Breaking News from Arise: Firefighters Vote Overwhelmingly for Strike Action

Just got this from the Arise Festival of Left-wing Ideas:

‘BREAKING: Firefighters deliver emphatic mandate for industrial action

Hello David

We are writing to share the breaking news that Firefighters have delivered a decisive mandate for strike action, with 88% voting Yes on a 73% turnout. You can:

• Read the FBU news release here
• Watch & share Matt Wrack explain the result here
• Hear Riccardo La Torre of the FBU on what the results mean and how we can offer our solidarity at #BuildingtheFightback online this Wednesday (Feb,1) at 6.30pm. Full details are below.

Yours in solidarity.
The Arise & Labour Assembly volunteers.‘

This is so overwhelming that the vote would still be valid and binding even under Sunak’s proposed cruddy legislation to stifle strikes. We’ve seen the firefighters before lock horns with the government over pay and redundancies. This is shows how massively discontented they are, and with good reason.

So maximum support to our firefighters, and out with Sunak and the Tories.

Short Guardian Video of Corbyn’s Election Promises

Labour launched its manifesto yesterday, as did the Tories, and the newspapers and TV were full of it. The Guardian, however, produced this little video in which Corbyn presents the party’s manifesto promises in just a minute and a half.

The Labour leader says

‘Labour’s manifesto is a manifesto for hope. That is what this document is. We will unleash a record investment blitz. And it will rebuild our schools, our hospitals, care homes and the housing we so desperately need. Every town, every city and every region. So a Labour government will ensure that big oil and gas corporations that profit from heating up our planet will shoulder the burden and pay their fair share through a just transition tax. We’ll get Brexit sorted within six months. We will secure a sensible deal that protects manufacturing and the Good Friday Agreement. And then put it to a public vote alongside the option of remaining in the EU. And yes, be clear, we will scrap university tuition fees.’ 

At this point there is massive cheering from his audience. He goes on

‘We are going to give you the very fastest, full fiber broadband for free. That is real change. And Labour will scrap Universal Credit.’

More cheering and applause. Corbyn’s speech ends with

‘It’s time for real change. Thank you!’

The crowd rises to give him a standing ovation.

Okay, so this is a very short, very edited version of Corbyn’s speech, just giving the briefest outline of the party’s policies. But it shows that Corbyn’s policies offer real change after forty years of Thatcherism, which has decimated our schools, NHS and public services and destroyed people’s health and lives through savage welfare cuts intended to punish the poor so that the rich could profit. All of which was also carried out by the smarmy face of Blair’s New Labour, who tried presenting themselves as some kind of caring alternative to the Tories, while taking over their odious policies and actually going further.

And as Corbyn says, this is a manifesto of hope. Zelo Street has written a post comparing it with the radical changes that set up the welfare state by Clement Attlee’s 1940s Labour government and their manifesto, Let Us Face the Future. The Sage of Crewe describes how Attlee’s reforms, which set up the post-war consensus, were destroyed by Thatcher, leaving nothing but poverty and run-down, struggling public services, including the NHS, so that the rich 1% can get even richer.

But he writes

Today, Labour brought something to the General Election campaign that recalled the message of 1945, and that something was hope. Hope that students of whatever age would not be saddled with tens of thousands of Pounds of debt for years after graduating. Hope that the punitive benefit sanctions régime would no longer target the sick and disabled. Hope that a living wage really would be enough to live on.

Hope that those out-of-towners without cars would not be effectively trapped in their homes at weekends and in the evening because of public transport cuts. Hope that the NHS would be able to cope without leaving emergency admissions on trolleys in corridors. Hope that someone would, at last, take the Climate Emergency seriously. Hope that the scourge of Universal Credit would at last be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Hope that the victims of press abuse would finally see the long-overdue completion of the Leveson Inquiry, so shamelessly ducked by the Tories in exchange for favourable coverage. Hope that bad housing, and bad landlords, would finally become a thing of the past. Hope that the Police and Fire services will be able to cope, giving security and peace of mind to everyone. Hope of an end to homelessness.

Hope that education will be resourced properly, that teachers will be supported in their work, that pupils will not have to ask parents or guardians to help pay for what should be classroom essentials. Hope of real action to challenge racism in all its forms. Hope for 1950s women that pension injustice will be acknowledged – and tackled. Hope that the divisions caused by the 2016 EU referendum can finally be healed.

