This is interesting. According to an article in today’s Evening Standard, Danyal Hussein, the murderer of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, was on an internet group run by a Nazi Satanist connected to the Order of the Nine Angles. The article, entitled ‘Danyal Hussein: Calls to ban Nazi-occultist group after Satanist murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman’ runs
‘Campaigners have renewed a call to ban a UK-based Nazi-occultist group following the Satanist murders of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman.
Killer Danyal Hussein, 19, was jailed for life on Thursday for the murder of the sisters as part of a twisted demonic pact to win the lottery.
Hussein is believed to have been influenced by a black magic practitioner called EA Koetting, who promotes his work to more than 80,000 followers on YouTube.
Since his Old Bailey trial, it has emerged that Hussein was an active member of online forum Becoming A Living God, set up by Koetting.
The American author has associated himself with a group called Order of Nine Angles (O9A) and its US branch, Tempel ov Blood, which has been linked to a string of recent terrorism cases in Britain.
As Hussein was jailed for life for the sisters’ murders, Nick Lowles, chief executive of anti-fascism campaign group Hope Not Hate, said: “Danyal Hussein was influenced by a man associated with the Order of Nine Angles before he launched his attack.
“This is yet another reason why the Government must move to ban this Nazi-occultist group.
“Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman had their lives stolen by this murderer, and the ideology which propelled him. Their families’ lives have been devastated.
“The Order of Nines Angles’ appearance in the story of these horrendous murders is shocking but shouldn’t be surprising.
“We have been warning of their promotion of terrorism and sexual violence, and called on ministers to act by banning the group.
“The Order of Nine Angles is determined to promote and inspire terrorism. They must be banned.”
Last week, Facebook announced that it had removed Koetting’s page and Instagram account for violating its Dangerous Individuals and Organisations policies, and YouTube said a review is under way. The PA news agency has previously contacted Koetting for a response.’
A few months ago when Danyal Hussein was arrested and charged with the murder, History Debunked put up a video suggesting that it was caused by Hussein’s own belief, as a Muslim, in the djinn. He stated that in his experience, it was very common amongst British Muslims and he had overheard Muslim students in his class discussing how one of their female relatives was being tormented by one of these spirits. That is why a murder, like something from the Middle Ages when people believed witches like Faust sold their souls to the Devil, and practiced human sacrifice, had returned to Britain.
Hussein did believe in the djinn, but it’s a bizarre twist that he was in fact motivated in this horrific act by a neo-Nazi. This might explain why the murder victims were two Black women, however. The Order of the Nine Angles is mentioned in Nicolas Goodrick-Clarkes book on contemporary Nazi occultism, The Black Sun. They sound absolutely bonkers, as if someone combined Norse mythology with a bit of crude Jungian theorising after reading the 2000 AD strip, Nemesis the Warlock, and thought that Torquemada was a good role model. The nine angles supposedly refer to the nine levels of Yggdrasil, the world-tree connecting the nine world in Viking myth. These are inhabited by acausal beings. The Order rejects the Theory of Relativity for the same reason the original Nazis did: Einstein was Jewish. After conquering the world and subjugating the non-White races, they aim to develop interstellar space travel and are eagerly awaiting the emergence of the future galactic emperor, Vindictus. Or something like that. The Nemesis the Warlock strip was set in a far future galaxy in which humans lived underground in a totalitarian hell. Earth was renamed Termight, and ruled over by Torquemada, grandmaster of the Terminators, a military order dedicated to exterminating all intelligent alien life. Creators Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill based it on the cruelty and corruption they had experienced in their communities growing up as Roman Catholics, though bigotry, hypocrisy and intolerance certainly aren’t confined to any one religion. They’re found right across all human ideologies and religions as part of the human condition. Mills and O’Neill were making metaphorical statements about racism in wider British society and particularly at the National Front, which was then on the rise. The strip was launched after a series of racist murders and the rise of anti-racist youth groups to oppose it like Rock Against Racism. But the Order of the Nine Angles with its cult of Vindictus does sound like its creators read ‘Nemesis’ and thought Termight was cool, as against the real fans of the strip, who knew it lampooned such Nazi prats. I have to say, though, that I don’t think anyone in the Order of the Nine Angles has read the strip or been influenced by it. It just seems to me that Mills’ and O’Neill’s creation, which still retains a cult following amongst comics fans, was all too accurate in its depiction of the mentality of these psychopathic nutters.
