420. Political bullying claims bring back very painful memories.

I do not believe the feigned astonishment of Business Minister Kwasi Kwarteng re the claims of Tory bullying and harassment. These things go hand in hand with the leadership of inadequate people.

Grant Shapps (the creepy train guy) resigned in 2015 amidst bullying claims but has found much favour in Boris Johnson’s government. Priti Patel (current Home Secretary and migrant botherer) was found guilty of bullying and remained in Johnson’s cabinet. It’s a sign of weak leadership – and corrupt leadership –and incompetent leadership – when your willingness to suck up to a leader is literally all that counts. The flip side of that ultimately insecure position, for those who begin to suspect the Emperor (world king) is wearing no clothes, is that ‘other’ methods have to be found. Bullying. Intimidation. Threats.

It may be that the 2019 intake – many from what are described as Red Wall constituencies, ex- Labour seats – suffer from not growing up with the public school fagging system so are shocked that such tactics are regarded as acceptable to the true blue Tories. However, it is also something that takes hold when the person in charge is simply a control freak or has got used to running a feudal system such was the case when I was elected the first black woman councillor to Newcastle City Council in 1988.

While I have little sympathy for Christian Wakeford,  (he has an appalling voting record but he can count and defected to Labour to save his seat) – the episode of the bullying and intimidation he reported brought back very unpleasant, upsetting, hugely painful memories.

I was tagged as a trouble maker for, among other things, vociferously supporting those campaigning against the Poll Tax - even though Newcastle City Council was supposedly a Labour council. Access to the press was strictly controlled by the same system of feudal favours exerted over the rank and file councillors and there was of course no social media alternative.

When I openly protested the excesses and abuses of the councillors' allowance system, over a decade before the MPs expenses scandal, leader Jeremy Beecham (now in the lords) who had already ostracised me over the Poll Tax threatened to remove the whip. Tony Flynn – his loyal side kick - even phoned my then husband, who had no involvement in politics, to get me to 'behave'. Subsequently, Beecham sent one of his 'boys' to try to get me deselected prior to the second election I stood in and won. And when a school in Beecham’s patch was 'saved' from closure after a failing Ofsted report by sudden, inexplicable and hugely damaging amalgamation with the school where I was chair of governors, I made a fuss along with the headmistress Sheila Clement-Jones.  It got a very nasty. On one occasion I received a threatening late night phone call from a union activist, parent governor of the failing school and gob shite. I alluded to the incident at the area meeting the following day - saying if it happened again I'd go to the police. Though I had little hope of that as I’d once approached the police about an anonymous racist letter I’d received to my home and got a can-do-nothing response.

Realising, among other things, that many of the real decision were made by THE BOYS in the pub and the committee meetings that took up so very much of my time were a waste – I ultimately resigned. Following the illegal invasion of Iraq I also left the Labour party which I'd been a member of since my student days.

IT is important to say that the majority of Newcastle city councillors (many of whom were old enough to be my grandparents) could not have been nicer to me, were in fact incredibly kind.

 I learnt a huge amount and had insights into the workings of THE SYSTEM that few are privy to but resigning was a decision I never once regretted.

The thing is – there is all the difference in the world between the bullying control of inadequate men who seek and increasingly seem to attain power and real leaders. We need, as a society, to learn to tell the difference.

This is the scary young black woman (23 when this pic was taken) who made the bully boy's piss their collective pants.

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Just quick note, if you in Edinburgh Friday 28th Jan, I'll be doing a short set at Teviot Underground (Edinburgh uni) 8pm and remember do check My BOOKS thanks so much.

419. Boris v Mallory

This is Mallory the cat. 

When Mallory was found, almost dead, in October where he'd been hanging around for several days outside the shop where my daughter has a student job, he was so malnourished his backbone was sticking up like a mountain ridge. His fur was matted beyond de-tatting. His back legs were collapsed. He shook and though he desperately wanted to eat, he couldn’t hold anything down or if he did it exited violently the other end. She took him back to her flat (in her flatmate’s boyfriend’s car which Mal decorated with exodus material from both ends). M was unable to use a litter tray effectively because of said problem with collapsed back legs. Eventually, after weeks of nursing and coaxing he was strong enough to take to a dog groomer where all his matted disgusting fur was painstakingly shaved off (thanks dog groomer woman).

M is clearly very old and possibly got overlooked after his owner either died or went into care (or he got chucked cos he was so disgusting lol). No one knows. He is deaf, some of his teeth are missing and a couple of the remaining ones are too long. His spatial awareness isn’t great and he is a bit stupid (he burnt his whiskers on a candle). He is, for obvious reasons, extremely needy and YOWLS pathetically if my daughter leaves the room. He is, however, a very loving cat. When he is sitting comfortably on my daughter’s knee or next to her with his head pushed into her armpit (!), he purrs like an outboard motor.

The thing is – even in the state he was in when he was first discovered – Mallory would have made a better Prime Minister than Boris Johnson.

 Now that his fur has partially grown back and he can successfully crap in the litter tray and doesn’t vomit anymore and loves his food and stays awake - often for 10 minutes at a time - and only drools a little bit - he could definitely run the country better than this fucking government.

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New Teddy talk Brexit Bastards

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Remember to check out My BOOKS thank you.

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And once again as I am not on social media well done for finding me here and thank you for reading

418. PLEASE!

 PLEASE…

…let 2022 be the year of COMEUPPANCE.

