Official Invitation to Work in Britain Shown on Beeb Antiques Programme

A little while ago I put up a piece about a video posted by Simon Webb on his History Debunked channel about the Windrush migrants. Webb claimed that the travellers on board the ship weren’t actually invited into this country, but did so merely to take advantage of the opportunities made available to them. The ship hadn’t managed to sell all its cabins, and so offered them cheaply to anyone wishing to go to Blighty. This was the reason the first group of Black and Asian commonwealth migrants came to Britain. This has been challenged by some of the great commenters here, one of whom distinctly remembers Birmingham council advertising in the Caribbean for people willing to work on the buses. Further evidence supporting the official invitation of BAME workers from the Empire to work in Britain appeared the other day on one of the Beeb’s afternoon antiques shows. I’m afraid I can’t remember which one it was, but one of the members of the public, who appeared on the programme showing their prized possessions, was a lady with her father’s official invitation from the British authorities to come over here and work. The invitation was made in the name of Her Maj. She said that these had been issued when their very many jobs available. She said that the inclusion of the Queen on the official document had allowed her father to make an excellent rebuff to the racists questioning his presence in the country. When one of them asked him why he was over here, or why didn’t he go back to his own country, he waved the invitation in their face and replied that he had an official invite from the Queen. And you can’t really argue with that.

Vox Political on the Tories’ Proposed Privatisation of the Fire Service

Yesterday Mike put up a piece showing precisely what the fire service would like if Brandon Lewis gets his way and privatizes it. His piece follows an article in Mirror Online. The Mirror obtained a letter in which Lewis calls for new laws, which would allow fire and rescue organisations in England to contract these services out to other providers. This could result in all 46 fire and ambulance services being sold to private industry. Lewis says in his letter that he realizes this would be controversial, but defends it as it would give the fire and rescue authorities more choice over whom to contract their services.

As Mike shows, it’s a rubbish idea, and one that will ultimately cost lives. He gives a very short scenario portraying how the privatized service would operate. A householder would phone up their local fire brigade to ask for help. They’d then get a reply telling them who the current provider is, which firm is currently sponsoring them, before finally asking them how they’re going to pay for it. By this time, the fire’s out of control and their house is burning down. The private fire service then informs the customer that they’ll bill their descendants.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/09/14/want-to-know-what-brandon-lewiss-privatised-fire-service-will-look-like-itll-look-like-this/

This plan is, of course, pure idiocy, and Mike’s absolutely right about how it would operate. This is another idea the Tories have stolen from Rothbard’s wretched Libertarians. Rothbard was an anarcho-capitalist, who believed that all state functions should be taken over by private industry, including the courts. They were solidly behind Ronald Reagan, and it was the Libertarians in the Conservative party who formed the party’s base for Thatcher.

Obviously, while Thatcher wanted to privatise everything that wasn’t nailed down, as a believer in a ‘strong state’ she definitely wouldn’t want to do anything so radical as sell off the courts or the armed forces, although the Tories had a pretty good go at selling off the forces’ support infrastructure, like various barracks, as revealed at the time by Private Eye. And way back c. 1991/1992 Virginia Bottomley wrote a glowing piece the Depress or Heil looking forward to the privatization of the police and their replacement with private security forces.

And the privatized future Mike portrays in his article is all too plausible. It’s what happened in the past. Viewers of the antique shows on the Beeb, like Bargain Hunt, will recall that every so often the presenters came across a house plaque dating from the 18th century. These plaques were to show that the householder was registered with an insurance company against fire. If fire broke out, the local fire brigade would come round to put the fire out. But they did this only for those, who were insured with them. If you weren’t insured, then they let your house burn down.

The Tories have been trying to cut down on the fire service for a very long time as part of their general campaign of cuts, including to the firemen and women’s pay, conditions and pensions. And the fire brigade union has fought against them. This looks like another attempt to break the brigade’s resistance by selling it off to a private contractor, just like the Tories have done to the personnel and their unions in other sectors of the state.

I don’t doubt that they’ll present this as a new way the brigade can raise necessary funds outside of taxpayer’s money, just like the part-privatization of the NHS was intended to allow GPs and other service providers to raise money from private industry. It’ll also be presented as still giving the people of a particular area uniform coverage while in fact removing the state’s obligation to do so, just as Andrew lansley’s vile Health and Social Care Law of 2012 removes the state’s obligation to provide health care. And just as the Tories want to introduce and increase charging within the NHS, so they’ll introduce charges into the fire and rescue services.

The result will be tax cuts for the very rich, as usual, while the people in the fire services will be placed on drastically reduced pay and conditions, and those unable to afford private fire protection will be left to fend for themselves. Just the Tories have done right across the entire economy.

Video of Jacob Rees-Mogg as Greedy and Litigious Child

This little video comes from I Am Incorrigible on YouTube. It’s from one of the breakfast TV shows, where they’re discussing the embarrassment caused to the Tories of the publication of a letter from the twelve-year old Jacob Rees-Mogg. Mogg had been interviewed by the BBC, and was demanding payment. If the Beeb wasn’t going to satisfy him, they’d get a letter from his solicitor.

And then they play the clip of the interview, and it’s really depressing. It’s audio only, I’m afraid, but nevertheless it shows what Mogg was like then. He states he likes money, and if he has it, he either invests it, or spends it on antique silverwork. He also wants to be the head of GEC. He aims to be the head of General Electric when he’s thirty, replacing Lord Weinstock. That is, unless Labour and Tony Benn nationalise it. But the Tories would then get back, and set everything to rights.

