Dispatches: Boris’ Lockdown Delay Killed 13,000

Despite the Tory party and its lapdog media’s attempts to portray Johnson as some kind of Churchillian heroic leader, successfully battling the Coronavirus just as Winston did the Nazis, Channel 4’s documentary series, Dispatches, was much less than impressed. The programme was unfortunately overshadowed by the news that the German police had a suspect for the abduction of Madeleine McCann. That’s a pity, as the programme’s exposure of the sheer indifference and arrogant incompetence of Johnson and his team of eugenicist murderers and looters was devastating.

Earlier this week, Zelo Street posted some of the revelations it made. Senior health experts and medical professionals appeared on camera to say how horrified they were that Johnson was shaking hands with people and criticized Bozo’s announcement on March 12th that the containment phase of the disease was over as ‘leaving an open playing field for the virus’. The Italian health minister, Pierpaolo Sileri stated that he had been told by President Conte that Boris had told him that he – Boris – wanted herd immunity. The Tories have since denied that. But perhaps the most devastating of the various statements made by the politicos, scientists and medical people was that of health analyst George Batchelor. He stated that had the lockdown been imposed earlier, 13,000 may not have died.

13,000 people killed by Boris.

They were killed because the Tories were fixated on running down the health service and implementing austerity. They died because May and Johnson scrapped the plans and the various measures in place for dealing with a pandemic. They died because Boris wanted to ‘get Brexit done’. They died because, unlike every other prime minister, Boris couldn’t be bothered to get of his ample, Eton-abused backside and attend the first five COBRA meetings. They died because he preferred to go home at weekends rather than work.  They died because Tory efficiency measures created an organisation that couldn’t procure the PPE medical workers need to stop themselves dying instead of allowing hospital trusts to get them themselves.

They died because Dominic Cummings was on the SAGE committee and actively interfering in scientific assessment and the framing of an effective policy, regardless of the lies told about this by the Tories.

They died because Cummings and the Tories are eugenicist monsters, who see the poor and disabled as biologically inferior. They are, as the Nazis put it, ‘lebensunwertigen Leben’ – ‘life unworthy of life’. The Nazis murdered the disabled in Aktion T4, murdered in clinics with poison gas, the same technique and ideology that led to obscenity of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belson and the other murder factories. The Tories aren’t doing that – they just simply consider that the state has no business helping the poor at the expense of the rich, and they should be left to die. Cummings said it at one of the Tory meetings. He wanted herd immunity, and if a few old people died, too bad.

13,000 people have been killed by Johnson, Cummings, May and the rest.

If this country actually had real politicians, instead of the politely-bred gangsters now occupying power, this would have caused a scandal and they would have had to resign.

But instead Boris and his chum Cummings hang on like limpets.

Get them out! They have killed too many already.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/maddie-is-new-squirrel.html

 

Boris Sentences More People to Death from Coronavirus

On Monday our murderous clown Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, casually sent more people to their deaths from the Coronavirus. Ignoring all the scientific advice to the contrary, he has decided to lift some of the lockdown restrictions. He’s insisting that some schools should reopen, and has allowed some nonessential business to do the same, provided they observe some measures on social distancing.

It’s far too early in this country for the lockdown to be raised, even partially. Both Mike and Zelo Street have published articles showing how Boris’ decision is yet another catastrophically wrong move in his halfhearted and utterly inept attempt to deal with the disease. Mike in his article reported that, according to the DEFCON type scale Johnson had invented for dealing with the disease, we were still at level 4. This means that the virus is not contained, the R level – the rate at which the virus is infecting new people – is above 1 in some regions, but hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. However the recommendation is still that the lockdown should be maintained. But as he points out, Boris is behaving as if we’ve reached level 1 and the crisis is over and everything can be reopened. But this won’t happen until a vaccine has been developed.

Mike’s put up a series of Tweets from people condemning his decision. One Tweeter, TheLockdownHeron, contrasts the situation in Spain and Britain. In Spain, 96 new cases were reported. In Britain, we had 8,000. But Spain is still determined to keep their lockdown in place, while we lift ours. Zelo Street’s article quoted Derek James, who tweeted that Spain had also had only fourdeaths from Covid-19 in the previous three days. Britain had had over 1,000. And the country was massively behind the rest of Europe as well. Bryan Smith tweeted out these figures for other European nations and his comments on them:

“Deaths yesterday across Europe: Spain 2 … Italy 87 … Germany 24 … France 52 … Turkey 28 … Belgium 42 … Sweden 84 … Portugal 14 … Ireland 6 … Poland 13 … Romania 13 … Hungary 8 … Netherlands 28 … UK … 324 … There’s no way we are ready to ease lockdown & open schools”.

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the SAGE advisory group, stated that the decision to ease the lockdown was political and that many scientists would have preferred the incidence of the disease to have declined to lower levels before doing so. His colleague on the committee, director of the Wellcome Trust Jeremy Farrar said that the disease was spreading too fast for lockdown measures to be lifted.