He goes on to predict how the people, who have profited from the poverty and misery Thatcherism, and particularly the austerity imposed by the Tories and Lib Dems over the past 9-10 years, will fight to prevent these hopes being realised. He points out that

that alone tells you whose interest is served by the decade of decay that has ravaged so many towns and cities across the country.

And concludes

‘Labour has promised us hope. Let Us Face The Future Once More.’

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/11/let-us-face-future-once-more.html

This is all precisely what we need, which is why the establishment will do everything they can to prevent ordinary people getting the government, a Labour government, that they deserve. Because, as the Galaxy’s dictator Servalan once said in the BBC SF series Blake’s 7, ‘Hope is very dangerous’.

 

 

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.

Kevin Logan on Grenfell Tower, Justice and Patriotism

This is an angry, impassioned rant by Kevin Logan against the gross social injustice of Tory Britain that has produced the Grenfell Tower fire. Logan’s a male feminist, who makes vlogs attacking the Alt-Right and Men’s Rights movements and their lunacies.

Logan begins the video by discussing the fire itself. He mentions how Grenfell Tower is an area of low-income housing in Kensington, one of the richest places in Britain. As it is a pocket of low class housing – he calls it ‘slum’ – amidst extreme wealth, the local council decided to cover it in cladding, so that the richer residents wouldn’t have to look at it. The fire spread rapidly because this cladding was inflammable. The disaster was entirely avoidable, as fire-proof cladding was only an extra £2 per unit more expensive. Thus it would have cost a mere £5,000 more to protect these people from the horror that engulfed them.

He also queries the official figures for the number of victims. At the time he made the video, the official death toll was 30. This, he states, will be revised upwards. It may well go over 100, and some have suggested that the real figure will be over 300. We don’t know at the moment, as the government has decided that it’s politically sensitive and so have slapped a D notice on it.

He lays the blame for this tragedy firmly on the Tories, and specifically David Cameron, George Osborne, Theresa May and Boris Johnson. George Osborne is responsible, as he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who launched the Tories’ austerity policies. David Cameron was the Prime Minister, who stated clearly in 2012 that he was against the culture of health and safety. He therefore was determined to repeal the ‘red tape’, which means the laws actually protecting humans beings. And Theresa May is responsible because she cut emergencies and the number of fire stations in London when she was in charge of the Home Office. As for Boris Johnson, he made the situation worse by cutting the number of counsellors available to help fire fighters get over the horrors they’ve seen. There were 14 of them before he took office as mayor of London, and those weren’t enough. But Boris then went and reduced them to two.

Logan states quite clearly that austerity kills. Not just through cuts to the emergency services, but also in cuts to hospitals and the welfare state. He also states that this country needs to decide what it is. Either we’re a nation too poor to afford to give decent cladding that will protect people for a mere £5,000, or we’re a nation so rich we can afford to give billions in tax cuts to millionaires. Not to mention the fact that we’re spending another £100 billion on nuclear weapons. He states that he isn’t going to get into the debate about nuclear weapons, only that apparently we can’t afford to feed and shelter the poor, but we can find money for nuclear weapons, and bombing brown folk elsewhere in the world.

He also informs his viewers how Jeremy Corbyn attempted to introduce legislation to protect people in poor quality housing, but 311 Tory MPs voted against it. This included 80, who were private landlords. This was a massive conflict of interest, which should never have been allowed to happen. And the media are complicit in it because they have remained silent on it.

Over half of the video is Logan discussing patriotism, and the question, often asked, whether he is patriotic. He states that when a tragedy like this occurs, no, he can’t be patriotic. Not for a country that cares more for the rich, than to spend £5,000 stopping poor people from being burned alive – or, rather, killed by smoke inhalation, in their beds. He states very clearly that there needs to be riots about this, and for those responsible to be properly prosecuted. He doesn’t know where legal responsibility for this tragedy lies, with local council or elsewhere, but a large number of people need to be prosecuted, far larger than a small number of sacrificial lambs. He states that corporate manslaughter needs to be taken far more seriously in this country. The politicians responsible should be given absolutely no peace until they either resign or pass the necessary legislation to protect people against further tragedies like this.

