Ho ho! An article in yesterday’s I for Monday, 15th April 2019, might explain why the Sunset Times was so keen to try another anti-Semitism smear against the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn the day before. The article, entitled ‘Labour on course to win general election’ by Cahal Milmo reported the findings of a poll by the Sunday Torygraph that in a general election, Labour would defeat the Tories, taking 59 seats from them. The article ran
The Conservative Party faces being swept from power by Jeremy Corbyn with the loss of nearly 60 seats in the event of a general election, according to new polling.
Labour would become the largest party in the House of Commons with prominent Tories, including the Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd and arch Brexiteer Iain Duncan Smith at “high risk” of losing their seats.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the steep fall in support was being fueled by anger among Conservative voters at the party’s failure to deliver Brexit on 29th March, despite repeated promises by Theresa May that the date would not be changed.
Professor Sir John Curtice, president of the British Polling Council, told the paper that it appeared Leave voters were being drawn back to Ukip or Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
The “poll of polls” by Electoral Calculus, based on surveys of 8,561 people between 2 and 11 April, found that in the event of an immediate general election Labour would become the largest party with 296 seats against 259 for the Tories – a net loss of 59 MPs for Mrs May’s party.
But despite such a victory, Mr Corbyn would not automatically become prime minister – he could only form a government if he secured support from other parties such as the SNP.
“The Conservatives’ failure so far to secure Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union is at risk of costing them dearly,” said Sir John. (p. 6).
While it’s refreshing to read a story that predicts Labour winning a general election, obviously it’s still incredibly biased. It comes from the Torygraph, and follows that rag’s pro-Brexit line. But while I don’t doubt that the Tories’ continued incompetence, factionalism and May’s stubborn determination to hang on to power and force through the same tired, discredited and utterly unwanted deal, there are other powerful factors that might bring about a Labour victory.
Firstly, as Mike has also pointed out this week, Remainer Tories are also being drawn towards the Tinge Group, Change UK, thus disproving their claims to be ‘centrist’ Labour. And secondly, Labour’s policies are massively popular. People want the health service renationalized and restored, electricity, water and the railways taken back into state ownership, the trade unions strengthened, workers given better employment rights and places in the boardroom, as well as the creation of a proper welfare state. All the policies that the Tories and the rest of the neoliberal establishment hate with a passion, and revile as just a return to the policies of the 1970s.
But Labour are very definitely ahead in the polls, but rather than admit that this is because the Party is genuinely popular and neoliberalism and Thatcherism are dead, zombie economics, the Torygraph is trying to spin this to discredit the ‘Remain’ camp within the Tory party. But hopefully it won’t be too long before there is a Labour election victory, and the entire Tory party is swept from power and kept out for decades.
Some may be outraged by the question, but it’s perfectly legitimate. The Nazis were Social Darwinists, who believed that the social elite, aristocrats and businessmen, were biologically superior to those at the bottom of the social hierarchy. And like Social Darwinists elsewhere in the West, they bitterly despised the disabled. They were ‘lebensunwertigen Leben‘, ‘life unworthy of life’, and a danger to the racial purity and biological fitness of the German people. Other nations had attempted to prevent the congenitally disabled from breeding through eugenics legislation providing for the sterilisation of the congenitally disabled and mentally handicapped. 22 American states had passed such legislation prior to the Nazi seizure of power, and when the Nazis in their turn enacted such laws, they claimed they had done nothing new. But they went much further, setting up a programme of official euthanasia in which the disabled and the incurably insane were taken by the SS to special clinics, where they were medically murdered.
