“We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future”… (499)

F. W. Maitland (English Law Historian -1850 – 1906)

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So – more quoting this week. Maybe there just no longer seems much point in writing out what is obvious when it has been so very obvious for so very long.

At the weekend I got into a poignant discussion with my young cousins’ Ukrainian girlfriend. A sparklingly intelligent young woman, making the most of her displacement and trying to live a normal life while worry clearly accompanies all her thoughts and actions concerning her internally displaced family back in Ukraine.

OF the many interesting things she said, there was a central point that many would do well to remember in relation to the hysteria over migrants and in particular the government’s mad obsession and ludicrous incompetence (not to mention criminal waste of money) over the laughably insane Rwanda scheme. IN fact it was a point that we’d do well to keep front and centre of any discussion relating to migrants or refugees that is now derailed by the rabid right wing. That point is that she would not be here if it were not for the situation in Ukraine.

Do we really need to be reminded that people do not just up- sticks and risk their lives or leave their homes and families without good cause? It seems we do.

The reason I tie in this family snippet with the quote above is many fold but most urgently this –

Maitland was writing not just pre-WWII but pre WWI. In fact his seminal works were written in the C19th and yet the point he is making (and this is very broad brush) is that there may be and possibly is always a point in time when we have the option to change humanity’s direction of travel. History is what has happened but history is happening all the time. At some point in the not too distant future – will historians point to this current mess and the chaos in the UK and US – and say – ah yes – at moments up to and during 2024 when opportunities arose to halt the descent into the hell of all-out global war – no one seized those opportunities? No one attempted to divert the cataclysm.

I’ve already alluded to the Tory Party’s addiction to Russian oligarch money and – when he was PM - Boris Johnson sneering at the military advisors who warned him of an imminent invasion by Russia. While no one would impute Chamberlain with Johnson’s venality back in September 1938 – it’s hard not to think of the challenges surrounding Hitler’s claims over The Sudetenland and his land grab in Czechoslovakia and not draw comparisons with recent activities in Crimea and now the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

At what point could Hitler have been stopped? At what point Putin?

Are we at another Sudetenland crisis? Have we past it already?

At the moment – all the West are doing, while more Ukrainians die, is preventing Ukraine from losing outright. Putin is not being stopped and voices are growing concerning how to placate him. 

Really!

I would regard myself as a pacifist – broadly – but even I know that if someone is smacking you around the head with a baseball bat, you don’t stop and wonder if you tied a ribbon around the bat and offered them a cream cake – they’d stop and go away.

And if we do let this situation slide – we need to be clear – any conflagration in the 21st century would make WWI and WWII look like a drunken brawl after a bad wedding – just look at the horrors of Gaza. Yes The Somme is a stain on humanity in terms of trusting young soldiers’ lives lost – but then what is 13,000 dead Palestinian children? Think of the image in the early days of Putin’s madness – of the pregnant young Ukrainian woman with the smashed hip being stretchered away from a bomb site screaming to be allowed to die.

So let us draw on that 19th century wisdom and apply it to the humanitarian apocalypse we may be stumbling into – today – tomorrow or next week because surely – we don’t want to make that type of history again. 

We’ve walked this dark road so often… (498)

In last week’s post, in a cursory glance at how the lunatics have taken over the asylum, I asked – ‘who are these people’ and responded to my own question – not only do we know - we knew.

Well – there is nothing like talking yourself in times of madness.

But as a brief side-note to that – one might ask how did these monsters seize power; from Trump to Netanyahu and from Vladimir Putin to Geert Wilders and, while he’s never won an election (you’d not think it from the amount of prime time the UK press has lavished on him) Britain’s Farage, who now poisons the UK body politic like a mega-virus.

Well – the response to ‘how?’ is almost as depressing as the response to ‘who?’ It’s depressing because we know exactly how these things occur, we’ve been here so many times before and have done nothing to effectively prevent a re-occurrence.

To short-circuit this post I’ll simply quote from Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason – which discusses – among other things – the madness of the invasion of Iraq and the poisoning of American politics by the lunatic, racist right.