Of course Boris’ decision to raise the restrictions is political. He has never liked them, and put off imposing the lockdown for as long as possible in order to ‘get Brexit done’ and preserve the economy, all while indulging in lethal, eugenicist fantasies about the British people acquiring herd immunity. His poll ratings have plunged, so that Labour’s Keir Starmer has an approval rating of +21 while BoJob’s is -1. Labour’s also risen five points in the polls and the Tories had dropped four, so that from a lead of 15 points ahead they were down to six.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/05/lockdown-boris-versus-experts.html

Some parts of the British public are already chafing at the bit, hoping for some return to a semblance of normality. That was shown by masses of people heading off to the coast at the weekend to enjoy the summer sun. BoJob and the Tory media are trying to defend his decision partly by pointing to some of the foreign countries lifting their restrictions, like Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. But these all have much lower incidences of the disease. When France tried it, there was a spike in about 90 new cases across la Patrie. And many people in this country are afraid of the same when the second wave of infection hits. Another of the Tweets Mike shows on his page is this ominous prediction:

Sarah @Frecklechops

 · May 31, 2020

Who else thinks we’ll have a second wave in a few weeks and be back in full lockdown in July?

BLACK LIVES MATTER@socialistbangrs

Second wave but no lockdown, they just let it kill everyone it will kill and infect everyone as originally planned because they’re Tories

Absolutely. Cheltenham hospital is already sending its routine cases to Gloucester in preparation for a new wave of Coronavirus.

As for the Tories, Black Lives Matter is right: the Tories will let it kill and infect everyone because it is destroying the ‘useless eaters’, who use the NHS and are supported by the welfare state, two institutions they want to dismantle for the sake of themselves and their wealthy donors.

Johnson does not care about people’s health, only about corporate profit. And so by passing this decision, he has condemned countless people to an unnecessary death.

Hypocrite Guido Fawkes Defends Italian Fascists from Jewish Labour MP

The Sage of Crewe at Zelo Street has put up a very revealing piece showing exactly where Guido Fawkes real sympathies like when it comes to the question of anti-Semitism. Staines and his far-right crew were as zealous as the rest of the lamestream media in pushing the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. But this time the mask has slipped. He has sided with a group of Italian football ‘fans’, who made Fascist/Nazi salutes, against the Jewish Labour MP for Warrington North, Charlotte Nicholls. This isn’t the first time Guido’s been responsible for a bit of Jew hatred. The Sage reminds us how, when Ed Miliband was leader of the Labour Party, one of his underlings, Simon Carr, wrote two anti-Semitic pieces about the Labour leader. Which delighted his employer so much, that he and fellow Fawkes’ employees Harry Cole and Alex Wickham that they embraced Carr on camera.

This time, Fawkes has been greatly indignant that Nicholls should be in favour of the Fascists being given a good kicking. Another one of Staines’ minions, Tom Harwood, has written a piece with the delightful title ‘Labour MP Continues to Endorse Kicking Heads In’. Harwood has apparently written

“Festive cheer was somewhat lacking from one Labour MP over Christmas, who took to the BBC to defend her conjecture Italian tourists should have their heads kicked in. Distancing herself from Labour’s pro-EU stance already.

“Back in October, Nichols had originally tweeted that fans of the Italian club S.S. Lazio should ‘get their heads kicked in’ as they performed fascist salutes before a football match in Glasgow”.

They quote Nicholls Tweeting “You shouldn’t be doing Nazi salutes on the streets of Britain if you don’t want your head kicked in”.   Tim follows her in considering that the Italians were making Nazi, rather than Fascist salutes. In fact, at this time there’s precious little difference between the two. The Fascists adopted the raised right arm, calling it the ‘Roman’ salute in order to evoke the memory of the Roman Empire, which they aimed to restore.  They weren’t originally anti-Semitic, but they followed the Nazis in passing anti-Semitic legislation in 1937. They weren’t as harsh as Nazi legislation, and 80 per cent of Italian Jews managed to survive the War. But Fascism was nevertheless still a brutal, racist dictatorship with laws against Jews and Black Africans, and their army committed atrocities in the Balkans, north Africa and Abyssinia. And contemporary Italian neo-Fascists are still racist and anti-immigrant, as well as hostile to democracy, liberalism, socialism, Communism and anarchism.

Nicholls added to her comment “Of course, right wing rag Guido refers to Lazio fans doing Nazi salutes on the streets of Britain as ‘Italian tourists’. My granddad didn’t risk his life in WW2 to beat fascism ‘in the marketplace of ideas’ and as a Jewish person I’d rather drop dead than apologise to Nazis”.

Absolutely. Presumably Guido is horrified by the Jews, socialists, Communists and trade unionists, who beat the living daylights out of Oswald Mosley and his thugs when the British Union of Fascists were marching up and down the country trying to intimidate them. Many British Jews also had family murdered by the Nazi during the Holocaust, and so, like most people in this country generally, they don’t take kindly to displays of real Fascism. I don’t want to encourage violence against anyone, but you really can’t blame Nicholls for feeling that the Lazio fans deserved a beating for their behaviour.