A similar attitude seems to underlie the Tories’ policies towards the disabled and the hated fitness to work tests. These are based on policies introduced by Blair’s New Labour, in that the disabled are required to undertake tests administered by private contractors like Atos and now Maximus in order to judge whether they are ‘fit for work’. Those that are, are thrown off benefits and left to survive on their own. And all too many don’t. As has been pointed out by left-wing and disability rights bloggers and activists, the tests are based on pseudoscience within an inbuilt assumption that people are malingering. Whistleblowers have also come forward to tell how there are targets set by the DWP for declaring a certain proportion of claimants well enough to work, even though they are anything but. Blogs like Atos Miracles and the satirical magazine Private Eye have reported incidents where people in terminal comas have been declared fit for work, along with others with serious physical and mental conditions. Amputees have been asked when they expect their limbs to grow back, and depressives suffering from suicidal thoughts have been asked why they haven’t attempt to kill themselves. People in real, pressing need have been thrown off benefits and left to starve to death. Mike at Vox Political and other activists and bloggers have fought hard to get the statistics out of the DWP for the number of people, who have died after being declared fit for work. The Tories have attempted to refuse the information, and only very grudgingly released it. At the same time they have also consistently denied that there is any connection between their policies and the deaths of the disabled and the unemployed, who have suffered similar removal of benefits under the infamous sanctions system. This has been so even when people have taken their own lives, leaving behind notes explaining why they have taken their own lives and placing the blame firmly on the DWP’s iniquitous policies.
Yesterday John McDonnell, Corbyn’s chief ally, urged people to make their concerns about the hardships caused by the DWP and Universal Credit known to their MPs personally, especially Tory MPs. He believes that if MPs personally met people, whose lives have been made worse through the sanctions system and Universal Credit, MPs would have a greater understanding of their suffering than through the ordinary process of parliamentary debate.
Mike in his piece about it was sceptical, pointing out that the government shares the same fundamental attitude towards the disabled as ‘useless eaters’, and believe that any policy that cuts down their number is good for the nation. Which means that it allows them to give massive tax cuts to the very rich. Mike also points out that the same rich the Tories defend and promote are far worse parasites, as they contribute less to the economy and use more of the state’s resources, funded by the taxpayer. Many of the business elite aren’t responsible for establishing the businesses they own or run. They simply inherited them.
But contacting the Tories won’t do any good. They’ll simply spit out the same old stories denying that their policies are responsible for the suffering and death they have manifestly caused. Meeting the disabled and unemployed personally won’t do any good either, they’ll just nod solemnly, look concerned and then carry on as before. This is because the Tories want the disabled and the unemployed, who find it difficult to get work, to die. Mike feels that the only way the DWP’s reign of terror can be stopped is if a court case or public inquiry found that a reasonable person would conclude that there was a connection between their policies and the deaths of the unemployed and disabled. This would open the way to the government being prosecuted for corporate manslaughter, possibly of as many as 100,000 people, although this is a conservative estimate.
The only other possibility is through a general election which puts Labour in power, though this may not be possible. Although the public believes in Labour’s policies, they are being deliberately misled into thinking that Corbyn himself is a threat. Hence the spectacle last week of soldiers in Afghanistan shooting at a picture of the Labour leader. Mike concludes
The system is stacked against Labour, and therefore against anybody who is in a position of vulnerability; anybody who isn’t a vastly rich Tory.
So if you have a relative or friend who has to claim sickness and/or disability benefits, go and see them, and give them a lot of affection. They may soon be dead – and if you voted Conservative, it’ll be because of your vote.
Mike here is absolutely right. The rich do use more state services than the poor, which is one reason why they should be charged a consequently higher tax rate. And the Tories have cut welfare benefits in order to give massive tax breaks to the rich. Who don’t pass the benefits of their increased wealth further down the social hierarchy in the form of wages increases or opening new businesses. It simply stays in their accounts. And they really do seem keen to kill as many of the poor and disabled as possible.
Which brings us back to the Nazi euthanasia campaign. This ran between January 1940 and August 1941, when public outrage led by the Roman Catholic aristocrat, Count Galen forced the Nazis to abandon it. By that time they had murdered somewhere between sixty to eighty thousand disabled people. See D.G. Williamson, The Third Reich (Harlow: Longman 1982) 68-9.