He also predicts that the Tories will find some way of tricking people out of their homes. They’ve said they won’t, and that the residents will be rehoused in the borough, but they will do it anyway. Logan states that it is wrong that there are people, who are homeless, while there are mansions, owned by the rich, that are going empty. The people made homeless by the fire could be housed in them, and the state could pay for their accommodation. But this won’t happen, because the rich always come first.

He says that he isn’t interested in what we claim to be, or what we were, but what we are and will be, before he will say he’s patriotic. He doesn’t hate the country, but we have to stop being a Tory vassal state. And Theresa May needs to go. If, however, we want to be a country where the rich come before stopping the poor die, then as far as he concerned, you can burn the country to the ground.

I agree with nearly everything he says here – about the twisted system of values we have in our society, where the profits of the rich come before human life, and where invading nations in the developing world for the benefit of multinationals is far more important than tackling the poverty back in Britain. As Mike and other disability rights bloggers – DPAC, Stilloaks, Johnny Void and many others have shown time and again, austerity is killing tens of thousands each year. There is absolutely no question about it. And neither should there be any question about who is responsible for this carnage as well. It’s the Tories.

I reject the call to riot, and his angry rejection of patriotism. Rioting only results in local residents having their lives and property threatened and damaged. It doesn’t threaten the politicians and corporations ultimately responsible for the iniquities against which the riots are aimed. And it allows the Tory press to dismiss those protesting as thugs and extremists. We’ve already seen it happen this weekend, when a peaceful crowd spontaneously invaded Kensington council offices to make their voices heard. No-one rioted, there was no violence, and no begging. But that didn’t stop the media and Tory press from claiming there was. All to frighten the millions watching and reading the papers away from supporting them.

As for patriotism, I’m a patriot in the sense that I want the best for my country and its people. There is still much that is good in this country. But its government is mendacious and corrupt. And the very people, who insist that we all be patriotic, are usually those responsible for the injustices that mar it. Like the Tories under Thatcher, who made much about how they stood for Britain and patriotism. Or the right-wing nationalists in the NF, EDL, BNP and similar organisations.

There’s a lesson here for the Alt-Right on why many people in the West don’t feel patriotic. According to the Alt-Right and similar right-wing ideologues, it’s all due to ‘cultural Marxism’. The Frankfurt School has undermined western self-confidence in order to destroy its culture, and place everyone under the Communist heel. It’s also because of ‘cultural Marxism’ that feminism is making such inroads to the point that men are being treated unjustly.

No, ‘cultural Marxism’, if it even exists, doesn’t have anything to do with the rejection of patriotism by many in the contemporary West. It’s gross injustices like the Grenfell Tower fire. Decent people are outraged by a social system that has gives such massive, disproportionate power to a rich minority, and has allowed the poor, non-Whites and women to be mistreated and oppressed. But I very much doubt that this obvious fact will make much impression on them, as they’re not going to listen.

More on the Government Falsification of the Figures for the Deaths from Grenfell Tower

Mike has this evening put up another piece about the figures for the number of people, who have died in the Grenfell Tower fire. The Met police have now said that the number of people believed to have been killed is 79. Mike reasons from this that there are a further 382 still missing, as the block had 600 residents. 65 were rescued, and 74 are in hospital.

There is an appeal for residents who are well, but who have not yet made themselves known to the authorities to come forward.

However, as Mike points out in his article, many people are convinced that the authorities are deliberately underestimating the fatalities. He has a video in the post, where people say that they have seen many more bodies than have been officially counted.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/19/grenfell-tower-death-toll-up-to-79-with-382-still-missing-or-are-they/

In an earlier post, Mike suggested that a true estimate of the number of people, as suggested by EvolvePolitics, might be given by taking the total number of residents and subtracting the numbers for those, who had been rescued and were in hospital. At the time EvolvePolitics tweeted this, it was believed thirty people had been officially declared dead, so the probably figure for the numbers of people killed in the blaze is 461.