The Sage also reveals in the post that Staines was also a close friend of Tory MP Aidan Burley, the MP for Cannock, who decided not to seek re-election after the Mail on Sunday revealed that he was part of a Nazi-themed stag party in Val Thorens. Staines was so upset about Burley’s participation, that he went out for a consolation drink with him.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/01/guido-fawkes-backing-nazis-not-jews.html

In fact, Staines seems to have always had a certain sympathy for Fascism. He’s a libertarian, and in the 1980s he was a member of a libertarian faction in the Tory party that invited one of the leaders of a real Fascist death squad from El Salvador to be their guest of honour at their annual dinner. The same outfit also, I believe, feted South African pro-Apartheid politicos. And a decade earlier, in 1975 the Libertarians across the Pond devoted a whole edition of their magazine, Reason, to Holocaust denial. I am not accusing Fawkes of denying the Holocaust. I am simply saying that it very much appears to me that Staines’ own politics have always been little short of real Fascism. And it says much about the moral squalor of the lamestream media that Staines is considered somehow respectable, despite his far right background.

But if Staines carries on with articles like this, perhaps that won’t be for long.

D.G. Ritchie’s Philosophical Justification for State Interference

Okay, this is going to be a long extract, but bear with it. It all needs to be said. One of the arguments I’ve seen Libertarians use to defend their ideology of a minimal state and absolute laissez-faire free enterprise and zero state welfare, is that liberals and socialists don’t have any philosophical arguments to justify their position beyond pointing to the practical, positive effects. I’ve seen this line stated by one of the more notorious Libertarians, Vox Day. Not only is Day a supporter of the miserable and immiserating economics of vons Hayek and Mises, but he has extreme right-wing views on feminism and race. You can tell just how far right he is by the fact that he calls Donald Trump ‘the God Emperor’ and refers to Anders Breivik, the man who called 70 odd children at a Norwegian Young Socialists’ camp, a saint. He really is despicable.

In fact, the philosophers of the New Liberalism, which appeared in Britain in the 1880s, like T.H. Green, D.G. Ritchie, J.A. Hobson and L.T. Hobhouse, produced philosophical defences of state interference to justify the new change in direction taken by the Liberals. These had broken with the stance of the old Radicals, who were firmly against state legislation. Instead, these philosophers argued that state interference, rather than reducing human freedom, actually enlarged it by empowering the individual. Ritchie, in the piece below, attacks the simplistic notion of the state versus personal liberty expressed by Herbert Spencer, the founder of Social Darwinism, and provides a philosophical justification for collective ownership not just in nationalization but also municipalization. In his The Principles of State Interference of 1891 he wrote

Underlying all these traditions and prejudices there is a particular metaphysical theory-a metaphysical theory which takes hold of those persons especially who are fondest of abjuring all metaphysics; and the disease is in their case the more dangerous since they do not know when they have it. The chief symptom of this metaphysical complaint is the belief in the abstract individual. The individual is thought of, at least spoken of, as if he had a meaning and significance apart from his surroundings and apart from his relations to the community of which he is a member. It may be quite true that the significance of the individual is not exhausted by his relations to any given set of surroundings; but apart from all these he is a mere abstraction-a logical ghost, a metaphysical spectre, which haunts the habitations of those who have derided metaphysics. The individual, apart from all relations to a community, is a negation. You can say nothing about him, or rather it, except that it is not any other individual. Now, along with this negative and abstract view of the individual there goes, as counterpart, the way of looking at the State as an opposing element to the individual. The individual and the State are put over against one another. Their relation is regarded as one merely of antithesis. Of course, this is a point of view which we can take, and quite rightly for certain purposes; but it is only one point of view. It expresses only a partial truth; and a partial truth, if accepted as the whole truth, is always a falsehood. Such a conception is, in any case, quite inadequate as a basis for any profitable discussion of the duties of Government.

It is this theory of the individual which underlies Mill’s famous book, Liberty. Mill, and all those who take up his attitude towards the State, seem to assume that all power gained by the State is so much taken from the individual, and conversely, that all power gained by the individual is gained at the expense of the state. Now this is to treat the two elements, power of the State and power (or liberty) of the individual, as if they formed the debit and credit sides of an account book; it is to make them like two heaps of a fixed number of stones, to neither of which you can add without taking from the other. It is to apply a mere quantitative conception in politics, as it that were an adequate ‘category’ in such matters. the same thing is done when society is spoken of as merely ‘an aggregate of individuals.’ The citizen of a State, the member of a society of any sort, even an artificial or temporary association, does not stand in the same relation to the Whole that one number does to a series of numbers, or that one stone does to a heap of stones. Even ordinary language shows this. We feel it to be a more adequate expression to say that the citizen is a member of the body politic, than to call him merely a unit in a political aggregate…

Life Mr. Spencer defines as adaptation of the individual to his environment; but, unless the individual manages likewise to adapt his environment to himself, the definition would be more applicable to death.