As for Hussein, it’s ironic that a man of colour was influenced by a Nazi, who would no doubt have looked down on him personally because of his race. And it shows that the motives behind his murder is much more complex than simple explanations that it was all down to Islamic superstition and immigration.
I found this trailer on Moviegasm’s channel on YouTube. It’s for a live action TV version of the Japanese anime cartoon of the same name, which I have to say I haven’t seen. As far as I can tell, it’s about three future bounty hunters – one Black, one Asian and a kick-ass White woman, who come together to take down the most dangerous crims in space. It looks really good, and I like the soundtrack. It’s seems to be seventies style Funk, or strongly influenced by the kind of Funk used in that decade’s action movies and television. So, a nice bit of nostalgia for us oldies. There is one problem though: It’s going to be on Netflix. There are a number of great SF series now on the streaming channel – The Expanse and Foundation, and now this, which makes it awkward for those of us who’d rather watch mainstream terrestrial and satellite broadcasting.
Here’s another interesting piece from this fortnight’s Private Eye for 29th October to 11th November 2012. It seems it’s not just the failing private railway companies that the government is desperate to prop up against the threat of nationalisation. They also need to do it for the academy chains and further education colleges. Here’s the article
Chains Reaction
In a worrying indication of the Department for Education’s level of confidence in the financial health of school chains and further education colleges, the department has made a deal with seven big law firms to provide insolvency services to “a broad range of financially distressed education providers”.
The scheme will put the firms, based in London, Leeds and Bristol, on a rota to provide advice on restructuring and insolvency to institutions facing either normal insolvency or “education administration”, the new process created in 2019 which allows an administrator to prioritise the needs for existing students to finish courses or find new placements, before paying creditors. Although the billing rates for insolvency work are not revealed in the contract award notice, the tender is listed with an estimated value of £3m.
The DfE has borne the brunt of winding up costs for a number of large academy trusts and has had to write off large sums where the department itself was one of a trust’s creditors.
Thus far two colleges, Hadlow College and West Kent and Ashford College, have been through the education administration process. Recently Brooklands College in Weybridge also faced the threat of insolvency as the Education and Skills Funding Agency attempts to claw back £20m after an investigation into the subcontracting of apprenticeships.
Academies are another failed Thatcherite idea that was taken over by Starmer’s molten idol, Blair, and then kicked into high gear. Thatcher and her education secretary, Norman Fowler, had founded a series of schools outside the Local Education Authorities as City Academies. They were an abject failure and were actually being wound up. Then Tory Tony fished ’em out of the dustbin along with a whole slew of other grotty ideas, and lo! the academies were established These were supposed to introduce private investment and management in the school system. Great things were predicted, like schools specialising in the STEM subjects, or music or whatever. And standards were definitely going to get better. In fact, the academies are only able to maintain their high standards through a rigorous policy of exclusion and selection to keep out the poor, the less able and those with behavioural problems, which state schools are bound to take. They have also benefited from far greater levels of funding. Some of the academies received up to £40 million, compared to LEAs which may have a budget for all the schools in their area of £250,000. Despite these advantages, numerous academies have had to be taken into receivership and into state management.
There is no use keeping up the pretence that they’re some kind of glowing Thatcherite, private industry success. This is just throwing good money after bad, and using the taxpayer to bail out failing private investors as the with PFI in the Health Service. It has to be ended now, and schools renationalised. Mussolini also set up a government department to bail out failing private industry. Fascist manifestos and ideology praised private industry and declared it to be the foundation of society and a proper, healthy economic system. But they had to recognise that some industries could not be supported privately and had to be taken into state ownership. And if Mussolini’s viciously anti-socialist dictatorship could realise that private industry is not the panacea for all industries, it’s high time our supposedly liberal, democratic politicos also had the guts to do so.
Academy schools are failing children, and it is just grotty Tory and Blairite Labour ideology that’s keeping them going. Renationalise now!
