Labour’s Plan to Cut Knife Crime

I go this message online from the Labour party’s Yvette Cooper. I’ve posted any number of articles criticising – rightly – the Labour party and Keir Starmer’s Toryism and destructive and vindictive factionalism. But this time I think the party is doing the right thing in its plan to cut knife crime. That is, if they go along with it and Starmer doesn’t think it’s another policy that’ll get him criticised and which Tory voters won’t like.

‘David, yesterday, the government let young people down again.

Knife crime has gone up by a shocking 77% since 2015, and the number of fatal stabbings has hit a record high, with the steepest increases in our towns and suburbs.

Too many young lives are being lost, too many families and communities left distraught.

Yet the Conservatives have repeatedly and shamefully failed to act.

Ministers have said 16 times that they will ban the online sale of dangerous knives. Yet even with the changes they belatedly announced yesterday, it will still be easier to buy dangerous machetes and ninja swords online than it is to buy a kitchen knife on the high street.

Enough is enough. We need urgent action to save lives. Only Labour is determined to do that.

Keir Starmer has made it part of our mission for the next Labour government to halve knife crime. That is why we have set out an urgent plan:

• Get knives off our streets with an urgent crackdown on the possession and sale of lethal knives, and bring in new and stronger laws to crack down on dangerous knife sales
• Crackdown on criminal gangs who are luring teenagers into violence, by making child criminal exploitation an offence and strengthening the serious and organised crime strategy
• Community prevention work and early intervention to stop young people being drawn into crime through a major new Young Futures Programme including new youth hubs and mental health support
• Immediate interventions and serious consequences for young people caught carrying a knife with referrals to Youth Offending Teams, sanctions and bespoke intervention plans
• Create a new cross-government coalition to end knife crime, bringing together political and community leaders to help tackle the issue and keep young people safe

Get briefed today

With the Tories, dangerous knives remain on our streets. It’s yet another crushing example of us all paying the price for Tory sticking plaster politics.

Only Labour will restore security to Britain’s streets with a mission to halve serious violence and rebuild confidence in policing and the criminal justice system.

Labour will make cutting knife crime a priority to make our streets safe – for you, your family, and your community.

Thank you,

Yvette Cooper
Shadow Home Secretary’

Former Head of MI5 and Other Intelligence Agencies States that Iraq Had Nothing to Do with 9/11

I have to put this up, as I’ve been banging on for years that Saddam Hussein, contrary to the bullshit George Dubya Bush and Tony Blair fed us, had zilch to do with 9/11. It was just an excuse for American multinationals and the American/Saudi oil industry to rob them of their oil and seize and privatise their state industries. It was pure mercenary greed which used the terrible events of that day as a pretext. Quite apart from Blair and the ‘dodgy dossier’.

It comes from @therestispolitics channel on YouTube, and has the title ‘”Iraq Had Nothing to Do with 9/11″ from Former Head of MI5′ or The Two Spies| Former MI5 MI6 Heads on the Iraq’ It’s another short, so it won’t demand too much attention.

The speaker is Eliza Manningham-Buller, who was the head of MI5 at the time. The speaker says that she was deputy head of MI5, head of GCHQ and SIS. She states from the outset that 9/11 was nothing to do with Iraq, as al-Qaeda were in Saddam Hussein’s jails at the time, and the distortions the Americans went to in order to claim that it was were disgraceful. She recalls that SIS went to America 24 hours after 9/11 to discuss what they were going to do together. The Americans hadn’t been to sleep. The head of the FBI was Paul Mueller, whom Buller knew from Lockerbie and had only just come from the Department of Justice, She does not recall any mention of Iraq. They knew it was al-Qaeda from prior intelligence and they were going to launch an attack in the autumn. They went back to the British embassy, who said that there was no evidence linking Iraq to what had just happened. The CIA had also concluded that Iraq wasn’t behind it. So Donald Rumsfeld set up a unit in the Department of Defense to claim that it was involved.

Bush and Blair are war criminals, who wrecked an entire nation just for corporate greed. They squandered the lives of Britain’s most courageous young men and women to do so. It’s too bad that the attempt by Canadian and Greek activists to have them arrested and tried at the International Court of Justice in the Hague failed.

And Blair keeps trying to sneak back in. He’s a butcher. Keep him out!

Donald Trump Visits Camberwick Green

This is just a fun, short video from 1WTC’s YouTube channel. It’s just the titles from Camberwick Green with the Orange Man appearing from the music box. It looks like the beginning of a much longer video, as Trump doesn’t actually do anything when he appears, except waves hello and nods when he’s asked if they can go campaigning with him.