If the Tories are responsible for the deaths of 100,000 people through Universal Credit, benefit sanctions and the fitness for work tests, then they have killed at least 20 – 40,000 more people disabled people than the Nazis.
This is horrendous. I dare say that Tory supporters would reject the comparison, as those left to die are not being forcibly taken to places against their will, like the Nazis’ murder hospitals or concentration camps, where they are then murdered by SS soldiers or compliant doctors. They are just thrown off benefits to starve on their own, so that the Tories, with a clear conscience, can say that they had nothing to do with their deaths.
But they did, and are. And its a disgrace. It’s long past time the Tories’ murder of the sick, disabled and unemployed was ended. Ideally those responsible, like Iain Duncan Smith, should be personally brought to trial and charged with their manslaughter. But this is probably impossible. The best solution would, as Mike says, be a Labour government brought in by a snap election.
And the fact still remains that the Tories have now killed more disabled people than the Nazis, and that those who voted for them are complicit in this.
Mike suggested in his first article on the Sunset Times’ latest anti-Semitism smear against the Labour party that it was motivated by the fear that a general election was in the offing. Mike wrote
This is a critical time for the people of the United Kingdom.
Hysteria over Brexit is at fever pitch, with Theresa May in negotiations with a Labour team on a way to save the process from the disaster she has made of it.
If the talks fall apart, it is possible that Mrs May will trigger a general election in the hope that a new Parliament may be able to support one of the options available.
And in this context, The Sunday Times publishes a piece smearing the leader of the Opposition.
I don’t think there can be much doubt about it. The Skwawkbox has also pup up a very interesting little piece reporting that the Mail on Sunday has an eight-page feature telling its readers ‘How to protect your cash from Corbyn’. Which, as the Skwawkbox points out, is a frank admission that they think he’s going to win the next election, and that they think that one’s coming soon. The Skwawkbox also points out that it shows that the Tories are also all about the wealthy, drily commenting ‘Who knew, eh?’
Who indeed? The Tories have always seen themselves as the party of business and industry. Or rather, they have since they stopped presenting themselves as just the party of the Anglican Church and aristocracy, and decided to broaden their constituency by taking the business vote from the right-wing of the Liberal party. As a result, they are very much the party of the Establishment, although it has to be said that the religious right have also become very worried that a large section of the Anglican church, along with many other British churches and religions, doesn’t support them. And it seems from the latest smears against the Labour party and this piece in the Heil on Sunday that the Establishment is very, very worried. And so they should. Polls last week showed Labour five points ahead of the Tories, and the Newport by-election even suggested that the lead could be as much as nine points. Or at least it was in Newport.
Hence the Sunset Times’ attack, which, as well as being a malign attempt to misrepresent and libel Corbyn and his party, is also an act of utter desperation. The Tories are desperately afraid they’ll lose the next election, and so they’re reverting to the anti-Semitism lies and smears. But they’ve used them so often before, it’s very likely that the British public, or at least a sizable part of them, realises that they’re lying and simply don’t believe them. I’ve blogged before about a piece I found elsewhere on the Net, which reported that a senior member of the Israel lobby, responsible for spreading the anti-Semitism smears against opponents of Israeli ethnic cleansing, lamented that it was no longer working as effectively as they’d like.
I hope this continues and the whole, wretched sham campaign of smears and lies is utterly discredited along with the soulless hacks and politicos that retail it. And that Labour wins the next election by a landslide.
As Mike reported this morning, May lost the vote about her supposedly renegotiated Brexit deal. As Mike himself has said, it’s anything but new. It was the same material she’d tried to pass already, and, again contrary to everything she said, it also wasn’t legally binding. The Tory MPs Charles Walker and Daniel Kawczynski have said that if May lost the vote, she should call a general election as it would then be clear that the government was dead.
Jeremy Corbyn has done it for her. In the video below, he stands up in parliament and demands that the government call a general election, backing this up with very strong arguments. But please hold your nose while watching it – it comes from the Scum.
