British Slavery slaiver from Burhnam & Badenoch plus Edinburgh’s phallic monument to rape and murder... (543)

Here in Scotland the word slaver (spelled slaver or slaiver or slever) means to drool or talk nonsense. Well, last week PM Andy Burnham had some tired old slaver about slavery.

Andy Burnham said, in one of his most mealy-mouthed statements that

“British people cannot be made to pay for the wrongs of slavery”

Apparently we must ‘confront’ a complicated history. Which simply adds a nothing burger. It’s what you might do to a teenager who dropped litter...

Note he does not mention that many established British institutions and historically wealth families including the Royal family still live off the proceeds of that murderous 4-century long abomination.

I recall the bicentenary ‘celebrations’ of the end of the Atlantic slave trade to the British Colonies in 1807 though in reality chattel slavery did not officially end until 1833. And the last recorded transatlantic voyage of slaves from Africa was in 1867.

Here in Edinburgh there still stands the Melville Monument to Henry Dundas who, as Home Secretary successfully delayed the abolition of slavery by 15 years. Imagine, if you dare, how many more slaves were beaten, raped, separated from family, murdered, worked to death etc in that ‘bonus’ decade and a half.

What is euphemistically described as a ‘tug of war’ between the wealthy descendants of the Dundas family and Edinburgh council is in fact no such thing. While those who toppled the Colston Statue in 2020 were criminally charged (thankfully unsuccessfully) When the wealthy Dundas beneficiaries of slavery vandalised a plaque placed on the monument to explain its presence, they were invited to the City Council Chambers for tea and chat.

I avoid walking through St Andrews square where this hideous monument stands. Ironically, the only appropriate element is the ridiculous phallic plinth because the systemic centuries-long ordeal of rape of slave women, such significant element of the African/Caribbean and American Slave abomination, is accidentally represented here.

I assume Burnham’s statement is due to Charlie tampon’s visit to the Caribbean.

Of course we can’t really pass without a mention of the ridiculous Kemi Badenoch and her statement that Britain has had enough of apologising for Slavery. Badenoch is the current top Tory and leader of The Conservative party. And that is not much of a crow since Boris Johnson systematically purged the Tories of any talent or credibility during his catastrophic term of gold wallpaper leadership and covid betrayals. But I would simply add that the descendants of slaves are also sick of these very empty apologies, so on that Badenoch and I agree though not in the way she might imagine.

Until some backbone is displayed on this issue the poisonous ever-present legacy of racism it left behind will not be expunged either.

Let us be clear, it’s not the British people as a whole who need to pay but the wealthy families and institutions, including the Church of England where integrated wealth can easily be traced to slavery that could be targeted.

If only there were the will.

(Henry Dundas - 1st Viscount Melville - rape/murder monument Edinburgh's St Andrew's Square)

As long as the Dundas Statue blights the Edinburgh sky line and party leaders of all hues trot out their regular empty platitudes, I will never believe there is any shame or sorrow at the unimaginable suffering of so many millions for so many centuries. 

The Age of Empires is over… (542)

...Britain, The US and the other dominant Western powers used to having things their own way just didn’t get the memo.

Since history was recorded the world has been a series of Empires rising, spreading like viruses, abusing, corrupting and collapsing. That time is over.

Formed from the rags and remnants of epochs marked by maltreatment, domination, destruction, avarice, the grasping despoiling hands of men and the weapons they formed to brutalise others, the new norm has no shape yet. So its easy to think things are as they’ve always been.

They’re not.

We can’t know if the new era will be better or worse than the old. It certainly does not have the time or resources to squander that the Age of Empires had.

Meanwhile, the (recent) old order is simply in denial. Stamping its feet, sucking its gums, stinking in its own soiled clothing, impotently fawning and raging in turn. It does not recognise the symptoms of decline that are always the same and ultimately lead to rotting from within from the combined effects of gargantuan corruption in all its manifestations and the takeover at the top of government by those least able, least talented, most lacking in moral fibre and any of the human decencies.

The new world order is establishing itself to the discordant hysterical screeching and senile babblings of the old. Most aptly personified by Donald Trump, the true poster boy for the old, addled, incontinent body politic.

Many (and we have it here in the UK) are revolting against change that has, in reality, already happened. As with America, the rabid (predominantly) white right, spit and rage against anyone brown, anyone who does not submit to their narrow and poisoned view of the world, not realising they are already yesterday’s people.

The greatest irony, evident this side of The Pond, is that many of those doing the ranting and raving, the hatred and bitterness, living in a dead past, are the very people who brought down the world they hanker for.

