we have is stagnation and failure. What they have done, is risk an economic and social engineering program that has led the country to ruin. To avoid a recession, by propping up spending at the end of the first quarter of 2012….. induce panic buying. Tell the country that you are prepping the army to deliver oil in the event of strike. Needlessly tell the country you are having meetings of the crises response team “Cobra”. Tell the country to fill up cans of petrol and take them home. For what reason? IN CASE of a strike? Strikers must give seven days notice. Ben Fenton at the Financial Times tweeted something similar:

There is absolutely no way we will be in recession after all this #pasty #petrol buying, though. What a brilliant tactical ploy.

There is one problem with this theory. To buy back 0.2% of GDP growth, consumer spending would have to top £800mn over the past three days. This is quite a stretch. Be interesting to see 2nd quarter growth figures.

Point 2) Prevent double dip recession in the most cynical way possible.

Going back to the point about lack of growth here is what the Government’s “budget for growth” has achieved. You see the green bar? That represents government debt as a share of GDP as outlined by the Tories on how they thought the austerity measures would work. The blue line, is what has actually happened. No amount of spinning this can make it positive.

And lastly, Bad press attention over the past week. First, a budget that cut the top rate of tax for the highest earners, whilst continually hitting the most vulnerable, especially pensioners was announced. Secondly, cash for access promises to be the scandal of the year for the Conservatives. Every employee in the country might not be too pleased to know that the man who wrote the government report on the need to strip workers of their rights when it comes to unfair dismissal, Adrian Beecroft, donated over £500,000 to the Tory Party. I’m not sure it’s right that very wealthy Tory donors should be allowed to create government policy. As well as the Tories not having a mandate to do any of what they have so far done, the public certainly didn’t vote for an odious little turd like Beecroft to oversee certain policy making endeavours.

Ed Staite, a former media advisor for the Tories is accused of trying to sell policy to the highest bidder. He is filmed by undercover reporters that they can use their money and influence to affect government policy in a way that helps their business, by pushing for the sale of Royal Mail. How does Staite defend himself? Well, on his website he says:

I was suggesting a transparent approach to generate new ideas which may well never become Conservative Party policy. That is how the policy formulation process works.

- How this is a defence, is beyond me. Policy is generated, he is suggesting, by selling access to very wealthy individuals? How is that a defence? And these people have the nerve to attack the Labour Party for its ties to unions? Unions represent hundreds of thousands of people. The one or two that speak to despicable advisors like Staite, represent their own private business interests. It actually disgusts me that these people are allowed anywhere near power. It seems, even though they did not win a mandate, like vultures they are attempting very successfully to use government to enrich themselves and their friends. This is corruption on a horrendous scale.

Francis Maude made the entire media onslaught a thousands times worse by insisting that people stock up on fuel at home in jerry cans. It was made a million times worse when a woman in York suffered 40% burns after transferring fuel at home and setting herself alight. Maude should resign.

Party funding, should be public.

Point 3) An attempt to divert the horrendous press the Tories have received this week away from them, and onto the unions and the Labour party.

It is all political. If it isn’t political, then it is such vast incompetence, it is scary to think that these idiots are running the country. This wouldn’t surprise me, given the different messages coming out of Downing Street. Firstly, fill up your cars. Then, fill up your jerry cans at home. Then, only fill to three quarters. But don’t panic. There is no coherent message. When a government goes out of their way to tell the entire nation not to panic….then there is going to be panic.

And then there are those who blame the public.

“Well they should have used their common sense!”
What a ludicrous argument. What a weak defence of an indefensible and perpetually shambolic government.
People don’t have all the information.
People are told the government are in emergency meetings for this.
People are told to stock up on cans.
People are already struggling, so when they hear this, they react.
People are aware that governments are more informed than anyone else on the situation.
It just so happens, that the government weren’t more informed.
And it just so happens that they weren’t more informed….. on the week of a big cash for access scandal, and reports of double dip.

Here is a particularly favourite argument I have came across:

- I highlight this argument, because it seems to be quite common. And yet, it’s very contradictory. He is saying that people should think for themselves instead of listening to government. And then he’s saying (in regards to the riots), people don’t listen to government at all. I’m not sure what the overall point is.
‎”If the government advised people to chop their testicles off to reduce over population, do you think people would just blindly do it?“
The “if the government said chop your testicles off blah blah utter bollocks” argument is as painfully uninspired as any other. Just a silly comparison. We know chopping a testicle off is detrimental. It’s common sense. There is no weighing up of pro’s and cons. But when a government who are privy to information we aren’t, on the proceedings of 1) government 2) economic conditions and 3) the possibility of strike action because they’re constantly updated on the threat ….. then people, who lead busy lives, or businesses that are struggling to cope, cannot be expected to spend hours wading through all the information and coming to a rounded judgement, especially when they do not have all the information and cannot possibly get all the relevant information. Of course people rely on official sources for their information. If you think a top Cabinet Minister going on TV and saying “we’re holding emergency Cobra meetings” and “fill up your tanks, take petrol home” is going to make people take a day off work so they can sit and read through all relevant documentation and information available, I think you’re expecting a bit too much. The government have a responsibility. They purposely caused panic in this instance.

Also, the riot analogy is just as weak. The riots themselves were not the result of sudden desperation and a fear of a lack of essential supply. There was an obvious economic and social undertone to the riots, and always have been when it comes to violent disorder. How he managed to compare the two, actually hurts my head. As I noted in a previous blog written just after the London riots:

The motives are of course opportunistic. There appears to be no political motive. It has purely brought out the violent and senseless mob who are achieving nothing but the destruction of their communities. But the social and economic situation in relation to these riots cannot be ignored. We must accept that when one person commits a crime, it is an individual problem. When thousands commit the same crime, on the same day, there is a deep social problem. Certain tweeters have said they watched people looting supermarkets of nappies and milk. The underlying issues need addressing. Many of the Greek rioters last year, were opportunistic in nature. But the economic pressures created an atmosphere where rioting was essentially inevitable. A government who go out of their way to initiate a shock to the system that forces unemployment up deliberately, whilst living cost and rising inflation also rise purposely, is a government that is committing economic criminality. It is similar in the UK. 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 affects 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. The looting of the public services and economic violence from the Government, will absolutely always lead to social violence and criminality.

An entire generation has been told that we must own stuff. That the purpose of life is to consume. We are given easy credit to fuel the debt needed to sustain an economy and a prevailing social wisdom built around consuming. People who have very little, who are told they will always have very little, living in areas where the opportunities are bleak at best and non-existent at worst, are still encouraged to consume. The materialist mindset that has dominated all other thought processes for far too long, must not be ignored as a contributing factor to the unrest; this can be seen quite evidently with the looting of non-essential, luxury goods. We are what we buy. And that is a problem. A generation of young people have had luxuries dangled infront of their faces by incessant advertising, only to be told they would never be able to afford them; well that temptation exploded and now they can get those desirable consumer items for free.

- To add to this. We live in a greed fueled culture. Humanity has many different traits. Our economic system is based on one trait; greed. Which isn’t always a terrible thing. But it does mean that that particular trait is quite obviously amplified, because it is rewarded. This is how the trickle down affect actually works. Greed at the top, will trickle down to the very bottom. This is when unrest becomes inevitable. Wealth trickling upwards, results in unrest trickling downwards. It isn’t a conscious phenomena, it is a product of the system that we live.

The petrol crises is the fault of the government. No one else. It was a cynical political game that has backfired miserably. People are still panic buying, petrol stations are closing, fuel is running low….. and there isn’t even likely to be a strike. What a total mess. Typical of such an awful government.

The Tory Party: One big PR disaster

Every morning, David Cameron must get out of bed, and feel as if he is walking through a storm without an umbrella. And instead of being soaked in water, he’s drowning in collective Cabinet shit. The Tory front bench, is a PR disaster, almost on a daily basis now. The media is totally in control of the image of the Tory Party. This is a sign of great weakness. There is no PR man controlling the public image of the Tory party any more. The days of painting David Cameron as a “Compassionate Conservative” are dead. The ball is now fully in the court of the media.

