Open Britain: Public Turning Against Brexit, But This Ignored by Politicians

‘David —

According to new polling, 63% of British adults now say that Brexit has caused more problems than it solved. While some of you may be shocked that the number isn’t even higher, given the shambolic economic state of affairs in Britain over the past several years, that figure is proof that the public attitude towards Brexit has changed. The big question is: why are neither of the major parties saying it? 

It should be clear to everyone by now that the Conservatives have permanently pinned their colours to the Brexit mast and that there is no going back for them. The cult of Brexit has subsumed the entire party’s identity. With an evangelical glint in their eyes, ministers pontificate endlessly about the sunlit uplands, plucking imaginary “Brexit benefits” out of thin air and holding them up as victories.

For the Brexiters in the Conservative and Reform parties, anything that goes wrong – as so much has lately – is attributed to a lack of dedication to the cause. As Labour backbencher Hilary Benn put it so eloquently during the recent e-petition debate on a public inquiry into Brexit: 

“It is like all revolutionaries, if I may use the analogy. When the revolution does not quite work out, they say, “But comrade, it was not applied with sufficient vigour and purity”—an argument that some Members in the Chamber might be more familiar with than others.”

But what about Labour? While lacking the religious fervour of the Conservatives, Keir Starmer has also insisted that Britain’s future lies “outside the EU.” Beyond that comment, we have no idea what Labour’s specific position is. 

A recent YouGov poll made it clear that the general public is completely uncertain about Keir Starmer’s stance on Brexit. He seems to be trying to assuage the right-wing press who want to attack him as a remainer, while also trying not to alienate his remain-heavy base. It’s a tough balancing act. 

We have to ask why no major party in the UK is willing to come out as unapologetically anti-Brexit. At the next general election, we’ll almost certainly have just two options to form the next government – Labour or Conservative. Westminster’s bubble is now so insular that it’s barely possible to see daylight between their stances on this, the biggest issue of our time. 

63% of British adults are not having their voice heard. These are people who want their freedom of movement back, who want an economy bolstered by the single market, who want the worker and environmental protections previously attached to our EU membership. They are a silent majority that our broken political system has systematically sidelined.

A political system that excludes a majority can’t really be called a democracy. This is yet another glaring indicator of the UK’s democratic deficit, and the abyss that awaits us if we fail to get a grip on our failing institutions and policies.

All the very best,

The Open Britain team‘

Starmer Takes Full Responsibility for Defeat by Sacking People Who Had Nothing To Do With It

Well, there have been some successes for Labour in the recent elections. I’m very glad Labour has entered a sixth term in power in Wales, and that Jo Anderson, Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan were elected mayors of Liverpool, Manchester and London respectively, and that down here in Bristol, south Gloucestershire and north Somerset, Dan Norris has been elected the metro mayor. But generally, Labour have suffered an humiliating defeat in the local council elections. Keir Starmer said that he was going to take responsibility for the defeat. And so he’s done what he previously done so many times – gone back on his word. If he was truly going to take responsibility, he should have tendered his resignation and walked. But he didn’t. He’s hung on to power, and started blaming and sacking other people instead.

The first of these is Angela Rayner, who has been sacked from her position as the party’s chair. He has decided that she was responsible for the loss of Hartlepool despite the fact that she had nothing to do with it. It was really the fault of his personal private secretary, Jenny Chapman, who, as Mike has posted over at Vox Political, decided on the candidate and chose the date of May 6th. But Chapman remains in place. Others who are lined up for the chop apparently include Lisa Nandy and Anneliese Dodds. This also reminds me of the incident a few weeks ago when Starmer blamed somebody else for a Labour loss. Apparently they failed to communicate his ‘vision’ properly. This would have been impossible. Starmer doesn’t have a vision. As Zelo Street has pointed out, Starmer has constantly evaded. He’s also defiantly agreed with BoJob on various issues and, as leader of the opposition, has spectacularly failed to oppose. People are heartily sick of him. The polls show that the reason the good folk of Hartlepool didn’t vote Labour was him.

And then there are the ‘charmless nurks’, as Norman Stanley Fletcher, the Sartre of Slade prison would say, that Starmer supposedly no wants in his cabinet. Wes Streeting, the bagman between him and the Board of Deputies, a thoroughly poisonous character; the Chuckle Sisters Rachel Reeves and Jessica Philips, who are so left-wing and progressive that they went to a party celebrating 100 years or so of the Spectator, and Hilary ‘Bomber’ Benn. Benn is the man, who wanted us to bomb Syria, as if Britain wasn’t already responsible for enough carnage and bloodshed in the Middle East. He’s been in Private Eye several times as head of the Commonwealth Development Corporation. This used to be the public body that put British aid money into needed projects in the Developing World. Under Benn it’s been privatised, and now only gives money that will provide a profit for shareholders. It’s yet more western capitalist exploitation of the Third World. None of these bozos should be anywhere near power in the Labour party. They’re Thatcherites, who if given shadow cabinet posts, will lead Labour into yet more electoral defeat.