It does, however, bring back happy memories of Trumpton, Camberwick Green, Chigley and the awesome Brian Cant. And it is fun imagining what Trump would do electioneering in Camberwick Green. Or would he incite the crowd to try storming the town hall, like he did Congress in America?

Open Britain on the Threat of Farage Becoming Tory Prime Minister

‘Dear David,

We need to talk about Farage. Again.

In a terrifyingly matter-of-fact interview with the Sun’s Harry Cole, Steve Bannon, the architect of Donald Trump’s polarising presidency, gave Farage a glowing endorsement and set out how he would go about succeeding Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.

Bannon believes that Farage could soon ride a wave of populist sentiment all the way to Number 10, especially if the Tories take a drubbing in the next election. (Spoiler: They’re going to.) His strategic advice? Take a page from the MAGA playbook and stage a hostile takeover of the Conservative Party.

And now, in his most recent email to his supporters, Farage has given his strongest hint yet at a potential return to frontline politics.

The prospect of Farage at the helm of a radicalised Tory party, steering the UK down a path of increased nationalism and xenophobia, is deeply troubling. At Open Britain, we’ve been warning about this possibility for some time now. With these brazen comms, it’s starting to look less like a potential distant nightmare and more a well-planned future reality. The 2029 election may seem a long way off, but the foundations for the profound political shift it could bring are being laid now.

We cannot afford to be complacent. It’s essential we spend the next five years growing, organising, mobilising, and fighting for the values that define us as a nation – openness, tolerance, and unity. We need to counter the siren song of populism with a positive vision of a Britain that works for everyone and secure the functional democracy needed to deliver it.

The next five years will be a pivotal period in our history. The decisions we make – and the policies the next government implements – will shape our country for generations to come. Will we succumb to the politics of division and fear in a country that is a democracy in name only, or will we stand together and build a brighter, more inclusive future with a democracy that works for everyone?

It’s up to all of us to get involved, speak out, and make our voices heard. There are more than a quarter of a million of us in Open Britain. We have the potential to be a powerful force for good. Together, we can ensure that the UK remains a beacon of democracy and hope in an increasingly uncertain world.

Let’s do exactly that.

All the best, The Open Britain Team‘

Why am I not surprised the Sun has interviewed Steve Bannon, who was praising the prospect of Farage taking the reigns of government? Way back in the early part of this century, when the Scum got into trouble for printing a cartoon showing pigs demonstrating against being compared with Arabs, Private Eye reminded its readers that Rupert Murdoch’s mighty organ already had 19 judgements against it for racism by the former Press Complaints Commission. It’s probably no surprise then, that they’re backing the man who used to sing Hitler Youth Songs when a boy at public school.

Richard Burgon’s Online May Day Rally with Palestinian Ambassador

I’ve resigned from the Labour party, but Richard Burgon is still one of the few Labour MPs I respect. Considering the ongoing barbarity of the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza, I have absolutely no hesitation in putting up the notice for this event.

‘Dear Friend 

Please join me, the Palestinian Ambassador and others for a May Day Rally for Palestine. We must continue the urgent call for an immediate ceasefire and to stop arms sales to Israel.

The rally is taking place online on Wednesday, May 1st at 6.30PM. 

Register your attendance for the rally by clicking here.

I hope you can join me in showing solidarity with Palestine at this critical time for the Palestinian people this May Day. 

May Day Rally for Palestine – Click here register 

Solidarity,

38 Degrees Survey on How to Cut NHS Waiting Times

‘David, it’s been reported that one in five of us are stuck on an NHS waiting list – 2 million more than previously thought! [1]

The Government has boasted about bringing the numbers down slightly in recent months. The truth is that millions of us are still left languishing in fear and pain, waiting for treatment – hundreds of thousands more than when Rishi Sunak promised that “NHS waiting lists will fall” back in January last year. [2] That’s nothing to celebrate.

We’re in an election year and the NHS tops the list of concerns for many of us. So our message to political parties couldn’t be clearer: enough is enough – we can’t wait any longer. Any party that wants to form the next government must make plans to end these endless waiting lists.

The plan is simple, David. If enough of us share our stories about how bad things have got, alongside our personal experiences of when things worked in the past, we can show how the NHS has worked for us before and can work again, but only if there’s the political will.

So David, will you share your NHS experience with us today to help pile the pressure on our politicians to bring waiting lists down? It only takes a few minutes to share your story but it could make all the difference. Here’s the first question to get you started:

Do you believe it’s possible for the NHS to give us the care we need, when we need it?