It was always very clear that Starmer had nothing but contempt for the Labour left, or rather, traditional Labour supporters and members. He’s a Blairite and very much a creature of the establishment. But a few days ago he made this contempt overt when Richard Madeley interviewed him. Madeley stated that he’d been criticised for not giving the left a hard enough kicking at the Labour conference. This incidentally betrays Madeley’s own political bias. I haven’t heard anyone make that complaint, but then, I haven’t read the papers for a little while, so perhaps it’s a sentiment that exists in the metropolitan media bubble away from everyone else. Instead of taking issue with the verbiage, Starmer blithely answered the question to show what he was doing to suppress the left and the Corbynistas. A line of peeps on Twitter made their disapproval very clear, including Jackie Walker, Tom London, Natalie Strecker, Another Angry Voice and a Muslim chap, Hamza. They remarked on the hypocrisy of the media decrying abusive messages after the murder of David Amess, and then calmly using violent language themselves. But Strecker also made the point that Hitler and Pinochet also used violence against the Left. Absolutely. Fascism has always been an ideology of violence. The Futurists, a militant avant-garde art movement that became incorporated into Fascism, declared that it supported ‘the punch and the slap as the decisive argument.’ And the targets of Fascism are always ‘Marxist’ socialism, and ethnic minorities: Jews, Blacks and Muslims. People like Jackie Walker, Tom London, who is of Jewish heritage, and Hamza, as well as people like Prof. Gayle Letherby. Despite the fact that she’s 62, and describes herself as an educator, researcher, writer, and volunteer, as a woman from the left of the party it really does seem that there are people there who think she deserves a good kicking.
I don’t think Starmer wouldstoopto physical violence, but his supporters are bullies, and have abused Blacks, Muslims and other members of ethnic minorities, like Diane Abbott. This shows a basic thuggery in their character.
Mike’s pointed out that Starmer’s popularity is plummeting, and a large part of this is his contempt for the left, which he’s just broadcast loud and clear. As for Madeley, when he and his wife first appeared years ago I noticed that there was a general respect for Judy Finnegan not given to him. If you asked people what they thought of him, there was a muttered comment like ‘he’s a knob.’
After talking to Starmer about giving left-wingers a kicking, I agree.
As well as covering Starmer’s attack on democracy in the Labour party, this fortnight’s Private Eye has also published a piece about how he’s recruited someone from the abortive United for Change party and one of Tweezer’s aides. The article runs
Centre Grounding
Labour’s scheme to grow a generation of pro-Starmer parliamentary candidates has recruited a man who tried to set up a multimillionaire-funded anti-Labour party and a former aide to Theresa May.
Labour launched the Future Candidates Programme in August to select, groom, and fast-track a new set of 360 would-be MPs. Announced in that well-known hive of left-wing activism the Times, the scheme was likened to David Cameron’s “A-list” scheme for new MPs, with Labour sources telling the paper the programme would “get pro-Starmer people” as candidates.
This month Labour wrote to the successful applicants, who will undergo online and face-to-face training. Among those announcing themselves as successful future candidates was Ryan Wain, 33 – co-founder and chief executive from 2018-19 of United for Change, a would-be new centrist party funded by multimillionaire Simon Franks.
In 2019 Franks and Wain claimed United for Change would become “the second biggest political party by membership”, with 125,000 members, and would “win the next general election”. But the new party never even launched. Undaunted, Wain found a new multimillionaireas a political sugar daddy, becoming political director of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Josh Tapper also announced his place on the future candidates programme. Best known as a regular on Channel 4’s Gogglebox from 2013-18, he left the show when he started working in communications for the Cabinet Office. Although a civil service appointment, this brought him close to the top Tories: Tapper became a campaigns manager in the Cabinet Office during Theresa May’s leadership.
Faced with complaints that none of the applicants chosen was from the left of the party,, Labour sources were brisk with the LabourList website: “This isn’t factional. We just aren’t insulting voters with pisspoor candidates any more.” The man in charge of theselection process? Labour’s election chief Morgan McSweeney, an acolyte of, er, Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Peter Mandelson.
This basically confirms what you already knew, if you’d been following Mike’s blog: Starmer wanted to recruit a new generation of MPs loyal to his Blairite self, and deliberately ignored anyone from the left of the party, or indeed, any traditional Labour member or supporter. He asked people to consider becoming a Labour MP, even if they hadn’t considered supporting the party before. Or something like that. The party’s membership, meanwhile, were expected to continue stumping up the money to support the party, which shows that Starmer considers us to be no more than cash cows to be milked and exploited.
As for the United for Change Party, I remember them being promoted by the I newspaper, which raved about how there was going to be another party launched by politicians and (corporate) donors. Which tells you all you really need to know about that newspaper’s politics. It’s supposed to be independent, and so for convenience is lumped in with the liberal press. But like the Groan, it’s really Thatcherite corporatist with something of a pro-European slant and a concern with minority rights. In other words, Blairite Labour cum Cameron Tory.