Already the Net has been filled with peeps giving their views on what Starmer should do next. The mad right-wing radio host, Alex Belfield, posted a video stating that Starmer was immensely rich, with millions of acres of land, and out of touch with working people. If Starmer really wants power, he declared, he should drop the ‘woke’ nonsense and talk about things ordinary people are interested in, like roads, buses and so on. And he should talk to Nigel Farage about connecting with ordinary people.

Belfield speaks to the constituency that backed UKIP – the White working class, who feel that Labour has abandoned them in favour of ethnic minorities. But part of Labour’s problem is that Starmer doesn’t appeal to Blacks and Asians. He drove them away with his tepid, opportunistic support of Black Lives Matter and his defence of the party bureaucrats credibly accused of bullying and racially abusing Diane Abbott and other non-White Labour MPs and officials. He’s also right in that Starmer is rich and doesn’t appeal to the working class. He’s a Blairite, which means he’s going for the middle class, swing or Tory vote. But there have been Labour politicos from privileged backgrounds, who have worked for the ordinary man and woman, and were respected for it. Tony Benn was a lord, and Jeremy Corbyn I think comes from a very middle class background. As did Clement Attlee. Being ‘woke’ – having a feminist, anti-racist stance with policies to combat discrimination against and promote women, ethnic minorities, and the LGBTQ peeps needn’t be an electoral liability if they are couple with policies that also benefit the White working class. Like getting decent wages, defending workers’ rights, reversing the privatisation of the health service and strengthening the welfare state that so that it does provide properly for the poor, the old, the disabled, the sick and the unemployed. These are policies that benefit all working people, regardless of their colour, sex or sexuality.

It’s when these policies are abandoned in favour of the middle class with only the pro-minority policies retained to mark the party as left-wing or liberal, that the working class feels abandoned. Blair and Brown did this, and so helped the rise of UKIP and now the kind of working class discontent that is favouring the Tories.

And it’ll only get worse if Starmer turns fully to Blairism.

The only way to restore the party’s fortunes is to return to the popular policies of Jeremy Corbyn, and for Starmer to resign.

See: #Starmergeddon as panicking Labour leader lashes out in night of swivel-eyed lunacy | Vox Political (voxpoliticalonline.com)

Zelo Street: Keir Starmer – No Vision, No Votes (zelo-street.blogspot.com)

Zelo Street: Keir Starmer IS UNRAVELLING (zelo-street.blogspot.com)

Labour Employees Responsible for Smearing Left-Wing Sites as ‘Fake News’

Excellent detective work by John McElvoy at The Canary. He’s revealed a new low in the Blairites’ attack on the Labour left and Corbyn’s supporters. This was two sites, which claimed to be dedicated to refuting fake news and online hate, but in fact largely concentrated on smearing and attacking left-wing news and comment sites, like The Canary.

One was the impressively named Center for Countering Digital Hate, a not-for-profit NGO which was formally registered at Companies House as Brixton Endeavours Ltd two years ago in 2018, although it had been operating unofficially since 2017. At the time of its incorporation its only director was Morgan McSweeney, who was Starmer’s chief of staff, and Liz Kendall’s campaign manager for his attempt to take the Labour leadership. Brixton Endeavours was renamed the Centre for Countering Digital Hate at the end of August last year, and McSweeney resigned his directorship in the first week of April this year.

The other site involved in the smears against the left was Stop Funding Fake News, which again has links to leading Blairites. It was founded last year, 2019, by the same CEO behind the CCDH, Imran Ahmed, although the two were set up as separate organisations. Ahmed has been a special adviser to Hilary Benn and head of communications for Angela Eagle, who launched her bid to become the party’s leader in 2016, the same time as Benn encouraged a vote of non confidence in Corbyn. Benn and Eagle were staunch supporters of the Iraq War, which surely shows how much she values the gentler politics she claimed to be promoting in her leadership campaign. Ahmed, however, is now on the steering committee of the government’s Commission for Countering Extremism, where apparently he’s an adviser on ‘conspiracist’ news sites. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate also shares premises with the Blairite, ‘Blue Labour’ outfit, Labour Together. Whose previous director was McSweeney, but is now under the joint leadership of Lisa Nandy.

Mike points out that not everything the two organisations have done has been bad. They have been responsible for successfully removing some genuinely noxious figures from parts of the web, like David Icke and Hatey Katie Hopkins. But most of their attacks were against the left, and The Canary in particular. As well as sharing CEOs, the two also have a patron in common: Rachel Riley. It isn’t known whether she’s funded SFFN since 2019, when she was loudly proclaiming that The Canary was on its last legs. And the CCDH claims it receives additional funds from members of the public and ‘philanthropic trusts’. Riley’s own yardstick for judging what counts as digital hate against Jews includes anything remotely in favour of Jeremy Corbyn. Because despite being an opponent of anti-Semitism, he has to be a Jew-hater for supporting the Palestinians, apparently. Mike concludes his article about these two noxious organisations

There is strong evidence to show that CCDH and SFFN are fronts for an anti-left-wing propaganda campaign run by people within the very organisation that should be supporting lefty news endeavours.

Perhaps it is time these people were put on the spot and, rather than accepting their accusations without question, we put their own credentials to the test.

Absolutely. Many peeps on the left have had their suspicions about these organisations for a very long time, as well as The Canary. Zelo Street put up a few articles about them, noting how they seemed to focus overwhelmingly on the left and pointing out how reticent they were to reveal their identities and who was funding them. Now we know why. They were partisan Blairite organisations deliberately set up with the main intention of smearing and discrediting the left.