One of the people posting about this on social media, Gemma-Fox-Official, claimed that she had been told by two of the firefighters who tackled this inferno, that there were many more bodies recovered than have been officially acknowledged. According to her, they said it was three tents full of them. The firefighters informed her, she says, that they were ordered to count only those people who physically died in the building. If they leaped from it, and fell to their deaths, they were not counted in the official death toll.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/19/evidence-mounts-against-the-authorities-over-the-grenfell-tower-disaster-strong-language/

If this is true, then it’s truly revolting. It means that, in order to keep power, the Tories are once again lying about the numbers their policies have killed. It’s frankly another denial of justice.

These rumours may well be wrong, but considering the way the Tories have massively denied and then falsified other mortality statistics – such as for the number of disabled people, who have died after being found fit and well by Atos, they are all too plausible.

Short Video of Jeremy Corbyn Talking to the Victims of Grenfell Tower Fire

This is a short video from RT I found on YouTube of Jeremy Corbyn’s visit to one of the community centres housing the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. Corbyn states that this is a time of great stress, but promises that he will do everything to get to the bottom of it, and says that he will leave them to raise questions about it in parliament. He also praises the community spirit which pulled everyone there together.

And shortly before the end, he talks to a little girl with purple dreadlocks, who’s come up to see him.

During his career, Corbyn has always shown his solidarity with the poor, marginalised and oppressed, and I have absolutely no doubt that he will indeed do his utmost for those poor souls.

His dignified words and quiet solidarity shame Theresa May, who really didn’t want to meet the fire’s victims. She was happy, though, to go to see the council, whose penny pinching savings resulted in the seriously unsafe building that finally burst into flames so horrifically.

I’m not really surprised. May does not like speaking to or meeting the general public. She far prefers closed meetings, like those she held during the election, where all the individuals are picked members of the local Tory community association. And where all the questions from the press have been vetted beforehand.

When she was finally shamed into going to see the victims, they terrified her with their sheer anger, and she more or less ran to her car.

But these people have every right to be furious. They’ve lost everything – family, friends, neighbours, their homes and possessions. They’re social housing tenants and among the poorest people in London. They have been shabbily treated by a Conservative-led council in one of London’s wealthiest boroughs, who were apparently hoping to clear them out to gentrify the area.

There are serious questions which need to be asked about the multiple failures of government, that resulted in this horrific disaster. Not least among them should be Boris Johnson’s decision to close ten fire stations, and waste public money buying two water cannons, which cannot be used in Britain.

And just as Theresa May and the Tories are doing everything they can to wriggle out answering them, I have every faith that Jeremy Corbyn will do everything he can to give them and their supporters up and down the country the answers they need.

As for May, the best thing she and her government can now do is accept complete responsibility and resign.

Thoughts and Prayers to the Victims and Emergency Teams of the Grenfell Tower Fire

Like the rest of the country, I was shocked and horrified by the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower in London. I have also been profoundly moved by the great community spirit of the victims. The people of the block were of all ethnicities, cultures and religions, but they all pulled together to support each other escaping from this horrific event. I also have nothing but admiration for the courage, professionalism and sheer heroism of the fire fighters and other first responders, who did what they could to save people from this conflagration.

I therefore send my thoughts and prayers to the victims and rescue workers, and the various charities that worked to give them somewhere to sleep after their homes were destroyed, and were collecting to provide for them after they lost everything in the fire.

I hope they will be housed soon, and will get satisfaction from the Kensington Council and this despicable Tory government, who have passed the legislation that allowed this to happen.

Mike has put up several fascinating posts about it, but one of these is particularly suitable for this post. It’s simply of a sweat/T-shirt on which someone has written their message of love to the victims. You can see it at:

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/16/this-image-speaks-for-itself/

Guy Debord’s Cat on the Scum and the Heil’s Smear of Corbyn as Supporter of Terrorism

Yesterday the French philosophical feline, Guy Debord’s Cat, put up a great article rightly condemning the Scum and the Daily Heil for claiming that Jeremy Corbyn is somehow a supporter of terrorism. This follows leaked information that MI5 kept a file on him in the 1980s because he, along with many other members of the Labour party and the Left at the time, advocated talking to the IRA in order to end the cycle of violence in Northern Ireland.

I’ve already posted a couple of pieces about this smear. It also appeared in the Torygraph and the Sunday Torygraph, as well as the Scum and Mail. Buddy Hell describes how the Sun’s editorial column, ‘The Sun Says’ claimed that innocent people were murdered because Corbyn and John McConnell ‘sucked up to the IRA’. Mr Hell states that this was an attempt to make Corbyn appear somehow responsible for Monday nights horrific terrorist attack in Manchester.