Even when we leave aside the fact that they have taken a weak economy that no one thought could get much worse, and made it far worse than anyone could have ever sat and imagined, the drivel that comes out of their mouths, and the antics they get up to, is enough to astound even the least interested in politics among us.

On the subject of the economy; growth had been downgraded from Osborne’s Office of getting everything entirely wrong, all the fucking time Budget Responsibility, five times. Three times before the Eurozone crises really started to take hold. The first time, the Tories blamed Labour. Everything was Labour’s fault. Then, in December 2010, when growth was downgraded again, they blamed the snow. Then the Royal Wedding. Then Europe. Surely the inherently racist Tory party can’t be far away from blaming black people?

Today, the Climate Secretary Chris Huhne, (admittedly, a Lib Dem, but that is so similar to Tory now, it really doesn’t need a distinguishing disclaimer) came out of a meeting with the big energy companies in the hope of striking a deal to bring down the cost of energy in the UK, as its rising rapidly out of control. Huhne’s interview with the BBC went something like this:

BBC: How did the meeting go?
Huhne: Very very very well!!
BBC: And what can we expect to happen?
Huhne: Well, if you switch providers all will be fine blah blah out of touch bollocks.
BBC: Did the energy companies concede anything?
Huhne: Well, if you switch providers all will be fine blah blah even more out of touch, skirting the question bollocks.
BBC: So it’s the consumer’s fault?
Huhne: Well, if you switch ….. you see where this is going.

- To sum up, Huhne thinks if we all switch to a cheaper tariff, we’ll all save money. The problem is, the difference between one company and another, is the difference between £1, and £0.99p. We know there are options, but the options are raping our bank accounts collectively. Ofgem reported last week, that the average profit margin for energy companies had risen from £15 per person in June… to……… £125 in September. That is vastly unacceptable. The bosses of these companies continue to blame wholesale prices of oil. Now, if profit margins had stayed the same, despite the rise in the price to the consumer, then they’d have a point. But you cannot increase your profit by such a huge quantity, and then claim it is the fault of wholesale prices. Huhne, is a PR disaster.

It goes without saying, that Theresa May and Kenneth Clarke are PR disasters, after the Tory Party Conference this year. For a quick refresher, May had used her speech to pour unnecessary and dangerous fuel onto the fire of a Nationalism that already burns far too bright in this Country. She was arguing against the Human Rights Act (a document so important, that May’s only argument against it, was an entire lie. She should be sacked for that alone). To do this, she said:

“The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – I am not making this up – because he had a pet cat.”

- The problem was, she had made it up. She is the personification of the Daily Mail. When you cannot find a legitimate reason to promote hate and anger; just make it up. When a Minister hasn’t checked their facts, has resorted to UKIP style populist politics to provoke anger and outrage and something that simply isn’t true, to then use the phrase “I’m not making this up” is so indescribably amateurish, one has to wonder how any of these people are in the position of power they currently occupy.
The story itself – the cat loving illegal immigrant – is wrong. Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary and May’s cabinet Tory colleague responded to her speech, by saying:

“I’ve never had a conversation on the subject with Theresa, so I’d have to find out about these strange cases she is throwing out.”
“They are British cases and British judges she is complaining about.
“I’ll have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership of a cat.”

The Judicial Communications Office said this:

“This was a case in which the Home Office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy – applying at that time to that appellant – for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK”.
“That was the basis for the decision to uphold the original tribunal decision – the cat had nothing to do with the decision.”

- So, May was wrong. She made up the story. She lied. But it gets even better. Chris Huhne (the PR disaster mentioned previously) tried to send a message on Twitter to his friend, saying:

“From someone else fine but I do not want my fingerprints on the story”

- This is in relation, to being exposed as the person pointing our the “i’m not making this up” speech by May was eerily familiar to Nigel Farage’s (leader of Far Right UKIP) speech, in which he said:

“Should not be deported because – and I really am not making this up – because he had a pet cat!”

- Huhne notified a Guardian journalist to the exact, word for word quote “similarities” between the speeches. But accidentally tweeted to all of his subscribers that he didn’t want his fingerprints on this story. So, May is a PR disaster. Clarke is a PR disaster. And Huhne is a double PR disaster. Brilliantly, Nick Clegg waned into the argument by saying, quite beautifully:

“They were both right.”

- N’awww…….what a cock.

Until recently (having declared he wont stand for re-election) Tory MEP Roger Helmer is responsible trying to justify his speeding, by saying:

“No matter how fast you are going, you get people passing you.”

And an email to a 17 year old animals rights activist, with:

“I am not prepared to join the seal campaign, because while I agree that the culling of seals by beating them over the head is not very pleasing and aesthetic, I think it is probably fairly quick and humane…
“I challenge the use of your term “innocent baby seals”, because
(A) Seals are not morally competent, and therefore cannot be innocent or guilty;
(B) I think it is mawkish, sentimental and unhelpful to adopt a “Bambi” attitude to animals, or to seek to anthropomorphise them – I wonder if you would have the same sentimental view of rats or tarantulas? – if not, why not?
(C) In one sense the seals are guilty (without any moral responsibility), for damaging fish stocks and the livelihoods of local fishermen.
“Your sympathy for dumb animals does you credit, but my advice would be that you save your concerns for people rather than animals.”

And on the subject of date rape:

“…the victim surely shares a part of the responsibility, if only for establishing reasonable expectations in her boyfriend’s mind.”

- Roger Helmer, not only is one of the worst human beings I have ever had to displeasure to read about, but also, a massive PR disaster.

Liam Fox’s friendship with lobbyist Adam Werrity is a PR disaster for so many reasons, it’s almost too big a story to try to dissect. Needless to say, using public funds to pay a lobbyist, and to claim thousands of pounds of public money to allow a lobbyist to stay rent free in your flat, is never going to end well. Especially when you’re the Minister in control of the Nation’s defence system. When that same lobbyist, who is almost entirely funded by public money, is able to bypass official channels because he is friends with the Defence Secretary, and arrange meetings with private companies for commercial purposes; the Defence Secretary automatically becomes… not just a PR disaster, but a massive moron of a PR disaster. When that same lobbyist is given over £140,000 by a property investor with ties to Israel and an intelligence firm with links to Sri Lanka, whilst he accompanies the Defence Secretary as an “advisor”, on trips abroad, not only is the Defence Secretary a massive moron of a PR disaster, he is a dangerous PR disaster.

Oliver Letwin, Minister of State for Policy, photographed dumping confidential documents in a bin on St James’ park, a few months after saying no one wants to see a poor family from Sheffield going on holiday abroad. Oliver Letwin, PR disaster.

Caroline Spelman, Minister for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs plans in late 2010 to sell off a third of the 1.85 million acres of British forests to private investors for the sake of Hotel Resorts and Theme parks, only to have the Prime Minister admit he’d never given permission for that, and for the entire thing to be shelved. Where’s the communication?

George Osborne, who seems to keep being on TV insisting that the UK is leading the way out of the financial crises, that his plan will work, and that all will be fine. He says this, whilst the poverty rate increases – more on this point later – whilst unemployment is very very close to hitting the 3 million mark, whilst youth unemployment is at its worst since the 1980s (coincidentally at the time of the previous Tory government), whilst wages are stagnating, whilst output is dropping, whilst homelessness increases, whilst inflation is slowly getting out of control, whilst energy bills are now unworkable, and whilst dropping growth figures show that we are very very close to another recession. George Osborne is a PR disaster.

Philip Hammond, New Secretary of Defence, tells BBC’s Question Time, that allegations of his tax avoidance (he’s a multi-millionaire who said he’d continue to claim £30,000 a year of public money to fund his second home) by Channel 4′s dispatches were:

“Completely unfounded innuendo and unfortunately if you go into public life you have to accept that innuendo’s will be made against you to which you don’t always have the opportunity to reply.”

To which, the follow up question:

“So were the allegations that you’d moved shares into your wife’s name and that you took dividends rather than income, wrong?”

