“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)

*

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 is a point that we’d do well to keep front and centre of any discussion relating to migrants or refugees, debate 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?

*

As always, do check out My BOOKS Buying a book is a good way of supporting this blog and better than that buy-a-coffee thing because you end up with something to give your mum/aunty/anyone who still reads for pleasure.

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!

*

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…

*

As always, do check out My BOOKS Buying a book is a good way of supporting this blog and better than that buy-a-coffee thing because you end up with something to give your mum/aunty/anyone who still reads for pleasure.

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...

 *

As always for lighter reading do check out - My BOOKS

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...

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

*

As always  for lighter reading click this link do check out My BOOKS or go to your own fave online bookstore.

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.

*

As always - for lighter reading do check out My BOOKS

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…

*

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.

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 …

WOHOOO - IT'S BANDCAMP FRIDAY AGAIN - (Fri 2nd Feb)...

 ... so check out my two-part lyrical environmental poetry story (audio version) - yes it's STILL there, just click on the title below.

Casey & the Surfmen

Since 2020 bandcamp friday has enhanced support for us artists- you can find the info HERE

Let’s play the ‘What If We Had’ game… (487)

I’ve written many times in many posts on this old bloggy about the way the hard won, post-war rights of ordinary people in Britain have been eroded by successive governments since 1979. It’s almost as if those who have historically had everything couldn’t even stand to see ordinary families have the basics. Good education - a reliable, free health service - good policing and decent housing.

The tired pitch is always budget restraints. It beats out like a dull thud on a broken drum. But oddly there is always money for the things they want. So – early in this election year let’s play the ‘What If We Had’ game…

To kick off I might start with;

What if we had the £30billion (according to The Resolution Foundation) lost to the UK economy when Truss’s catastrophic and right-wing dogma driven autumn budget spooked the markets in 2022

You get the idea – so play along…

What if we had the extra £6 billion for the underselling of the Post Office (JP Morgan said it was worth 10bn the government flogged it for just over 4bn)

What if we had even the £1billion Theresa May paid to the DUP in order to bribe them to help her stay in power.

What if (London) had the £53 million (£43 of public money) Boris Johnson wasted on his vanity Garden Bridge project.

What if we had the £240+ million spent on the useless/corrupt/unworkable Rwanda scheme.

What if we had the £22billion allocated to the useless Test and Trace scheme during covid.

What if we had the £60million profits made by peer of the realm Michelle Mone through covid profiteering sanctioned by Matt Hancock.

What if we had the £140 billion (according to Cambridge Econonometrics – Jan 2024) lost to the UK economy since Brexit.

And so on...

And remember – Osborne’s horrific austerity and the misery it has caused ordinary working people was justified because of the 2007/08 crash – or banking crisis. ‘Banking crisis’ is another political euphemism for the greed and mismanagement of fiscal bodies. The loss to the UK economy is almost incalculable but you bet it’s the poor who are paying and not greedy bankers or the ministers whose weak policies enabled them.

In 2021 the OBR reported that the cost of the ‘necessary interventions’ i.e. to save banks – alone cost £33billion. So – yes – what if instead of justifying poverty and misery we had that £33 billion and some of the very rich who caused that crash had been made to sort through their off-shore accounts and pay something back…

On a minute scale – families supplementing their survival with visits to the now ubiquitous food-banks might wonder how they’d have spent some of the money used to fund Boris Johnson’s covid parities. A recent freedom of information request revealed the cost of alcohol for these illegal events. According to The Mirror – the covid party drinks bill was £7,897. A tiny amount in terms of the money successive Tory governments have squandered but possibly looks like a fortune to an ordinary family hit by the cost of living crisis.

So just remember – next time some Tory twonk  gazes into the middle distance and talks about more and more cuts to public services being painful but necessary and how they are ‘prepared to take the tough decisions’ it’s only the tough decisions as relate to people not like themselves…

*

As always – for lighter reading do check out My BOOKS

Westminster & the habit of getting it wrong... (486)

The wrongness of the government at Westminster has been a theme for decades and simply escalated since Cameron. If you were to take a broad brush swipe at why, you could do worse than conclude it’s because those in charge live lives more vastly removed than ever from the majority of the population they are supposed to serve.

But there is something more rotten at the heart of government now.