“Throughout history, our innate fear of others-who-are-different-from-us has combined all too frequently…to unleash the most horrific violence and oppression…Moreover, this deadly form of exclusivist group passion can be virtually invulnerable to reason. So it is especially useful to demagogues who learn how to fan it and exploit it to gain and consolidate power.”

                                                        Al Gore

                                                        The Assault on Reason

                                                        (chpt 2) 

‘WHO are these people’... (497)

…is a rhetorical question we like to ask.

More and more we ask it in all seriousness.

When, for example, peering at the peers in the House of Lords and seeing a dodgy Tory-appointed Russian donor or a certain Ms Mone who profiteered to the tune of many millions via dubious PPE contracts during covid, we are incredulous – who are these people?

But in more up-front politics the question becomes absurd in the extreme because the true response to ‘who are these people’ is that we know exactly who they are and more importantly – many have been elected by the people after the facts were public.

Let’s start with the obvious one. Donald Trump – the 77 year old convicted rapist and ex-president. Prior to his being elected it was known that he was a multiple failed businessman/conman with an appalling attitude to women and minorities. Once elected, the baseness of his intellect, his gross venality, infantilism and general unfitness to walk the streets let alone hold high office were thrust very definitely in our faces. He is now the GOP candidate for this year’s Presidential race. And, shame on the Democrats by the way, for not choosing a stronger candidate.

Here in the UK we have of course seen the premiership of one Boris Johnson; a man who never missed an opportunity to be unfaithful or dishonest. A man who surfed the sewers of both misogyny and racism and somehow came out smelling – if not of roses – at least something clearly acceptable to the British public.

Up here in Scotland we have dear old Alex Salmond and his Alba party – think the UKIP of Scotland. Despite some of the appalling things this new organisation has done – Alba candidates are treated like normal people when it comes to press reporting. Some, I’m sure will get elected at the coming local and national elections.

Alba was a party that openly welcomed a candidate knowing he was an anti-vaxxer and had racist views against travellers and appalling views regarding homeless people. Alex Arthur used dehumanising language referring to homeless people as “pigs” (The Herald 30^th March 2021) similar debasing language used by Trump was widely and internationally condemned.

Then there is Salmond’s cosiness with Putin’s pennies.

Salmond was publically deplored by all parties when he refused to give up his RT programme even after the Salisbury poisonings and was only separated from his doynaya korova (cash cow) after pressure following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The programme Salmond hosted along with Ms Tasmina any-party-that-will-have-me Ahmed-Sheikh was shunned by politicians of all hues.

The idea that Alba is a party interested in Scotland’s future is so mad it cannot be ignored. Alba is not a ‘wing’ of the Indy movement. An Alba Scotland would alienate anyone who cares about fairness, decency, international credibility, minorities, loyalty and public standards. ALBA is simply the Alex Loves Being Alex party and is nothing to do with what is good for the rest of us.

Netanyahu – who, to my mind – is driven in his ongoing, Western-sanctioned slaughter of Palestinians by one thing – to stay out of prison which is where he seemed to be headed last autumn. America knew who/what he was before they let him loose in Gaza.

We knew who Putin was before he invaded Ukraine. To anyone who thinks Putin could not have been stopped I say there used to be a you tube clip of Boris Johnson (then PM) sneering at his own defence advisors when they told him there was imminent danger of Putin invading Ukraine. Johnson is now re-cast as the erstwhile hero of that mess – mainly due to his own PR exertions – which tells us as much about the failure of the media as about the hideousness of the man.  

But then – that brings us right back to the start of this post – and the close ties of Russian Oligarchs to the Tory Party.

Who are these people? We know exactly who they are – and we let them in… 

CONservatives! (496)

It’s an obvious, lazy pun I know – but I'm feeling lazy and obvious today...

The list of ways the CONservatives have conned Britain is extensive, comprehensive, exhausting.

British politics has in many ways, been an open, ongoing scam since Thatcher.