- was answered rather spectacularly by Hammond, with:

“Neither of those facts are incorrect”

- Unfounded innuendo one second, but absolutely true the next. Brilliant. Phillip Hammond, is a PR disaster, whilst also managing to be a smug twat about it.

How weak Cameron is looking. He needs an Alastair Campbell. His one attempt to attract an Alastair Campbell type figure, was Andy Coulson….. a massive PR disaster. They are one PR disaster after another, day after day, idiots running the Country and being exposed as idiots every time they show their contemptuous, nasty little faces.

The problem this represents for those of us on the left, is that the actual issues do not get publicised (perhaps i’m partly responsible for that, given the nature of this blog) enough. The BBC chose to almost entirely ignore 2000 people blocking the bridge the day of the NHS Bill moving to the Lords. The big issues, like the NHS bill, that have grave consequences for all of us that believe in a Nationalised, free health service, are put to one side, because Letwin uses a bin. And so, public discourse focuses almost entirely on the image of the Government, rather than the disastrous and dangerous ideological economic project they are inflicting on Country. Policy gets pushed aside, the underlying nasty nature of Theresa May’s made up cat story, is ignored. This can only work to benefit the Tories. Nobody voted for such a big NHS reform. Nobody voted for a huge hike in tuition fees. The Tories are getting away with shifting vast sums of wealth to very rich individuals and businesses, and the docile English population is too engaged in the fact that Liam Fox has a friend. Perhaps there comes a time when endless PR disasters can be used to benefit an unpopular government and its very undemocratic and ideologically motivated agenda.

#realbrokensociety

A Vulture Fund is a hedge fund that buys up National debt at a tiny price because the debt is about to be defaulted, and pursues it vigorously through the courts. Liberia, a Nation in deep poverty, one of the World’s poorest Countries, had debt that was bought up by a Vulture Fund owned by Hedge Fund manager Eric Hermann. He took war torn, poverty stricken Liberia to court, in which his Vulture Fund won £12m from Liberia – 5% of their annual budget, for debts from 1978, before his Vulture fund was even set up. The debt, plus interest earned the Vulture Fund a nice profit, that would otherwise be used to build half a million homes in Liberia. The funds thrive on poverty. In 2010 a bill came through Parliament aimed at stopping these Vulture Funds. It took up a lot of time, and right at the last minute looked likely to pass. Tory MP Philip Davies then penned an amendment to try and stop the bill passing. It didn’t stop the Bill. But suddenly, a Tory MP on the front bench shouted “object” (a silly Private Members bill rule), and so the bill failed to pass. All the Tory front bench sat with their hands over their mouths so no one would know who made the bill fail. #realbrokensociety

According to the Telegraph:

Six-year-old Abdullah Qadoos was hit by cluster bombs fired by the British Army as they took the Iraqi city of Basra in March 2003. Shrapnel smashed through the window of his home, cut off his arm and tore open his abdomen.

- The UK government banned clusterbombs years ago. But a loophole in the law means banking institutions can invest in companies that manufacture clusterbombs. Royal Bank of Scotland, which is pretty much owned by the taxpayer, has invested more than £115m in Alliant Techsystems and Lockheed Martin – two clusterbomb manufacturers. Given that Cameron deplored a “culture that glorifies violence“, will he be closing this loophole? Well, no. Of course not. Mainly because when a kid suggests looting a Footlocker on Facebook it’s a great evil, but when rich companies fund violence, it’s fine. Number 10 said:

The issue of indirect financing is for individual institutions to consider. We as a government have made it very clear that direct financing of cluster munitions is illegal. We would encourage NGOs to come together and engage with the banks to find a mutually agreeable approach to indirect financing.

- Encouraging banks to self regulate? Really?
#realbrokensociety

Ex Chief Exec. of RBS presides over bank that loses £24.1bn of other peoples money. The biggest loss in Corproate history. Described by the Guardian as one of the 25 people at the heart of the financial meltdown Worldwide, and is punished, by having his pension reduced to £342,500 a year from £555,000 a year. Meanwhile, a man in Manchester is about to face jail for “looting” an ice cream cone and two scopes of ice cream. #realbrokensociety

Jeremy Isaacs, donated £190,000 in the past five years to the Tories, and who happened to be the boss of the Asia/Europe branches of Lehmann when it collapsed and engulfed the World. #realbrokensociety

Npower just announced profits of 130% larger than last year. Still, they think raising gas prices by 15.7% is “necessary“. Elsewhere, Bolton County Council have had to sell a painting by the great English painter Sir John Everett Millais to an American art collector, meaning the painting will probably never be in this country again, just to help fund its arts and culture sector which has been needlessly slashed. #realbrokensociety

“If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment” bleated David Cameron, in response to the rioting across England two weeks ago. In the 1980s, Cameron was a member of the notorious Bullingdon Club Elite, who ritualistically smashed restaurants and pubs up. New members only become aware that they have been accepted, when they find their rooms trashed and smashed. After rioting, the Bullingdon Club chant: “Buller, Buller, Buller! Buller, Buller, Buller! We are the famous Bullingdon Club, and we don’t give a fuck!“. When the Bullingdon club were out one night, a plant pot was thrown through the window of an Oxford restaurant. Eye witnesses say they saw a bunch of men including David Cameron run away. This week, two men imprisoned for 4 years for inciting riots on facebook which didn’t actually lead to any trouble. #realbrokensociety

Sir Philip Green was asked in 2010, to write a report into Government spending and procurement. He reported that there were mass failings in Government procurement. The entire procurement professional dismissed the report as nonsense. Philip Green’s Arcadia Group business has thus far avoided £25bn in taxes. In 2005, his dividend on 92% of the shares in Arcadia, gave him £1.2bn. My home city of Leicester was found to be home of a sweatshop factory in a basement, where workers were paid less than minimum wage, providing clothes for Top Shop. Top Shop is owned by Sir Philip Green. Meanwhile, a rioter is imprisoned for 6 months for stealing a water bottle worth £3.50. #realbrokensociety

Clive Goodman, jailed in 2007 for hacking the phone of Prince William, had penned a letter to the News of the World, which stated that Coulson among others, had regularly discussed phone hacking, and told Goodman that if he didn’t implicate the News of the World in the scandal in 2007, he would be given his job back when he got out of prison. The letter was sent from the solicitors Harbottle and Lewis who are investigating internal N.O.T.W emails, to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee two days ago. Hacking into the voicemail of dead schoolgirls, and then covering it up, and then becoming the Prime Ministers chief of communications. #realbrokensociety

The Minister in charge of deciding whether Murdoch should be allowed to buy BSkyB, and decided in favour of take over, is Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. In 2009 a ‘sleaze watchdog’ found that he had allowed his friend to stay rent free in his tax payer funded house, whilst claiming expenses for both of them. Fraud, I believe it is known as. Will he face jail for looting the public purse? “If you are old enough to commit these crimes you are old enough to face the punishment” according to Cameron. Well, no. He said sorry. So he only have to repay half of the £20k he fraudulently claimed. Whilst claiming for that house, he was also fraudulently claiming for mortgage payments on another house. But it’s okay. He said sorry. #realbrokensociety

One in four UK households are now classed as fuel poor. Fuel poor means when the cost of heating your home exceeds 10% of annual income. Roger Carr, the Chairman of Centrica which owns British Gas and has just announced a 25% increase since December 2010, is also the President of the CBI. The CBI have called for deeper spending cuts than have been so far imposed, and have opposed any tax rise on Capital Gains tax. Effectively, meaning they wish to see Winter Fuel Allowance for the neediest cut drastically, but the taxes on their huge profits lowered. #realbrokensociety

The maximum tax credit of £54 a week for families with a disabled child will now be cut to £27 a week. Thousands will be plunged into poverty due to this cut. Meanwhile, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, who is worth £7.5million, pays himself in dividends rather than a salary from his company Castlemead, saving him money on tax. Also, to avoid the 50p top rate of tax, he moved his shares into his wive’s name, who pays a smaller rate of tax, allegedly saving the Transport Secretary £25,000 a year. On Question Time, he called it “rearranging my affairs“. #realbrokensociety

I think it’s about time the Prime Minister instilled a sense of humanity and moral decency in his own household before he continues this ironic moral crusade.

