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Tuesday 19 March 2024

OK – I’ll do it… (494)

I hear (or imagine I hear) the clamour.

Amanda – PLEASE – you do it. You become Prime Minister. For goodness sake. Save us. Become Tory PM and call an election. Replace rubbish, risible, ridiculous Rishi.

Alright – I’m not an MP – but then neither is David Cameron and he is Foreign Sec. Pretty important in the current climate. And on the plus side, I didn’t bring the country to its knees with austerity or fuck up by holding an EU referendum to try to sort the problems in the Tory party - so that is score 1 to me.

I don’t have time to practice being racist and bigoted so you’d have to do without that but frankly would one less person being a total Tory turd even be noticed as those left at the bottom of the Conservative barrel scrap it out to see who can be the worst sort of person imaginable.

Having a sense of human responsibility probably also rules me out. You only have to listen to Tories and their media mouth-pieces talking about the success or failure of the miserable, mean, misanthropic Rwanda scheme as if it’s simply about point scoring now rather than anything to do with actual human lives - to know that.

But I’m only talking about being PM in order to call an election.

Tory back room chunter is apparently all about Penny Mordaunt’s chances but I saw a clip of her at the coronation. She’s clearly off her nut.

Nor do I have any rich mates who I could give contracts to so they can profit from a deadly global disease or from all the companies that have been privatised. Also – I can’t imagine sanctioning multi-million pound contracts to some  bastard racist just because he bunged the party a few quid but I’d happily give government money to – oh I dunno – the NHS or help for affordable housing, or schools or to repair roads or other mad crazy wild stuff like that.

It would only be for a few weeks and I might quite enjoy it. Apparently you get to take pointless trips in helicopters and when polling is dire you pop over for a photo op with that Ukrainian comedian.

Mainly – the competence bar is so catastrophically, unbelievably low now that as long as I wasn’t caught eating cat turds out of the gutter while singing La Marseillaise out of tune in a hailstorm – surely I’d be the best leader the Tories have had in a very very long time…

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Tuesday 12 March 2024

The Miners’ Strike 40 years on - a collective punishment beating that remains unhealed. (493)

By the time I left home to study, I was personally acquainted with the viciousness and debilitating nature of racism. That white people could treat other white people with a disregard and animalistic savagery that took the breath away was a revelation to me back then.

Despite being a black woman, it is the totemic white/male working-class struggle of the miners’ strike that sparked my political life and social awareness more than almost any other significant happening in the UK.

As a student in Newcastle in the 1980s I cut my political teeth on that conflict.

As someone scared of both horses and dogs (and police with batons), a pro-miners demo in London remains one of the scariest experiences of my life. No smartphones then to document the on-the-ground truth or counter the misleading BBC images. 

As a city councilor in Newcastle, I witnessed first-hand the oppressive effect on political struggle/debate following the successful collective punishment beating meted out to working-class communities. 

Move forward and I worked briefly for a Newcastle law firm that carried a significant caseload of ex-miners personal injury claims. Like the Post Office scandal, there was a real sense of heel dragging in the hope that many would die before any compensation had to be paid. And many did.

Stumble into the 21st century and I've watched horrified as the country is devastated by the corrosive effects of complete privatisation, criminal incompetence, extreme cronyism plus rampant and out of control greed.

Most astonishing is the way the Tories successfully convince socially and economically eviscerated communities that all the ills they'd visited on them, all the failures, all the inadequate and hollowed-out services are not the fault of a bunch of posh twits who care nothing for the majority, but the fault of migrants. The fault of the most powerless and unfortunate. People who were not even here when The Haves began systematically and completely dismantling all the post war gains of The Have Nots.

In the common parlance it's been quite a journey...

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Tuesday 5 March 2024

The ghosts of Gaza lie in wait for Biden & Starmer at this election… (492)

Despite what the papers, pollsters and focus group leaders tell Biden and Starmer – they’re not on a home run…

Here in the UK, The Labour Party is wary of being too confident. Historically, this is due to the Kinnock effect. People my age will recall the shoe-in that was supposed to be Neil Kinnock’s 1992 Labour government  - which never was - after the then leader seemed too overconfident and alienated an electorate that did not want to be taken for granted.

Was it that simple? I don’t know. I do know that a more recent election (2015), featuring Ed Miliband, also deemed to be a shoe-in by political pundits was also lost by Labour.

On this blog I called it correctly at the time.

In the aftermath of Miliband’s failure (whatever did he do with that stone carved pledge?) there was a wringing of hands in the Westminster bubble and in the press – how could they have got it wrong! In my view because they looked at it from an entirely political point of view and did not rule in the psychology of the UK public. Apart from Miliband caving as soon as the Tories accused him of being too tight with the unions (to which the answer should have been – YES – we are a party for ordinary working people) he also, to the mind of a public obsessed with soap operas and royalty, stabbed his brother in the back. The older Miliband was seen as heir elect. Factor these things in.