The horrors or WWII and the attendant shame rightly felt by the British establishment when troops from Blighty were measured against allied troops (literally) and found wanting in so very many ways (fitness, literacy etc), fed into the narrative that altered attitudes to societal and wealth inequalities and in a very tight nutshell – because this isn’t really the main thrust of this piece – helped usher in The Welfare State hot on the heels of slogans like Homes fit for Heroes. 

The NHS was set up, slums were cleared, education was meant to open up and Britons were to be cared for from cradle to grave – a phrase were all familiar with.

Except – Thatcher herself – who Ken Clarke once pointed out, had chosen NOT to put her career on hold and serve her country during the war as others had – held ordinary working people in utter contempt. Like the Tories of today, she did not come at this head on but sideways. Pretending to be pro ordinary people, she systematically began disembowelling working-class structures and working class organisations and benefits. She was ‘Thatcher Thatcher (free school milk) milk snatcher’ to us back then but also the one who meted out the punishment beating to The Miners (see couple posts ago -  blog 493).

Plus of course it was Thatcher who began the horror show of privatisation which culminated in the sell-off of The Post Office this century and we all know what a shit show that has been. Easy on the ear and deceptive phrases such as ‘right to buy’ helped shape the turd that stinks from every corner of Britain today. In some cases it's the literal stench of private profit-before-people whether its shit in the water or a shitty train service – one which was the envy of the world.

Here is a list of just some of the cons perpetrated by The Conservative Party since Thatcher began deconstructing post-war Britain.

The selling off of council house stock with no plan to replace a vital national resource which helps to fuel today’s housing crisis.

The council tax – still regarded as one of the most unfair taxes ever imposed since the original Poll Tax which is what we used to call it.

The Falklands nonsense –the war that spectacularly turned around Thatcher’s deep unpopularity giving Britain even more years of hell.

Austerity – all of it - including the whole idea of those at the bottom of the pile being THE PROBLEM.

The most recent con of course is Brexit. And it’s ironic that while many in the Tory party idolise Thatcher – she was not anti-EU but then neither was Boris Johnson until he realised that was how to get himself more media adulation. Those who were paying attention alluded to turkeys voting for Christmas but this is something CONservatives have always been able to pull off – getting ordinary folk to vote against their best interests. Just break out the jingoism.

Sadly – since the inclusion of Blair into the Labour party machine – they also have done similar. Need I mention Iraq – illegal invasion of – the ramifications are with us to this day. The private sector’s involvement in and abuse of both NHS infrastructure and schools lies at the door of Blair's New Labour  as does the misery and life-blighting debt of University tuition fees for  many thousands of young folk. But then Blair was very much child-of-Thatcher.

While many are talking of Labour being a shoe-in for the coming election – scepticism surrounding politics has grown in a way that makes prediction more of a fool’s game even than when the last proper election was called (I am not referring to Johnson’s get-Brexit-done CON v Corbyn’s  hopeless twonk event in 2019)

So my question is – this time around – whenever it is – having been conned so very obviously so very many times so comprehensively – WILL THE BRITISH PUBLIC WISE UP?

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After a decade & a half of Tory wreckage – they have a plan! (495)

SO, Britain is now a country where you pull out your own teeth after a visit to the foodbank maybe after doing an over-worked, understaffed shift in the NHS at a crumbling hospital and while forking out unaffordable childcare fees then collecting your older kids from a school that may collapse then a drive along dangerously pot-holed roads along streets of homeless people while your elderly relative waits in pain for that hip operation or delayed cancer diagnosis and treatment and where you go home to a damp flat with eye-watering rental or to a house where the mortgage makes you want to weep and you can’t afford to put the heating on while the Tories squander £millions on a cruel, failed deportation policy, enrich their mates and themselves and The Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is on the news telling you that it’s hard to live on £100k…

But, after a decade and a half of wreckage, the Tories HAVE A PLAN…

WTF!

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As a corollary to this depressing state of affairs I believe that the state of national debate ably demonstrated here by Larry and Paul Larry & Paul every political debate is part of the reason we no longer get or expect nonsense to be publically challenged…

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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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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