Phone Hacking, The BBC, Left Wing Conspiracies and Boris!

There are a lot of blogs and articles surrounding the staggering resignations, deaths, arrests and revelations surrounding the Met and its Press Office run almost entirely by ex-News Corp journalists and their incompetent handling of two investigations; the utterly absurd judgement and ignorance of the Prime Minister; the shameful opportunism of Ed Milliband; with regard to the News Corp hacking issue. There are hundreds of articles and new revelations popping up every day. So I wanted to a somewhat different angle to this, and run down a tangent.

Though first, it seems that the Prime Minister is on the very brink of being dragged underwater and his Premiership drowned (I say that, with a lasting smirk on my face) as it emerged that not only was Coulson brought into Tory Party HQ, but also Ex-News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis, who is one of the people who have been arrested so far, was an adviser to Coulson after Coulson began work for the Tories. This is particularly toxic for Number 10, because Wallis has already brought down Met Chief Sir Paul Steve Stephenson and Deputy Met Chief John Yates after it was revealed that the Met had employed Wallis as a PR consultant. This will be worth following, because even Tory blogger Iain Dale makes the extraordinary suggestion that Cameron could be brought down by this scandal. This is echoed with Tory blogger Mark Thompson offering up Theresa May as a replacement for Cameron, after betting agencies were taking 6-1 bets on Cameron being brought down, down from 100-1 two weeks ago.

Anyway. Onto the main point.

At Prime Minister’s questions last week, Tory MP for Beverley and Holderness, Graham Stuart asked the Prime Minister if the police would also be investigating what he refers to as a “criminal conspiracy” at the heart of the previous Labour Government and the Murdoch Empire, into the desire to undermine Tory Peer Lord Ashcroft in the run up to the General Election.

I think it necessary to evaluate the character of Graham Stuart MP directly, as to discern whether his little outburst is worthy of our attention.

When Graham Stuart was at Cambridge, he was the Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association. His term also coincided with a scandal, in which voting for his election was seen as suspicious and irregularities in the outcome meant that eight of his colleagues in the CUCA resigned in protest. Eight!

As well as having a face you just want to slap, and being a little bit untrustworthy at election time, he also managed to acquire the services of the repair men to resurface his private road leading up to his luxury mansion, at a usual cost of £2,500….. for free. There are potholes on the public roads around the town that he lives, but instead the resurfacing was used for his private estate.

But even if he had to pay for the road (which he didn’t), he would be able to, with the money he saves on his fortune, through his expense claims, which he thinks are perfectly legitimate. According to his forms, that I have spent the past couple hours of my apparently boring life reading through, he claimed half the electricity bill, half the rent on the flat which comes to £1400 a month, half the council tax, food, internet, phone, mobile phone, digital camera, tripod, an Egyptian cotton satin sheet worth £40, £240 on bed linen from John Lewis which he says represented “good value for money“, four £86 pillow cases, £8,500 on food between 2005-2009, he claimed £85 from a company called “Freestye Design” whom design company logos. I wondered why he’d be using a company like that. When his expenses were released, he said:

“if anyone has any questions or queries about individual claims they are more than welcome to email me or contact my office and I will do my best to answer them.”

So that’s exactly what I did.
He didn’t reply.

So, given that this man has a bit of a dodgy typical Tory character, one has to examine his question. The point he was trying to raise, was that Tom Baldwin, Head of communications for Ed Miliband, had obtained information about the Tory Lord’s tax affairs illegally. It’s an odd charge to make, given that no one is likely to feel all that sympathetic toward a Lord, worth over £1bn at the heart of a Government (who, indeed, is the largest donor to the Tory government) whose mantra is “save save save!!” Money must be saved everywhere, disabled people must lose out, children must lose out, everyone who isn’t rich must lose out…….. except for Lord Ashcroft, who isn’t contributing to the save save save mantra, because the “illegally obtained information” showed that he is classified as a non-dom, which means he doesn’t pay any UK tax on his fortune made abroad. Yet, he is part of a legislature, that insists the UK is on the “brink of bankruptcy“. He is hardly likely to foster the sympathy of a public, in the same way that the hacking of Millie Dowler’s phone gained. The Tories are actively trying to divert attention away from themselves, because not only did David Cameron appoint Andy Coulson (they clearly want, and desperately need an Alistair Campbell), but Boris Johnson, the Tory Mayor of London referred to the hacking scandal last year, as a Left Wing conspiracy. Whenever a Right Winger uses the term “left wing conspiracy” to refer to something they do not like (it happens alot in America, who, any time a gay guy says he wishes to get married to the love of his life, some lunatic Republican insists it’s all part of the “gay agenda“), I often want to bang my face against a wall and weep for the sanity of that particular section of humanity. Take Janet Daley writing in the Telegraph yesterday:

…..that great edifice of self-regarding, mutually affirming soft-Left orthodoxy which determines the limits of acceptable public discourse – of which the BBC is the indispensable spiritual centre.

Firstly, she does what most right wingers do, and suggests the BBC has a horrid left wing bias. She will no doubt point to some illogical evidence to back up her point, whilst ignoring all evidence to the contrary. The BBC, to me, has no real bias. It is almost impossible for a media organisation to be objective when objectivity itself is impossible with regard to politics. For example, whilst Daley will claim that Euroscepticism doesn’t get treated as a legitimate political view on the BBC, it is equally as important to point out (which she doesn’t) that the BBC personality who presents all their Westminster shows, is Andrew Neil, a man who was in the Conservative Club at the University of Glasgow, was a Conservative Party Research Assistant, and stood side by side with his former boss; Rupert Murdoch at the launch of Sky in the 1980s, before becoming a writer for the Daily Mail. It is almost impossible to become more right winged, before morphing into Margaret Thatcher. And he presents all of the BBCs Westminster coverage. The Daily Politics, sees Andrew Neil flanked by Labour MP for Hackney, Diane Abbott (never been a minister, or taken particularly seriously in politics) and Michael Portillo, a former Tory Defence Secretary, Shadow Chancellor, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Secretary of State for Employment, and potential leadership candidate. The balance is tipped very much in the direction of the Right on this one.
The political editor at the BBC is Nick Robinson. One quick google search shows that Robinson, during his time at Oxford, was not just a member, but President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. He was National Chairman of the Young Conservatives. Before the 2010 election he compared Cameron to Disraeli. After the election when the coalition agreements were being debated and drawn up, he referred to a Lib/Lab coalition as a “Coalition of losers“. And contrary to the views of the those of us on the Left, on his blog Robinson says of Cameron:

David Cameron prides himself on being bold when big moments occur – challenging for the Tory leadership in 2005, calling on Gordon Brown to have a snap election in 2007 and that “big, bold and generous” offer to form the Coalition in 2010.

What Robinson has done there, has metaphorically kissed and caressed a photo of David Cameron.

Daley is so blissfully ignorant to the fact that the past two years has seen the political discourse dominated by the desire to see deep public sector cuts rather than tax hikes for the wealthy; it has seen the emergence of the desire to revert back to the Capitalism that indeed failed and brought the World crashing down with it from both Labour and the Tories, and it has seen the discourse in the media and from the mouths of politicians everywhere throw spear after vicious spear at the hearts of anyone on benefits or in a Union. The NHS has been attacked, the Welfare state has been attacked, Universities have been attacked, the public purse has been attacked, and yet the very people who caused the mess in the first place have been given vast pensions and allowed to go free. A Guardian poll yesterday showed the Tories ahead of Labour, which all suggests that the public discourse and its limits are very firmly in the court of the Right Wing. A left wing discourse would, above all, launch a sustained attack on the very need for public sector cuts in the first place, it would be calling for a complete reinvention of the economic system as opposed to ignoring the inherent flaws which WILL lead to another crash, it would be unequivocally supportive of the Unions and public sector workers rather than painting them as out of touch, greedy, and overpaid, it would be constantly presenting the information surrounding Corporate tax avoidance and the obscenely high cost to the taxpayer rather than attacking the single mum who claims a few quid more than she perhaps should. As a left winger, it is an insult to hear the discourse of the political landscape in this country referred to as left wing. But that is the superb nature of right winged discourse, unless we’re throwing anyone with an Asian complexion out of the country, privatising the NHS, and shooting the families of Union leaders in the face, they will insist the Country is too left wing. Boris Johnson did that when he claimed the coverage of Phone hacking was all part of a left wing conspiracy. The same Boris Johnson who will now, in his short term as Mayor of London, see the arrival of the third Met Commissioner on his watch. Not a great record. So that’s Boris, Cameron, The Met, Lord Ashcroft (who we are now supposed to feel sympathetic toward) and Graham Stuart MP, who have not had the greatest of records pertaining to the phone hacking scandal.