The public mood is more feral and febrile than ever and those in the magic circle don’t always keep up.

Regulars know I am a mad letter writer and it's often interesting to me the ones that do not get published. E.g. for many years I referred to Tony Blair as a war criminal. Despite the public mood consistently being anti the Iraq invasion – at the time and after the horrors - those letters never got published. After Putin invaded Ukraine – and after W Bush made his gaffe (or Freudian slip) confusing Ukraine with Iraq – suddenly it was ok to refer to the war criminal as a war criminal.

Anyhow – I digress.

In Michigan recently – the Dems had an unpleasant surprise at the number of voters who responded at the Democrat primary by returning uncommitted. This was a peaceful, practical protest against Biden’s too-uncritical support off Netanyahu and the 100,000 UC votes cast was the result of just a 3 week campaign. When congratulating themselves on the win, the Biden team ignored that result which – according to long-term social observer and political titan Michael Moore could be enough to swing an important state come the November elections. 

For both Starmer and Biden there is, I believe, an underestimation of the Gaza effect.

It’s easy, for example, to dismiss the recent election of the vile lunatic George Galloway in the Labour-botched election in Rochdale here in the UK. Drawing wrong conclusions is dangerous.

Both Starmer and Biden will be judged by future generations to have been on the very wrong side of history over Gaza but more immediately will be shown – to a greater or lesser extent, not to carry the sentiments of their natural followers. They have both played it very wrong.

Caution, complacency and credulity have been their Achilles heels.

Here in the UK the Labour lead over the Tories in polling is wider than it has been in 40 years. HOWEVER, the problem for Labour in the UK as for the Dems in the US has always been turnout. Back in the 1980s when I was elected as first black woman to Newcastle City Council, in a wave of naivety and hope – a wise old-timer warned me on the day that ousting the sitting Tory could depend on whether or not it rained.

The angels are weeping tears over Gaza and both Biden and Starmer should beware that rain. It could still drown or disastrously dilute their electoral successes. Especially as both need not just to win but to win decisively and carry support with them for the huge national and global challenges ahead.

The ghosts of Gaza are waiting for Biden and Starmer this election...

Tuesday 27 February 2024

Wasting the 21st Century… (491)

I doodle when I’m lost for words.

In this post I invite you to DATE THE DOODLE as an exercise in identifying political futility.

Check out the dates (where they are legible) in the bottom right hand corner and you’ll see these issues remain rotting in a back room while dog-whistle politics takes centre stage…



(2013)






Ok - there are more but you get the point but if proof were needed that dog-whistle politics is now the norm do check out my letter in today's  Glasgow Herald

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Tuesday 20 February 2024

Who’s more gullible – MAGA mugs buying crappy gold sneakers or UK Conservative voters buying endless, obvious lies? (490)

Across the pond, Donald Trump is attempting to sell gold Trump sneakers for $399. Apart from the general incredulity from anyone with registerable brain function, it’s been pointed out that the high-tops bear a strong similarity to a pair of cheap gold sneakers that can be bought from general stores for about $18.99. But if tacky gold Trump toddler shoes don’t rock your boat in the latest Pay My Legal Bills Trump grift – he is also selling, for a mere $99, Trump Victory perfume!!!

Make no mistake – MAGA rubes will pay. Some of the poorest in America will buy this shit in order to fund the self-styled billionaire’s legal penalties, ratcheted up in court as a result of his being found guilty of (among other things) defamation, rape and false business practices.

Here in the UK, the Tories are simply asking voters to believe their lies old and new, buy into the narrative that the devastation of their multiple administrations is really nothing to do with them and they have shiny new ideas and plans to fix Britain. The Britain they broke so badly. 

After decades of economically debilitating and socially damaging privatisation, the calamity of putting people before profit – the short-sightedness of lack of investment and the constant attack on the things every-day people rely on – public services – which are now on their knees – The Tories want the electorate to buy the idea that it’s all the fault of migrants.

Nothing to do with them. Look over there…

Never mind that poverty, homelessness, foodbanks, rent stress, covid education failures – broken infrastructure – schools, roads, hospitals and on and on have all grown exponentially during the last 14 years of one disastrous Tory government after another. 

A couple of posts ago (487) I invited readers to play the ‘what if we had’ game; what we might have if various Tory PMs – elected and unelected, hadn’t wasted billions on failed pet projects and poor governance. But they continue to this day to push the lie that if we could just be crueller and crueller to the most desperate, the poorest, the most vulnerable – those elusive sunlit uplands will magically appear...

Many people will buy it.

At least the folk buying the Trump perfume might keep the bugs away.