YES

NO

Only recently, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, was arguing for MORE privatisation of the NHS to tackle waiting lists. [3] But we all know that opening up the doors of our NHS to profit-hungry private companies could signal the end of the NHS as we know it. [4] The experts are clear, privatisation drains money from the NHS, poaches NHS staff and services and is ultimately bad for patients. [5]

This is not the solution.

Our NHS is in crisis: it’s no accident, but it is an emergency. Most of us will know someone who’s on the waiting list – often living in pain or discomfort – waiting for months or even years for treatment, tests or assessments. This is a direct result of the Government’s failure to deliver on their promise to bring waiting times down.

But it doesn’t have to be like this, David.

Will you help us highlight the difference in how the NHS used to work for us and the state of it today? There are a few quick questions for you to answer. Here’s the first question to get you started:

Do you believe it’s possible for the NHS to give us the care we need, when we need it?

YES

NO

Thanks for all you do,

Tom, Megan and the 38 Degrees team

NOTES:
[1] BBC: One in five waiting for hospital care in England, survey suggests
Independent: NHS waiting list could be 2 million higher than thought, new data suggests
[2] BBC: Rishi Sunak: Hold me to account if NHS waiting lists don’t fall
Huffington Post: Rishi Sunak Promised To Cut NHS Waiting Lists. They’ve Gone Up By 330,000
The Guardian: NHS waiting lists falling but will stay above pre-Covid levels until 2030, IFS says
[3] The Financial Times: NHS should ‘seek to use’ private healthcare capacity, Wes Streeting says
The Guardian: ‘Middle-class lefties’ won’t stop Labour using private sector to cut NHS backlog, Streeting says
[4] The Financial Times: Investors eye opportunities in Labour pledge to boost private health sector
[5] The Guardian: NHS privatisation drive linked to rise in avoidable deaths, study suggests
The Guardian: Investors are making a fortune from UK healthcare. Why is nobody holding private equity to account?
The Guardian: NHS doctors offered up to £5,000 to recruit colleagues for private hospitals‘

I’ve completed the survey. My experience with my local Hospital Trust has been excellent, but others haven’t been nearly so lucky with theirs. And yes, we do have to make appointments to see the doctor. I can remember, waaaay back when I was at school in the 1980s, when you could make an appointment with your GP and be seen the same day. So does Anne Widdecombe, now one of the leaders of Reform. Reform are Thatcherite to the core, and fervently anti-immigrant and pro-Brexit. Widdecombe says that it could be done, conveniently forgetting she was part of the crowd that reduced it to its present parlous state. It can indeed, Anne, but not by and Reform.

As to how it can be improved, my suggestions are:

1. Renationalise it, so that all the funding goes into paying its staff and not into the corporate bureaucracy, management bonuses and share dividends of the outsourcing companies.
2. Raise funding to continental levels.
3. Train more doctors, nurses and other health professionals.

If this is done, which requires real will and determination, we could have again the world class NHS that the Tories have done so much to destroy.

The Megaphone on a Memorial Day for Workers

‘Dear David,

Every year people lose their lives at work.

Most don’t die of mystery illnesses, or in tragic “accidents”. They die because a boss took a shortcut and put them at risk.

Workers Memorial Day (IWMD) 28 April commemorates those workers. 

We’re getting in touch because there’s a memorial event happening in your area this weekend. Click on the map to find it.

Take me to the map

Workplace deaths are preventable deaths. Trade unions fight for a future where no worker must risk their health or life while doing their job.

Can’t make it to an event?

Share with your friends, family and colleagues: click to tweet, share on Facebook or WhatsApp
Take a look at the resources on the TUC website

In Solidarity,

Lois,Megaphone UK’

This is why we need the health and safety legislation the right-wing press is always telling us is crippling British industry. If you look at the stats, the figures for the number of people injured or killed at work dropped significantly when these laws were introduced in the 1970s.

We Own It Celebrate Starmer’s Declaration that He Will Renationalise the Railways and Their Members Who Campaigned for It

‘Dear David,

Labour has just announced that they will take our whole railway into public ownership over the next five years.

And they’ve gone beyond just pledging it – they’ve outlined a detailed plan to make it happen.

We’ll have to make sure they carry out this plan after the election, but this is HUGE – and your campaigning made it happen.

Labour’s pledge only affects England but whether you are in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, you helped make this happen.

Over the last few years, you’ve campaigned and won victories to take several rail services into public hands.