It must not be supposed that we wish to blind ourselves to the many real difficulties and objections which there are in the way of remedying and preventing evils by direct State action. If assured that the end is good, we must see that the means are sufficient and necessary, and we must be prepared to count the cost. But, admitting the real difficulties, we must not allow imaginary difficulties to block the way. In the first place, as already said, State action does not necessarily imply the direct action of the central government. Many things may be undertaken by local bodies which it would be unwise to put under the control of officials at a distance. ‘Municipalisation’ is, in many cases, a much better ‘cry’ than ‘Nationalisation’. Experiments may also be more safely tried in small than in large areas, and local bodies may profit by each other’s experience. Diffusion of power may well be combined with concentration of information. ‘Power’, says J.S. Mill, ‘may be localized, but knowledge to be most useful must be centralized.’ Secondly, there are many matters which can more easily be taken in hand than others by the State as presently constituted. Thus the means of communication and locomotion can in every civilized country be easily nationalized or municipalized, where this has not been done already. With regard to productive industries, there may appear greater difficulty. But the process now going on by which the individual capitalist more and more gives place to enormous joint-stock enterprises, worked by salaried managers, this tendency of capital to become ‘impersonal,’ is making the transition to management by government (central or local) very much more simple, and very much more necessary, than in the days of small industries, before the ‘industrial revolution’ began. The State will not so much displace individual enterprise, as substitute for the irresponsible company or ‘trust’ the responsible public corporation. Thirdly, and lastly, be it observed that the arguments used against ‘government’ action, where the government is entirely or mainly in the hands of a ruling class or caste, exercising wisely or unwisely a paternal or ‘grandmotherly’ authority-such arguments lose their force just in proportion as government becomes more and more genuinely the government of the people by the people themselves. The explicit recognition of popular sovereignty tends to abolish the antithesis between ‘the Man’ and ‘the State’. The State becomes, not ‘I’ indeed, but ‘we.’ The main reason for desiring more State action is in order to give the individual a greater chance of developing all his activities in a healthy way. The State and the individual are not sides of an antithesis between which we must choose; and it is possible, though, like all great things, difficult for a democracy to construct a strong and vigorous State, and thereby to foster a strong and vigorous individuality, not selfish nor isolated, but finding its truest welfare in the welfare of the community. Mr. Spencer takes up the formula ‘from status to contract’ as a complete philosophy of history. Is there not wanting a third and higher stage in which there shall be at once order and progress, cohesion and liberty, socialistic-but, therefore, rendering possible the highest development of all such individuality as constitutes an element in well-being? Perhaps then Radicalism is not turning back to an effete Toryism, but advancing to a further and positive form, leaving to the Tories and old Whigs and to Mr. Spencer the worn-out and cast-off credd of its own immaturity.

In Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock, eds., The Liberal Tradition: From Fox to Keynes (Oxford: OUP 1956), pp. 187-90.

Libertarianism was discredited long ago, when 19th century governments first started passing legislation to clear slums and give the labouring poor proper sanitation, working hours and education. Its philosophical justification came later, but I think also effectively demolished it. The people promoting it, such as the Koch brothers in America, are big businessmen seeking to re-establish a highly exploitative order which allowed industry to profit massively at the expense of working people. It became popular through aligning itself with left-wing ideas of personal liberty that emerged in the 1960s, such as the drug culture, and in the ’90s produced the illegal rave scene. In the form of Anarcho-Capitalism, it also appealed to some of those who were attracted to anarchism, while attacking the communist elements in that philosophy. Its adherent also try to justify it by calling it Classical Liberalism.

But it’s still just the same old reactionary ideology, that should have finally gone out with end of the Nineteenth Century. I think that as more people become trapped in poverty as a result of its policies, it’ll lose whatever popularity it once had. And perhaps then we can back to proper political theories advocating state intervention to advance the real, practical liberty of working people.

RT Video Shows the Awkward Facts about Safid Javid

This is another short, excellent little video from RT. It states that its about the uncomfortable facts the media is trying to cover up about this son of a bus-driving dad. When he was working for Deutsche Bank, his annual salary was £3 million a year. He voted 16 times against a tax on bankers’ bonuses. He was responsible for a speech vilifying Momentum as the ‘hard-left Fascist group’. ‘Hard left’ and ‘Fascist’ are contradictions in terms, as Fascism is far right, whatever Tories and American Republicans try to argue. Momentum is actually neither. It’s traditional centre left, Labour’s traditional post-war political stance before the destruction of the social democratic mixed economy and the welfare state under Thatcher. Oh yes, and he was responsible for the government’s failed promises to the Grenfell victims, and just this week warned that the government was about to break another one. They weren’t going to be rehoused any time soon. So much for Tweezer’s claim that they’d all be rehoused within twenty weeks, and it would be a top priority.

In short, Safid Javid is another massively overpaid, corporate banker. Like Rees-Mogg he votes consistently for the benefit of the rich, his own class, and cares nothing for those beneath him. Which includes the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire.

He and the rest of the Tories should be sent a message through the council elections tomorrow that people are sick of them, their contempt for ordinary people, their own monstrous, unrestrained greed and their vile treatment of the poor – the victims of Grenfell fire, the members of the Windrush generation they’ve deported, and just about everyone their policies have attacked and reduced to insecurity and misery – the unemployed, the disabled and those on low incomes, who are now having to choose between eating and paying the bills. Vote them out!