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Tuesday 13 February 2024

Post-truth, post-shame, post-challenge Britain (489)

Many posts ago I wrote a blog called Living in The Penisic Era - 165. Now, it seems, we’ve morphed to a new era, not just into post truth and post-shame but one where there is only feeble push back. There is no effective challenge as day after day the falsehoods spew. It could be that there is now just too much, it comes too fast and sensible voices and coherent thought are drowned in the turd-filled verbal sewage overflow.

Another older post is called ‘Deference is killing us’ - 391. and that is part of the problem too. Tories have that overweening sense of entitlement that resonates with too many in other positions of power and especially the media, so that tribal instinct kicks in before duty to country and fellows less fortunate has time to impact.

There are many things we should not be ashamed of that we were, in past times, taught to be mortified by but something shame should definitely still attach to is lying through one’s teeth, repeatedly and publically for personal/political gain. Or - more so recently – just to get your mug in front of a camera gearing up for a lucrative GB News slot.

From the lies that brought us Brexit to the re-writing of history we saw at the covid ‘inquiry’ we now have a fluid, ever-present liquidity of lying in our post-Brexit, austerity-devastated, wealth-divided, privatisation-poisoned land.

Unflinching dishonesty has become so ordinary that while it still leaves a bad taste and a sort of fetid stink in the air – like the sad, un-cared for smelly folk I increasingly encounter on the bus – you just sort of grin and bear it and hope someone opens a window (real or metaphoric…)

But the damage is becoming catastrophic.

Take the muddle-mumbling and obfuscation of the vile, slimy, should-have-been-gone-long-ago Minister for Levelling up Michael Gove and the bollocks he’s been spouting recently about housing. Promising again to do away with no fault eviction – something this government had ample time and opportunity to do and have not done – IS lying - surely?

Take the nightmare deliberately and falsely created over the UK migrant issue that became, via the forked tongues of Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman and, more recently, James Cleverly and PM Rishi Sunak – nothing at all about fixing the problem but all about dog-whistling to racists to flex the xenophobic muscle and keep in with the right wing head-bangers. Oh – and wasting £240m in the process for no result. Is obvious false presentation of reality not also unabashed lying?

The afore-mentioned Gove and afore-mentioned Johnson could be lined up with Farage if we wanted to talk about the biggest and most ruinous lie so far this century – Brexit. I’ll leave that one because even the folk who were taken in now realise it was a massive con. Only Johnson could think of putting such a huge lie on an object so associated with solid, work-a-day reliability – a red bus.

Not so long ago – amidst the howls of the Right-wing claiming left-wing bias by our so called public broadcaster the BBC – we had a chairman who was appointed by Tories and who had previously been a Tory donor and also an advisor to both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. The said Richard Sharp was only forced to resign when it emerged he was further mired in muck in an attempt to fix a mate’s loan for Johnson.

Watch any other party or other politically involved person who is not a Tory and see how they are minutely examined, probed for explanation, eviscerated if every i is not dotted every t not crossed.

But we have to find something to counter-act this dangerously unequal playing field.

When a Tory stands up in front of the media and lies about the mess the country is in (even though we are all living it) or tells us, yet again, they ‘have a plan’ to fix the, e.g. waterways of England, polluted by private companies that have simply sloshed away profits over the decades; when they tell us poverty is down when we know it’s not, when they tell us they are ‘investing’ in the NHS and the NHS is on its knees and literally no one is going to get the kind of response to their cancer awarded to Charles recently, when they lie and lie and lie about how state school kids were abandoned during covid - what do we do?

For once this is not one of my rhetorical questions.

I don’t know.

But we need to work something out because the shameless liars have razed the social structure of Britain to the ground along with much of the physical infrastructure and they have tainted all government administration with their slurry.

They are successfully blaming their mess on the least vocal, least powerful, poorest and most vulnerable people in society – and often – without challenge – claiming that somehow it’s the fault of other political parties. And they are getting away with it…

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For lighter reading do check out My BOOKS

Plus if you google Amanda Baker Edinburgh letters you may come across some of my editor letters - too many to put links to.

Tuesday 6 February 2024

11,500 dead children in Gaza. Three of the four nations of the so called ‘United’ Kingdom want a ceasefire. Westminster MUST call for one…(488)

The Welsh Parliament (by majority though without the Labour leader) called for a ceasefire early in the conflict as did Humza Yousaf the First Minister of Scotland. 

Now that Stormont has resumed, the newly minted First Minister of Ireland made room in her inaugural speech to call for a ceasefire and express sympathy for the incalculable and unimaginable suffering of the people of Gaza. 

As the number of dead teens, children and babies heads for 12k – can it be sustainable that the 'United' Kingdom's position remains one of not calling for a ceasefire when 3 of the 4 nations have openly, formally called for cessation of the slaughter? 

For a list of the names (those known) of the dead children of Gaza – look here THEIR NAMES