Equally grotesque was the cartoon by the Daily Mail’s ‘Mac’, real name Stanley McMurty. This shows a couple peering out from behind their curtains as a couple of men with Kalashnikovs and black ski masks head up the drive. Below is the hilarious caption, “Oh dear. Will you answer the door? I think they’re canvassing for Jeremy Corbyn”.

The Cat describes the Sun’s attack on Corbyn as what it is: libel. He says

isn’t journalism or anything like it. It’s a blatant smear; a character assassination that is based entirely upon a historical revisionism. But The Cat has a question: who signed this off? This is evidently libellous and we know Murdoch has pockets that are as deep and as wide as the Pacific Ocean, but did The S*n’s editorial team think it could swerve around the law? Clearly it did and the paper has learned nothing from the Leveson Report.

As for Mac’s wretched cartoon,

Mac can claim he’s being humorous, but it doesn’t wash: this is a blatant piece of propaganda dressed up as humour. In this, it is reminiscent of the cartoons found in Der Sturmer, the official newspaper of the Nazi Party (below).

Underneath is a cartoon from the Nazi newspaper showing a cowed, blonde ‘Europa’, being shown off by a stereotypical evil Jew to a stereotypically thuggish Black man. Unfortunately, this type of racism and the racist conspiracy theory it produced didn’t die when Hitler blew his brains out in the Berlin bunker. The real, anti-Semitic neo-Nazis really do believe that the Jews are promoting racial intermixing between Whites, Blacks and other people of colour in order to destroy the White race. This presumably includes the members of the Alt-Right screaming about ‘White genocide’ whenever they see a film or TV series with a non-White as the star. And especially if the lead is female.

The Cat goes on to make the point that

What is quite absent from the claims about Corbyn’s non-existent sympathy with terrorists, is any acknowledgement on the part of the media’s interviewers and commentators of the role of the British state in Loyalist violence. Worse, perhaps is the morbid nostalgia that seems to accompany these claims. It’s as though the Good Friday Agreement never happened and the power-sharing government never existed. Instead, what we’re treated to are selected fragments of Tory memory larded with a narrative that’s been constructed from misrepresentations and outright lies. For the Tories and others, the Provisional IRA is still active and still bombing the country. Meanwhile, the Loyalist paramilitaries are treated, in not so many words, as heroes or simply not mentioned.

He also points out that May is trying to look like a stateswoman again, after her party cut the police, army and firefighters over the past seven years. He concludes

Who’s the bigger threat to the country? I’d say it’s Theresa May and the British press. (Emphasis mine).

https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/this-is-not-journalism-or-anything-like-it/

There’s an abundance of evidence showing that the British secret state colluded with Loyalist terrorists in Ulster, and that the SAS operated in secret there, beyond the control of the regular army, as a death squad murdering prominent republicans. The parapolitics magazine, Lobster, has published any number of articles on this over the years.

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/

Regarding the question of who signed off on the Scum’s smear of Corbyn, it may well have been the paper’s editor, without any referral to the Dirty Digger himself. One of the facts that emerged about Murdoch’s sordid empire has been that, while Murdoch has tried to present himself as being a ‘hands-off proprietor’, he still bears the responsibility for the actions of his underlings. They’re very carefully selected to do exactly what he wants them to do. He doesn’t have to interfere in the day to day running of his empire of filth, because he knows they’ll do exactly what he wants anyway.

And in cases where the Digger’s own views are required, Murdoch has a very cavalier attitude to libel. It was reported by one of his underlings that when the question of libel comes up, Murdoch used to look over to his legal advisor, who would hold up the number of fingers representing the thousands of pounds or so that News International would have to pay in fines and damages if the victim sued. Murdoch would take note of the figure, and if it was low enough compared to the number of papers he hoped to sell with the smear, authorise its publication.

As the judge tells Norman Stanley Fletcher in the voiceover in the opening titles of the Beeb’s prison comedy, Porridge, he’s ‘an habitual criminal’. Unfortunately, unlike the character played by Ronnie Barker, he has never been sent to HM Prison Slade for five years.