Blair’s New Labour was serious about promoting multiculturalism and greater diversity with all-female shortlists and an ideology of inclusion. One of the role models Blair praised was the Black American soldier, General Colin Powell. This was at the same time Blair made illegal immigrants ineligible for receiving unemployment benefit, hence the rise of the food banks. These were set up to support the migrants before the Tories expanded it to included everyone thrown off benefits. But Starmer seems to be turning away from any kind of genuine anti-racism. His supporters have bullied Black and ethnic minority MPs and activists, Islamophobia is rising in the Labour party but the only ethnic minority Starmer seems to want to defend are Zionist Jews. Left-wing Jews who criticise Israel are smeared as anti-Semites and purged in a gross display of sectarian anti-Semitism. He’s pledged his support for gay and trans rights, but I wonder how long that will last as Starmer lies through his teeth and breaks promises as easily as breathing.
Starmer is turning Labour into another Tory party, and his adoption of these two candidates show his contempt for the rank and file members of the party he leads very clearly.
Keir Starmer’s assault on democracy within the Labour party and his purging of the left has become so blatant that even the determinedly anti-Corbyn Private Eye has been forced to take notice and publish something reasonably critical. It has published two pieces about it in this fortnight’s ‘H.P. Sauce’ column, for 29th October to 11th November 2021. One is about the purges, while the other is about Starmer’s recruitment of people, who tried to found an anti-Labour party and worked for Tweezer. The article on the purges runs
Uncontrollable Purges
Although it is 22 years since David Evans, general secretary of the Labour party, first presented a plan to overhaul the running of the party to Tony Blair, it is under Keir Starmer’s leadership that Evans has finally been given the chance to put his ideas for purging the left into practice.
In his paper to Blair, Evans described constituency Labour parties as “dysfunctional” and claimed “the majority of local Labour parties are more like Trotters Independent Traders than Marks & Spencer”. (An amusing reference to the then-popular TV comedy Only Fools and Horse, m’lud). Central to the plan, as chaaracterised by Phil Gaskin, regional director of Labour South West, is to remove members’ say on the policies outlined in the leaflets they stuff through letterboxes.
The party is in a precarious state. Since December 2019 it has lost 150,000 members. it is pending more on legal costs than campaigning. Its funding has been cut by trade unions, and it lost £1.2m of the taxpayer funding based on MP numbers following the net loss of 59 seats in 2019.
Starmer may have promised to put an end to years of internecine warfare, but that did not mean extending an olive branch to the left. Evans’ plans are aimed at keeping opponents of Starmer quiet – those, that is, who escape being forced out or choose not to quit. Changes include abolishing the membership fee and replacing members with “supporters”; meanwhile, policy will be determined by the leadership.
Since Starmer took office there have been hundreds of suspensions directed from the office of the general secretary. For his part, Gaskin has suspended more than half the constituencies in the south-west region for alleged antisemitism or for demanding “democracy”. He also prevented the Bath CLP from donating £3,600 from its £1.3m funds to food banks shortly before Christmas 2020, on grounds that this was not “campaigning”. It was also Gaskin who led the case against film director Ken Loach, expelled from the party in August.
Prohibited from CLP agendas in the south-west region, which covers Bristol, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and half of Dorset, is any mention of support for ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn and any debate or motion on the subject of, er, free speech.
This shows just how far back the Blairite contempt for democracy, socialism and traditional Labour values goes. It also names Gaskin as one of the chief instigators of the attack on democracy, particularly in the south west. I’ve had emails from the south-west regional office asking me to join their conference or respond to various initiatives. I shall now have to think very carefully about them and especially about whether my local party has also been muzzled by this dicta.
And how utterly, utterly contemptible of Gaskin to ban Bath from supporting a food bank!
This comes from the ‘H.P. Sauce’ column in Private Eye’s edition for 30th November – 13th December 2012 nine years ago. It’s about how Tom Watson, Angela Eagle and Keith Vaz nobbled the party election in Rotherham to exclude the popular candidate and get their people in, to the disgust of the local party. The piece runs
‘Labour has a dismal record of fixing selection contests, but the “Rotherham fiasco” marks a new low.
After local MP Denis “expenses fiddler” MacShane was belatedly expelled from parliament, the party’s “special selections” committee arrived in South Yorkshire to draw up a shortlist for the by-election on 29 November.