And now they and the identities of the people behind them have been revealed, it should be they who are discredited and treated with contempt for the digital hate they have spread.

See: Betrayal: Online campaign against left-wing political sites was started by LABOUR employees | Vox Political (voxpoliticalonline.com)

Cole Morton Names the MPs and Lords Describing Desperate Channel Migrants as ‘Invaders’

The Tory campaign to divert us all from the horrific mess they’ve made of Britain and their mass killing of its people continues. Once again, it’s all about illegal immigrants. Mike and Zelo have put up several excellent articles this hate campaign, with Zelo Street pointing out that the number of these asylum seekers coming to this country is trivial: 4,000 compared to 40,000 applications for asylum last year, and 677,000 people immigrating to the UK in 2019. Nevertheless, the Tories are describing it as an invasion. Zelo Street today has posted an excellent Tweet from the author Cole Moreton, who has named these disgraceful bigots. Moreton writes

Here are the names of 23 MPs and Lords who claim the desperate men, women and children risking their lives to cross the Channel in tiny rubber boats in search of peace are “invading”. Anyone here on the coast who has met them knows how obscenely ludicrous that is.

They are

Sir John Hayes CBE MP, South Holland and the Deepings

Sir David Amess MP, Southend West

Lee Anderson MP, Ashfield

Gareth Bacon MP, Orpington

Scott Benton MP, Blackpool South,

Rob Blackman MP, Harrow East

Philip Davies MP, Shipley

Nikc Fletcher MP, Don Valley,

Sally-Ann Hart MP, Hastings and Rye,

Tom Hunt MP, Ipswich,

David Jones MP, Clwyd West,

Daniel Kawczynski MP, Shrewsbury and Atcham

Pauline Latham, OBE MP, Mid-Derbyshire

Jonathan Lord MP, Woking,

Sir Edward Leigh MP, Gainsborough

Karl McCartney JP MP, Lincoln,

Stephen Metcalfe MP, South Basildon and East Thurrock,

Craig McKinley MP, South Thanet,

Lia Nici MP, Great Grimsby,

Andrew Rosindell MP, Romford

Alexander Stafford MP, Rother Valley,

Henry Smith MP, Crawley,

Martin Vickers MP, Cleethorpes

Lord Horam

Lord Lilley,

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/08/migrant-row-wheres-mark-francois.html

And Mike’s also named a few names in a piece in his blog.

Mike notes that Priti ‘Vacant’ Patel was told back in November that her policy was forcing migrants to use more dangerous routes into the UK. She ignored the report because it recommended establishing more legal routes into the UK, as well as doing something about the reasons they were leaving their home countries in the first place. Patel’s innate ruthless caused her to reject all this. She just wants to stop them, and so is determined to make this route unviable. Mike notes that she uses the word ‘shameful’ in her Tweet about this, to divert attention from the fact that the real disgrace here is her.

Mike then goes to cite a Beeb report on one of the boats, where they were forced to use a plastic container to bail it out. When asked where they came from, the migrants replied ‘Syria’. In 2018 the UK voted to bomb Syria following reports that its government had bombed its own people. But the materials used to manufacture the bomb were supplied by Britain. Mike writes

Now, I don’t know the personal situations of the people on that boat, but it seems entirely likely that the UK is the reason they have been fleeing their own country.

If you approve of this behaviour by your country’s leaders then you are a jingoistic, sabre-rattling racist.

Fortunately, the evidence I’ve seen suggests that few people do. Most of us appear to have reacted with disgust – both at the government and at the BBC. 

He then provides a few tweets by people disgusted with this contemptible hate-mongering.

One of them is by Richard Murphy, who points out

We can apparently put the RAF over the Channel today to needlessly spot dinghies but have only allocated £5 million for emergency relief for Beirut. In terms of humitarian crisis management haven’t we got almost everything wrong?

Kerry-Ann Mendoza:

I’d like to say “I can’t believe England is calling for the extra-judicial murder of displaced people in dinghies” but I can believe it. There are great & compassionate communities in England. But others seem bent on regressing it into a spiteful, cold, grim little island.

Zarah Sultana MP:

People fleeing war, famine and persecution shouldn’t be confronted by gunships and hostility, but instead offered safe, legal routes to asylum. Our common humanity demands nothing less.

Carole Hawkins contrasted the attitude with Lebanon, which has accepted 1.5 million refugees

Lebanon with all its problems has accepted 1.5 MILLION REFUGEES & Spaffer/Patel going loopy over a few hundred so much so that Spaffer wants to change or make new laws. This is Trump politics – executive directives which Spaffer is also doing. Totally non democratic.

Mike points out that this demonisation may not stop if you vote for Labour, because of the right-wingers who voted to bomb Syria. According to Ben, they were

Stella Creasy

Liz Kendel

Yvette Cooper

Neil Coyle

Hilary Benn

Margaret Hodge

Margaret Beckett

Maria Eagle

Angela Eagle

Lucy Powell

Harriet Harmen

Bridget Phillipson

Alison McGovern

He concludes ‘This lot chose to destroy these migrants homes’. Yes, yes, they did. Not because they were outraged at a government killing its own people, but because they’re bog-standard Blairite neocons. The Likud-Republican alliance has a list of seven countries, whose governments they want overthrown because they’re a threat to Israel and an obstacle to American imperial interests. One of these is Syria, because the ruling class and government are a Shi’a sect and allied with Iran.