If you are my age or (even) older and pay attention to the world around you – British politics as acted out at the heart of government has been almost a constant internal groan since Thatcher. An obsession with the rich has morphed into callous disregard for the poor. Xenophobia is the go-to when the peasants get pissed off and the clarion call of profit drowns out everything.

And now we reap the horrible rewards of the selfish, wrong-headed religion of privatisation – whether the Post Office Horizon scandal or the fuel poverty epidemic that rages while companies make profits you can barely calculate.

Maybe like me you are a regular train user and find that over-expensive fayres mean severely limiting the number of times you visit family and friends or that – when you do turn up at any given station – you feel you’ve won the lottery if the train is even running. If it’s on time it seems a near miracle and yet – train company bosses are also trousering bonuses that would be obscene even if the train service in the UK was not an utter disaster.

I could go on.

The illegal invasion of Iraq – so wrong, everyone apart from the old war criminal himself – seemed to know. Tony Blair also introduced tuition fees so that – unlike the slippery eel himself who was born with the proverbial silver spoon – many ordinary youngsters are suffocated by debt before their lives have got started.

Move on and we have ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron – Old Etonian – with all the odious habits that seem to go with his ilk – including a massive sense of entitlement and an idea that his tribe – rich Tories – mattered more than the country he was supposed to lead. In that mind set – in order to settle the internal wranglings of his petty, fractious party he served up Brexit. The rest –as they say – is history.

Cameron’s side kick the truly vile George Osborne gave us austerity XXL. Austerity plus failures of government oversight left us with – among other things – the horror of Grenfell.

Rock up Theresa May, who was happy to dole out a £billion to get the hideous DUP to support her failed leadership. They in turn now hold N Ireland to ransom in another casualty of Boris Johnson’s Brexit.

The odious liar and sexual incontinent chancer himself - Boris Johnson - lied and partied his way through Covid. Demeaning Parliament was his signature tune and illegally proroguing Parliament was his first deed when elected.

Then the unelected Truss spectacularly tanked the economy in her nano-second of premiership. And – now of course – we have Sunak, also unelected. The current PM looks like a pup that just shat on the carpet after chewing the furniture and peeing in the hall and still wants a biscuit.

Ministers include the con-man and terrible human joke Grant Shapps who, over the weekend verbalised that a newscaster should know more about the Royal Navy’s mishap than he. Shapps is current Defence Secretary.

Therese Coffey, as environment secretary, thought shit in the water system was not a problem and didn’t seem to know, when addressing Parliament recently, that Kigali is the capital of Rwanda!

And – oh boy – Rwanda… This bonkers Johnson diversion has somehow – via Priti Patel, the evil Suella Brevareman and the total twonk James Cleverly – become central to the Tory Party identity. Being cruel to migrants and wasting millions of pounds of public money now defines what is, not just The Nasty Party any more but the party of absolute fucking morons. The Numpty party. The Numskull party. The Nut-job party.

AND – on the most important issues of the day – the Westminster lot have been found wanting oh so badly. 

Like the invasion of Iraq, it seems those outside the bubble were able to see what those inside would not. Netanyahu’s slaughter in Gaza is Genocide (see last post). With the right-wing horrors he has sold his soul to in order to stay in power and out of prison – it was never going to be anything else. But Sunak and Starmer slavishly followed the US line – business as usual. And even now with 25k dead including at least 10k children, they are not calling for a full ceasefire.

I am sick and appalled but history will judge them more harshly.

*

Remember – for lighter reading to check out My BOOKS

Sunak’s election-year, unsanctioned military action v Houthis - to protect your cheap garden furniture… (485)

Thatcher had The Falklands to save her from election oblivion. Blair – the war criminal – got his rocks off in Iraq for reasons which still defy logical examination. And now – it seems – in this election year (oh coincidence I hear you cry) Rishi is rattling his little manhood in the Red Sea. For the Houthis who thrive on anti-western rhetoric, the promotional possibilities of Sunak’s action – unsanctioned by the UK parliament – will vastly outweigh any damage the missiles can do – they’ve been on the receiving end of similar for a very long time.

The people who brought you the disastrous management of the greatest domestic crisis since WWII – covid – are stumbling into another unwinnable conflict and further risking escalation and destabilisation in this terribly fragile, volatile region where millions are suffering unimaginable hardship.