Tory MP Wants to Unseat John Bercow for Attacking Trump

Kudos and respect this week to the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow. The honourable gentleman spoke this week about banning Trump from addressing parliament if he ever came to this country on a state visit. He stated, quite correctly, that addressing parliament is not a right – it is a reward that has to be earned. He also stated that he would have wanted to have Trump prevented from addressing the lower house even without his ban on Muslims travelling to the US. Millions of ordinary Brits share Bercow’s opinions.

Trump has shown himself repeatedly to be a vulgar egomaniac with a despicable attitude to sexual assault and ethnic minority communities, such as Latinos, Blacks and Muslims. While he may have tried to distance himself from them somewhat, his most vocal supporters and some of his closest advisors are anti-Semites, White Supremacists and just plain neo-Nazis. Richard Spencer and his followers screaming ‘Hail Victory! Hail Trump! Hail our race!’ while raising their right hands in the Fascist salute was a clear demonstration of their real vile political views, despite Spencer’s later attempts to claim that he was ‘being ironic’.

For many millions of people, Trump and his supporters represent a horrible return of some of the Fascism and racist persecution of the 1920s and ’30s. To Brits, Trump and his supporters recall the 1930s when Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists goose-stepped up and down Britain and marched into the East End of London in an attempt to bully and beat Jews, Communists, trade unionists and members of the Labour party.

There is such a thing as the ‘dignity of parliament’, regardless of the less than sterling character or views of individual MPs. Bercow was right to want to have Trump stopped from addressing it.

Unfortunately, many Tories do not share Mr Bercow’s views. Earlier this week Mike posted a piece reporting that, despite earning the praise and support of long term Labour MP, Dennis Skinner, members of Bercow’s own party, the Tories, sat in stony silence.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/02/07/the-house-of-commons-should-be-proud-of-its-speaker-some-conservatives-seem-to-disagree/

Now one of the Tory MPs, James Duddridge, has tabled a vote of ‘No Confidence’ in the Speaker. Yesterday he wrote to Theresa May asking her not to impose the whip on her top team if the commons did hold a vote of ‘no confidence’. Now he claims that an increasing number of MPs share his anger, and that Bercow could be deposed before parliament resumes the Monday after next.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/02/10/tory-mp-tables-vote-of-no-confidence-in-john-bercow-after-donald-trump-attack/

This is disgusting, but it doesn’t surprise in the least. The Tories have for a very long time hated Bercow with a passion. They didn’t want him becoming Speaker, as they moaned that he was biased against them. Which probably means that he was trying to be fair and do his job impartially. It also wouldn’t help that he is literally sleeping with the enemy. His wife, Sally, is a Labour MP.

Bercow in his speech denouncing Trump stated that Trump should be prevented from speaking, if the House was serious about combatting racism, sexism and supporting equality. This proposal by Duddridge shows precisely what he, and many other Tories, really think about these issues. Despite Cameron’s attempt to rebrand the party as non-racist, embracing ethnic minorities, gays and promoting women, there is still a large number of Conservatives who clearly don’t share these views. The Daily Mail has consistently attacked immigration, gay rights and feminism, despite the fact that it was originally founded to appeal to a largely female readership. The same kind of attitudes permeate the Express, the Scum and the other Tory rags to a greater or lesser degree. And there have repeatedly been instances where Tory MPs have been caught making extremely derogatory remarks about Blacks, Asians or women.

Parliament is under pressure to reform itself so that it does become more representative of Britain’s diverse society, with more Black and Asian MPs and more women. It is therefore contradictory, at the very least, to give the privilege of addressing it to someone like Trump, with his racist and misogynist views.

Bercow’s principled statement of his intention of blocking Trump from speaking has shown the real nature of the Conservative party as it has brought out their support for Trump, and by implication the grotesque policies and attitudes he represents.

Bercow is to be applauded. Duddridge and his supporters are a disgrace to the dignity of House in which they sit, and their views are an insult to anyone worried about the growth of Fascism and the extreme right.

Demonstrations Across the UK Today Against Trump’s Muslim Ban

Mike has put up news that there are going to be mass demonstrations across the UK today against Trump’s ban on immigration from seven Muslim majority countries. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has demanded that Trump’s state visit to Britain should be cancelled. And, almost predictably, Theresa May has failed to say very much about it. She has asked Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to raise the issue of the travel ban with their opposite numbers in the US administration. But this seems to be less than altruistic. She’s not worried about the ban on Muslims going to the US so much as how it would affect the Tory MP, Nadhim Zahawi.

The demonstration in London is due to be held this evening at 6.00 pm outside Downing Street. There are also demos in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Falmouth, Glasgow, Hastings, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Preston in Lancashire, Sheffield and York. The demos are organised by Momentum, but people of other views are welcome to join them.

There is also a petition currently being compiled against a state visit by Trump to the UK, which people may also wish to sign. And Mike has also suggested that those with a Tory MP may also like to write to them in protest about it, using the tools provided by Write To Them for creating such messages.

For further information, please go to Mike’s website, where there are appropriate links to the internet pages of the organisations mentioned.