✅ TransPennine Express – renationalised in May 2023

✅ ScotRail – renationalised in April 2022

✅ Southeastern – renationalised in October 2021

✅ Transport for Wales Rail – renationalised in February 2021

✅ Northern Rail – renationalised in March 2020

NOW the rest of our railways will come into public hands where they belong – to work for passengers, not overseas shareholders.

This is YOUR win!

YOU won this – with your online actions, donations, protests, social media sharing, and talking to friends and family.

With your help, we were able to commission polling that shows that 67% of people want rail in public ownership!

We have been able to use today’s announcement as an opportunity to spread the message, with Johnbosco on BBC Radio Sussex and Times Radio.

YOU can quite rightly feel pleased and proud of these victories but there’s still work to do!

Labour is not planning to create a publicly owned ROSCO (ROlling Stock COmpany) to take on new fleets when needed. Currently, private rolling stock companies are extracting hundreds of million per year from our railway. Read our blog ‘Riding the ROSCO gravy train’ on our website.

YOUR campaigning can continue to make a difference.

The cost of travelling by rail has increased substantially in real terms since privatisation. And it’s no wonder: over £30 billion has leaked out of the system in the last 3 decades, mostly going to line shareholders’ pockets.

Under public ownership, we could be saving enough to bring down bills by 18% instead of hiking them every year.

YOU are passionate about public ownership, not only of public transport, but also water, NHS, energy, Royal Mail – and other public services. Public services should be run for people not profit.

So THANK YOU SO MUCH for all you do to fight for public services in public ownership. Whether you donate or not, every action you take adds strength to our movement. Together we can win so much more.

Public ownership is talked about as a solution much more these days: YOU DID THAT!

In solidarity,

Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate, Imogen and John – the We Own It team.’

Starmer’s announcement is welcome, but I’m not entirely convinced. He’s still convinced, like all Thatcherites, that private enterprise is the solution for everything and state ownership and management is utterly dreadful and inefficient. I’m not surprised that he’s said that he isn’t going to create a state-owned rolling stock company, as nationalising anything runs very much against his grain. And I really don’t trust him to honour his promise, not after he’s broken so many in the past. But it’s a start.

Related to this, the Groaniad has put up a piece with a headline that was is needed is complete rail nationalisation. Exactly. And we could have had that, along with the nationalisation of the other utilities and the NHS, and so much more, if Jeremy Corbyn had got into No. 10. And the reason he didn’t was partly because the left-wing press joined the confected lies and smears of the right-wing press that Jezza was a terrible anti-Semite for not backing the Israeli state’s brutal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Over the past few years the Groan has published a number articles supporting policies that were very much part of the Corbynist platform. It’s too bad they didn’t do it when he was head of the Labour party.

Also related: the Torygraph has also, apparently, published an article with a headline quoting Starmer as saying that if he loses his seat, he’ll work in a Kentish Town bookshop. I don’t know which bookshop he means, as I didn’t read the article, but I look forward to him serving customers behind the counter.

Rather than high-tailing it into the House of Lords which is where failed politicos and their donors usually end up.

Trumpton’s Fire Brigade Dance to the Village People’s YMCA

Here’s a bit of fun for those of us who were kids in the ’70s. It’s from the Trumptonshire Official channel on YouTube, which has a number of other silly videos like it. It’s of Trumpton’s fire brigade strutting their funky stuff to the Village People. Ah, the roll call whenever they appeared: Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb. Half Man Half Biscuit released a record about rioting in Trumpton, and someone else turned into a rave track. And there are a couple of other pop videos that use tropes from Trumpton, Chigley and Camberwick Green, which show just how wide their viewership was.

Horror Writer Thomas Ligotti on Company Managers Who Get Promoted Through Destroying the Company

I’ve been watching videos by the Outlaw Bookseller recently. He’s a retired bookshop manager, now living in Bath, who talks about literature and book collecting, and particularly Science Fiction and Horror. In one of his videos he discusses Horror writer Thomas Ligotti’s novel, My Work Is Not Yet Done. This differs from much horror literature in not being set in Gothic castles and catacombs, but instead in the corporate work place. One of the characters is a manager, who comes along with flip charts and checklists purporting to improve productivity and employee performance. As the story goes on, the characters realise that all his management strategies are rubbish. They don’t actually work, and instead make the situation work. At which point, the manager gets promoted to another position.