And he starts his piece with this brilliant meme:

Wise words from Tony Benn. And its exactly right. Food banks originally appeared under New Labour, when Blair and Brown passed legislation forbidding illegal immigrants from claiming benefits. Then the Tories decided that it would be a wizard system to inflict on the native, British population – by which I mean all Brits, who have been here for generations, Black and Asian as well as Brown – as they cut away the welfare state. The result is mass starvation.

Counterpunch and the late critic of the American empire, William Blum, have published several articles pointing out that what the west does to the rest of the world supporting Fascist dictators ultimately comes back home. Those same governments then set about militarising the police force and stripping back people’s civil rights, all in the name of protecting us from terrorism, of course.

After Patel has finished rounding up desperate men, women and children fleeing real war and violence in their countries of origin, she will try to turn to the guns on us. And scumbags like Hillary ‘Bomber’ Benn, Margaret ‘F***ing Anti-Semite’ Hodge, Angela ‘Gentler, Caring Politics’ Eagle and the rest will help her.

What did Orwell say the future was? ‘A jackboot stamping on a human face. Forever’. It’s in 1984. And Patel, the 23 Tory MPs and their New Labour collaborators are all ready to polish it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beeb’s John Sweeney Attack Parliamentary Lobby System as Source of Fake News

Very interesting article in next week’s Radio Times for 16th-22nd November 2019. John Sweeney, a former journo with the Corporation’s Panorama, has written a piece attacking the parliamentary lobby system, ‘Time to name your sources’, on page 9. The subtitle states very clearly why he objects to it ‘Why are political reporters feeding us fake news?’

The article runs

As the country gears up for a general election, TV viewers and newspaper readers are being lied to from within a secretive system that reduces political journalists and Westminster correspondents to underbutlers, protects power and poisons our democracy. It’s called the lobby and its two most powerful players are a career psychopath (Conservative) and a neo-Stalinist (Labour).

The lobby was created after an Irish terrorist bomb in 1885 caused MPs to lock out the journalists who used to mingle freely inside Westminster. Reporters complained and a permitted few were allowed back, so long as they followed rule number one: when a source says a story is on lobby terms, you don’t identify that source. 

The lobby’s most elegant defender, Andrew Marr, wrote in his book, My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism, “Sophisticated social animals are necessarily hypocrites… who really wants to know less?”

But Marr wrote that before King Brexit turned everything it touched to Novichok. So where do those political stories based on anonymous oft-quoted “sources close to…” come from?

The PMS (the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman) is a many-headed beast, but one set of jaws is snapped by James Slack, who, as Nick Cohen pointed out in the The Spectator, in a previous life wrote the words underneath the infamous 2016 Daily Mail headline “Enemies of the People”, attacking three judges. Another set of jaws are those of Rob Oxley, Boris Johnson’s press secretary, but the sharpest teeth belong to “career psychopath” Dominic Cummings. David  called him that five years ago. It was an understatement.

Cummings, Slack and Oxley jointly and separately use reporters in the lobby system to tell unattributable whoppers while the system as a whole is given coverage by BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky and the papers. Veteran political reporter Peter Oborne nailed a series of lies about Brexit on “lobby terms” recently. Perhaps the most poisonous was the “lobby terms” claim, reported in the Mail on Sunday in October, that Remainers Dominic Grieve, Oliver Letwin and Hilary Benn were being investigated by the government because of their involvement with foreign powers. The story was a lie. The BBC, etc, didn’t tell that lie. But they prop up the system in which the lie could be told.

That system also encourages acquiescence among political hacks. If you don’t toe the line and ask awkward questions instead you are excluded from the regular drip-feed of anonymous briefings. It was reported that Boris Johnson when Foreign Secretary was considered a security risk by MI6 because of his dodgy private life. But has the lobby asked if Boris will launch an inquiry into himself? Nyet.

Another potential security risk is Jeremy Corbyn’s spin commissar, Seumas Milne. He oversees Labaour’s lobby operation but the system shields his shenanigans behind the arras. In 2014 Milne appeared on a panel at a summit in Sochi alongside Vladimir Putin. Milne, a former Guardian journalist, has in the past bigged up both Stalin and East Germany. Creepy.

Has the lobby asked Putin’s pal Milne if he is a security risk? Again, nyet.

In these toxic times, the lobby has become a lie factory. We need to scrappy “lobby terms”. If power speaks with a forked tongue, we need to know whose tongue it is that’s lying.

