For someone who isn't going to vote for Jeremy Corbyn (or the Labour Party) at the general election, I seem to be banging on about him an awful lot.
Well, it's got a lot to do with the fact that despite my Scottish and Welsh roots, I was born in England and I do care about my friends (and some of my family) and what some of them might face with the prospect of an electorate being conned into voting for the same old shit.
The thing about Corbyn is now quite simple; he is the Marmite candidate. You either like him or dislike him. All kinds of reasons are given on both sides, but few people are ambivalent. As a vegetarian, Marmite is something I look at with fondness as a flavour enhancer; as a way of giving a soup or a stew an oomph; a depth that sometimes is lacking in certain veggie dishes. I could never have it on toast, or in a sandwich or however straight Marmite eaters have it. No way, Jose.
Corbyn barely registers on the same middle ground and over the last few years, where there has been those ambivalent about him, but cared about the Party or a fairer society, they have been gradually eroded, one way but most likely the other. This election for me, won't be remembered for the early running gaffs or blatant lies, smears and US Presidential-like insults; it will be remembered for this and various versions: Yes, but Corbyn.
Look, it doesn't matter what I or any other person says to people who use that phrase. It's simply a case of personal expression, belief and taste, three of the main things that make up opinion and the opinion of Jeremy Corbyn among some is that he's bad for the country, even if there isn't really any verifiable evidence to prove this. There are those who view him as the second coming; mainly down to the belief that a properly-run left wing government will not repeat the mistakes of their Third-World counterparts; a fairer society for all means a happier society - it aint rocket science.
Those who sit in the middle, the very small amount now, don't really give a fig about him, per se. He's just the bloke who, if elected, would instruct the rest of his team to get on with running the country. Regardless of what people think, while many things have to pass over the PM's desk for approval, a good PM delegates without impunity to the ministers he trusts - provided, of course, they don't make any universal blunders.
People sometimes want to know what a political party is going to do for the country as well as themselves, despite the fact we're learning very quickly how not to care. If Corbyn was PM, what part of him wanting a fairer society for the 99% doesn't include you? Personally, I think it's a terrible indictment of our society at the moment that the man who is offering HOPE is dangerous and the man who is literally offering us BLAH BLAH BLAH is a hero. History may well look back on this era and wonder what on Earth we were thinking or how it came to be like this.
But back to Corbyn, because I have a strategy that he wouldn't touch in a million years. A way of maybe winning some of the idiots onto his side. We know that banging on about policies works to a certain point, but there's a ceiling when you start meeting resistance from the 'Yeah, but...' loose-affiliation. They don't care if you were offering the country free sex, so trying to persuade people who ignored economics in the Leave the EU vote thing aren't going to be swayed by common sense and maths now. Are they?
Corbyn needs to ditch the nice guy act, mainly because his nice guy persona isn't believed by the cockwombles. They believe his refusal to entertain 'political pop culture' questions is a sign of his weaknesses. The logic behind he doesn't sink to his rivals' levels means he must have even more to hide simply wouldn't wash if people hadn't already been brainwashed about what a threat to society a 70-year old nice man with an allotment is. What he needs to do is start going on the offensive in a personal way (and we all know he won't and he'll lose). He needs to start saying stuff like, 'If I was a terrorist sympathiser would MI5 let me run a political party?' or 'Since when did a member of the Privy Council also have terrorist links?' or 'I was part of the team that helped forge the Good Friday Agreement; was I supposed to do that without meeting all sides?' ... But he probably won't.
He needs to start calling out the BBC for its apparent bias.
He needs to start asking questions instead of answering them; like why isn't the press talking about Tory Islamophobia? Why is there never any real evidence given of antisemitism - just the constant allegation without ever any substance or examples?
He needs to start pointing out some of Johnson's lesser credentials; mention his 'illegitimate' kids, his record in office, especially during the downfall of May, the money the man wasted as London mayor, his dodgy dealings in the FO, his racist-tinged journalism, his colourful metaphors to describe anyone who isn't a Tory voter.
The mud is being flung all from one direction, it's time to start throwing it back. The electorate probably could get behind a good fight; let's have Labour fighting back against bias and smears. Let's have them stop TV journalists from stopping them from ever finishing a point; shut. them. down! Point out that they do not interrupt the Conservatives, so pay them the respect they deserve. Don't stand there looking like you want to explode but sticking with the policy of defend and don't attack back. That doesn't work; idiots think you're hiding something!
He needs to start asking members of the public the questions they sometimes stupidly ask him. If some gammon in the Question Time audience wants to know if he'd push the nuclear button if everyone else is; he shouldn't try to reason with him, he should simply say, 'Yes, I'd make sure that you and all your friends and family would be wiped out just as quickly as everyone else as we destroy the planet. Is that what you'd like? Is that what you want from a PM? To destroy the planet so you can feel safe on it?'
It's time they said bollocks to playing fair and go for the goolies. This is probably going to be the end of democracy as we know it if the Tories get in again. Enjoy voting while you had the chance; there'll be no point crying about it when it's taken from you.