It begins with the speaker announcing that Corbyn is about to stand and speak. He thanks the Speaker, and begins with the statement that the government has been defeated again by an enormous majority, and must now except that their deal, their proposal, the one the Prime Minister has met, is clearly dead and does not have the support of this House. And quite clearly, no deal must be taken off the table. We’ve said that before, we’ll say that again. But it does mean the House has got to come together with a proposal that could be negotiated. The Labour party has put that proposal and we will put that proposal again. Because the dangers of what the Prime Minister’s proposing if she carries on threatening us all the danger of no deal, the danger of that, knowing full well the damage that will do to the economy. Corbyn states that his party will put forward its proposals again, which are for a negotiated customs union, access to the market and protection of rights. Those are the proposals they’ll put forward. They believe there may well be a majority for them, but there will also be the potential for negotiating them. The Prime Minister has run down the clock and the clock has been run out on her. Maybe it’s time instead we had a general election and the people could choose -. And there the clip ends.
That’s it. May’s credibility is in tatters. Of course, it was in tatters long before last night, and her second meaningful vote hasn’t changed anything, except perhaps to make it even more glaringly obvious what a spent and empty political force she is. Corbyn, Walker and Kawczynski are right. We should have a general election now.
But I don’t doubt that the Tory party will try to cling on to power with all its might. Zelo Street has reported this morning that May’s Brexit problems are all the creation of herself and her party, the Heil and the Scum are trying to shift the blame somehow on to Corbyn. It won’t wash. A general election is the only hope we have of finding a government that will be able to salvage something from this mess. A Corbyn government.
Mike says that if it happens, it’ll be our third in four years. Which is approaching the level of political instability our political pundits believed could only happen in the continental system, and particularly with the Italians. But now it’s hit us, and the only chance of producing genuine, beneficial change is for a general election and the replacement of May’s failed Tories with a Labour government under Corbyn.
What can decent people do about Christopher Chope, the Tory MP for Christchurch? Apart from either waiting for him to be voted out at the next general election, or having him committed to Broadmoor as a dangerous lunatic whose twisted view of democracy is a threat to the safety of vulnerable women and girls?
Yesterday Mike put up a piece reporting that Chope talked out a bill on Friday intended to safeguard girls and women against Female Genital Mutilation. His decision to do so was in direct opposition to his government’s own stance against this repulsive practice. Mike’s article quotes a tweet from Tweezer herself, who said
Female genital mutilation is an abhorrent practice and we will not accept it. We’ve strengthened the law on FGM, leading to the first UK conviction last week, and we’re helping communities around the world to end this appalling crime.#EndFGM
Chope declared that the reason he did so wasn’t because he was in favour of FGM, but because he hated Private Members’ Bills. But in the instance, as Mike pointed out, his professed principles amounted to pure egotism as he placed them before the wishes of his government, party, nation and parliament. Mike asked in his article whether Chope would have been quite so keen to block the bill if he knew someone, who had suffered from FGM, or if it was a form of mutilation and torture he might also have suffered if he had been born into a culture that practiced such barbarity.
Mike also goes on to say that he first learned about it at school, and it turned his stomach. I was about the same age when I first heard about it, and Mike’s right – it’s horrific and revolting. I think it can very in terms of severity, and has been described by feminists as ‘female castration’. There are absolutely no medical benefits to it, and, apart from the horrific nature of the operation itself, it can also be a positive danger to women’s health. It isn’t just the national government that is worried about it. Local authorities are too. A few years ago there was an article on the local news for the West Country on the Beeb, Points West, about concerns by activists and medical professionals about girls in Bristol being taken out of the country to their families homelands to have it done.
As for Chope himself, last year he also talked out a Private Members Bill to prevent upskirting, which Mike suggests means that he seems to have an unpleasant attitude to stop women protecting their private parts. And public opinion was very definitely against Chope. Mike quotes two Tweets from Dangerous Hero Rachel Swindon, who said
Following on from his upskirting disgrace, Tory MP Christopher Chope MP has just shouted to object to the Female Genital Mutilation Bill.