Okay, Sweeney’s correct to call out the lobby system. I’m irritated myself by stories that begin ‘sources close to the Prime Minister’ or ‘Ministers are considering’, as quite often this means that the source is sounding out a policy. And that policy is quite often something monstrous. I remember a story in the Sunday Express back in the early 1980s, when AIDS first appeared and everyone really was afraid it would decimate the global population like a new Black Death. It was so strongly associated with gays that a Beeb science documentary on it had the title ‘AIDS: The Gay Plague’. In this climate of fear, the Sunday Depress announced that ‘ministers’ – who were never named – were considering a radical solution to the problem. This was the construction of an ‘AIDS island’ following the Swedes’ example, where AIDS victims could be isolated and treated. It harkens back to the location of lazarettos – leper hospitals – on islands. But it was also frightening coming as it did from a government that had very far right tendencies and a reputation for aggressive homophobia. Maggie had just tried to introduce her law banning the positive teaching of homosexuality in schools. To many people, this seemed like the beginning of a campaign against homosexuals and the left which would end up with internment camps. The nightmare Fascist Britain of Alan Moore’s and Dave Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, running in the comic Warrior, seemed all too possible.

Others have also challenged the very close relationship between the press and the political class. When David Cameron was PM, it was pointed out that many leading journos, including editorial staff at the Guardian, I believe, also lived in Cameron’s village of Chipping Norton. Over on the other side of the Pond, some of the left-wing news shows on the Net, like The Young Turks, Sam Seder’s Majority Report and the David Pakman Show, have also commented on the way the press is content to parrot stories and claims by right-wing politicians, because they’re afraid that if they start challenging them, those politicians will simply stop talking to them and they’ll lose their stories. The result has been a decline in journalistic standards, as papers no longer attempt to hold politicos to account, but simply repeat their lines and lies. I’ve no doubt that this also partly accounts for the utter complicity of the press in repeating the claims and assumptions of the neoliberal right over here.

But this also doesn’t exonerate the Beeb. Despite the protestations of its political editor, the Beeb does platform right-wing figures over the left. Mike put up a graphic from Tory Fibs a few days ago, which showed very clearly how massively biased the Beeb was in its inclusion of figures and spokesmen for the right on its news shows and panels. Its newsroom is stacked full of Conservatives, like Nick Robinson, and Fiona Bruce and her producers on Question Time scarcely hide their right-wing bias. And the Beeb is still under investigation for the massive bias in its Panorama documentary on anti-Semitism in the Labour party.

The lobby system is a major part of the problem, but not the whole. The whole journalistic system and its cosy relationship with right-wing politicians is rotten, and needs to be overturned. And the Beeb is very much part of it.

Jimmy Dore on a Healthcare Rally on Hollywood Boulevard

According to polls, over half of Americans now want a single-payer healthcare system. One fifth of Americans would be unable to afford private healthcare insurance without Obama’s Affordable Care Act. But Donald Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and privatise Medicare and Medicaid, the state healthcare system that exists to pay for the medical treatment of those Americans too poor to afford private health insurance.

In this clip from the Jimmy Dore Show, the comedian goes to Hollywood Boulevard, where protestors are holding a demonstration, ‘Our First Stand’, demanding single-payer healthcare, and talks to some of the people there. The demonstration’s on both sides of the street outside the famous Chinese Theatre, and the protestors are a mixture of Asian Americans and Whites. One of the ladies he talks too is an Asian woman, who tells him how her husband has a congenital heart condition. Thanks to this, before the passing of Obamacare, they found it extremely difficult to get health insurance. Now she and he are frightened that Trump’s threatened repeal with leave him without it, as well as millions of other Americans, who are similarly affected. She is also concerned and upset that Congress just doesn’t seem to understand the needs and wishes of ordinary Americans like her.

He also talks to a White woman, who agrees with him that none of this would probably have happened if Hillary Clinton had won. Trump’s victory has galvanised people to protest. But like the young man Dore talks to at the beginning of the clip, she recognises that the corporatist Democrats are part of the problem. She was one of Bernie Sanders’ supporters, and she is aware and angered by the way his campaign for the presidency was blocked and defeated not by the Republicans, but by Killary and the section of the Democrat party that care more about winning big donations from the big corporations and representing them, than working for Mr and Mrs. Average Joe and Josie.

The crowd has placards saying ‘Medicare for All’, and one guy has a sign emblazoned with ‘F*ck Big Pharma’. It’s a slogan with which Dore fully approves, and he stands next to it to show his support and get it on camera. The crowd are all shouting slogans like ‘Healthcare is a right, not a privilege’.

This isn’t just an American issue. We’re faced with the same kind of situation in Britain and particularly in England. The Tories and New Labour have been trying to privatise the health service gradually since Thatcher won the general election in 1979. 55 out of 166 local health authorities now have problems finding beds, thanks to funding cuts imposed by Jeremy Hunt and his mistress, Theresa May. More and more vital NHS services are being rationed and contracted out to private healthcare providers. People are suffering because of cancelled operations, difficulties reaching the doctor, and long waiting lists.

All manufactured to give private healthcare providers access to a lucrative market that has previously been tied to the state.

And if Thatcher, Major, Blair, Cameron and May get their way, we will have the same problems over here. Private healthcare is massively expensive and very inefficient, whatever tripe the Tories, BUPA, Virgin Healthcare or Circle Health try to tell you. In America, up to 40 per cent of a company’s budget may go on administration. Pretty much like it was in the private hospitals in this country before the NHS. Private healthcare only works for those who are fit. For everyone else, especially those with congenital conditions, like the husband of the lady in the above video, it’s exorbitantly expensive. Private hospitals are smaller than state, and the private healthcare industry in Britain depends massively on state support.