The Politics of ...
Sunday 8 December 2019
Sunday 17 November 2019
Anyone But Corbyn
I've made it clear since I moved to this part of Scotland that voting Labour is going to be a wasted vote. Dumfries and Galloway is firmly split between the sitting Tory MP and the SNP, whatever happened to Labour in Scotland after Gordon Brown and before Jeremy Corbyn has pretty much killed them in all but a handful of places.
But, at heart, I'm a socialist and even the SNP's brand of socialism is more palatable than voting for someone else, even if my heart isn't really in it.
In my social media bubble you'd think Labour will win a landslide election, but the reality is much different, because one thing stands in the way. The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a most divisive of character, but if you can actually get 'floating' voters to tell you why they will vote for anyone but Corbyn, usually the answer is quite unfathomable or based on the kind of Chinese whispers you expect the right wing media to be right behind. After all, the right wing media turned people against the EU without using a shred of actual evidence, but by pressing all the buttons a disgruntled, confused public will get behind. The Tories and their media have branded Corbyn many things. He's a racist. He's a communist. He's anti-semitic. He's incompetent. He's stupid. I mean, if people said, he's old, he's got a beard, he's a bit scruffy, he's got an allotment, it has as much meaning, except much of it is absolutely true; all of the shallow, callow accusations aimed at him are essentially bollocks. But it doesn't matter; the press has done its job and people simply don't like him. In a world where we no longer really like being told what to do, a lot of people have been told what to do and they're in danger of doing it. Free will? In your dreams.
I don't expect anyone who reads this and isn't voting Labour will be swayed by anything I say, after all, it's just my opinion and there are far more cleverer people out there, who know what they're talking about. Except, I haven't got a vested interest. Life will, one way or another, continue for me as it will for everyone else as it did before on December 13th. That's, in a way, quite depressing because those people who won't 'vote Labour because' are throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Yeah, I know. You had to do it. 'Anyone but Corbyn' you'll cry without realising that you'll have been conned for a second time in 3 years, but that doesn't bother you because no one is going to tell you how you should vote; you're voting for what's best for Britain, while actually you're not... But it really doesn't matter what I say, you'll always come up with another reason. The sad thing is you might as well say, 'I don't want a bearded PM' because it's as logical as the reasons you give, but in many ways less more honest.
There's a few memes floating about, one preaching to the converted about only people over £82,000 a year will pay more in tax and that if an extra £20 is taken from these people, how will they survive? The other is how any working man can look at the promise of more services, a shorter working week and free wifi as somehow less important than ensuring the rich who don't pay any tax continue to pay no tax. Like it's a good thing that we have money hoarders and an even better thing is we have homeless children because, directly or indirectly, of these money hoarders. What kind of person will dismiss a manifesto geared at making as many ordinary people happy as possible as stupid, but think a PM who thinks maybe building actual bridges - like one from Northern Ireland to Scotland - might be better? Johnson calls Labour's plans 'crazy' and yet he wants to divorce us from our largest trading partners in the hope we'll get a better deal from Rwanda or Cambodia. We'll be all right for yams and noodles all year round!
I can't convince anyone that they're voting the wrong way, because it's your vote and you do it the way you see fit; but at least be honest with yourself. At least be comfortable with the fact you're okay and you don't really care about those who aren't.
What's that? Most people on benefits have only themselves to blame? They're all on the fiddle; they all play the system. Benefits fraud totalled £2.6billion in 2017 - that's a shit load of cash; you could save the NHS with that. It's an awful amount of money and one that needs to be addressed, in a fair way. However, and all these figures are available by searching the internet for reputable sources, were you aware that almost £60billion was not paid in taxes, the vast majority of which was by overseas companies, who treat their employees like Victorian slaves? Your Amazons, Facebooks and Microsoft pay less money in tax than someone on £150,000 a year.
Yes, but I could be poor and those dole scroungers are making it difficult if that happens.
Surely, you'd want it fixed so you can get what's entitled to you and people who fiddle don't? I would. I wouldn't punish everyone because some, probably a step or two ahead of the DSS Fraud squad, screw the system and I'm sure that most people would feel the same way; but maybe they wouldn't. You see the whole Leaving the EU thing has meant that hate is now out of the closet and is being allowed to take centre stage. We have at least a third of the country despising politicians to the point where they will do all the hard work for them at the virtual hustings and then become the turkeys who voted for Christmas.
I know you won't, but ask yourself this: if you vote Conservative and help them win, will they really do what they can to help improve your life? Or will there be more cuts, more deaths as a result and less accountability? I know you don't care about that because the nasty things always happen to someone else or in those dirty stinky cities, with their metropolitan, pan-sexual weirdos and Somalians. But what if you're a working class person who votes Tory in the North East because you think they'll fix all the problems they started; do you really, honestly believe that? Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror and feel clean. especially if someone you know or love suddenly becomes one of those 'statistics' you think is left wing bullshit?