There is seriously something wrong with this guy. Abhorrent individual.
And also pointed out that he was one who believes in denying government aid to the many, while being very glad to avail himself of it.
Tory Christopher Chope doesn’t just derail upskirting & FGM bills. He voted –
•12 X for the Bedroom Tax
•44 X to cut benefits
•9 X against bankers bonus tax
•19 X to reduce Corporation tax
He used £10,000 expenses to fix his roof, a £2,600 bathroom & £881 to repair a sofa
Mike stated that, thank to his principles, the provisions of this bill will now have to be included in a formal government bill. Which means more time putting more women and girls at risk. He asks
Will Mr Chope accept responsibility for their pain and humiliation? If not, perhaps any such victims should take out a private prosecution against him.
Mike also concludes
So perhaps we should simply accept that he blocked the Bill against FGM because this principled man believes in the principle behind FGM: That those with power are entitled to do anything they like with those who have none – and do all we can to remove this dinosaur, and his prehensile principles, from Parliament at the earliest opportunity.
Chopes’ decision to block the bill seems to be part of the same attitude of a certain group of far-right Tories and Kippers. There was a scandal a few years ago, I seem to recall, when some UKIP MEPs tried to block or voted against a similar bill intended to protect women from either sexual assault or FGM, I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which. And in some cases their actions have been extremely hypocritical.
I don’t know what Chope’s attitude towards Islam is. I’m not aware that he’s a bigot. But there is a very strong element of pernicious, systemic islamophobia in the Tory party. And one of the issues islamophobes have seized upon to try to show that Islam is incompatible with British culture and should be heavily legislated against and discouraged is Female Genital Mutilation. Yes, it goes on in Islam, but it is not commanded in Qu’ran. I think it’s one of the practices that entered Islam from outside, and is most widespread outside the Middle East in sub-Saharan Africa. Certainly the women’s rights activists, who spoke about it on the Points West piece cited cases were girls were being taken there. There is an Islamic feminist movement, and I’m absolutely sure that there are campaigners against it in the Dar al-Islam. But many of the same Kipper MEPs, who voted against the European parliament’s attempts to outlaw it were also bitterly islamophobic, which made them both religiously bigoted and misogynist. Islamophobe or not, by blocking this legislation Chope has also undermined the efforts of Islamic and BAME feminists to protect women. But then, as Dangerous Hero Rachel Swindon and Mike have pointed out, Chope doesn’t believe in supporting the health and welfare of the poor and underprivileged, only in giving even more to extremely rich White men like himself.
As for his precious principles, they’re clearly undemocratic. Private Members’ Bills always have been part of parliamentary democracy. He can hate them all he likes in principle, but it should not be his right to obstruct parliamentary democracy. Especially when it puts women and girls at risk of horrific mutilation.
You hope it won’t be too long before there’s a general election and he, and the rest of his party of thugs and bigots, are thrown out and a proper Labour government installed instead.
More lies, cowardice and broken promises from Theresa May. After telling the world that she was going to hold a vote on her Brexit deal tomorrow, 13th December 2018, Tweezer has once again shown her true colours and run away. Just like she pulled out from a debate with Jeremy Corbyn when she found that the Labour leader was not going to give in to her and hold the debate on the Beeb, in a format packed with Tories or pro-Tory voices. Just like she also demanded Corbyn debate her at the election in 2017, and then ran away from that when agreed.
It’s standard Tweezer policy when the going gets sticky. And the going here was very sticky end. According to RT, 62 per cent of the country think her deal is bad for Britain. MPs on all sides of the House are lining up to criticize it, and her own cabinet is bitterly divided on the issue. Plus leading Tories are lining to up to say they’ll challenge her leadership of the party, the latest being Esther ‘Killer of the weak and disabled’ McVey. So Tweezer has decided to postpone the vote.
