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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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...

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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...