There are demonstrations in this country against the Tory privatisation of the NHS. But we also need to bear in mind that, just like the corporate wing of the Democrats worked to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign, so the Blairites in the Labour party, led by John Mann, Hilary Benn and the rest of them, have tried to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership with the connivance of the mainstream media. Corbyn has made it clear he intends to renationalise the NHS, in contrast to the Blairites, who have tried so hard to privatise it.

Support Corbyn.

Clear out the Blairites.

To save the NHS, May and Hunt must resign.

Why Are the Tories Demanding Assad’s Overthrow?

I’ve posted up a number of pieces recently arguing that the real reason the US and its allies are demanding the removal of Syria’s president has nothing to do with any concern over humanitarianism, the killing of civilians or his personal dictatorship, and everything to do with backing a gas pipeline proposed by the Qataris, which would pass through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey and then into Europe. Apart from being immensely profitable, the scheme also has the geopolitical advantage, from the standpoint of the West, of harming the Russian natural gas company, Gazprom, and Russia itself, which currently exports 70 per cent of its gas to Europe.

Britain is backing the US in this through the ‘special relationship’ which has been a feature of Anglo-American relations since the Second World War. Radio 4 once broadcast a programme on the memoirs of a senior British diplomat to the Land of the Free, who recalls how he was bluntly told to ‘get up the Americans backside and stay there’. This is all about currying favour with the Americans in order to ride on their imperial coattails now that we have declined as an imperial power.

I also believe that the Tory party, if not the British political class as a whole, has personal, vested interests in the scheme. As a recent book revealed, a considerable number of MPs hold directorates, often in multiple companies, so that parliament is effectively dominated by corporate interests. During the Lib Dem-Tory coalition, over 90 Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs held directorships or senior positions in private healthcare companies, which explains why they have been so enthusiastic about its privatisation. British governments have also been keen to promote the British arms industry to foreign customers, including despots, and Private Eye has run any number of articles in the past commenting on the revolving door between the arms manufacturers and senior civil servants and politicians in the MOD.

And I now have absolutely no doubt that the same is true of the petrochemical industry. George Galloway was accused of being paid for his support of Saddam Hussein in barrels of Iraqi oil. He denies this, and to my knowledge the accusation has not been substantiated. But I do remember Private Eye running a feature on the various British MPs, who had commercial interests in one of the nastier Gulf Arab states after they went on a jaunt there. And if memory serves me correctly, long ago Ian Hislop also tackled another Tory MP about his connection to the Middle Eastern oil companies on Have I Got News For You.

I don’t know for sure, but I very much believe that many of Theresa May’s MPs also stand to profit personally from the pipeline. And it also wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if the Blairites in the Labour party also didn’t have shares and directorships in the very same companies. This would explain New Labour’s enthusiasm, as well as the Tories’, for overthrowing Assad.

These people are calling for the war to be expanded into Syria, at the risk of escalating the conflict and provoking war with Russia, to enrich themselves and their bloated corporate donors. They don’t care about democracy, freedom or peace. They are only interested in sending our brave, young people to fight and die for their own profit.

Video of DPAC’s Westminster Bridge Protest against Benefit Cuts

This is another video I found on YouTube, this time of the protest DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) held on Wednesday, which closed down Westminster Bridge. It shows them moving along one of the roads to the Bridge and then crossing it with their banner proclaiming ‘No More Deaths From Benefit Cuts’, and chanting the same. One of the organisers, a large lady in a motorised wheelchair, gives a ‘hello’ to Theresa May, pointing out that she is now in Prime Minister’s Questions. She then reads out a message from another woman, Chrisman, who couldn’t be there, about the death of yet another disabled person, a man, who was put on the work group, despite the fact that he was so ill he could hardly walk. Apart from the speaker, several of the protesters are in motorised wheelchairs. There is a group from a women’s disability organisation, Winvision, which is for women with invisible visible disabilities. Someone else is banging a drum, and there is also a man carrying around a fake coffin, obviously to symbolise the huge numbers of people that have been killed by New Labour and Tory benefit cuts.

The video also shows the rozzers turning up to tell the protesters, who sat down on the Bridge to hold their protest, that they are causing an obstruction. They don’t want to arrest them, but if they continue, then the police will do so. Several people were arrested, including one young man, who is seen being taken away with a police officer holding both his arms.

Mike over at Vox Political blogged about this protest earlier this week, and I also wrote something. DPAC have been very active campaigning against the cuts for quite a few years now. While I’ve no doubt that travellers on the bridge were cussing them that morning, DPAC had every right and reason to protest. The work capability test and the cuts to benefits are forcing millions into mass poverty. Mike spent something like two years fighting with the government to get the figures for the number of people, who have died as a result of being found ‘fit for work’. I’ve forgotten the precise figure, but it’s several thousand. And well over 500 people have died of starvation, or killed themselves in despair, after being thrown off benefit. These victims have included an elderly couple, a young mother, and a diabetic man. Stilloaks over on his blog has compiled a comprehensive list, with accompanying biographies, of the victims.