Back to Ashcroft. In 2005, he commissioned two polls by YouGov and Populus. The polls were huge, and were set up to help the Tories target marginal seats, therefore it is most certainly in the public interest. He commissioned them and paid for them through his company which is based in Belize, which means he didn’t pay any VAT on them. The Guardian estimated that he owed £40,000 in unpaid VAT. Ironically, Vince Cable, now part of the Tory government funded by Ashcroft, said at the time:

“This is quite serious. We are now not talking just about Ashcroft’s non-dom status, but about systematic tax avoidance in funding Conservative party activities such as polling.”

- So why on Earth should I care that a man who sort to keep his tax details private whilst funding a Party who would almost certainly allow his abuses to continue as they gutted the public purse, had his details extracted illegally? There are levels of poor conduct within the journalist arena, and those conducted by Brooks and Coulson and the Met (the Chief of the Met had a meeting with the Guardian to urge them to drop the phone hacking investigation last year) and in-directly, David Cameron, is far far worse than those by Tom Baldwin.

Graham Stuart MP should quit his ramblings and just go back to his mansion, and lay on his Egyptian Satin tax payer funded sheets.

The saga continues…

Bricks and mortar

This is Samantha Cameron, the wife of David Cameron:

This is a section of 300,000+ people:

The public are very similar to Sam Cameron, in that they’re being fucked by David too.

This is a gimp:

A gimp is traditionally expected to keep quiet and do as he’s told. He has a master. He must take all the abuse, he mustn’t have an opinion, and he must be kept on a short lead in case he disobeys.

This is Nick Clegg:

Nick Clegg has a master, does what he’s told, has had his opinion beaten out of him, and now just obeys. Right now, you are drawing a comparison in your minds between Nick Clegg……… and a gimp.

I went to the TUC rally in London on Saturday, accompanied by close to half a million people. This is what I saw:

Support from all over the place.

My favourite banner quote all day.

My thoughts exactly:

The march across the Thames.

£250 for bacon? Bloody Aussie’s. First they give us Fosters, and now overpriced bacon.

The reason this amazing human being looks so bright, is because he jumped in front of my shot at the very last second. He makes this picture so brilliant.

I am fully aware that this guy holds a bit of a resemblance to me. This is worrying.

The spirit of Che!

Damn right.

Possibly a little bit extreme. Unless we’re now referring to the Foreign Secretary, as “The Hague” in which case, I fully support this.

Lots of families!

The Met officer looks pretty guilty to me. He must really fucking hate Starbucks. He is probably one of those annoying people who insist on talking to you about their favourite coffee.

Carnival type of atmospheres at marchers are fantastic. This man has moves!

The aftermath at Trafalgar.

The Business Secretary, Lib Dem Vince Cable today said he was listening to the Unions, but would not budge on the Coalition’s plans for austerity.
In 2010, before the election, Cable said this:

“We have deep, long term problems….. a financial aristocracy which regards tax paying as something for little people not themselves.”

“People are desperate to see the back of this Labour government. But they don’t want the same old Tories. And make no mistake they are exactly the same.”

Today on BBC Radio, speaking about the top rate of tax, Cable said this:

“It moved up to 50p in an emergency because we had to have a sense of solidarity that everybody was bearing some of the pain, and the chancellor said in the budget that we’re going to have to move away from that. I agree with him. The Liberal Democrats agree with him.

- Essentially what he is saying is there doesn’t need to be a ‘sense of solidarity that everybody is bearing some of the pain any more’ because whilst the disabled, the elderly, and the most vulnerable lose all sorts of care, Cable is allowing the richest few to pay less tax. What an obscene man he has become. I wonder if the Vince Cable of 2010 who warned of the “same old Tories” would appreciate the Vince Cable of 2011 becoming one of the same old Tories. It is the biggest ideological attack in many many years. It is not the “only way”.

The issue from Tory MPs and those who seem to have very short memories, and an apparent lack of attention to detail, now seems to be that no one is setting out an alternative, to deep austerity. As if Neoliberalism is the only possible way. The problem with that is…
1) Labour set out an alternative before the election.
2) Pre May 2010 Lib Dems had an alternative.
3) Reforming the clear imbalance between cuts and taxes is an alternative. Tax more, do not cut Corporation tax, raise it. Impose a stricter set of regulations on banks and impose a far far higher levy. Robin hood tax. Close all tax avoidance loopholes. Ensure that Companies such as Diageo agree to pay back all of what they owe over a set period. Do not abolish tax on offshore profits bought back to the UK. DO NOT abolish the 50p tax rate, as Vince Cable announced would be abolished as early as 2013. Stop promoting the idea that we are like Greece. We aren’t, in any way like Greece, nor were we heading that way. That’s an alternative. It is a wholly left wing alternative, but an alternative nevertheless. Keynes set out an alternative. Stiglitz set out an alternative. Roubini, McCulley, Romer, Krugman, Pettifor, Pissarides, Kalecki, Blinder, and many many other economic and political theorists have many different alternatives than deep austerity. Thereisabetterway.org sets out alternatives. To ask ordinary people to sacrifice their jobs and their livelihoods, for the sake of a mass of tax cuts, is not the only way. To claim no one could possibly come up with an alternative, is massively ignorant.

Violent action is provoked by violent economic policies.
There is an alternative.

Campbell vs Boulton

We all know Fox News is so ridiculously bias, it makes us laugh to watch it. Sky News, is a Murdoch run news network in the U.K. We have laws that prevent our news coverage becoming too much like Fox – manipulative. Sky, along with other Murdoch Publications; The Sun newspaper, have spent the past few months attacking Gordon Brown and Labour constantly.

An entire day’s lead story, last week was a Labour candidate in an unwinable seat, crazily rambling about “we’ll get all socialism and stuff in, like, England, and stuff” and how Gordon Brown is the worst prime minister ever. That was Sky’s lead story, all day.
A day or two later, a Tory MP, is was revealed (not by Sky), is a member of a Church that claims it “cures homosexuality”, Sky did not even mention it.
A day or two later, a Tory peer said “Muslims don’t have morals or principles”. Sky did not even mention it.
So yes, Sky is ridiculously bias.

Today, has proved it more than ever.

Today Gordon Brown announced his resignation as Prime Minister. Effectively, he will remain in power until the Conservatives and the Liberals agree on a way forward together, and until the Labour Party can elect a new leader. Which is obvious. Otherwise, there is no Prime Minister, no Executive branch, and no leader of the Labour Party. He is right to stay on until this Constitutional nightmare is over.

Sky HATE it. They have spent years suggesting everyone in the Labour Party should burn to death, and that Brown should resign, now that he has, they are accusing him of trying to cling to power.

What this means is, the talks between the Tories and the Liberals has been thrown into a little bit of chaos. The Liberals always said they did not want a coalition that propped up Gordon Brown. Well, now Brown has gone. It was paved the way for a Labour/Lib Dem coalition, on the same day as the Liberals announced they have opened discussions with the Labour Party.

Sky have had a mental breakdown at that.