You only have to look at places like the Financial Times - not a Labour paper by any stretch - and see the fiscal deficit now stands above a trillion pounds and is 86% of GDP and compare it to when Labour 'left us in a real mess' to see these Tories really can't be trusted with the economy. Look at it this way; if 1 million seconds equals 12 days and 1 billion seconds equals 31 years, what is a trillion seconds? Now apply that to money. A billion is a thousand million, a trillion is a thousand billion.
If you think Labour represents the unions and unions are bad things; remember that Thatcher removed the teeth of the unions and got it built into any EU (EEC) agreement that unions will not have the same power again. Also remember that without unions you wouldn't have 90% of the benefits you get working somewhere that has a union, or that life will be much different without those benefits. But most of all, remember that even if you despise unions with a passion and blame them for many things, you still get the same benefits if you weren't in a union, and without them? Good luck negotiating that 1% pay rise on your own.
If you think austerity was needed, but now complain that your bins aren't being emptied enough or the street lighting is poor, or the potholes on the roads are worse; that wasn't Corbyn's fault; just like it has never been Corbyn's fault that the Leaving the EU bill has never got through our viciously hung parliament; he's in opposition; it's his job to stop the party in power from damaging the country, even if a third of it thinks he's a traitor for doing so. If it was the other way around and Boris trying to do what he can to stop a bad Labour deal, how would you view it then? If Corbyn was trying to give you what you voted for but Boris, like he did with his own PM at the time, voted against it; how would that make you feel? Would Corbyn be so bad if he was doing all of this in power?
The problem with Corbyn is unless you're a tax dodger, or a Tory with vested interests in low taxes, no services and a lack of workers' rights, you're helping tar a human being with a brush loaded with lies. The other thing you're letting happen is turning a monumental decision into a popularity contest, or, as it seems, an unpopularity contest. The 'whataboutery' has been ramped up to 11. Boris won't tell people how many children he has, but what about Corbyn? He's been married three times and had an affair with a black woman. Boris lies and lies again; says whatever he thinks, even if it's rather distasteful and borderline racist/sexist, but Corbyn is promising the impossible. Or worse still, those people who now think that politicians are corrupt and that is now a good thing. In the 1980s, Cecil Parkinson lost his job on the Tory cabinet for having an affair that resulted in a child (one he was always going to look after if the need arose); 30 years later and we have an adulterous PM, with a questionable number of children and relationships; one who has the police called to his home because of fears of domestic violence and no one bats an eyelid.
Now, ask yourself this, if you dare; why is it safe to believe that attacks on Boris are left wing conspiracies that you believe almost without a doubt, but anything you hear about Corbyn must be true? Even if some of the stuff you hear about Corbyn was true, surely, by the law of averages, some of the accusations leveled at Johnson must also be true? Why do you have so much trouble believing a truth is a lie and a lie is a truth?
Why do you think this is some kind of Presidential race and that whoever wins will do all the work? I don't get this, anti-Corbyn people think that if JC was PM he would make all the decisions; he would be in sole charge and his cabinet would just be turning up for coffee and their wage cheque. That would be impossible to do, especially for a man of his age, and it's why we have a chancellor, a defence secretary, a housing minister, a leader of the House - they all have their jobs; they all have a certain amount of autonomy.
Ask yourself why Sajid Javid says he wants to bring a £10 minimum wage in by 2020 and Tory supporting newspapers say that economists reckon this is a great thing, yet ten days earlier, John McDonnell was saying the exact same thing and it was going to bankrupt the country? It's because they know that if you read a Tory supporting newspaper you'll believe any old shit they tell you and what's better is you'll convince all your mates who don't read the paper to think the same way. How many lefties reading this will nod if I suggest you've met people who don't read papers, don't watch the news, don't go to political rallies who all know that Corbyn is an evil stupid man? Ask them what it's based on and you get outbursts that would shame a 6 year old. The internet is full of people who stick their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la-la-la-la very loudly whenever you suggest otherwise. It's like people want to suffer; it's like subconsciously there are people out there who feel we should have extra pain; feel more injustice and widen that net to get even more victims of today's society.
Just be honest. Your opinion of Jeremy Corbyn is based on hearsay and what you've heard others say. If there's never smoke without fire, then apply that rule equally or you might as well take up golf so you can cheat at it every game.
This is too long and no one voting Tory will have got this far; so lets up the ante a bit. I know someone who won't read the Labour manifesto; wouldn't vote for Corbyn because he reminds him of Tom Hanks and he really can't stand Tom Hanks and doesn't care if his family starves as long as we leave the EU because the country is overrun with foreigners, says a man who claims to have a Pakistani Britain as a best friend and uses the Polish deli down the road, almost as much as he's in the bookies. He's also been one of the dole scroungers and if looked at in black and white would fit the profile of a pro-Remain Labour voter...