This might be a distortion, but it sounds very much like the young Rees-Mogg is driven by greed for money and corporate ambition. And he doesn’t seem to have any of the normal wishes and desires of boys of the same age. Quite a lot of kids have ambitions to be something really exciting, like sportsmen, or pop stars, TV celebrities or else go into the army. I don’t know, but I think some might still dream of being astronauts or engine drivers. Or inventors. I can remember wanting to be an astronomer or a great scientist, before I became more interested in history. As for spending money, a lot of ordinary children spent their allowances on pop records, comics, and sports kit.

To be the head of GEC is quite an ambition, but it’s dully adult. The young Rees-Mogg seems to have had all the usual childhood dreams crushed or smothered in him, so that his whole ambition is to be a corporate chief. And this is apart from his willingness to resort to litigation. Depressing.

First Windrush, Next Ugandan Asians?

If this is true, then it’s utterly despicable and really shows that no-one is safe from the Tories’ programme of racist deportations.

Mike in another of his posts reporting and commenting on the unjust deportation of Windrush migrants, at https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/04/24/nothing-has-changed-despite-their-claims-tory-racism-remains-in-place-for-everyone-apart-from-commonwealth-migrants/, included a tweet from Carole Hawkins. She posted

Ugandan Asians are next for deportation as reported on the Westminster Hour on R4 22/4/18. How far are the Tories going to take this?
Voting all Tory councillors out on May 3rd tells Tess her policies are cruel & her power base erodes, something Tories can’t stand. https://twitter.com/bassmadman/status/988329689885310977 …

Mike checked her source, and found that what she said was correct, at least according to the Beeb. He states

Carole Hawkins is absolutely correct. Listen to that evening’s edition of Westminster Hour and around 18 minutes into the programme you will hear: “The next group to be snared in this will be Ugandan Asians; people who were allowed to come here by Ted Heath when they were fleeing Idi Amin. And that is going to be another painful moment in the life of the government.”

It continues: “They arrived in 71-72 so we can expect to get that problem for the government in 2019-2020… This problem is not going to go away.”

Mike’s article is worth reading in total as it comments on the institutional racism behind May’s immigration policies. It’s not just the discrimination against the children of Windrush migrants. This includes the story of two brothers, who have had their lives wrecked by May’s decision that they, and others like them, aren’t British citizens but foreign residents, who should be deported. It’s also the very high rates of racism and racist abuse in the Border Control Force and aggressive policing by officers looking for Asian men with foreign passports.

But the possibility that the government has been thinking about doing the same to the Ugandan Asians is a new, particularly vile low, even by the Tories’ abysmal standards.

As Mike points out in his piece, the Ugandan Asians were expelled from their homeland by the country’s vicious dictator, Idi Amin. They were given sanctuary in Britain in 1971-2 by Ted Heath, after many other nations, including India, refused to take them in. Immigration was a very hot topic, I’ve read since then that many Tories thought Heath was risking electoral disaster by allowing them to come to Britain. But he did, and it’s undoubtedly to his credit, despite everything else he stood for as a Tory.

Way back in the 1990s our mother helped to run a small day centre for the elderly here in south Bristol. One of the guest speakers, who came in to talk to the seniors using the club was a member of Bristol’s Asian community. The man was also a Ugandan Asian. He told of his people’s expulsion by Amin. They were forced out of their homes and businesses and made to leave. And along the route out of the country, to the airport or wherever, there were roadblocks, the soldiers on which took the opportunity to rob the expellees of whatever they could. I think he said that you would have wept if you saw how they robbed and abused people. And I’ve no doubt he’s right. But, he continued, Ugandan Asians are grateful to Britain for taking them in.

I believe that the community also has its own museum, or at least a museum gallery devoted to them in one of the northern towns. I think I saw it featured a year or so ago on Bargain Hunt or one of the other related antiques programmes put out by the Beeb. That part of the programme and the gallery itself also covered the community’s expulsion and their arrival in Britain.

Now it seems that May and her vile crew have decided that they want to deny citizenship and expel the children of people, who have already endured one traumatic expulsion by a vicious dictator.

The Ugandan Asian community included professionals and businesspeople, and Britain has benefited from their hard work and skills. Now the Tories want to repay them and their gratitude towards Britain for giving them refuge, by throwing them out.

Absolutely disgraceful. As is the treatment of the Windrush generation. I’d even call it a national disgrace, because of how badly it reflects on Britain.

And for all her huffing and puffing, trying to put the blame on Labour, this all comes down to Cameron and Tweezer. May took the decision to destroy the landing permits, which would have allowed the Windrush children to prove their citizenship. She also secretly removed the legislation that protected them.

She’s a racist bully, picking on those members of the Black and Asian community she thinks she can brutalise and throw out without anyone noticing or complaining. Well, she’s wrong. And people are rightly outraged.

She should resign. Now. No ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. And if she doesn’t, parliament should work until she does. Because she has shown by her actions that she regards British citizenship not as a right, but as a gift that can be withdrawn at the whim of herself and the other racist monsters in her party. And until she goes, and proper regulations are put in place to correct this and stop it being inflicted on anyone else, no-one in this country is safe.

Get her out.