The Sun itself also has form for publishing racist material. Way back in the 1990s, or the first years of this century, Private Eye reported that the Scum had had 19 judgements against it by the Press Complaints Commission on this score. This includes its cartoons. One of the most noxious showed a couple peering at a line of pigs marching in the street waving placards. The caption read ‘Now the pigs are protesting against being compared to Arabs’.

And Mac in the Daily Mail has also published other racist, or racially offensive, cartoons. This seems to clash with the effort of at least one of their cartoonists to appear hip and bohemian. I remember a documentary on TV back in the 1990s, which featured the Heil and showed its cartoonist at the time. From what I recall, he seemed to be dressed in the Beatnik style of 1950s intellectuals. This made an impression, as the Daily Mail is anything but hip and bohemian. It’s ferociously anti-intellectual to the point where I get the distinct impression that Paul Dacre and the entire editorial staff would have a fit if they caught someone in the office reading Sartre or any of the French phenomenologists.

Also, the title of the Sun’s editorial column is surely a misnomer. The Scum has slavered, screamed, shrieked, yelled, ranted, raved, accused, denounced, thundered and harangued, but it has never, ever merely ‘said’ anything.

And through its history, it has spread lies and smears about the Labour party and its leaders. It’s started doing it again, doing to Corbyn precisely what it did to Michael Foot, Ken Livingstone and the others back in 1983.

Don’t be taken in by the lies and hysteria.
Vote Labour on June 8th for a genuinely safer Britain. Without the Sun’s and Daily Mail’s xenophobia and ultra-nationalism.

Theresa May Was Told in 2015 that Her Cuts Were Dangerous

Mike over at Vox Political has posted up another excellent article showing that Theresa May’s cuts to the police force have seriously weakened it, leaving the nation more vulnerable to crime and terrorist attack. Like the one a few days ago in Manchester, that has claimed 22 lives and 59 or so people wounded.

The Police Federation warned her that the cuts had damaged national security, and made the threat of an attack like the one in Paris more likely.

Mike has also posted up a tweet from Andrew Scattergood, containing a video in which Theresa May is told by a former police officer that her cuts are a danger. The police officer had been given an award by her for his services to community policing. He tells her that he left the force in 2012 because he could not stand any longer what the Tories’ cuts had done to it. He describes community policing as having collapsed, including their intelligence gathering. He states very plainly that this is dangerous and ultimately a threat to national security.

May took no notice, and laughed these warnings off as ‘scaremongering’. No doubt with that infuriating shake of the head and irritating, condescending laugh she makes when Corbyn or another opposition MP has just made an entirely accurate criticism and she’s trying to laugh it all off as ridiculous.

Corbyn and the Labour party announced their plans to make Britain safer a week ago. These were

* 500 more border security guards.
* 3,000 more prison officers.
* 3,000 more fire officers.
* 10,000 more police officers.
* Spending 2 1/2 per cent of GDP on defence.
* Renewal of Trident.
* Banning arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
* £10 billion spent on cybersecurity.
* More financial support for veterans.
* And he would use Trident to retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/25/heres-the-moment-in-2015-theresa-may-was-told-her-police-cuts-were-dangerous/

These are all excellent policies, which reverse or put the lie to some of the claims about the Labour party. Like the accusation that somehow, because Corbyn isn’t a xenophobe like the Tories and UKIP, he’s complacent about the threat of terrorism from immigrants.

Apart from spending more on the police, he’s also right to want more prison and fire officers. Remember the scandals a few years ago when our prisons were in a crisis, because there weren’t enough police officers? And the way the fire brigade tried to point out that the cuts to them and the Tories’ attacks on their pensions would make people more at risk?

And the ban on arms sales to the Saudis is an excellent idea. Patrick Cockburn is in the I today with an article pointing out how the Saudis are partly responsible for promoting terrorist attacks like the one in Manchester through their efforts to export Wahhabism, the extremely intolerant version of Islam that is their official religion. Apart from banning all non-Muslim religions, the Saudis also prohibit other Islamic creeds. A few years ago, the Sharif of Mecca declared the Shi’a an enemy of Islam and ‘worthy of death’, chilling words advocating genocide. And Saudi law makes atheism illegal, defining it as ‘terrorism’. This is grotesque. It’s horrifically unfair to persecute individuals, who don’t believe in the Almighty but are law-abiding and peaceful, by claiming that they are somehow equivalent to those, who kill and maim, simply because the regime despises their religious views.