This is a woman, who doesn’t like facing an audience unless everything is very carefully stage-managed. Like during the electioneering last year, when she went round supposedly meeting ordinary people. Except she didn’t. The meetings were very carefully staged, often in private, and with very carefully selected audiences, in order to exclude anybody who was going to ask awkward questions.
May has therefore postponed the Brexit vote. Mike has asked on his blog whether this means it’s effectively been cancelled. Which would lead to another contempt of parliament motion. This wouldn’t surprise me either. It would have been the first promise Tweezer has broken. Some of us still remember how she promised all manner of things last year, including workers on management boards, which were forgotten or postponed as soon as she got into No. 10.
But Mike also asks what this means for democracy. Without the vote, she can simply push it through parliament, no matter how bad it is for the country and the amount of opposition to it in parliament.
Are we living in a democracy, or slaving under Dictator May?, Mike pointedly asks.
Mike has also mischievously suggested that one reason May pulled out of holding the vote on her wretched Brexit deal tomorrow is that Andy Serkis did an impression of her as Gollum. Serkis is the actor, who played the character in the Lord Of The Rings and Hobbit films. And it’s appropriate. Tweezer got nicknamed Gollum after her obsequious fawning and curtsying to the monarchy, just like the character flits between fawning over Frodo and the others searching for the Ring and spitting hate about them.
It appears that Serkis did his impression of May/Gollum as part of the People’s Vote campaign for a second referendum. I found it on the We Wants It channel on YouTube, which takes its name from Gollum’s cry about the Ring, ‘We wants it, precious!’ Just as the we, the country, or at least some of us, wants a second referendum. Here it is.
Mike has also written about this latest piece of massive cowardice by May. His piece also includes Serkis’ Gollum impression, taken from the Mirror, as well as some very grim pictures of May groveling to the Royals. It’s at
This is another great little video from RT, of just over a minute in length. It shows the Conservative MP, Michael Heseltine, urging his fellow Tories to reject May’s Brexit deal because it will make poor people even poorer. He makes it clear that it won’t affect him personally, but it will very many others. And they will hold the Tories to account at the next election.
The man the press dubbed ‘Tarzan’ in the 1980s says
We are voting in this legislation to make this country poorer. Most of us in this House will not be that affected and I certainly won’t. But much has been made about the poorer people. And if this House is solemnly going to vote, knowingly, as we’ve heard here today for a slower economy, for lower tax revenues, for lower, for lower public expenditure then those who will suffer most are those least able to bear the strain and when the election comes, it will have been a Tory that led the Referendum campaign, it will have been a Tory government that perpetuated the frozen living standards, it will be a Tory government that is blamed for what we are talking about today. I will have no part of it.
It’s a good speech from the man Thatcher derisively called a ‘socialist’ back when he was a member of her cabinet in the 1980s. Though Heseltine’s still a Tory, and so has backed the policies that have caused such suffering to ordinary working people over the past forty years or so. And as this speech shows, he’s attacking the deal partly out of fears for what it will do to the Tories election chances, so there’s an element of political self-interest there.
I doubt that many Tories will rebel and vote down May’s Brexit deal. They’ve threatened rebellion in the past, but always, when the time’s come, they’ve given in and voted to support May after she’s given just vague concessions to them. Their sense of corporate self-interest and solidarity is far too strong to be overcome by anything like principles.
But it’s clear that May’s Brexit deal is widely unpopular, and she’s clearly in real trouble as more and more members of her cabinet has jumped ship as a result. They could see it was a bad deal, and didn’t want to be held responsible for it in the backlash.
It’s time May faced up to the fact that she and her government are a wretched, disgraceful failure, and an election called to bring in a proper government. A Labour government. Give Corbyn the tools, and he will do the job!