If you don’t have comeuppance where you come from I highly recommend it – it means someone getting the punishment or fate they richly deserve. Sort of karma if karma was an angry child.

Is it too much to ask? I mean, the rest of us who didn’t carelessly trash the country (and other parts of the globe [Blair]) for financially beneficial popularity or sucking up to other world leaders and/or the indulgence of some spite and racism or to deregulate the UK for profit (Brexit) or starve infrastructure of investment for privet profit (Thatcher to austerity) are going to pay – ARE paying.

We are paying with the underfunding of the NHS, poor staffing levels, huge increases in fuel bills, a divided society and growing gaps between rich and poor and falling longevity in the poorest areas. We are paying. Why shouldn’t they?

Our inner 6 year olds have highly honed senses of fairness and mine is screaming and screaming and screaming.

How come Chris Grayling got away with giving nearly £8m of our money to ferry companies with no ferries then got promoted in Johnson’s government?

How come Matt Hancock got away with enriching his mates by facilitating de facto profiteering during the first year of covid? Though it is difficult to know with any of them how much is corruption and how much is eye-watering incompetence.

Talking of incompetence - how come Dido Harding got away with wasting £billions on track and trace protocols that didn’t work?

We cannot go on too much longer with those who don’t care not being made to care; those who have creamed off profits at the cost of the misery/lives of others living comfortably and care free and consequence-free.

We cannot go on with money constantly being funnelled to those who least need it through privatised infrastructure and government contracts, while the media roast the poor for being feckless. Things have to change as I said in this little letter published by The Jamaica Observer last week

I keep thinking I see tiny sparks of the COMMUPPANCE fire – a little smoke – then nothing - a damp squib.

Johnson seemed a bit more bug-eyed than usual. Is the peppa pig PM finally feeling uncomfortable after a lifetime of lying and not only getting away with it but being elevated by our bizarre system?

Is Andrew finally sweating despite the chance that mumsy will pay off one of those pesky women? Check out JUST DESSERTS

Re the vile Tories who overturned the Dubs Amendment to the 2016 Immigration Act – a measure the public approved of that was meant to help unaccompanied migrant children, might they feel some of the fear, cold and pain of those abandoned youngsters?

Maybe as part of all this, we could have more vigorous opposition? I’m just saying – as per my letter published in The Herald (yes - this blog is not enough outlet for my ire...)

I’m not sure what the proper comeuppances might be. Take Matt Hancock. Members of his own party felt that profiteers during WWII - that Churchillean era they fantasise about - should face the firing squad…

Is there any chance that the bully (that’s official) Priti Patel might get hers? Please.

Tony Blair’s outrageous knighthood seems to have stirred up the public anger that the media so blithely ignore.

Is it happening? Could it possibly be? Is this the year?

Please let it be.

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Also check out an old post Rule Britannia - new lyrics

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Yes, there are a lot of links today but as always, please check out My BOOKS most paperback versions now available on expanded distribution which means you can buy from your fave online bookseller and also remember - Fun Poems for Children has entertaining youtube videos for all the poems.

I am not on social media so well done for finding your way here. Hope it was worth the trip.

417. Fantasy futurists are failing the human race.

2022 has to be the year when the fantasies that are pedalled by the rich white boys with their penis rockets and social media social inadequacies are quashed. These fake fantasy futures are – ironically – helping to ensure a failed future for humanity.

Climate crisis Cassandras are unpopular – I get that. Like being told to eat your veg when you are a child and brush your teeth. But then no one wants cancer and no one wants fillings or root canal work. You can’t have it both ways.

However, what the ‘doomsayers’ have been trying to explain for decades - is that we are not so much decimating the planet when we hack away at essential eco systems and pollute with unfettered consumerism – we are MAKING THE PLANET UNINHABITABLE FOR HUMANS. That is us.

 There is a huge overlap between the realists and the selfish people. There is common ground.

Is the message that difficult to grasp?

Clearly, yes.

It’s far easier to listen to those who say technology is going to solve all our problems.

I listened – for as long as I could – the 2021 Reith Lecture on AI doing ‘human’ jobs. There was some smug nonsense about a robot folding towels and at one point, as a side issue, the eminent lecturer briefly mentioned the price of all the necessary raw materials being affordable in his AI future - ‘because it would be’ !!!! Listen for yourself.  AI utopia

Never mind a human desert – there seemed to be an intellectual desert on Radio 4.

And this is where the nonsense of a tech-resolved human future always falls down. It is so easy to forget that even hi tech – sci-fi tech - RELIES ON ACTUAL REAL RESOURCES.

Remember, the technology to make your smartphone is far more advanced and uses tech they didn’t even have to get the first rocket to the moon. And that was just one rocket to one moon. 

Space is filling up with human debris (making space exploration more dangerous, ironically and with more chance of damage to satellites) just as the sea and land is smothered with poisonous plastics, killing and suffocating the things we actually need to live. Oxygen. Unpolluted food. Clean Water. 

That ubiquitous smartphone – the one that tells you if your over-heated home full of crap you don't use is being burgled or whether you have milk in the fridge (!) - needs regular charging. It will only work if there is – not just electricity - but the infrastructure to provide it to you whenever/wherever you want it. And uninterrupted satellite connections.

2022 needs to the year we wake up.

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Usually I ask you to check out my books (and some of you have – thank you) but this week – just try Zero One Zero Two The e-version is very cheap and it’s a novella so even if your concentration span has shrunk to a social media-induced 3 minute absolute limit – you could get the hang of it. Hey – just skim read. You can do that.