I know a man who won't vote Labour because his grandfather got screwed over by the unions in the 1970s and a friend who got screwed over by them in the 1980s. They both saw hardship as a result and for some reason that has stuck with them, despite living through 16% interest rates, British industry being sold off and a proliferation of food banks - just three of the things we can say the Tories gave us. It's like Labour (or their associates) can only fuck with us once; but the elite aristocracy, shit, they're allowed to do it repeatedly. I know my place. And that is, in many ways, why this election should be about the PARTY that offers the most hope going forward; not one that is offering nothing and claiming everyone else is crazy. It might sound like the Tories are just advocating realism, until, that is, you factor in that these same people are the ones who were in power when all this madness began. If nothing else, let that fact sink in. You've done no good with them for 9 years, what evidence is there to think it won't be more of the same?
The voting landscape is inhabited by unpaid trolls sowing vague seeds of doubt - the most easy to germinate - and like collaborators during the wars, they live for the now. It's uncool to care; unhip to help; it's okay to be vile and hateful because you can hide behind an anonymous icon and think you're balancing the books. With politics there is no better place to do the bidding of the people who convince you that you're better off under them while doing nothing for them at all. It's probably why spam still exists; there's always some mug who'll fall for it, despite every warning under the sun.
Finally, why not 'anyone but Boris?' Why not 'What's to lose with trying something radical and different?' We can't sink any lower than we are and as the same people who say 'anyone but Corbyn' will remind you, we get a chance every four or five years (usually) to pick a new government; if Labour screw up then vote the Tories back in or their yellow buddies, but don't dismiss them before you've had a chance to see if their ideas work. Or are you that far beyond taking a calculated risk? Because if you think you have a better chance of surviving the coming storm with who have been in charge for the last 9 years, then you're already dead.
But, at heart, I'm a socialist and even the SNP's brand of socialism is more palatable than voting for someone else, even if my heart isn't really in it.
In my social media bubble you'd think Labour will win a landslide election, but the reality is much different, because one thing stands in the way. The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a most divisive of character, but if you can actually get 'floating' voters to tell you why they will vote for anyone but Corbyn, usually the answer is quite unfathomable or based on the kind of Chinese whispers you expect the right wing media to be right behind. After all, the right wing media turned people against the EU without using a shred of actual evidence, but by pressing all the buttons a disgruntled, confused public will get behind. The Tories and their media have branded Corbyn many things. He's a racist. He's a communist. He's anti-semitic. He's incompetent. He's stupid. I mean, if people said, he's old, he's got a beard, he's a bit scruffy, he's got an allotment, it has as much meaning, except much of it is absolutely true; all of the shallow, callow accusations aimed at him are essentially bollocks. But it doesn't matter; the press has done its job and people simply don't like him. In a world where we no longer really like being told what to do, a lot of people have been told what to do and they're in danger of doing it. Free will? In your dreams.
I don't expect anyone who reads this and isn't voting Labour will be swayed by anything I say, after all, it's just my opinion and there are far more cleverer people out there, who know what they're talking about. Except, I haven't got a vested interest. Life will, one way or another, continue for me as it will for everyone else as it did before on December 13th. That's, in a way, quite depressing because those people who won't 'vote Labour because' are throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Yeah, I know. You had to do it. 'Anyone but Corbyn' you'll cry without realising that you'll have been conned for a second time in 3 years, but that doesn't bother you because no one is going to tell you how you should vote; you're voting for what's best for Britain, while actually you're not... But it really doesn't matter what I say, you'll always come up with another reason. The sad thing is you might as well say, 'I don't want a bearded PM' because it's as logical as the reasons you give, but in many ways less more honest.
There's a few memes floating about, one preaching to the converted about only people over £82,000 a year will pay more in tax and that if an extra £20 is taken from these people, how will they survive? The other is how any working man can look at the promise of more services, a shorter working week and free wifi as somehow less important than ensuring the rich who don't pay any tax continue to pay no tax. Like it's a good thing that we have money hoarders and an even better thing is we have homeless children because, directly or indirectly, of these money hoarders. What kind of person will dismiss a manifesto geared at making as many ordinary people happy as possible as stupid, but think a PM who thinks maybe building actual bridges - like one from Northern Ireland to Scotland - might be better? Johnson calls Labour's plans 'crazy' and yet he wants to divorce us from our largest trading partners in the hope we'll get a better deal from Rwanda or Cambodia. We'll be all right for yams and noodles all year round!
I can't convince anyone that they're voting the wrong way, because it's your vote and you do it the way you see fit; but at least be honest with yourself. At least be comfortable with the fact you're okay and you don't really care about those who aren't.
What's that? Most people on benefits have only themselves to blame? They're all on the fiddle; they all play the system. Benefits fraud totalled £2.6billion in 2017 - that's a shit load of cash; you could save the NHS with that. It's an awful amount of money and one that needs to be addressed, in a fair way. However, and all these figures are available by searching the internet for reputable sources, were you aware that almost £60billion was not paid in taxes, the vast majority of which was by overseas companies, who treat their employees like Victorian slaves? Your Amazons, Facebooks and Microsoft pay less money in tax than someone on £150,000 a year.