I’ve discussed Trump’s Epstein war in Iran at length. And its certainly a massively significant catalyst in the re-forming that is going on. But there are other evident failures of Western hegemony that stand out. One is outlined in a letter of mine regarding AI recently published in (among other papers) THE JAMAICA GLEANER

Also a recurring theme in posts on this blog is the precipitous and predictable post-WWII decline of the British Empire that was stemmed, in part, by joining the EU. Britain was shored up for decades by inclusion in that vibrant trading environment. Also the advantages of free travel and flow of ideas and access, via the EU to much of the rest of the world on a more equal footing, helped maintain the fiction that it was still Great Britain.

We threw that away with Brexit for the sake of the casual racism and the wet dream of deregulation so enjoyed by the failed right on this Island. And many of those most vulnerable to the effects of this suicidal action were the most ardent in voting for destruction in 2016. Just as the US threw away its stronger global dominance with two terms of MAGA Trump.

Though in all ways the Trump catastrophe is more dramatic, more wide-reaching, more impactful for the entire globe, it was very much part of a pattern and a certain poison that was in the air and which has never fully cleared, like mustard gas, leaving a stench of decay which is palpable in our grey, dirty, failing cities with their empty stores like black gaps in a rotten set of teeth… Many of these gaps filled with the rough sleepers who, in their increasing numbers show us how the basics of our social order are failing and failing.

Brexit pretty much trashed the UK but the US domestic and foreign policy stumblings, fumblings and outright deliberate catastrophic disasters have altered everything of any significance in the modern world.

America tied itself to a lump of orange offal and the rest of us have watched in horrified fascination as she sank and sank and sank some more..

History, if we make it to that, will marvel at the decline. The speed. The totality. The lack of awareness. The way the old order clung to the flotsam and jetsam of their self-made destruction.

Of course it would be crass ignorance to ignore the insane irony of it being an area of the globe recently decimated by Western murderousness having had the very first empire. The war criminal half responsible for that atrocity was our own Tony Blair with his bestie George W Bush and that country Iraq. The Akkadian Empire established around 2334 BCE was located in Mesopotamia – modern day Iraq. And of course the end of the Akkadian empire was in part due to 'all of the above' plus climate change...

Isn’t there always a certain symmetry when fate is laughing at human frailty and vaulting ambition?

But the world to come is burying its dead, mourning its children, biding its time and eventually will turn its back on the old. Sickened by its excess, blood lust and wanton destruction. And one thing we must remember while the battles rage and the poor persist, is that Empire brutality taught the current underdogs how to survive. How to endure suffering. Something we in the West can no longer do.

The new element in all this, again something I’ve banged on about, is the precipitously unstable and depleted state of the planet.

Yes past empires fell and new ones sprang up each bent on dominance and blinded by a sense of superiority. But each one needing to mine the planet and exploit its people and resources for new wealth to fund avaricious expanse.

This time maybe the planet has had enough.

That is the new element.

That is the new challenge.

What will the new world order have to fund its ambitions?

I’d like to hear someone in a position of power and influence asking that question. At the moment its just noises off. Not just off but off the point, off their heads, off their meds and very off in the way meat goes if left out in the warmth where the flies can get at it.

When will, for example, those in power and those in the media turn their focus away from the fly-blown carcass of the old, not even fit for the knackers yard and concentrate on what is coming?

You know the answer to that and so do I.

When its far too late...

BROWN GIRL OUTSIDE THE RING - (Is there something wrong with me!)

So, in terms of the world and all that jazz, things are getting weird. The weirdest part of the weirdness is the way humans continue on as if nothing is changing. Despite the catastrophic failures of late stage Capitalism which is nowhere more evident than here and across the pond in America. We cling to the idea that tomorrow is going to be the same as today.

And yet today is nothing like yesterday.

The things that encourage those still keeping their heads above water to think this way include; the anaesthetic of moronic t.v., being anchored by debt, all the stuff, things, behaviours of consumerism I’ve listed on this blog for years.

 Plus, there's a willingness to listen to obvious conmen if they target and blame those lower down the ladder, more unfortunate and preferably a different colour. Also that even more inexplicable willingness to listen to the inadequate dysfunctional tech billionaire weasels proclaiming that AI is going to make everything better with a virtual world and Mars space travel. By the way, here’s my dystopian novella on that subject Zero One Zero Two e-book or paperback.

I often wonder if my rejection of this stuff was a conscious decision, an accident of behaviour and circumstance, or if there is something wrong with me. Or all of the above!

Anyhow, my first blog of the Autumn is named after my blog

By the reactions of people if they find out, for example, I’ve not had television since last century, maybe I should have called this blog “IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME?”

I wont demean poetry by calling this offering that, its a rant. It just happens to rhyme because somewhere the poet in me got tangled up with the spewing.

BROWN GIRL OUTSIDE THE RING

(Is there something wrong with me?)