And the Saudis have been active sponsors of real terrorism around the globe themselves. It was only the other year that Obama finally released the suppressed 24 pages of the official report on 9/11, that concluded that the terrorists had links to the Saudi government. The Saudis, including the current regent, Salman bin Salman, were funding and arming ISIS in Iraq and Syria. They only stopped because ISIS then turned against them, and released a video urging the Saudi people to rise up and topple the monarchy.

But this will not be acknowledged by the authorities, because the Saudis control the world’s oil industry and western arms companies are making too much money selling them weapons, that they then use on innocents, like the civilians killed by Saudi bombing in Yemen.

I’ve no doubt that in the next couple of days, May and her vile horde will be running around trying to convince everyone that only they can protect Britain from terrorists through ‘strong and stable’ government. But in fact, May’s position on many things is weak and wobbly, and the cuts she was personally responsible for have grievously damaged national security.

Don’t believe the Tory propaganda.
Vote Labour on June 8th for a stronger and fairer Britain.

John Stuart Mill on the Right to Free Speech, vs. IDS and the Coalition

John Stuart Mill is one of the great founders of the modern concepts of political liberty, democracy and equality for women. His book, On Liberty, became the classic statement of Liberal ideology to the point where it was given to the leader of the Liberal party on his accession. He saw parliament as supremely important as the organ of government in which every opinion present in the country should be expressed and debated, so that politicians should form and adjust their policies accordingly. He wrote

‘In addition to this [i.e., the function of control], the Parliament has an office, no inferior … in importance; to be at once the nation’s Committee of Grievances, and its Congress of Opinions; an arena in which not only the general opinion of the nation, but that of every section of it, and as far as possible of every eminent individual whom it contains, can produce itself in full light and challenge discussion; where every person in the country may count upon finding somebody who speaks him mind well or better than he could speak it himself – not to friends and partisans exclusively, but in the face of opponents, to be tested by adverse controversy; where those whose opinion is overruled, feel satisfied that it is heard, and set aside not by a mere act of will, but for what are thought superior reasons, and commend themselves as much to the representatives of the majority of the nation; wh4ere every party or opinion in the country can muster in strength, and be cured of any illusion concerning the number or power of its adherents; where the opinion which prevails in the nation makes itself manifest as prevailing, and marshals its hosts in the presence of the government, which is thus enabled and compelled to give way to it on the mere manifestation, without the actual employment, of its strength; where statesmen can assure themselves far more certainly than by any signs, what elements of opinion and power are growing, and what declining, and are enabled to shape their measures with some regard not solely to present exigencies, but to tendencies in progress. Representative assemblies are often taunted by their enemies with being places of mere talk and bavardage. There has seldom been more misplaced derision. I know not how a representative assembly can more usefully employ itself than in talk, when the subject of talk is the great public interests of the country, and every sentence of it represents the opinion either of some important body of persons in the nation, or of an individual in whom some such body have reposed their confidence. A place where every interest and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause even passionately pleaded in the face of government and of all other interests and opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply, or state clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no other purpose, one of the most important political institutions that can exist anywhere, and one of the foremost benefits of free government. Such “talking” would never be looked upon with disparagement if it were not allowed to “doing”; which it never would, if assemblies knew and acknowledged that talking and discussion are their proper business, while doing, as the result of discussion, is the task not of a miscellaneous body, but of individuals specially trained to it; that the fit office of an assembly is to see that those individuals are honestly and intelligently chosen, and to interfere no further with them, except by unlimited latitude of suggestion and criticism, and by applying or withholding the final seal of national assent … Nothing but the restriction of the function of representative bodies within these rational limits will enable the benefits of popular control to be enjoyed in conjunction with the no less important requisites (growing ever more important as human affairs increase in scale and complexity) of skilled legislation and administration.’