Mike’s put up several articles pointing out that Tweezer’s Brexit deal is incredibly desperate. No-one wants it, whether they’re extreme-right Leave supporters, or left-wing Remainers. Or even left-wing Leave supporters, who certainly exist and were one element in the vote to Leave last year. Tweezer has thus been running around trying to get the British public to support it, and has appealed to the Labour party to do so as well. 26 Labour party MPs turned up to the Tory briefing, and at present they’re undecided. Only half of them will vote for it, if that. And if they do, then they will earn the hatred and resentment of the voters, who put them in parliament for their betrayal of ordinary working people to the Tories.
Here’s a video RT put up showing Jeremy Corbyn’s speech in which he urged the House to reject it. Corbyn says
(The) Prime Minister says that if we reject this deal, it will take us back to square one. The truth is, Mr Speaker, under this government we’ve never got beyond square one, the botched deal is a bad deal for this country, and all yesterday did is mark the end of this government’s failed and miserable negotiations, there can be no doubt that this deal would leave us with the worst of all worlds, no say over future rules and no certainty for the future.
Ploughing on is not stoic, it’s an act of national self-harm. The Prime Minister may have achieved agreement across 27 heads of state, but she’s lost support of the country. This deal is not a plan for the future of Britain, so for the good of the nation, the House has very little choice but to reject this deal.
Massive applause and uproar.
I hope the whole deal collapses, along with May’s government, they have to call a new election and Corbyn wins. If Tweezer gets kicked out tomorrow, it won’t be too soon.
This is a bit of Cassetteboi-type fun from the YouTube channel Joe.com. Cassetteboi cuts and edits footage of politicians and celebrities to make them appear to be saying stupid and ridiculous things. One of their greatest hits was at the 2012 London Olympics, when they made Boris Johnson look even more of a pratt than he already is.
The people of Joe.com have done the same to Tweezer, mocking her reliance on Arlene Foster and the Loyalists of Northern Ireland’s DUP. It’s a relationship which is increasingly looking very rocky since Foster’s withdrawal from their Confidence and Supply agreement over the issue of Brexit and a hard border with Eire. Yesterday, as Mike explained in his blog post, the government’s position was so precarious that they had to swallow their pride and accept all of Labour’s amendments to their wretched budget, otherwise the result could have been that it was voted out completely, followed by a ‘No Confidence’ vote on Tweezer and a general election.
So the channel has put up this video of Tweezer singing about their dubious relationship to Foster, which has the lyrics
Arlene, Arlene, Arlene,
Arleeeeene,
I’m begging of you
Please don’t break my plan.
Arlene, Arlene, Arlene,
Arleeeeene,
Please don’t break it
Just because you can.
I gave you one billion pounds
So that you would not vote me down
So please don’t turn your
Back on me, Arlene.
When you’re not denying dinosaurs,
You insist on having UK laws
Except abortion and Gay rights,
Arlene.
You only have 10 MPs
But it’s you that I need to appease
My time is up
Without your help, Arlene.
If you vote this budget down,
You end up with that Boris clown,
Be careful what you wish for,
Arlene.
Arlene, Arlene, Arlene,
Arleeeeene,
I’m begging of you
Please don’t break my plan.
Arlene, Arlene, Arlene,
Arleeeeene,
Please don’t break it
Just because you can.
Visual highlights include May pulling back the bedcovers in front of Foster to reveal masses of pound notes, Boris Johnson in clown make up, and copies of Foster’s head appearing from clouds to surround Tweezer.
I know the Tories will immediately complain about the title of this article, but that’s exactly what’s going on. The Tories have been privatizing the NHS piecemeal since the 1980s, when Maggie Thatcher wanted to sell it off completely and replace it with an American-style insurance based system. Thatcher was prevented from doing so through a massive cabinet revolt, plus the fact that her private secretary, Patrick Jenkin, found out how appalling the American system was after he actually did some research and went there.