I’m a pre-historic stone age gal from the world of the T-Rex

You wont find me on twitter, instagram, snapchat or X

My mind is decades back with basic internet

Email, snail mail and texting is as modern as I get

I’ve never own a dishwasher, smartphone or microwave

My daughters roll their eyes at me and tell me to behave (comply?)

Sans car I ride the bike I’ve had for over 50 years

With dented spokes and dodgy brakes leather saddle and 3 gears

I don’t want congealed fast food out of a cardboard tub

Brought by cyclists risking death from an anonymous food hub

I don’t want gurning game show hosts with stretched and plastic faces

Asking what’s the capitol of various far flung places

Why are wheeled suitcases on trains the size of giant coffins

Are folk who research on facebook really highbrow boffins

I sag with heavy weariness at mass passive compliance

Where’s anger, energy, creativity, independence and defiance

Social media, modern politics, genocide, smartphones, data centres, rubbish thrown from cars, vaping on buses, pollution, neo-fascism, reality t.v., privatisation, junk food, watches that tell you how much you’ve walked or slept, holidays abroad to places ruined by the folk who go there (did I mention genocide?). Farage, the people who voted for him, the people who funded him, the media that platformed him oh and thanks to climate wreckage, the invasive rosemary beetle that devastated my lavender this summer…

So much about the modern world makes me want to shout

Trust me I prefer being left out... 

*

see you in October.

Trump & The Unfillable Void.

Before I sign off for the summer I thought I’d post a final final (yes last week was supposed to be the final) quickie. And I know the heading sounds like an H. P. Lovecraft story but this contemporary tale of woe does fit something eldritch and inexplicable, barely describable.

It occurred to me, in all the fluff, drivel, hokum and swirling detritus surrounding the man no one can ignore, no matter how we try, that there’s one simple thing we need to understand about this malformed, shambling, chaos merchant and its this -

If Trump were to become a multi-vigintillionaire tomorrow, it would not be enough to fill the void where his soul should be.

Like Musk (and lesser manifestations such as Farage in the UK) and other creatures who walk among us fuelling hate, poisoning the well of humanity, exhibiting meanness, abusing women, revelling in spite and bigotry, stirring conflict and encouraging the worst impulses of the human race – the nothingness of the man is unfillable.

Trump is a black hole sucking in all that is good and wholesome leaving a path of destruction in his wake; from Iran and the global economy to the ridiculous mess of the Reflecting Pool and the devastated White House, from the women he’s abused and the racism he’s normalised to the children who’ve died unnecessarily due to aid and welfare and medical aid cuts. From the US citizens murdered by ICE to the babies incarcerated in cages, separated from their parents on the Mexico border he has left nothing but a trail of misery.

If we believe he and his ilk cannot consume us all in this oh so consumer world, we are mistaken...