He also made it very clear that he had some sympathy with Socialist aspirations for the improvement of humanity and the destruction of the class system. He stated

‘In short, I was a democrat, but not the least of a Socialist. We [i.e., he and his wife] were now [i.e., in the early 1850’s] much less democrats than I had been, because as long as education continues to be so wretchedly imperfect, we dreaded the ignorance and especially the selfishness and brutality of the mass; but our ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists. While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most Socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to. The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to untie the greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labour …

… and we welcomed with the greatest pleasure and interest all socialistic experiments by select individuals (such as the Cooperative Societies) which, whether they succeeded or not, could not but operate as a most useful education of those who took part in them, by cultivating their capacity of acting upon motives pointing directly to the general good, or making them aware of the defects which render them and others incapable of doing so’.

So how does the Coalition measure up to these ideals? Not very well at all. Indeed, there is more than a little of a ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of their conception of the value of parliament. The Coalition has just passed the gagging law, which means that unless you are an approved corporate lobbyist, you may not approach parliament to voice your opinions and concerns. Unless you’re a prospective Corporate sponsor, and there’s money and directorships in it, Cameron and Clegg really don’t want to hear what you think or have to say. They also don’t want to see you, either. Legitimate, democratic displays of protest can now be banned as a nuisance to the people down whose road you are marching. It’s particularly dangerous in London, as BoJo has decided that, while he can’t find the money to pay the firemen to stop your house or business burning down, he can afford to buy watercannon to train on protesters. It’s a German watercannon, so perhaps its a bit too repressive for them. Back in the 1960s and 1970s their use in the Bundesrepublik was extremely controversial, after a protester was killed by one during demonstrations by the ‘extraparliamentary opposition’. I’ve got a feeling that incident fuelled the conviction that all too many Nazis had escaped justice at Nuremberg, and were still holding lucrative posts in the police, armed forces and civil service. BoJo likes to present himself as man of the people against Cameron, but his instincts are definitely with their oppressors and the watercannons are just two more weapons in his armoury.

Not only does the Coalition not want to have to discuss any nasty, disturbing and possibly liberal ideas in parliament, or see them on the streets, they also don’t want to have to answer to parliament or keep the people informed of the consequences of their policies either. IDS dragged his feet until the very last minute before attending the Work and Pensions Committee. When he did, ‘RTU’ appeared surrounded by bodyguards and armed police officers, just in case the members of the public in attendance said something unpleasant about him. Or cause a serious, life-changing injury to his dignity by throwing a custard pie at him, like someone did to Murdoch. As for non-interference by parliament in the way the officials charged with executing their public policies perform their duty, well, once again IDS fails to make the grade. He tried to get one of his subordinates to take the blame for his own mistakes.

It’s not just RTU that hasn’t read his Mill. The Information Commissioner hasn’t either. FOI requests for information on the number of people, who’ve died after being judged fit for work by ATOS have been repeatedly turned down. Why? They’re vexatious. IDS’ DWP has also refused to release information about this and similar issues on the grounds that it would cause opposition to their policies, and prevent those policies from being implemented. So much for believing that political ideas need to be discussed in parliament, and held up for criticism. Or as someone once said, ‘Arguments are upsetting and sometimes cause you to change your mind’. Or words to that effect.

As for Socialism, the Tories have been an enemy of this ever since Maggie Thatcher declared it was a nasty, foreign import that she was going to destroy. At first Cameron’s localism agenda looks like it might be approved by Mill, for the way he wanted public institutions like libraries and so on to be staffed by volunteers. Mill also lamented the way modern society left increasingly few posts without pay, where they individual would have the honour for working for the public good without material reward. However, under the Coalition, as under Blair, politicians have been all too keen to enjoy material benefits – increased pay, and lucrative posts with industry. It’s only those, who can’t afford to that are expected to work for nothing, like the increasing ranks of the unemployed on workfare. As for the destruction of the class system, and the division of the world into the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, that had already increased under Labour and the gap is even wider under the Coalition.

So, despite their talk about democracy and accountability, the Coalition has consistently acted against some of the most fundamental principles of democracy articulated by Mill, perhaps its greatest British exponent. In some ways this isn’t surprising coming from the Conservatives, who traditionally stood for the privileges of the ruling classes. Clegg, however, must take his credit for the way he and the others supporters of the free-market ‘Orange Book’ have done so much to destroy Mill’s political legacy and the enduring Liberal traditions in which they were raised, and which they have betrayed.