MP Tom Watson presided, supported by Keith Vaz and Angela Eagle, and their first casualty was popular local councillor Mahroof Hussain. He was followed out the door by Yorkshire-based solicitor Richard Burgon, who had the support of nine affiliated trade unions – a record for any potential Labour candidate in recent times.
Watson and chums opted instead for the chief executive of a cancer relief charity, Sarah Champion, and one Sophy Gardner, an RAF Wing Commander. Realising their decision might not go down too well with the comrades, Watson demanded that the vote of the selections committee “not be recorded”.
Hearing of the “fix”, more than 80 members of Rotherham Labour Party duly walked out in disgust, leaving the two endorsed candidates to slug it out, with Champion receiving all of 13 votes to her rival’s 11.
Not everyone was cowed by the order “not to speak to the media.” After the mass exit, one disgruntled comrade told the Rotherham Advertiser: “These people who ‘arrive’ in Rotherham to further their careers and then decide they know enough about us to represent us, make me sick. What a slap in the face to impose someone who has been a card carrying member for two years and a union member for two weeks. You would have thought they had learned a lesson because they imposed MacShane and they say we aren’t capable of choosing a candidate! Excuse me while I go and puke.”‘
This shows just how long the Blairites have been rigging elections, though I’ve no doubt that there were cases going even further back when Blair was parachuting in his preferred candidates to safe Labour seats over the wishes of the local party. Given this piece of prime Blairite corruption, it should have been no surprise when Starmer started changing the selection rules against the Left.
I found this rather amusing little piece in Private Eye’s literary column for 28th October 2011. It notes that the hero of an SF book by Norman Spinrad from 1967 is one Boris Johnson, and the book’s title is strangely appropriate: Agent of Chaos. The article runs
LIFE IMITATES ART
Sonia Purnell’s new book about the mayor of London, Just Boris, has been treated with disdain by those of Boris’s chums who have been asked to write the majority of the reviews. But it’s not the only book out there starring a man named Bojo.
The 1967 sci-fi novel, Agent of Chaos, by Norman Spinrad, stars as its hero a man named Boris Johnson. He is described as follows by his enemies: “The man is a bumbler; he stumbles in the dark ignorant of even the Democracy he professes to champion… Yet still he stumbles on. Blind courage is, after all, a Random Factor. So is heroism. So too, for that matter, is sheer stupidity – and Johnson, paradoxically, is a course of all three.”
Well, I see absolutely nothing heroic about Johnson. Quite the reverse – he’s a villain, who’s ruining this country and its great people purely for the profit of himself and his super-rich friends. But he is certainly a bumbler and agent of chaos.
I also recall that back in the 1980s, Spinrad caused a bit of controversy with his book, The Iron Dream, which speculated on what would have happened if Hitler had instead migrated to the US and wrote SF pulp fiction. It was banned in West Germany for violating the Basic Law against glorifying Nazism, though I don’t believe that Spinrad himself was a Nazi. Given how right-wing Boris’ politics are, perhaps there should be an SF novel in which Adolf Hitler writes a novel, whose hero is called Boris Johnson.
Is this the type of electoral success Starmer is trying to tell us all will sweep Labour into government and himself into No. 10? Labour came third behind the Tories in the Newark and Sherwood by-election. Labour got 16.7 per cent of the vote, the Tories 17 per cent, but the seat was taken by an independent, who got 66 per cent of the vote. Starmer may be surprised at the result, as he seems massively deluded to the point that the declares Labour just scraping in as a major victory and endorsement of his leadership, but you could have predicted the result. How? Because Starmer is a Blairite, and this is how a large part of the British electorate acted in defiance of Blair and the Tories.
Blairism is just Thatcherism taken up by the left. As Blair sought to purge the party of any awkward left-wing policies, these were instead taken up by single issue activist groups outside parliament. And one of the issues the British people feel most strongly about is the closure of their local hospitals. Unfortunately, the Private Finance Initiative means that any hospitals built through such public-private partnerships are more expensive than would be the case if they were funded directly through government. As a result, the hospitals built under the scheme are smaller. And for those built, existing hospitals had to be closed. Blair tried doing this to a much-loved local hospital up in the midlands. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the exact constituency. What I do remember is that the local people weren’t pleased. And neither were the staff at said hospital. In fact, they were so annoyed that they formed a political party with the aim of saving the hospital. One of the hospital doctors stood as their candidate in the election.