The government’s repeated refusal to give the correct figures for the numbers of people, who’ve died and their suppression of repeated internal reports showing that their policies are literally killing thousands has given many disabled people, carers and ordinary members of the public the impression that the government is consciously committing mass murder comparable to the Nazis’ campaign against the severely disabled in Germany. Mike over at Vox Political has called it ‘chequebook genocide’. Jeffrey Davies, one of the commenters on this blog, has referred to it as ‘Aktion T4’, using the Nazi codename for their mass murder of the disabled.

The work capability test was introduced by Tony Blair and New Labour, using a scientifically discredited model of disability, under the explicit view that people claiming disability benefit and long-term sickness were ‘malingerers’. Blair and Brown should also share some of the blame for these deaths. Ed Miliband told his shadow cabinet that they should abstain on a vote on benefit cuts, so the Labour party wouldn’t be attacked by the press for being soft on welfare scrounging. Jeremy Corbyn gave his support to the protesters. Owen Smith, unsurprisingly, refused.

And as so much of the hate against the poor, the unemployed and the disabled for being on benefits is driven by the vile right-wing press in this country, we should also have no hesitation in blaming Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, his proprietor, Lord Rothermere; Richard Desmond, the owner of the Express and his editors; and Rupert Murdoch and the editors of the Scum and the Times, for their part in causing the organised deaths of so many vulnerable people. Thanks to their hysterical lies and abuse, the majority of people in this country really believe that the majority of people on benefits are frauds, despite the fact that the real figure, as revealed by the government itself, is just 0.67 per cent.

May and the Tories should not be in government, and Smudger, Bomber Benn and the rest of New Labour should not be in any positions of power in the Labour party. If there was any justice, those responsible for this toxic policy and the deaths it has caused should be in the dock being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity, as should Murdoch, Dacre, Desmond, Rothermere and their assembled hacks as their willing collaborators.

Secular Talk on Poor Americans Now Using Pet Antibiotics

This is a story from another side of the Pond, but it’s relevant because it shows the kind of horrific medical system that the Blairites and the Tories are introducing over here through the destruction of the NHS. In this piece from the atheist/ secularist news channel, Secular Talk, Kyle Kulinski comments on a story in Raw Story from a report from a respected medical journal, The Journal of Antibiotics. A survey was done of 400 people in Houston, Texas, asking them how they obtained their antibiotics. These were people, who needed the drug, not those who did not. Kulinski is very clear to dispel this possible misunderstanding, as the overprescription of antibiotics is a separate issue. It’s responsible for the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, which is a serious threat to health around the world.

This is about people, who genuinely need the drug. It investigated how people obtained it, when they could no longer afford it. About a quarter had saved up supplies of the drug. Another 12 per cent talked about getting it from friends or relatives. And 4 per cent took pet antibiotics. As Kulinski points out, animals metabolise drugs in a different way. This shows how desperate the poor are in America when they can’t afford healthcare.

Kulinski describes this disgusting state of affairs in justifiably strong language. He points out how its shows the twisted attitude of the country’s political elite, who have been bought by the corporations. Many Americans can’t afford medicines. The country’s infrastructure is falling apart. In some places there isn’t any clean water. But the country has spent $7 trillion on the Iraq War. It’ll be paying it off until 2053. $80 billion has spent bailing out the banks. $4 billion or so was given by the government to the oil company, ExxonMobil, to help with their research and development, despite the fact that this is one of the richest companies in America. He makes the point that America can afford to spend all this money on pork barrel projects for companies, and making wars on ‘Brown people’ who have never invaded us. But somehow it can’t afford to spend money on healthcare, despite the fact that singlepayer is actually cheaper than the insurance system already in place.

Nearly all of these criticisms can be directed at our parliament, and our politicos in New Labour and the Tories. Blair was all too eager to invade Iraq as George Dubya’s poodle. We’re sending our sons and daughters to fight and die in a country that never attacked us, despite all the spin and lies about how Hussein was in league with Bin Laden, and ready to launch weapons of mass destruction at 45 minutes notice. And Blair and the Tories are selling off our healthcare system, so it won’t be long before we have people in this country saving antibiotics, or using stuff that’s been prescribed for their dogs and cats. We’ve already seen 4.7 million of us forced into food poverty. That’s people, who don’t have enough to eat, or don’t know when or where their next meal’s coming from. But we have more than enough money to support the Iraq War, and for Cameron, May and Bomber Benn to talk about attacking Syria. We’ve more than enough money to spend on Trident, a weapon system we don’t need, which will set us back trillions. And despite the spin, the majority of jobs it’ll create are in America. And apparently we’ve got enough money to go threatening to start a war with Russia, despite the fact that Putin isn’t a threat, and the people being genuinely persecuted in Ukraine is the ethnic Russian minority.