Yes, but I could be poor and those dole scroungers are making it difficult if that happens.
Surely, you'd want it fixed so you can get what's entitled to you and people who fiddle don't? I would. I wouldn't punish everyone because some, probably a step or two ahead of the DSS Fraud squad, screw the system and I'm sure that most people would feel the same way; but maybe they wouldn't. You see the whole Leaving the EU thing has meant that hate is now out of the closet and is being allowed to take centre stage. We have at least a third of the country despising politicians to the point where they will do all the hard work for them at the virtual hustings and then become the turkeys who voted for Christmas.
I know you won't, but ask yourself this: if you vote Conservative and help them win, will they really do what they can to help improve your life? Or will there be more cuts, more deaths as a result and less accountability? I know you don't care about that because the nasty things always happen to someone else or in those dirty stinky cities, with their metropolitan, pan-sexual weirdos and Somalians. But what if you're a working class person who votes Tory in the North East because you think they'll fix all the problems they started; do you really, honestly believe that? Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror and feel clean. especially if someone you know or love suddenly becomes one of those 'statistics' you think is left wing bullshit?
You only have to look at places like the Financial Times - not a Labour paper by any stretch - and see the fiscal deficit now stands above a trillion pounds and is 86% of GDP and compare it to when Labour 'left us in a real mess' to see these Tories really can't be trusted with the economy. Look at it this way; if 1 million seconds equals 12 days and 1 billion seconds equals 31 years, what is a trillion seconds? Now apply that to money. A billion is a thousand million, a trillion is a thousand billion.
If you think Labour represents the unions and unions are bad things; remember that Thatcher removed the teeth of the unions and got it built into any EU (EEC) agreement that unions will not have the same power again. Also remember that without unions you wouldn't have 90% of the benefits you get working somewhere that has a union, or that life will be much different without those benefits. But most of all, remember that even if you despise unions with a passion and blame them for many things, you still get the same benefits if you weren't in a union, and without them? Good luck negotiating that 1% pay rise on your own.
If you think austerity was needed, but now complain that your bins aren't being emptied enough or the street lighting is poor, or the potholes on the roads are worse; that wasn't Corbyn's fault; just like it has never been Corbyn's fault that the Leaving the EU bill has never got through our viciously hung parliament; he's in opposition; it's his job to stop the party in power from damaging the country, even if a third of it thinks he's a traitor for doing so. If it was the other way around and Boris trying to do what he can to stop a bad Labour deal, how would you view it then? If Corbyn was trying to give you what you voted for but Boris, like he did with his own PM at the time, voted against it; how would that make you feel? Would Corbyn be so bad if he was doing all of this in power?
The problem with Corbyn is unless you're a tax dodger, or a Tory with vested interests in low taxes, no services and a lack of workers' rights, you're helping tar a human being with a brush loaded with lies. The other thing you're letting happen is turning a monumental decision into a popularity contest, or, as it seems, an unpopularity contest. The 'whataboutery' has been ramped up to 11. Boris won't tell people how many children he has, but what about Corbyn? He's been married three times and had an affair with a black woman. Boris lies and lies again; says whatever he thinks, even if it's rather distasteful and borderline racist/sexist, but Corbyn is promising the impossible. Or worse still, those people who now think that politicians are corrupt and that is now a good thing. In the 1980s, Cecil Parkinson lost his job on the Tory cabinet for having an affair that resulted in a child (one he was always going to look after if the need arose); 30 years later and we have an adulterous PM, with a questionable number of children and relationships; one who has the police called to his home because of fears of domestic violence and no one bats an eyelid.
Now, ask yourself this, if you dare; why is it safe to believe that attacks on Boris are left wing conspiracies that you believe almost without a doubt, but anything you hear about Corbyn must be true? Even if some of the stuff you hear about Corbyn was true, surely, by the law of averages, some of the accusations leveled at Johnson must also be true? Why do you have so much trouble believing a truth is a lie and a lie is a truth?
Why do you think this is some kind of Presidential race and that whoever wins will do all the work? I don't get this, anti-Corbyn people think that if JC was PM he would make all the decisions; he would be in sole charge and his cabinet would just be turning up for coffee and their wage cheque. That would be impossible to do, especially for a man of his age, and it's why we have a chancellor, a defence secretary, a housing minister, a leader of the House - they all have their jobs; they all have a certain amount of autonomy.
Ask yourself why Sajid Javid says he wants to bring a £10 minimum wage in by 2020 and Tory supporting newspapers say that economists reckon this is a great thing, yet ten days earlier, John McDonnell was saying the exact same thing and it was going to bankrupt the country? It's because they know that if you read a Tory supporting newspaper you'll believe any old shit they tell you and what's better is you'll convince all your mates who don't read the paper to think the same way. How many lefties reading this will nod if I suggest you've met people who don't read papers, don't watch the news, don't go to political rallies who all know that Corbyn is an evil stupid man? Ask them what it's based on and you get outbursts that would shame a 6 year old. The internet is full of people who stick their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la-la-la-la very loudly whenever you suggest otherwise. It's like people want to suffer; it's like subconsciously there are people out there who feel we should have extra pain; feel more injustice and widen that net to get even more victims of today's society.