But the privatization is still going on. There was a mass exodus of dentists in the late ’80s-early ’90s, after Maggie – or was it Major?-refused to give them any more money. Then came Peter Lilley and his Private Finance Initiative, in which hospitals were to be built and run for the NHS by private contractors. Then New Labour expanded this massively, breaking up the NHS internal structure to model it after the American private healthcare system, Kaiser Permanente. Blair was approached by a whole slew of American private healthcare companies. His idea was that hospitals and clinics should be taken over by private healthcare companies, like Circle Health, Virgin Healthcare and so on. The community care groups of doctors, which were supposed to commission healthcare for their patients, where to obtain it from both private healthcare providers as well as the NHS. And they were also given the powers to raise money from private enterprise.
And before anyone objects that Blair was a Socialist, no, he wasn’t. He had Clause 4 removed from the party’s constitution. He was also profoundly hostile to the trade unions, who have formed part of the very core of the Labour party since it was founded in the very early 20th century.
Blair was a true, blue Thatcherite. The first thing he did when he got into power was invite Thatcher round. And she responded warmly, declaring New Labour her greatest success. Remember, this is the woman, who proudly shouted about how she was going to destroy socialism.
And the Tories have carried on her project of gradually destroying the NHS, bit by bit, while loudly proclaiming how much they’re in favour of it.
The present Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is a prime example of this. He even wrote a book in which he declared how much better everything would be if we had a private healthcare system, like America.
Yeah, like America, where the poorer parts of the country don’t have any doctors at all, because it isn’t profitable. Where once a month, in Virginia, people sleep in cars overnight in order to join the queue for the doctor’s or dentists’ surgery offering free dental care that Saturday.
Where something like 20 million Americans can’t afford their medical coverage, and 30,000 people die every year because of this.
And where the Republicans and corporate Democrats have been lying and smearing Bernie Sanders, because he dared to run on a platform of ‘Medicare for all’. You know, giving Americans state-funded healthcare, like in the other parts of the world.
This is what the Tories are doing to Britain. And last week, as Mike reported on his blog, Stephen Hawking, the great cosmologist, called them out on it. He also accused Hunt of cherry-picking the data about the supposed deaths caused by NHS staff not working Saturdays.
Hunt got terribly upset about this, and declared that Hawking didn’t understand statistics.
This is a joke from a professional moron. Statistics are a vital part of science and medicine. Much of modern science, including astronomy and cosmology, is going through the data, trying to find something that is statistically significant. It can be time-consuming, tedious work, requiring sophisticated techniques to sort out what’s importance from apparently random results.
Hawking’s a physicist, who has been working with some extremely advanced maths as part of his investigation into the origins of the cosmos and the nature of Black Holes for his entire career. I don’t believe in his ‘No Boundaries Solution’ to the problem of the origin of the universe, but it’s abundantly clear that he understands stats. And as a man stricken with Motor Neurone Disease, a terrible illness, which has left him confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak and scarcely a muscle, Prof. Hawking clearly has first-hand experience of NHS care.
In short, don’t believe Hunt. Believe Hawking.
And yesterday one of the doctors weighed in, to request that a televised debate should be held between the two. See that story on Mike’s blog.
I’ve got no doubt that this will never happen. The schedules are full already, and the last thing the Tories will want is putting their man in a position where he’ll lose against a vastly more popular, far more respected and definitely more intelligent opponent.
Although they’re both authors. Hawking’s most famous work was A Brief History of Time, published back in the 1980s. It was a national bestseller, following very much in the footsteps of Carl Sagan’s epic Cosmos, another pop-sci blockbuster from a great science communicator, as well as a concerned scientist who attacked militarism, imperialism and man-made global warming.
As for Hunt, very few have read his book, which is why he can still repeat the lie that the Tories aren’t privatizing the NHS with a straight face, despite having advocated himself.
Such a debate would be so unequal in Hawking’s failure that I’ve no doubt that the Tories in charge of BBC News, the same people, who gave Corbyn such overtly biased coverage during the general election, are blanching at the very thought of it. Such a debate will never happen, just as the BBC will never own up, and confess that they, and particularly Laura Kuenssberg, are massively biased and everyone, who has complained about this painfully obvious fact is absolutely right.