Mike’s article also has a few Tweets from those disapproving May’s silence on this critical issue. One of them is Gary Lineker, wondering when May’s going to speak out. The other is Hugh Terry, who aptly describes May as not a prime minister, but a ‘fascist apologist arms dealer disguised as a rancid old school-marm!’ Which is an accurate description of May, and indeed, of that great, golden Tory icon, Maggie Thatcher.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/01/29/join-demonstrations-across-the-nation-january-30-2017-against-trumps-muslimban/

Back to Censorship with the Tories

One of the reforms now being mooted by the Tories is the introduction of legislation to allow the Broadcasting Standards Authority to intervene in a possibly controversial or offensive programme before broadcast. This is, of course, censorship, and the Tories are well aware of what a hot potato this issue is. Mike’s already reported on his blog over at Vox Political the reaction of Sajid Javid, who has apparently raised some objections to it. It’s ‘apparent’, as Mike considers that Javid’s objections are merely cosmetic formalities. The decision has already been made, but the Tories are presenting a façade of objections in order to stave off criticism that they are all in favour of it.

In fact, sections of the Tory party have for some time now bitterly objected to what they see as appallingly lax, permissive standards on television and the theatre. A few years ago, one of the High Tories with either the Daily Mail, the Spectator or possibly the Telegraph, wrote a piece declaring that British society had been wrecked by the evil Roy Jenkins. Why Roy Jenkins, of all people? After all, Woy was hardly some Marxist or other radical Left firebrand, determined to destroy capitalism. He was one of the founders of the SDP. Some idea of his character can be seen in Gerald Scarfe’s description of him as having ‘a good claret face’.

Nevertheless, the Tory right despises him as the personification of the very worst aspects of the Sixties. It was Woy Jenkins as home secretary in the 1960s, who ended censorship in the theatre, legalised homosexuality and removed the property qualification for jury service. This meant that all kinds of ‘orrible filth was allowed on stage, to the consternation of Mary Whitehouse and the other members of her Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. The judiciary became soft of crime, because the great unwashed now allowed to judge whether defendants were guilty in the courtroom were not respectable householders, and so had no interest in defending property rights. And most heinous of all, gays were allowed the freedom to indulge their sexuality in the privacy of their own homes, instead of being arrested and properly punished for the threat they posed to society.

Looking back, the restrictions on what was considered suitable for performance, either broadcast, or on stage, was quite severe. Michael Bentin, one of the Goons, said in his one man show, From the Sublime to the Paranormal, way back in the 1990s that the Beeb’s regulations forbade them from making jokes about the following:

The monarchy

Disability

The colour question

‘Effeminacy’ in men

and they couldn’t blaspheme.

They remembered all this through the mnemonic ‘My God, said the Queen, I do believe that one-eyed N*gger’s a poof’. According to the regulations, this would be the single most unbroadcastable sentence possible.

Of course, this censorship became increasingly untenable as popular attitudes changed and traditional authority came under increasing questioning, not least during the satire boom. Ways could be found for entrepreneurs to get round the statutory requirement for theatres to submit their scripts to the Lord Chamberlain for approval before they were staged. And the restriction’s became increasingly anachronistic and absurd. Peter Cook in an interview with Clive James back in the 1990s gave an example of just how absurd and unworkable they were. One of the plays he staged at his club, The Establishment, began with the line ‘Enter three terrible old queens’. Obviously, this violated the prohibition against the portrayal of homosexuals. The script came back covered in blue pencil. They then changed the line to ‘Enter three aesthetic young men’. This, however, was deemed completely accepted and duly passed.

The lifting of those restrictions thus prepared the way for the portrayal of racism and discussions of racial issues in Til Death Us To Part, with Alf Garnett on TV and the extremely camp characters, Julian and Sandy, on the radio comedy series, Round the Horne. Their sexuality was never clearly stated in English, but they spoke in Parlary, the language of actors and the gay underground. And if you understood that, then it was. There were numerous lines about men being ‘omee palones’. ‘Omee’ is the Parlary word for man. ‘Palone’ meant woman, and ‘Omee palone’ was the term used to mean a gay. So, provided you knew the lingo, it was pretty much in front of you all the time, even if the BBC never dared to say it quite outright.

As for the increasingly questioning attitude towards authority, this appalled members of the older generation to the extent that twenty years after it was broadcast, the BBC’s foremost political journalist and broadcaster, Robin Day, still declared That Was The Week That Was ‘deplorable’ in his autobiography, Grand Inquisitor, when it was published in the 1980s. The Tories would dearly love to drag the country back to situation before 1968/9, when there was due to deference to the monarchy and established authority, and the airwaves were full of clean, wholesome family entertainment without the sex and violence that they feel is destroying the British family and sending crime figures shooting up.

It’s highly debatable how far the reactionary Right can turn the clock back to the 1950s. Homosexuality is still bitterly opposed and hated in some sections of British society, but it’s been so widely accepted elsewhere since the 1980s that the Tories have been forced to support gay marriage. Weirdly, even UKIP, which has viciously attacked gay rights, has now gone so far as to want to take part in a gay price march in London. Society generally has accepted premarital sex and the depiction of nudity and some sexual activity on TV – as long as it’s broadcast after the watershed, that it’s hard to see how an outright ban on this could ever be possible or be seen as anything other than ridiculous. Quite apart from the fact that viewers are able to see sexually explicit and violent movies on DVD or the internet in their own homes, and in films at the cinema.

This doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be some standards, especially when dealing with sex and extremely controversial topics like race. It does mean that the standards have moved so far since the days of censorship that its return would be difficult, unpopular and probably so riddled with complications, contradictions and exceptions as to be unworkable. One example of the latter was the prohibition of the Thatcher government against directly broadcasting statements by terrorists in their own voices. It was introduced to prevent organisations like paramilitaries in Northern Ireland and their associated political parties, like Sinn Fein, from gaining ‘the oxygen of publicity.’ So the TV companies simply resorted to voice actors imitating their voices while quoting their statements. The policy then had to be abandoned, because some of the impressions of the terrorists and their politicians, like Gerry Adams, were so good that they were actually indistinguishable from the people themselves.

And even before the policy was finally abandoned, it was spoofed and something of a laughing stock. The Day Today, the BBC spoof news show, which was the precursor to Chris Morris’ classic and highly controversial comedy, Brass Eye, sent up the restrictions in one edition. This featured an interviewed with a supposed Irish Republican politician, who, ‘in accordance with government broadcasting requirements’, was required to breath helium to make him sound as ridiculous as possible when giving his statement to journalists.

Moreover, any mention of censorship by that very term is extremely controversial. Way back in the 1980s or ’90s the British Board of Film Censors decided to change its name to the British Board of Film Classification as something that sounded much better and far less authoritarian. It’s interesting that the new legislation to allow the Broadcasting Standards Authority to intervene before broadcast has not been described as such. Nevertheless, censorship is what it is.

There is, of course, a much more sinister aspect to the Tories’ planned reintroduction of censorship. They’d like to have complete control over the news before its broadcast, to manipulate its content and control public attitudes. News analysts and media watchers have already noted that the BBC in its reportage is biased towards the Tories, but this isn’t enough for them. Any criticism, not matter how mild, is always denounced as evidence of the Beeb’s liberal bias. This is particularly self-serving when one considers how many of those making the denunciations have connections to Murdoch, who would dearly love the BBC to be reduced, privatised or completely abolished so he could grab some of its broadcasting action.

Private Eye have also published pieces pointing out just how many journalists from the Right-wing press, and associated in particular with Cameron, have gone off to work for the Beeb, contradicting the claims of the Telegraph and Times that there is a revolving door between the Beeb and the Labour party. This is, apparently, shown by the appointment of Andrew Marr as one of the Corporation’s leading political journalists. He is a member of the ‘left-wing’ establishment, as he was editor of the Independent, before taking up his position at the Beeb way back in the 1980s.

Thatcher’s government in particular acted at least twice to try and prevent the broadcast of critical programmes, or destroy the broadcasting companies that did. These were the programmes, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, an edition of the Beeb’s documentary and current affairs series, Panorama, and the ITV programme, Death on the Rock. ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’ annoyed the Tories because of its claim that they had been infiltrated by members of the extreme Right, such as the National Front, in order to radicalise it further, similar to the way the Labour Party had been infiltrated by the Marxist Militant Tendency. They therefore tried all they could to stop it being shown. Death on the Rock was about the shooting of a squad of IRA terrorists in Gibraltar as they were preparing to attack a British army base. The programme alarmed and angered Maggie as it showed that there was no need for the shooting of the terrorists. They had been under observation at almost every point in their journey to the Rock, and could have been picked up and arrested safely, with the minimum of violence, at a number of times before their final battle with the British army. This wasn’t a defensive battle, but a staged execution of the terror squad, intended to punish the IRA and send a clear message that future attempts at terrorism would be dealt with the same way. It also seems to support the allegation of Colin Wallace and others, published by Lobster, that special SAS squads had been embedded in the British army in Northern Ireland in order to carry out similar executions of Nationalists.

Thatcher, however, denied that the shooting of the IRA terrorists in Gibraltar was anything of the sort. She and her cabinet were so annoyed at the programme that the ITV broadcaster lost its licence, and was replaced instead by Carlton. The very name of that company recalls the Tories’ Carlton Club in London, and suggested their political allegiance, or at least compliance, with Maggie’s demands. Despite Maggie’s denials, Lady Olga Maitland later gave the game away in her biography of the Iron Lady published later, where she said that the terrorists were shot as a punishment, rather than killed from self-defence.

And if the Tories were upset and tried to ban hostile programmes, they also harbour long grudges about programmes supporting them which the Beeb didn’t broadcast. Every so often you can read one of the Tory journos griping in the Daily Heil or one of the other rags about the Beeb’s bias in not broadcasting a play about Maggie and the Falklands War. This had a pro-Thatcher perspective, and included a scene showing her crying about the squaddies, who had been killed by the Argentinians in the conflict. I find it hard to believe that Maggie shed any tears for anyone, except herself and her immediate family, but this might be right. Either way, it was not broadcast, and the Tories have bitterly resented this and used it regularly as a cudgel to beat the BBC for its supposed left-wing bias ever since.