And – perhaps most pathetically of all – this military action – mobilising depleted British forces and sending other people’s children into harm - is so that your cheap garden furniture or other sweat-shop produce can still get through the shortest shipping routes. This from a government that has failed repeatedly to call for a ceasefire in Gaza where 10,000 children have been slaughtered in just over 100 days of assaults on this tiny strip of land.

A couple of blogs ago I made the point that all wars are basically now resources wars. And – yes – of course – we cannot underplay how much the disruption of, for example, oil supplies might affect the everyday Western comfort of the average reality TV watching Brit. But then again – are we not underlining another great and terrible failure – that of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels? And do recall at this point – the UK rep to COP 28 just a few weeks ago – had to fly home early so as to support Sunak’s cruel, failed, idiotic Rwanda deportation bill.

Even by the standards of the current UK Tory government - does it get any sicker than this?

*

For lighter reading – do check out My BOOKS

Voter Apathy Is A Deadly Disease...(484)

It’s easy to forget that prior to Thatcher, armies of homeless on the streets of Britain was not a norm.

The political punishment beatings of working-class people that began with the 1979 government, went nuclear with the Tory administration of the 21^st century.

Even during the Labour government from 1997, which began with two years where Blair stuck to Tory spending restrictions – it was the rich who got richer with the most exponential growth in the wealth gap the country had seen in the post war period. And that is before you take into account the illegal invasion of Iraq and subsequent global destabilisation.

Cameron’s debacle gave us a Con/Lib coalition which saw a generation betrayed over tuition fees and finished off the post office (subject of much current debate due to the Horizon scandal and miscarriages of justice that have been allowed to linger for years) But it was the cruelty of Osborne-led austerity which saw the introduction and the normalisation of Food Banks.

Today we live in a Britain where – while those on benefits are still vilified by wealthy Tory ministers, targeted by the right-wing media and demeaned by thugs like Deputy Conservative chair Lee Anderson – it’s actually working families who are most likely to be in receipt of some sort of benefit or subsidy.

In September last year, a BMJ article indicating that the cost of living crisis could lead to thousands more premature deaths (The Guardian). Additionally and shamefully, longevity fell in poorer parts of Britain this century for the first time since such records were kept by the likes of The Rowntree Foundation.

While the recent expensive Covid enquiry provided the opportunity for many we hoped we’d seen the last of, to get before cameras again and lie again – little we heard was new or surprising. What we do know is that the cavalier attitude of ministers who literally partied while people died and who used the pandemic to enrich their mates, meant that a country with a sophisticated, developed health system, nevertheless had one of the highest excess death rates in Europe (according to the BMJ).

Historically, low voter turnout has favoured The Conservatives. When I was campaigning for election as a very young labour candidate in 1987 I was told by more experienced members to pray for good weather because that would definitely help labour. I thought they were joking. They weren’t. But we did have good weather and I did win. In 2024 I will, again, be voting for the party that supports governing Scotland from Scotland and, come flood or heatwave, I pray for all who can to exercise their precious democratic right.

Young people, while eschewing the mass student protests that were a regular feature of my student life, seem happy and willing to go on demos, enjoy photo ops but are difficult to get to the polling booths. Meanwhile complain that those in power do little for them. I wonder why…

Voting is more important than demonstrating. Especially these days when those in power know that the reality TV-watching public have a short attention span.

Being politically active through a union is still important, however, since many of the larger unions, apparently stuck in the 1970s voted for Brexit and encouraged their members to do the same – I question if they really understand where their workers’ best interests lie. Certainly the harm done to the economy and Britain’s global standing not to mention opportunities for business, commerce, science and the arts by Brexit has been catastrophic and highly damaging to the UK workforce.

From 1922 to 1997 voter turnout held above 70%.

In 2001 voter turnout dropped below 60%

In 2019 Boris Johnson won (or the abysmal Corbyn lost) on a turnout of 67.3% - of that turnout, the win rested on 42.4% BJ 40% Corbyn (Statista)

Huge numbers of people are not voting. The majority are not actively voting for the people who rule our lives. This is very problematic in what we think of still as a democracy.

And yes – what you hear when things go wrong is people pleading for accountability. Pleading to be heard. Disgusted that they are not treated as if they matter. However, unlike the vast majority of the disenfranchised – those in power are not reliant on food banks, or the NHS or the state education system.

There is one simple answer to this. Vote. Vote every time. Vote vote vote.

Forget bitching on twitter (or whatever).