And they won.
Which also had the positive effect of embarrassing and annoying Blair, who poured scorn on the whole idea only to find his own MP out on their ear.
This is what will happen again if Starmer and the Blairites retain control of the Labour party.
Mike’s article about this grotty defeat also quotes from an article in the Morning Star, warning left-wingers that any success Starmer has will be made through a rejection of socialism and a genuine progressive political agenda. Starmer wants left-wing Labour members to vote against their own political ideals. And if Starmer is successful in purging the party and political system of socialism, it will be the coming generations that will be most harmed.
Mike therefore askswhy people would vote for a party that doesn’t do what they want?
It’s a good question. I’m hoping that there’s a way the left can make a comeback from the leadership’s grossly anti-democratic attempts to keep them out of power permanently. But I also think that if Starmer and the other Blairites carry on, people will start looking at alternative groups and parties promoting goals that once upon a time Labour would have stood for. Like defending the NHS. I don’t trust Starmer to do it, and expect that as soon as private healthcare companies start sponsoring Labour, like they did Blair, he’ll suddenly be all for privatising it. There is, however, or was, a specific party set up to defend it – the NHS Action Party. If Starmer’s Labour doesn’t defend the NHS, then I suspect that people will start embarrassing him by voting for it, or parties like it, instead.
Just as they did so against Blair, and just as they did against Starmer and Johnson in Newark and Sherwood.
One of the major stories this week has been that the Conservatives have voted to allow the water companies to dump raw sewage into our rivers and seas. This is, as Mike has pointed out, threatening to bring back cholera, and no doubt many other lethal Victorian diseases. Mike and the good peeps on Twitter have put up a list of the various Tory thugs, who passed this noxious motion, and the excuses have started already. Mike’s local MP, Fay Jones, was telling everyone that the amendment would cost the taxpayer £600 billion or so to replace the Victorian sewage infrastructure. But it wouldn’t. It would cost the government that, who might have to raise taxes as a result. But it shouldn’t be raised from them. The cost would have to be borne by the privatised water companies. I remember when the water companies were privatised under Thatcher the head of the local company down here in Bristol, Hooper, was all in favour and declared that it would allow them to raise more money for investment. So if any expense is involved, it should come from their profits, shareholder dividends and customers, not the British taxpayer. Jones also complained that people attacking the government’s actions over sewage obscured the brilliant work they were already doing reducing discharge from storm overflows. But there’s precious little evidence of this, either. So once again, the Tories are lying.
This was after David Davies started crying that he was being abused and subjected to online hate, because Catrin Maby had asked him an awkward question about allowing untreated effluent into our watercourses. It’s deeply distasteful coming after the murder of David Amess, a murder that seems to be an act of premeditated Islamist terror rather than caused by online hate. So once again, we have the Tories wrecking peoples’ health but claiming they are somehow the innocent victims, while presenting precisely no evidence to support their assertion.
But as nasty as all this is, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
When Brexit was first being mooted critics warned that once Britain was out of the EU and their environmental regulations no longer applied, the Tories would allow this and other abuses to happen. It was even shown in a short-lived cartoon strip in Private Eye. This was ‘The Ukippers’, and featured a fiercely patriotic couple who believed that everything would be absolutely brilliant once we have left the EU. One edition showed the two celebrating the new, higher environmental standards we were promised after Brexit by running into the sea for a swim. The two were undeterred by the fact that the water was foul and brown, and filled with what Billy Connolly used to describe as ‘jobbies’. Despite the foul state of the water around them, the pair were still convinced that it was much cleaner than it had been under the EU. It’s an attitude I’m afraid will probably come true at some point, as Tory voters repeat the lie that somehow it’s all cleaner, which I’m sure that Boris and his cronies will tell at some point.
In fact the Tories have a history of allowing pollution into the water. It started in the 1980s the moment Thatcher – or was John Major? – decided to privatise it. I can remember reading articles in Private Eye, once again, about how the Tories were passing legislation to strip the National Rivers Authority of its powers to prosecute the newly privatised water companies for pollution. I’ve got a feeling similar legislation to reduce its powers even further has also been passed. And there have also been a series of scandals, also covered by Private Eye, in which various water companies were caught violating environmental regulations with the dumping of sewage or chemicals into rivers.
This latest attack on the British environment was predicted, because the Tories have been doing it for decades.
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