If the Tories manage to get their way with the new broadcasting bill and its provisions, you can expect their control of the media to be more or less absolute. Mike and many of the other left-wing bloggers have pointed out how protests are not reported by the BBC, or given minimal, grudging coverage. This included a massive demonstration of tens, if not hundreds of thousands, outside the Beeb’s own doorstep. This will only get worse with the Tories’ plans for the Broadcasting Standards Authority to act before broadcast. There will be even less hostile or oppositional coverage of the Tories and their policies, and instead much more programming supporting them. Of course, this could ultimately damage the established broadcast media, as more people would turn to the internet, and foreign news channels to get an idea of what was going on here. It’s happened already, in that Russia Today and the Iranian Press TV have already given extensive coverage to protests and demonstrations against the Coalition and their cuts, which the Beeb and British broadcasters have done their best to ignore as far as possible.

The political dimensions to this new censorship won’t be introduced explicitly. Instead, it’ll be like Cameron’s proposed legislation trying to censor the internet. It’ll be promoted and set up under the pretext of protecting impressionable Brits from porn and other objectionable material. The Daily Mail will no doubt celebrate it as the return of proper protection for the vulnerable children watching TV. Nevertheless, it will come in. The Tories will do what they normally do, and lie and deny that it is censorship, but this will be exactly what it is. And another British freedom will have been destroyed to make the world safe and profitable for them and their corporate backers.

American David Pakman on Britain’s Excellent State Healthcare

This is another video from the alternative, left-wing or progressive American news media. This time it’s David Pakman, who’s interviewing Wendell Potter. Potter is a former VP of Corporate Communications at Cigna, and the author of the books Deadly Spin and Obamacare: What’s In It for Me.

In his books and other writings, Potter examined the reality behind the comments and the negative depiction of Britain’s NHS in America to show the truth: Britain’s health service is excellent, and far and away much better than that of America.

He states that the stories of long waiting times and poor care trotted out by advocates of private healthcare are anecdotal. He also spoke to Brits living in America, and Americans with dual citizenship with Britain, who had experience of both British and American healthcare. He states that they all stated that British health care was better. It was much cheaper, for a start.

American healthcare is much more expensive than those in the other countries. Thirty per cent of American costs are wasted in bureaucracy.

It is also not true that the tax burden in Britain and other countries with similar systems is higher than America. Americans are also paying significantly for the healthcare in taxes at a comparable level, but this is hidden.

He notes that in the statistics compiled of 11 countries in the developed world by international authorities, Britain’s NHS is no.1, while America is right at the bottom at 11.

British health outcomes are better, as indeed are those in the other countries, which have state regulated or single payer healthcare. The infant mortality rates in America is much higher, for example.

Mr Potter also points out that because healthcare is immensely profitable, the insurance companies and medical industries are actively promoting their system as the best, which he attempted to expose in his book, Deadly Spin.

Pakman and Potter also discuss the fact that American healthcare 100 years ago was moving towards something like state healthcare. However, as this became massively unpopular and there was a campaign against because it was the system used by the Germans, who were the first country to have a state healthcare system.

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This is an important corrective to some of the lies told about the NHS by the Republicans in America and the Tories and Kipper over here. The Conservatives and their Lib Dem enablers are actively privatising the health service. 92 Tory and Lib Dem MPs have connections to private healthcare companies seeking to profit from its dismantlement. A few years ago Boris Johnson even wrote a piece in the Spectator demanding that Britain’s NHS be abolished in favour of the American model. Nigel Farage and his chief gauleiter, Paul Nuttall, have both advocated its privatisation, as have other Kippers.

This must not be allowed. andtThis video shows the reality behind the Right-wing propaganda.

Hampshire: Another Kipper Wants to Privatise the NHS

Yesterday’s Southern Daily Echo carried news of the furore in Winchester, when the UKIP candidate for the town’s Eastgate ward in the county council elections stated that he’d privatise the NHS. Bradley Monk, a student and part-time chef, posted on Twitter the comment “The welfare state is massively bloated. I’d scrap the NHS personally, but that is political suicide.” The article describes the criticism of Monk’s comments by the local Lib Dems, who were keen to defend the NHS, and Monk’s attack on the local Conservatives. They’ve said that as he’s only a student, he’s likely to move away from the area, an accusation that Monk rebuts. The article’s entitled Winchester UKIP candidate criticised for call to scrap NHS , and it’s at http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/10396473._/.

Monk isn’t the first or the last Kipper to want to privatise the NHS by any means. The Fuhrage has said that he wants it replaced by an insurance system like America, while his 2nd in Command, Paul Nuttall, has also stated that he wants to privatise it.

And the attack on Monk by the Tories is interesting for what it doesn’t say. Hampshire’s Tories don’t criticise him for demanding the privatisation of the NHS. They just make general attacks on UKIP’s credibility and the possibility that Monks will no longer stay in the town if he wins. This is because the Tories themselves are privatising the NHS by the backdoor. Andrew Lansley himself has stated that he wants it privatised. And there are 91 other Tory and Lib Dem MPs, who agree with him. Like Iain Duncan Smith, when he isn’t congratulating himself on sending another poor soul starving and desperate to his grave.

UKIP don’t represent the working man, no matter what pretence Farage puts on. Don’t be taken in by them or the Tories in the coming elections.