Just be honest. Your opinion of Jeremy Corbyn is based on hearsay and what you've heard others say. If there's never smoke without fire, then apply that rule equally or you might as well take up golf so you can cheat at it every game.
This is too long and no one voting Tory will have got this far; so lets up the ante a bit. I know someone who won't read the Labour manifesto; wouldn't vote for Corbyn because he reminds him of Tom Hanks and he really can't stand Tom Hanks and doesn't care if his family starves as long as we leave the EU because the country is overrun with foreigners, says a man who claims to have a Pakistani Britain as a best friend and uses the Polish deli down the road, almost as much as he's in the bookies. He's also been one of the dole scroungers and if looked at in black and white would fit the profile of a pro-Remain Labour voter...
I know a man who won't vote Labour because his grandfather got screwed over by the unions in the 1970s and a friend who got screwed over by them in the 1980s. They both saw hardship as a result and for some reason that has stuck with them, despite living through 16% interest rates, British industry being sold off and a proliferation of food banks - just three of the things we can say the Tories gave us. It's like Labour (or their associates) can only fuck with us once; but the elite aristocracy, shit, they're allowed to do it repeatedly. I know my place. And that is, in many ways, why this election should be about the PARTY that offers the most hope going forward; not one that is offering nothing and claiming everyone else is crazy. It might sound like the Tories are just advocating realism, until, that is, you factor in that these same people are the ones who were in power when all this madness began. If nothing else, let that fact sink in. You've done no good with them for 9 years, what evidence is there to think it won't be more of the same?
The voting landscape is inhabited by unpaid trolls sowing vague seeds of doubt - the most easy to germinate - and like collaborators during the wars, they live for the now. It's uncool to care; unhip to help; it's okay to be vile and hateful because you can hide behind an anonymous icon and think you're balancing the books. With politics there is no better place to do the bidding of the people who convince you that you're better off under them while doing nothing for them at all. It's probably why spam still exists; there's always some mug who'll fall for it, despite every warning under the sun.
Finally, why not 'anyone but Boris?' Why not 'What's to lose with trying something radical and different?' We can't sink any lower than we are and as the same people who say 'anyone but Corbyn' will remind you, we get a chance every four or five years (usually) to pick a new government; if Labour screw up then vote the Tories back in or their yellow buddies, but don't dismiss them before you've had a chance to see if their ideas work. Or are you that far beyond taking a calculated risk? Because if you think you have a better chance of surviving the coming storm with who have been in charge for the last 9 years, then you're already dead.
Monday 11 November 2019
Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
I've recently seen two viral video clips that have been circulating Facebook from my left-leaning cadre of friends. The first is a woman in Pennsylvania who literally declared that she would have no problem if, as Donald Trump said during his first election campaign, he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. "He's the President; he can do what he likes," was her tacit comment.
The other was of a American-Hispanic border patrol officer in southern California, who, when asked about the supposed swathe of migrants (actually there's no 'supposed' about it, but that's a story for another time and probably another person) attempting to cross the border into the USA. "I can't understand, anymore, why they want to come here?" This tacit comment was alluding to the fact that immigrants are now persona non grata in the Land of the Free. A country built on immigration now wants to be so selective about who they allow in, it's like Rosa Parks was never born.
I read this morning that Canadian-born hippy-rock-70s-icon Neil Young is having problems with his citizenship application because of previous misdemeanours with pot. My first thought, as it is with whoever wants to apply for American Citizenship is 'Why?' Why would you want to go to a country that, from the outside, looks like a thoroughly unpleasant place to live apart from the scenery? I went to the USA 25 years ago and I've never had the urge to go back. But that's just me; I'm not wealthy and I'm also a lefty vegetarian.
The thing about the USA is that since the mid-1980s, a growing number of Tory MPs have looked at the USA, with its rampant inequality; monefied health care system and its reliance on wealthy philanthropists to prop up ailing communities and liked what they saw. In many ways, despite its size and free-thinking, the USA is the authoritarian utopia many wealthy Tories aspire to bringing to the UK and they're pretty much on the cusp of doing just that.
Now, I've changed my stance on the Leaving the EU situation. I believe that it could work if we have the right government in place; the problem there is whoever is in charge of the separation when it finally happens, because, let's not kid ourselves, we're leaving the EU on January 31st barring some kind of countrywide epiphany, needs to have the entire country's best interests at heart.
One side of the divide wants deregulation, removal of personal employment rights, amongst other civil liberties and to turn the UK into a massive Service Industry Island for money to be kept - but not spent - and to pay the same kind of wages for the poor that would make them competitive against Third World growth economies. This isn't 'lefty bullshit', there is evidence out there to prove that many of the members of Boris Johnson's pre-election cabinet were and are all for making it easier for employers and harder for employees. You might think this is a good thing; it might stamp out the fecklessness that has crept into the British workforce, but history suggests happy workers are more efficient workers, therefore more profitable. But, they can have a go at flogging a centuries dead horse again, with a modern twist, to see how long it'll last this time.