Voting is more important than being a member of a union or waving a placard.

Some countries including Australia have mandatory voting.

UK Conservatives would never introduce such a thing. If they did, they’d be out of power for a very long time…

*

Thanks for reading. There are links to my books on the previous post.

All wars are resources wars now. Ukraine & Gaza are part of ‘the brink’ we’ve talked about for so long and ignored… (483)

All conflicts are now either overtly or covertly about resources. One hesitates to call them wars as that suggests equivalent forces on either side. The  21st century is marked by aggressors attempting to grab what is someone else’s when they think they can overcome the other side with fear and overwhelming short-term violence and the complicity of the lazy comfortable West  – even if – in Russia's case – they turn out to be not quite right.

 

The current ‘war’ in Gaza so called by the legacy media, is anything but. It is a slaughter. Bush and Blair’s ‘war on terror’ was anything but. The irony there had to be that if the rich bros genuinely thought Iraq had WOMD ready they might not have gone in for their horrible adventure so costly in the lives of other people’s children.

 

As an aside – while many in the UK, orchestrated by The Telegraph and Daily Mail etc, bitch about migrants from their sofas, the flaccid response of more moderate media has led to a dull acceptance that the migration debacle is a problem that sprang from nowhere and is nothing to do with government foreign policy or domestic incompetence. In fact, decades (centuries) of wealthy countries stealing resources and messing things up in other people’s back yards - white mischief in Africa and contributing to chaos in the Middle East, is having a NOW effect.

 

Possibly mad Vlad Putin was encouraged by Trump’s lunatic administration and the UK Conservative party's love of Russian oligarch money plus the moron Boris Johnson who openly sneered when his military advisors told him that Russian tanks could be crossing the Ukraine border any day.

 

What, I wonder, must it have taken for Zelensky to allow the blithering blonde blob to constantly pose next to him for photo ops with that brain fart in the background?

 

China wants Taiwan, Venezuela  wants Guyana’s oil meanwhile the world is allowing Trump and Netanyahu to use their country’s precious time, energy, lives and assets in a game called ‘keep me in the spotlight and out of prison’.

 

In the olden days it was less complicated for top predators to grab stuff and commit genocide. America was taken from the Native Americans. Australia from the Aborigines. Britain and America both decided it would be convenient to pretend black people were sub-human for a few hundred years so they could literally ‘steal’ people; their lives, their families, their labour, their dignity, their pasts and futures.

 

I would wonder if the above atrocities could have happened in the full glare of daily as-it-happens social media but Gazagedon has answered that question.

 

Biden’s costly misstep over Gaza in unquestioningly accepting that the horrors of October 7th equalled day1 of this conflict will haunt him and possibly the world.

 

And put simply – the THING that is wrong is inequality. Gross inequality. We are on this brink because we’ve ignored the environment crisis and continued abusing the planet so that those with everything could have more.

 

The real solution to sustainable and secure living is so unpalatable that the answer seems to be – grab what someone weaker has. But – unlike the olden days – those resources are running out and the planet is weary.

 

Inequality is destabilising. Extreme inequality is catastrophic. We know this.

 

Every dystopian movie and novel you could name – and some you couldn’t - like my own offering Zero One Zero Two - teaches us this very obvious disastrous lesson, as does history. Without equality we are all doomed. You can’t buy your way out of the flames.

 

All us Cassandra’s out here are getting mightily tired of seeing the bleeding obvious come to pass.

 

Let 2024 be the year we wake the fuck up.

 

And by the way welcome to the New Year. For my regular readers thank you for your patience – this is my first proper post in 7 months but I aim to get back to regular weekly posts.

 

*

As always – please check out novels, novellas, children’s books and poetry anthologies either HERE or other main online stores. The silly you tube vids that go with Fun Poems for Children are still avail. Thank you.

 

Finally, as regular readers know, I’m happily lodged in the Stone Age and have never had any kind of social media account (I don’t even have a smartphone) but if you’ve read the letters sections over the last two decades in –

The Guardian

The independent

The New European

The Glasgow Herald

The Daily Record

The National

The Scotsman

The Times (a couple of times)

The New Statesman (once)

a couple of the smaller papers in New York

The Jamaica Observer

plus a handful of others (even one in Wales once!) then YES that ‘Amanda Baker Edinburgh’ banging on about stuff, using a quill pen – IS ME 😊