Oh yes, and as someone who believes in socialism and the trade unions, I have difficulty in understanding why I should be called upon to support a war for a government that includes Nazis and brutally attacks trade unionists. That’s right – the coalition currently ruling the Ukraine includes the Nazis from the Pravy (Right) Sektor. When I say ‘Nazis’, I mean Nazis. The real thing. People who wear the insignia and regalia of the auxiliary SS units and nationalist organisations that collaborated with the invading Nazis during the Great Patriotic War. Unreconstructed anti-Semites, who revere the memory of those responsible for the Holocaust and the pogroms against Jewish Ukrainians. During the ‘democratic’ demonstration that ousted Yanukhovych from power in Maidan Square in Kyiv, a group of these attacked a group of trade unionists, throwing several of them out of the upper floors of one of the buildings into which they’d fled. Red Ken in his 1987 book, Livingstone’s Labour, condemned the way the West had recruited Nazis, including participants in the Holocaust, as part of the global campaign against Communism. And he’s right. We shouldn’t have recruited them and given them sanctuary, and we shouldn’t be supporting a bunch of Nazi collaborators now.

This is what British and American politics has degenerated into. We’re bankrupting ourselves for wars against people, who’ve done us no harm, while denying our own people healthcare, food and clean water. All for corporate profit.

NHS Doctors Now Required to Ask Patients to Use Private Health Insurance

I’ve been putting off looking at some of the NHS stories Mike’s posted up over at Vox Political, on the grounds that the Tory and New Labour privatisation of the Health Service makes me both extremely depressed and absolutely boiling mad. But the issue’s far too important to leave alone.

Today Mike posted up a little snippet from The Canary, which reported that NHS chiefs are now asking doctors to politely ask their patients if they have private health insurance. If they answer ‘yes’, the doctor is supposed to gently remind them to use it. The Canary states that this signals the end of the NHS, and universal free healthcare.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/09/06/theres-a-question-doctors-are-now-being-urged-to-ask-patients-and-it-signals-the-end-of-the-nhs-the-canary/

Absolutely, and it’s what over three decades of right-wing administrations have wanted going all the way back to Maggie Thatcher. Despite her protestations in her autobiography, she really was considering privatising the NHS. She discussed it with the cabinet and Douglas Hurd, nearly provoking a rebellion. This wasn’t because her cabinet believed in the NHS. They just saw the writing on the wall and knew that if she went ahead, that would be the end of the Tory party at the next election. She also decided against it after she sent her private secretary, Patrick Jenkin, to the States. He came back and told her precisely how dreadful the American system was.

Nevertheless, she still stated that she wanted a greater role for private medicine, and enacted policies designed to encourage people to take out private health insurance. She wanted 25 per cent of the population to have it, and was disappointed when very few in actual fact did so. Amongst the newspapers pushing this policy was the Express, which published a long piece raving about how those with such insurance should have tax cuts in its Sunday edition.

The privatisation of the NHS continued with the Tories’ introduction of the PFI and the expansion of the scheme and break up the NHS by Tony Blair’s New Labour. Hospitals have been taken out of the bureaucratic structure of the NHS and encouraged to become self-financing. They’ve also been handed over to private management, and the clinics and walk-in centres set up by New Labour were also intended to be privately managed. Well over half of all operations are now carried out by private healthcare firms. The Care Commissioning Groups, which were introduced with loud noises about giving doctors the power to run their own practices are able to commission private healthcare firms to contract for services, and can themselves raise money through private finance. This was taken over by the Tories, and has been expanded even further. At the last parliament, I reposted a meme that showed just how many Tory and Lib Dem MPs had connections to private healthcare firms hoping to profit from the demise of the NHS. It was a lot – about or over 100, if I recall correctly. The Angry Yorkshireman and Mike have also reported comments by Jeremy Hunt, the current health minister, and other Tories attacking the NHS. Hunt, or one of them, has described it as ‘an abomination’. My guess is that this anger probably comes from the Tory hatred of having to pay for public services, which they almost personally resent as the state forcing them to pay for someone’s else’s benefit. I also believe they despise it because it’s a state-run service, and so excludes them for profiting. It’s why Peter Lilley introduced the Private Finance Initiative all those decades ago when John Major was in power: he wanted to find a way to open up the NHS to private investment.

And now New Labour and the Tories are moving another step closer to the final privatisation of the health service. This is being done through a manufactured financial crisis. Blair and Brown did much damage to the NHS, but when they left office it was in budget and did not need further reform. That has changed, due not least to Jeremy Hunt. Even now, Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis in their book, NHS-SOS state that the problem isn’t that the NHS is underfunded – it’s that NHS funds are being squandered and misdirected due to the introduction of private enterprise into the service. The bureaucracy in these firms and their shareholders profit, while soaking up money that would otherwise go to providing services.

The privatisation of the NHS is a national scandal. There are activist groups pledged to defending it, like the NHS Action Party and doctors’ groups and organisations. These and their on-line addresses can be found in Davis’ and Tallis’ book.

At one time the assaults on the NHS would have resulted in a wave of strikes, public protests and demonstrations. But the Tories have all but destroyed the unions, and cowed the public with a mixture of massive debt and job insecurity. And it’s going to get worse when Brexit takes effect.

Don’t let the mass media deceive you with the pro-Tory, pro-New Labour bias. When you read the papers attacking Jeremy Corbyn and praising Theresa May, just like the Beeb does on TV with Laura Kuenssberg, remember that these are the policies Smith in the Labour party, and his backers Benn et al, and the Tories stand for. Corbyn has said that he wants to renationalise the NHS, and that’s too much for the Tories and Blairite corporatists. These people should be thrown out of power as quickly as possible, before more people die or are harmed by their greed and mendacity.