The other side wants us to stay pretty much where we are, but with more investment, even if it means borrowing, but borrowing to pay back through productivity.
As an aside, are people aware that if you look at theoretical political structures throughout history, the most successful have been co-operative societies? These have lasted the longest, by a long chalk, than capitalism, fascism, communism, socialism, neo-liberalism - which, are actually mostly quite modern and are surpassed by such things as feudalism and monarchies. The overriding thing from it is that co-operative societies have always lasted a long time and arguably because they were the happiest; as soon as you put someone 'in charge' or appoint governments to decide what's best, things start to go wrong and this is usually by implementing societal changes or laws - usually ones people didn't want and which benefit the people who made them more than others. Once constraints of whatever nature are applied to some but not all, you get division and it is how class structures develop. In co-operative societies, most things were done by consensus, usually a 2/3rd majority, and everything was discussed or allowed time to be discussed by whoever in the community wanted to; governance was usually by the elders and people accepted things that didn't agree with their way of thinking, usually because the next decision probably would. Political division - the one we're used to - has existed a lot longer than organised politics.
The problem with humans is they are essentially greedy, selfish or prejudiced - three things that have consistently happened as a result of politics and have polarised since the arrival of communications.
The thing about the upcoming UK election that I find the most frustrating is the obstinacy of a certain demographic of voter. I don't know if it really is cognitive dissonance or if the constant drip drip drip leading to some form of ideological osmosis has truly made the citizens of a lot of the UK no longer actually care.
Care about what?
Nothing. Except themselves. I'm not even sure you can include 'their own' in that.
My overriding memory of the Thatcher Years was how the country I'd returned to in 1969 had changed from a community-based, caring society, that was extremely naive, yet oddly happy to something a lot different. The late 1950s and 1960s had seen Britain boom; we were coming out of the post-war years like a bullet train and things were looking good. There was a divide and very much a class-based society, but people worked, they saved, they planned for the future, they were 'the best years' according to many Baby Boomers yearning for today's technology to be married with that sense of the UK going places. When people remind these thinkers about all the shit things that happened during this time, it is rightly dismissed - in the 21st century, we won't have things like the threat of nuclear war, or rickets or TB or unions to drag us down; we should live a long happy life of prosperity where everyone is happy and the lowlier inhabitants doff their caps at the gentry with an admiring and loving smiles on their faces. Margaret Thatcher dispelled the image of old happy Britain in the early 1980s; instead of Love Thy Neighbour she turned it around 180 degrees and suggested we should Shop Our Neighbours. The community was our enemy; there were dole scroungers, drug dealers, child abusers and slubberdegullions littering our streets and they needed to be removed so that people could live without the risk.
I remember a few years ago, an old boss of mine telling about how he was a newly-qualified social worker, just starting his journey, in the 1980s when the 'hotline' was introduced; the telephone number that was created for people to ring in anonymously and express your fears or whatever you have witnessed about what was going on in your neighbours houses. It obviously wasn't worded like that; it was hidden inside a concern for the welfare of children, so if people were fearful for the safety of a neighbour's child, they should be able to report this without having to get themselves involved. My old boss said at the end of the 3rd year of this telephone number being introduced, almost 80% of the calls were hoax or worse still, angry or disgruntled neighbours trying to get people into trouble because they didn't like them.
It didn't take us long to Hate Thy Neighbour. Thatcher might have done many good things for this country (according to others), but her dismantling of the community structure was probably the reason we're where we are now.
Things haven't exactly got better. We now demonise everyone who isn't 'normal' (Normal meaning in work, with money, home-owning, latte drinking, Netflix watching and Tory voting) and use them as a scapegoat because... get this... we have absolutely no point of reference to compare our lives with the rich, so we look at what is worse and say, 'I'm not having any of that,' like, if we kill off all the poor, through one means or another, there won't be any more left and we can not have anyone to blame because it'll all be okay. Except if it is, then maybe get rid of all the foreigners because they steal jobs (how, exactly does someone 'steal' a job?), they put pressure on our (almost non-existent) services, they clog up A&E with their foreign emergency illnesses or physical damage when some white, British [read: English], fully-employed tax paying Tory voter might need it.
In fact, the crazy thing is, I see right wing people, the so-called normal people nod sympathetically at the genuine cases of hardship in this country and then get on with demonising them. Suggest to them that billionaires should be taxed and unless they're really stupid they simply say, 'Yeah, that's not good, but what about people who fiddle £50 a week from the government?' Because people understand poverty and don't comprehend having enough money to own as many yachts as there are food banks in the country. It is that simple.