FREE.

~~~~~~~~ 

From today (July 7^th 2026) for the next 5 days, most of my books are available free to read so do check them out by clicking the link 

MY BOOKS

(NB if the weird, presumably AI generated, 'gym' book is still there ignore it. Its nothing to do with me and has hijacked my page.)

And if you are living in this world you could do worse this summer than re-read E. M. Forster’s (1909) short story The Machine Stops. Look out for phrases that will ricochet around your brain;

The story opens revealing Vashti “a swaddled lump of flesh… with a face as white as fungus” who was “seized with the terrors of direct experience.”

“People never touched… the custom had become obsolete owing to the Machine”.

Meanwhile – here’s a piece to keep you til I see you again in the Autumn.

Grasping & Gasping

(colours of the world...)

Rotting hands grab green-backs

Star-spangled oligarchs enjoy renown

Stagnant blue bloods still leach off the people

Achromatic suits blame folk who are brown

Black ooze fuels purple fevered consumerism

Thwaites great white monolith warms its belly

Maroon liquid flows in Gaza unquenched

Blanks in nacreous garb spin and sparkle on telly

Yellow journos hold none accountable

Algorithms rush us straight to red

Spew beige sound-bites that don’t

And bile not worth being said

And The Grey multiply stumble stagger and shuffle

Skin eyes and lungs the colour of ash

All the poisons they drink eat and inhale

Urban armies of jaundiced zombies buying death for cash

My 60s childhood was indigo, burnt pink and emerald

Now most are in black or mourning shades of slate

Dazzling peach hot chocolate tart turquoise I remember

Today we practice denial but dress for our last date

As the lords of greed grasp and grab sealing our fate

*

cheerio

Ebola; US/UK aid cuts, wilful naivety & the media's failure to give context...

If there is one plea I’d make to Western media its this, JOIN UP THE DOTS.

While Trump continues to rot before the eyes of the world and golden ballrooms and crypto currency obsess those with wealth beyond imagining and even sense and Netanyahu’s orchestration of the US/Iran not-a-war hits all the wrong notes and the struggle of Ukraine sinks further down the headlines – there is a little something else happening in the world. Something linked to my blog two posts ago concerning Africa and the West’s entrenched double standards and moral failures when it comes to that continent.

The latest, no-context story is one that’s been brewing for months. Ebola.

We are currently getting all the usual images of distraught Africans struggling with the newest outbreak of this voracious virus.

The WHO (dumped by Trump last year) has declared a public health emergency while The West continues as before; clogging the mediashpere with celebrity shite and platforming political dregs.

Two wrong assumptions fuel our lack of attention to what occurs on the continent of Africa - a. it has nothing to do with us b. it will not affect us.

In fact Trump’s cuts to USAID and consequent decimation of on-the-ground organisations slowed the speed of detection and reaction.

This outbreak of Ebola is predicted to be the deadliest so far.

Already the US is quietly re-routing its affected citizens to European and Kenyan quarantine centres though there have been protests in Kenya. Meanwhile, Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ threw 10million Americans off affordable healthcare.

This side of the pond – let’s remember that during COVID then PM Boris Johnson drastically cut foreign aid and the present Starmer government is taking further funds from foreign aid to put towards military spending.

And during the last Ebola outbreak the UK too saw its citizens fighting for the right to be treated at home leading one nurse to re-enter without letting on she might be affected.

This as schools are about to break and Westerners, happy to be treated like cattle at airports, start hurling themselves around the globe in search of cheap consumables, sun stroke and escapism.

Its a dangerous mix of public wilful naivety and a media that rarely gives context.

What could possibly go wrong...

Tony Blair is a war criminal…(539)

...sounds to me like saying rain is wet.

But its been oddly, quietly controversial since the catastrophic Bush/Blair Iraq atrocity, at least this side of the pond, the debacle being ruled to have been started not just on a false premise but on one that was known to be false at the time (ref The Chilcot Report).

So why am I writing about his now when I and innumerable others, have referred to Blair in this fashion for two decades while the rest of the world and much of the legacy media behaved as if with collective, selective amnesia?

A couple of weeks ago I received mail from the managing editor of Scotland’s newspaper The National informing me that IPSO (The UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation) ruled in the paper’s favour re certain complaints. One such was a letter of mine referring to Tony Blair as a war criminal. Something I do regularly.

Many papers that have, for years, published my missives were shy of using the WC tag and simply ignored those letters that did.

Notably, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Bush’s Freudian slip where he referred to that atrocity as the invasion of ‘Iraq’, there was a subtle change. The Guardian for example, for the first time, published a letter where I’d used the WC tag.

IPSO ruled in the paper’s favour and mine.

Its odd in a way as it makes little material difference to me. I and many millions like me, will always know Blair is a war criminal even though he’s protected by the colour of his skin his wealth, power and connections, from ever facing consequences.

But why does this matter now?

The answers to that dark question are legion -

Because we are repeating ourselves.

Because at some point the truth always has to be acknowledged.

Because we cannot continue in a world where only certain people face consequences for their vast crimes while victims always pay in blood, misery and destroyed futures.

Because Trump is in Iran.

Because Putin is in Ukraine.

Because Netanyahu is in Gaza and Lebanon.

Because its always about resources (see blog 483 All Wars Are Resources Wars).

Because power, like wealth is more unevenly distributed than ever and the two are more closely linked than ever and the powerful and wealthy are spending on war not welfare. (NB - in the US 40m Americans live in poverty while Trump’s war has so far cost the US tax payer an estimated $25BILLION).

Because vast swathes of the populous are malleable and easily persuaded to act against their (the majority's) interests even more so now by the tech bros who manipulate all narratives and those bot-billionaires are, in turn, pandering those who control government and military might.

Because we are at the zenith of the collision of catastrophic Capitalism and war-mongering. Greed and war have always gone hand in hand as those who have, continue to grab grab grab feeding their endless want want want, they need to be backed up by fire power.

Because carrying on regardless, we may (as per last month’s post) be the first species on the planet to bring about our own destruction.

Finally in this ‘because’ list which could go on, we must acknowledge the devastating AI/social media associated decline in that singular commodity most precious to civilisation and the counterweight to greed and violence - human empathy.

And so it matters to me that the man who has been a major 21st century catalyst to the normalisation of the heightened destroy and grab, dominate and subjugate process and is deeply embedded in it still via his Tony Blair Foundation and who, stretching irony almost to breaking point, was an early joiner of Trump’s Board of Peace – should be called what he is, a WAR CRIMINAL.

To IPSO I am perhaps a little grateful for one thing, a tiny amount of vindication. More importantly, we must finally acknowledge the ‘war’ (illegal invasion) for the atrocity it was and Blair for the abomination that he is even though we continue to blindly repeat.

Its the least we can do for the dead, displaced and traumatised. Without even that small thing, we are all shameful and shameless.