In this video, you see Adam Boulton. He is Sky’s answer to Bill O’Reilly. He is in essence, an idiot. A very very bias news “person” (I wont say Journalist). He has spent the past few months defaming Labour and Brown as much as possible, and given David Cameron a free ride. He even (along with the Sun) went as far as to claim Cameron has a lot in common with Obama.

The other man is Alastair Campbell. Campbell was Tony Blair’s Director of Communications, during the Blair years. Campbell was essentially, Blair’s spin doctor. He is known for being the King of Spin over here in the UK. A lot of people took a dislike to him. Myself included, especially over the September dossier.
Now he’s out of Government, I quite like him. He knows what he’s talking about. He has been around Government and Journalism along time. He know’s media bias when he sees it. This is a good example of that.

This outburst comes days after Sky’s equally as useless presenter, Kay Burley told a pro-electoral reform spokesperson to “just go home“.

Sky, you can tell today, are panicking hugely. They did not expect this at all. It has been hour after hour of wheeling people out to tell England how evil Brown is for clinging onto power. How awful it is. How Britain sacked Gordon Brown, and yet he’s still here. Britain may have sacked Gordon Brown, but they did not employ David Cameron.

Alastair Campbell 1 – 0 Murdoch’s fucking idiotic English version of Fox’s Bill O’Reilly.

The Postal Strike

Yesterday, I let our local Postman know he has the full support of our household, in striking. He told us thanks, and that they are going to need all the support they can get.

I’m getting mildly bored of the coverage the Media seems to be giving the Postal strikes. Purely because across the media, including the “impartial” BBC, all I see is small business owners complaining about their invoices not being sent, or regular people in the street complaining that their nephews might not receive their Nintendo DS in time for Christmas. There is very rarely postmen explaining the reasons for the strike action. The first thing that strikes me about both of those arguments, is how utterly selfish they are.

The first (the small business owner), is merely thinking about his or her own wealth prospects. The strikes threaten their wealth. The nature of business, is indeed “I’m more important than everyone else“. The less industrial action, even if the action is justified in bringing about much needed regulations to improve the working conditions of the workforce, the better when it comes to business. It is the reason the CBI opposed minimum wage….. they wanted us for as cheap as possible, so they could make as much as possible. It is the reason why Primark are able to get away with abusing the child populations of Bangledesh. Because it benefits business. It is the reason why Trafigura tried to gag the Guardian, into it’s discovery that they’d knowingly tried to cover up their part in the Côte d’Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal. It threatens their wealth. It’s the reason Insurance Companies in America manage to attract ridiculously naive members of the American public, into opposing Universal Healthcare by using such discourse of the privileged few, manipulative terms as “Socialism” and “Freedom“…… They’ve somehow (quite impressively) managed to convince a large section of the American public, that the ability for a private insurance firm to make a lot of money, is more important than the rights of a poor man to get a decent quality of healthcare. It is the reason why the Conservatives have successfully managed to take the debate away from the fact that their free-market ideology has failed miserably, and onto the fact that they plan to drastically cut public spending. Selfishness. The very basis of business. When in comes to the Postman strike, the rich elites (and their blind, idiotic followers) do not care how badly the postmen are treated, as long as their wealth is secure.

The second, is arguably less intelligent. They aren’t out to protect their own wealth (when living in a system that rewards selfishness, protection of ones own wealth, is the natural reaction, especially from a business class). The “I’m expecting a parcel that hasn’t arrived because of the selfish postmen!!!” argument, isn’t even worth listening to. It’s even more frustrating, that these idiots can vote.

Onto the strike itself, Peter Mandelson (A LABOUR MINISTER!!!!) said of the strikes, that Royal Mail faced “a very poor future” if modernising efforts were not realised. I’m not entirely sure what he means. He sounds very Thatcher-esque, but of course he used the word “modernising” instead of “privatisation“. Are we better off, as a society, with the privatising of British gas? Or BT? Are our bills less expensive than they were? Is the service they provide, much better than it was? Not particularly. Can you actually get through to BT when you need them? No. They’re useless. We all know it. So what are we actually expecting from the “modernising” of Royal Mail? All that privatisation achieved, was handing over democratic institutions that worked for the benefit of the whole of society, to private hands that work for the benefit of enriching shareholders. Suddenly, democracy is very much under attack. Suddenly, key institutions (gas and heating especially) are not working in the interests of society, they exist as money making opportunities and nothing more. Suddenly, the minority (the rich) rule the majority (the rest of us), and that, by definition, is so horrendously undemocratic, it’s unjustifiable. Do we want that to happen to Royal Mail? Because if it does, post will cost far far more than it does now.

Why don’t they start, by improving management? Why attack the workforce first? There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that allows bankers to destroy the economy, yet live out the rest of the days, free from prosecution, on a beautiful beach somewhere exotic….. yet allows public workers to bare the heavy burden of “cost cutting” in order to bring down a debt, caused, by the private market.

Royal Mail said in May 2009, that they needed to impose a pay freeze on 181,000 Postman and other staff. The average Royal Mail worker, takes home £347.61 a week before tax, whereas the UK average worker, takes home £438. The Royal Mail CEO Adam Crozier, whilst freezing the pay of very low paid, below average salaried workers; increased his own salary, to £1,000,000, and took home a bonus of £2,000,000. And people have the fucking nerve to blame the Posties for being “greedy“? If you genuinely believe the workers are making a fuss over nothing, you are not worth debating with.

It isn’t even as if Royal Mail are struggling (When your boss takes home £3,000,000, the company isn’t struggling); in the nine months to December 2008, Royal Mail made £255,000,000…… in profit! That’s up from £162,000,000 in 2007. Showing the biggest profits the company has ever made, and then rewarding your staff who achieved that, with a pay freeze, and pensions that do not follow the rate of inflation, whilst enriching yourself, is pathetic and totally unjustifiable. But, they wear suits and ties, so apparently that makes it okay these days, to be a bit of a crook. Royal Mail are hardly facing a huge struggle weathering this recession, and certainly doesn’t justify huge pay freezes, mass redundancies, increased shifts (sometimes 50% added to their usual round, and given no extra time to complete it, or extra pay), whilst the boss works three times a week, and enriches himself with horrendously large pay packets.

It seems all too convenient, that after the announcement that Mandelson wanted to sell off 30% of Royal Mail and the general public opposing such a move….. that suddenly the service takes a dive. Could it be, that the Government needed to somehow make the service look like it needed “saving”? Because the service suddenly took a downward turn this year, for no obvious reason (Royal Mail made an all time record profit in 2008….. hardly struggling, or needing to cut costs).
The public in general didn’t support the selling off, because Royal Mail was working fine. So, it has been systematically abused, badly, to look like it needs “saving“.
The problem for the Government is….. it doesn’t need modernising, or saving, because it made a huge profit (it’s biggest ever) and far surpassed all it’s targets. The Government, and Royal Mail management, seem to be suggesting that the product isn’t broken at all……. but it needs fixing anyway.

Labour have massively disappointed me over this problem. They have backed management the entire way. A lot of jobs will be lost through “modernising” despite the fact that Royal Mail made it’s biggest profit ever last year. Shouldn’t that money be going to securing jobs? Why aren’t the very Party set up to advance the cause of workers, actually doing that? It’s a little concerning.

We know what we want from Royal Mail. We want a Post Office not too far away, we want a good daily service, and we want a Postie that everyone knows and talks to. We don’t want 30% sold to a private firm who’s main objective is to enrich the boardroom. We want a service that works for the public, not controlled by incompetent, out of touch bosses, or the private market.

I fully support the Posties in this. Because the moment we stop supporting their right to strike, we are giving management the green light, to impose whatever ludicrous working conditions they so wish on the workforce, purely because they know the public, with it’s obsession with consumerism, will oppose the strike.

Is it obvious that I’m a little bit of a Socialist?