Ligotti’s been going for decades now. He was published in a variety of British small press horror, SF and fantasy magazines in the ’80s and ’90s and is very much respected as one of the great writers of the genre. I’m not a big fan of ‘Orror. I’ve read Dracula, some of Brian Lumley’s grim tales, H.P. Lovecraft and a few others, but it’s not a genre that really appeals to me. But that description of the manager seems very well observed. Way back in the ’80s and ’90s Private Eye used to cover various big businessmen, who were recruited to head blue chip companies like ICI with very generous salaries. These men then proceeded to wreck these companies so that their share prices plummeted, at which point they were released. Again, with obscenely generous severance packages. The same people would then go on to be recruited by another, previously successful company or organisation and then proceed to do the same again. And I’ve met people who’ve experienced this in real life. I was talking about it to a taxi driver, who told me that it happened to a company he had worked for. The company recruited a manager at an expensive pay package, who then proceeded to run it into the ground, before being given the heave-ho with another massively generous pay package. Who then went off to do it to some other company.

No wonder British industry’s in a state. It’s full of the incompetent and greedy running companies into the ground, while being massively rewarded for their greed and incompetence. And I dare say that if anyone says anything about their grossly inflated pay, they’ll get the usual nonsense about market rates and having to pay large amounts to recruit talent.

Even when the people recruited are massively untalented and a real destructive force with their incompetence. But no doubt they went to the right schools and know the right people, so they carry on in their mission to wreck western business in order to get themselves bigger and more lucrative promotions.

This St. George’s Day, It’s the Tories Who Are the Real Enemies of the Patriotic Working Class (Of All Ethnicities)

It was St George’s Day yesterday, the day dedicated to England’s patron saint. There were parades in various parts of the country. I think most of the time these went very well, except in London where the right-wing demonstrators were involved in clashes with the police. They’ve been claiming on the net that, contrary to what the Met police have been tweeting, ’twas the cops that started it. Given that the Met police also have form starting fights with some left-wing protesters, such as during the Poll Tax riots back in the ’90s and against the miners during the miners’ strike, I can also believe that they may have started by attacking the rightists, even if I don’t agree with the protesters’ views.

The day was also accompanied by various bods arguing whether or not it should be celebrated on GB News and elsewhere. Femi Oluwalde popped up on GB News a day or so ago to argue against displaying the flag of St George because of England’s history in the slave trade and colonisation, while ignoring the fact that other countries also were involved in this long before England. But it also reminded me how the Tories under Maggie Thatcher draped themselves in the mantle of British patriotism. The 1987 general election featured Battle of Britain Spitfires zooming around the sky while an excited voice declared ‘It’s great to be great again!’ And there was a headline in the Torygraph quoting Maggie as saying, ‘Don’t call them boojwah, call them British!’ Well, it’s nearly forty years later, and there’s precious little great about Britain. Oh yes, I’ve seen the headlines announcing that Britain is the second most powerful country, but

1. Our public utilities are owned by foreigners,

2. An ever increasing number of working people are suffering real poverty, resorting to food banks because their not getting the welfare benefits they need, or their wages are too low to cover the costs of food and/or heating.

3. The NHS and dental services are being decimated due to Tory underfunding and privatisation. As a result, many people are pulling out their own teeth because of shortages of NHS dentists.

4. Rishi Sunak and the rest of his party of knaves and brigands has announced they’re going to stop GPs giving people sicknotes and cut Personal Independence Payments, because Tory ideology and the Heil say that everyone on benefits is a scrounger and malingerer.

5. Meanwhile, the Tory party is more than happy to received dodgy donations from the mega rich while doing their level best to reduce genuine democratic accountability by placing restrictions on the Electoral Commission.

6. And then there’s the issue of the Tories’ own personal corruption. Rishi Sunak has given public monies to his wife’s companies, the party also gave PPE contracts, for equipment that didn’t work, to companies with which they were personally linked, and BoJob handing out a computer contract to the woman with whom he was having an affair.

I also wonder about their personal commitment to this country and its people. Sunak, before he got the go-ahead for his political ambitions, was all set to get his green card and emigrate to America. Boris Johnson was born in America, and although he also became Prime Minister, showed precious little interest in actually doing the job of governing. He didn’t turn up to the COBRA meetings about Covid, and seemed to spend every available moment either off home for the weekend or having a holiday. He fancies himself as a statesman in the mould of Churchill, but his aptitude and abilities are, whatever we make of Winnie, in no way comparable.

I see precious little genuine patriotism amongst the Tories.

They have consistently betrayed the interests of this country and its great working people, of all ethnicities, while declaring the opposite.

They represent solely the interests of the global rich, and are impoverishing ordinary Brits in order to give vast tax cuts to their corporate paymasters.

Whatever party you decide to vote for, get them out at the next election!