Murdoch VS BBC

In between spitting at tramps, and kicking orphans, James Murdoch (son of the Devil) has took a swipe at the BBC, calling it “state-sponsored news” and that only free market news organisations can produce “independent news coverage that challenges the consensus“. Murdoch, owns Fox News. Need I say more? Yes, Fox does indeed challenges the consensus; in the sense that Fox challenges intelligent thought and replaces it with Glenn “WE NEED TO TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK (but stay magically quiet when our right winged politicians illegally invade foreign lands, and magnificently destroy the economy in the first place)” Beck, and Bill O’Reilly. They then spend a few hours telling me that Obama (who they’ve referred to as a Fascist a few times recently) is planning a mass communist revolution, in between his efforts to kill your babies and let old age pensioners die in extreme pain. So yes, Murdoch’s idea of independent broadcasting does indeed challenge the consensus, insomuch as it creates a ridiculous parody of the news.

Murdoch’s main worry is that the size and scope of the Beeb, means that competitors are already at a disadvantage and struggle to compete. I’d assume, Murdoch is simply smoothing the path for an attempt to get us all to hate the BBC, whilst he and his devilish father start trying to convince us all that charging for news content, is in the spirit of “freedom” (that nasty little Right Winged word).

Murdoch also owns The Sun, the paper that (referred in to previous blog entry) puts it photographers on the streets to get up skirt shots of female celebrities getting out of a car. Perhaps that’s what the BBC is doing wrong. Perhaps what we need is BBC news to be a frequent Right Winged propaganda showing with the cameramen pointing their cameras up the skirts of the female news readers.
Or perhaps, if Murdoch gets his own way and the Tories after the next general election allow more Press independence by rolling back fairness as defined by the Broadcasting Act, Sky News will become the British version of Fox. I cannot imagine anyone in Britain wants to see that happen. There’s only so much of Glenn Beck crying on screen about how much he loves his Country, I can take. If Sky were to become more like Fox, we’d need new News Anchors. The likes of Adam Boulton are just far too middle of the road, not crazy enough to host a British Fox. Perhaps Richard Littlejohn; columnist for The Daily Mail might strike a chord? Littlejohn is our very own version of Bill O’Reilly. Maniacal, ignorant, unpleasant, despicable with an unhealthy need to be as cruel as humanly possible. Take for example, his article in 2006 about the murders of the five Suffolk prostitutes. Six months after their murders, Littlejohn felt it necessary to say….

“We do not share in the responsibility for either their grubby little existences or their murders. Society isn’t to blame.
It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of “work”, death by strangulation is an occupational hazard.
That doesn’t make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss.
At Ipswich Town’s home game on Saturday, there was a minute’s silence. We were supposed to believe that this was a true reflection of the community’s sympathy.
I don’t buy it. Most people went along with it in the spirit of emotional correctness and through fear of getting their heads kicked in if they didn’t.”

Ipswich VS Leeds, observing a minutes silence because they felt forced too by evil liberal political correctness? Reeaaally? Have Leeds fans become super sensitive to political correctness recently?
There was a minute silence, because five women had just been killed. People who happen to exert some form of compassion, notice that people should not be defined by how they make money. And i’d argue that being a prostitute, is far less disgusting a profession, than spewing hate filled right winged propaganda, and a rather disturbing attempt to destroy lives with words.
This deeply unpleasant, hateful little insensitive prick would fit in beautifully at a Murdoch run deregulated “news” channel.

“As Orwell foretold, to let the state enjoy a near-monopoly of information is to guarantee manipulation and distortion. The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.“
- If Fox is anything to go by, that statement just there, by James Murdoch, could not be filled to the brim with any more irony, without a disastrous irony spillage.

Sky News isn’t a victim in all of this, as Murdoch seems to be suggesting. IRN recently dropped ITN as it’s content supplier, in favour of Sky News. Which, gives Sky (and Murdoch) pretty much a monopoly over commercial radio news. Sky is the sole news provider, to over 250 radio stations in the UK now. This, along with Channel 5 news (also provided by Sky) suggests that this worry of Orwellian State media monopoly, is disastrously hypocritical of the Murdoch’s.

We need the BBC to provide the balanced reporting that 100% independent broadcasting fails to provide. It is a key resource for Global news, provided to millions across the Planet. The BBC provides sensible coverage, it doesn’t lean too far to the Left, and it doesn’t lean miserably to the Right (which is what Murdoch has a problem with, he’d clearly like to see it lean to the Right as much as possible). Whether Murdoch likes it or not, the BBC works. It is cherished by millions. That is why it’s a threat to Murdoch, because he can’t control it. The Murdoch family seemingly have a deep need to control everything we see, read, and hear, and when it doesn’t go their way, they get all critical and employ typical right winged fear tactics. Nevertheless, the BBC is a national treasure that should not, under any circumstances, become fully independent. We certainly do not need a British Fox News.

The Minority Republicans

It was the first time i’d heard of Bobby Jindal, and my instant reaction after his speech was “And this man is actually allowed to talk?” He should be banned from talking, he’s an insult to those of us who can talk without sounding patronising. He’s an insult to oratory. Cicero died all over again last night, this time with shame.

So President Obama made a great speech again, oozing with the same confidence that helped win him the White House, to a joint session of Congress. Fantastically eloquent, and full of exactly what needed to be said. He was absolutely right in blaming the problems America faces, on the greed of short term gains. He was right when he suggested that the distorted world of International Capitalism has lead to making the rich richer instead of investing in the future.

And the Republicans response? Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana. A man who once said “Transparency inspires confidence, and confidence promotes cohesion” and then his own office ranked last in the Country’s transparency ratings. A man who was referred to by The Wall Street Journal as…. “a boy wonder of the party. At 25, he was appointed to fix Louisiana’s failing Medicaid program, and succeeded.“… despite the fact that since taking over Healthcare in Louisiana, they dropped from 48th in the league, to 50th largely due to the fact that all he did, was cut spending, and made it harder for poorer patients to see a doctor. A man who voted against Gay marriage. There’s nothing like the Civil rights of one minority gaining the right to oppress another. He’s totally against abortion, and voted against all forms of stem cell research. So, to sum up, he’s against gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, helping the poor, and because he refused to take some of the bail out money to help workers in his state claiming it will lead to tax rises on the wealthy, he’s also a big business suck up. So wait, isn’t that pretty much what the Republicans have stood for all the time? This guy isn’t new or exciting or different. He’s the same shit. He’s begging for the same failed policies. He’s asking to restore confidence with the American people, by offering nothing new. He’s basically saying “We set the country on fire, so I propose we put the fire out, with this new and exciting ….. fire.”

Jindal would only be “new” if he recognised the hypocrisy of stating just how wonderfully pro-life you are, but then cutting all costs that help sustain life for those who are less fortunate than the horribly rich.
He basically said “Hey, The Republicans understand ordinary Americans…….. and that’s why we wont support any plan that is made to help you!!! But we WILL help the rich become even richer!!…..oh, and i’m black by the way, in case you didn’t notice.”

So I wonder, of all the people who could have spoken for the GOP, and knowing their track record on disastrous eloquence, surely Jindal isn’t the best they have? I mean, watching his response to Obama was cringe worthy. He spoke as if addressing a class room of five year olds. Even Fox News didn’t like it. When Fox News don’t like something a Republican has to say, then you know you’re in trouble.

So given that he’s no different to every Republican who came before him, given that he’s offering nothing new, given that he claims his health reforms were some how magnificent because it saved money rather than measuring the level of healthcare on the fact that people, actual humans, not money, but people – suffered more under him than they did previously, and given that he’s a horribly patronising speaker, why did the GOP choose him? I suspect for the same reason they chose Palin when Hilary Clinton was commanding the vote of the Female population. I suspect for the same reason that they chose Michael Steele when Obama had commanded a landslide of the vote of the Black population. Because they represent minorities. There is no other reason why Jindal would be chosen ahead of all the Republicans out there, other than he’s young (to counter the idea that the GOP is full of old men) and of a minority (to counter the idea that the GOP is full of old… white men). It really doesn’t matter how utterly detestable the man is, he’s a minority and that’s the GOPs way of yelling “LOOK WE’RE NOT RACIST!!!.. Despite the fact that we’ve spent decades ignoring anyone who isn’t rich and white“. Jindal started his speech, stating all his minority status credentials. To me, this proved just how important it is to Republicans that they have a spokesman who happens to have a different skin colour, to counter the love for Obama. They failed massively to chose someone of a minority who is actually talented in the field of Politics. The Democrats chose wisely with Obama. The Republicans failed to chose wisely with both Palin and now with Jindal. It’s like they’re saying “Well he’s black, what more do you want?” The alternative of course, is that they picked Jindal for his intelligence, which makes me think that if he’s the best they have, if Palin is one of the best they have, if Michael Steele is one of the best they have, if George Bush was the very best choice the Republicans had eight years ago, the rest of the Republicans must share the combined intelligence of a goat, a retarded goat…. as unfair to retarded goats as that is.

The Democrats should counter with a gay Atheist guy at the top. The GOP could never match that. A gay GOP member (i’m not talking about those many, many undercover Gay GOP members like Glenn Murphy who found his mouth accidentally around a penis. Or Bob Allen who mysteriously offered to give a cop $20 to suck him off) would have to start every speech with “I realise i’m unnatural, disgusting, and God hates me, but…..“

Obama clearly has a talent for eloquence, and I think we’d all agree, also has a great mind. Similarly, although he doesn’t have the talent for oratory that Obama has, John McCain has a great mind. By comparison, Bobby Jindal is a disaster, much like Sarah Palin was a disaster. The GOP need to stop trying to show just how inclusive and diverse they are, and start showing that they understand why America didn’t want them anywhere near Government for at least the next four years.

Good luck to them.

Socialist Healthcare works

“I find it offensive that one in four of the livers donated, go to alcoholics. If there are two people side by side wanting a liver, and both have the right tissue match, and one is an alcoholic, there’s no contest -you take the one who’s not an alcoholic, they are more entitled.” - Eunice Booker, The Observer, front page, 15/02/09

It would appear that we, as a Nation are taking steps to punish people for being flawed. Unlike Eunice, I do not believe that the non-alcoholic in that scenario is more entitled to a liver transplant. I don’t believe anyone is “more entitled“. According to The Observer today, 151 liver transplants out of the 623 administered, were the result of alcohol abuse. As a non-drinker myself, I recognise that if I were in the situation where a drinker was given a liver transplant over myself, I would be annoyed. I accept that. However, without logical thought one could end up distraught at all medical problems.

The man who takes too long in the dentist chair causing you to miss work; because he hasn’t brushed his teeth enough; The woman who is taking up a bed in intensive care because she was txting whilst driving; The man taking up NHS time and money having his tummy tucked because he ate too many chips; The woman taking up Surgeon’s time because she smoked too much and contracted Cancer. Where does it end?

I get the feeling we’re becoming a society hell-bent on attacking anyone who is not like us. Anyone we consider to be less than perfect, we instantly take a dislike toward. On the train to Nottingham on Thursday last week, on my way to go for a lovely meal with my beautiful Girlfriend, I was sat behind a homeless man. He was old and worn out. He had a huge scar running from the top of his forehead to the tip of his left cheek. He kept walking up to the bathroom to hide, so that the ticket inspector didn’t catch him. It was snowing outside. He was wearing incredibly thin clothing. He asked a man passing by on the train if he could spare some change. The man, with his hair slicked back, wearing an incredible posh pin-stripe suit said “fuck off”. I looked at the man as he passed by and shook my head at him complete with a disgusted look.

The homeless man turned round to face me and said “What do you say when homeless people ask for money?” I told him I usually give them the odd pound if I can spare it. He went on “…I’ve got nowhere to sleep tonight, or anything to eat, do you have any change you could perhaps spare?” .. so naturally, I gave him the £2 I had left in my pocket and a packet of crisps I had in my bag. He got up and left to go try his luck elsewhere, but not before thanking me, and getting up with a smile on his face.
As we came to Nottingham station. The very kind lady sat behind me, asked if she could give me back the £2 i’d given to that homeless man, because she didn’t want me to now be short of money. It was only £2 so I wasn’t that fussed; thanked her for her kindness and politely turned it down.

That particular situation has had me thinking all weekend. The diversity of social responsibility was incredible in that brief thirty minute journey. A homeless man who clearly wasn’t completely sane. I’d guess years of living on the street, with no family, perhaps a rough childhood and the appalling conditions he’s had to live with, which inevitably included that scarred face. Then there was me, a typical young man worrying about money, what he wants from life, how he’s going to be able to afford posh holidays and a big house when he’s older who’s also happy to talk to and help the homeless because I do not see them as worthless animals, but as human beings who have simply been unable to cope with the money making side of life, like a cog that has fallen out of the machinery. Then there was the business man, who metaphorically pissed all over the tramp, whose only sense of responsibility is himself. As if money made him a better species of human. And then of course, there was the kind lady sat behind me who was willing to help the person who helped the homeless person.

The beauty of the NHS is it encourages social responsibility. It is the last calling card of the socialist. It says that regardless of who you are, and how much you earn, you are not entitled to a better standard of healthcare than anyone else. It is largely humanist in it’s approach to life. It takes the idea that healthcare should not be withheld from you, if there isn’t a profit to be made, and instead puts you and I on equal stepping. And rightfully so. I am not more or less important than a homeless man who has never worked a day in his life. Because healthcare should not be a commodity. The NHS, is a national treasure.

John McCain during the 2008 Presidential race referred to the British NHS as “undesirable“. Undoubtedly, as many Conservatives like to do, he focused on those who were not pleased with their level of healthcare from the NHS, the disgruntled few. Which accounts for such a small percentage, it’s an insult to those of us who need the NHS; such my dad, who had a heart attack a few years back, and who the NHS saved the life of.
John McCain must be blissfully unaware that according to the World Health Organisation, whilst over 45million Americans cannot afford adequate Health Insurance, the American Government pays 15.2% of GDP toward Health. However, over here in the UK, we’re all covered. Whether we’re worth billions of pounds, or the homeless man I met on the train; and it still costs less of our GDP (8.2% in fact) than the USA. We are in fact, healthier as a nation on the whole, than the U.S.A. And that can be strongly attributed to such a World class Health Service. If that is “undesirable” or “socialist“, then we should be damn proud to be undesirable and socialist, because it works. When the system currently in place in America allows 47 million people to be incapable of receiving adequate health care, and when health insurance costs are rising faster than wages or inflation, you have to really start choosing your words with much more care and attention before you start attacking the system of another Nation.

According to the NCHCA Third of U.S Firms in 2007 did not offer healthcare insurance. 8.1 million children in the U.S were uninsured. Almost 90 million people between 2006 and 2007 spent a period of time without healthcare insurance. And our system is undesirable? It would appear that we have the right system with creases that need to be ironed out, whereas the U.S, has the wrong system entirely. You cannot run away from all ideas born out of Socialist ideals. Some do work!

I’ve always wondered why Healthcare in America, if universal, would be “Socialist” yet police and fire coverage aren’t? Perhaps that question can be answered by what Professor Brendan McSweeney from the Holloway School of Management referred to as “market-failure denial“. The same people who seem to think that Stalin’s Centralised Government in which the guys at the top exploited the guys below, is any different from the guys at the top of a bank or the top of a Corporation exploiting those below them. The only difference of course being, that one is called “Government” the other is called “Company“. It’s a bunch of Eastern bloc Communists scattered across the place hiding under the name ‘Capitalism’, whose Corporate central planning is more costly than that of most developing nations, and whose central planners (management – the guys a million miles away from the workers) earn hundreds of thousands more than those who work for them, who have never seen them before since working there and yet insist on devising targets and procedures. Central planning, is of course, “Communist“. The same people more happy to bail out bankers, than offer healthcare to those who need it most. The same people who are more than happy to yell “I’m pro life!!!“….. until the baby is born into a poor family, in which case, it suddenly isn’t as deserving of life as a rich child.
Go figure.

As for the Observer story from this morning, the moment we start questioning who is more deserving of healthcare, is the moment we start down the slippery slope toward total privatised healthcare.