You can demonise the disenfranchised because everyone knows or knows of someone who has screwed the system. These criminal people are so evil they ruin it for everyone else. I'm sure if you actually nailed a Tory voter to a seat and said, 'What's more important: someone poor who does what he can to eat or someone so rich they can buy Madagascar, but needs a few more tax breaks?' and they'd struggle to come up with an answer and even if they actually agreed that the billionaire is worse than the benefits 'scrounger' I despair when they back that up with, 'but you can't do anything about the billionaire.' That's all right then; we'll ignore the people who could wipe out poverty without losing their ability to buy a gold plated arse wiper and just focus on the people who can die, in the 21st century, because they're poor and live in the 5th or 6th richest country on the planet.
The stupid thing is if the benefits scroungers bill is £2.6billion a year and the million and billionaires tax dodging is £26billion a year, where is the obvious place you'd think of going if you wanted to ensure the benefits scroungers will stop benefits scrounging? Imagine the investment and change £26billion could do? I'd hazard a guess a lot more than sitting in the Cayman Islands avoiding tax.
"Oh, but they're billionaires, they'll always do it." People argue they'll leave the country and take their money with them. Their money has isn't here any more and is unlikely to return any time soon!
Maybe they will, but why penalise everyone who needs help to ensure these people who are richer than countries continue to get wealthier? How does that help? If we spent some money on employing the right people to ensure the correct members of society are getting what they need (and deserve) and made more - informed - checks on the people who take the system for a ride, then maybe we'd stop thinking about anyone (who we don't know or isn't related to us) needing benefits as some feckless shirker out to rob you of your tax donations.
Once upon a time we paid tax and National Insurance to guarantee we got help in the time of unemployment, sickness and disability; we don't pay that money to ensure the government withholds it from the people who need it. I mean, imagine if you suddenly needed Universal Credit and found the application alone requires half a Citizens' Advice Bureau staff and a couple of legal specialists? If you lost your job, you'd expect state aid; how would you feel if getting that state aid was designed to make you give up or not bother? What if you were disabled and were five minutes late for an appointment and lost your benefits in sanctions because the bus service you also pay towards is cancelled because of a lack of bus drivers? You wouldn't be happy and you'd be on social media complaining about - either directly or indirectly - the bastards you voted into power; wouldn't you?
There's probably a lot wrong with the welfare state, but dismantling it with no intention of rebuilding it in a way that is seen to work for everyone isn't exactly a progressive approach, is it? Maybe if we focused on making it cost efficient and less heartless and distrusting we might get a lot of people not thinking 90% of the people on benefits are there deliberately. I really don't believe people go, 'bollocks to this work lark, I'm going on Universal Credit because I like having fuck all and suffering the indignity of going to the foodbank.'
"But they all have mobile phones and widescreen TVs?"
How dare someone with nothing have something I paid for... Except they maybe did pay for it, once. Or, as many people don't understand, the DWP have ingeniously enforced all claimants to have both a mobile phone and internet access to be eligible for benefits - if they can't ring you or you can't surf the net all day for a job, then you get sanctioned by not getting to even go through the process.
So next time you see a feckless dole scrounger with a mobile, realise that our own government has forced them into getting one to be able to get the money they were entitled to; there's a massive trade in 2nd hand and knocked off phones out there; just because you're paying Apple through the nose for yours doesn't mean some poor schmuck is doing the same. Or is that wrong as well?
But people don't really care and the media enables them to continue not caring by lying and deceiving them - most of us - into thinking that a bunch of very wealthy, elitist borderline aristocrats are looking after them; or worse still, the other party are going to make it worse. That seems to be the underlying message about this election, 'We're bad, but they're awful.' Whoop-de-do; we are all doomed.
The press has done such a good job of labeling Jeremy Corbyn as some kind of evil incarnate communist terrorist sympathiser who is going to destroy the country to punish the rich, that even people who don't believe it are now saying, 'Yeah, but Corbyn.' It makes me wonder what would happen if Jesus actually came back with a message of love, peace and sharing of wealth, how well the press will go to ensure he's crucified either literally or metaphorically in the press to the point where the Daily Mail's headline will be 'Son of God is a Communist'? 'Jesus wouldn't Push the Nuke Button' or 'God Botherer Claims He Now Owns all the Churches.'
As we become less tolerant of anyone who doesn't agree with us, where do you think the UK is going to be in a few years with a right wing Tory government? I'm not even going to hazard a guess, purely and simply because forecasts cannot be made now as everything is Project Fear. The economy will crash - Project Fear; The Russian are coming - Project Fear; You'll starve to death or won't get your medicines - Project Fear; Chlorinated chicken, lower food standards - Project Fear; A nice sunny day tomorrow with light winds and warm sunshine - PROJECT FEAR!!!
Certain things have to happen first, so that all the people who voted for it and them can look around and blame someone else for the trouble we're in. It's never us. It's never the government. It's always the opposition, the people who didn't want to leave the EU, the foreigners, the gays, the blacks, the Muslims, the Jews, the EU itself, the disabled, the single mums, CND, 1970s Labour, GOD. Are people so thick that they'll buy it's everyone else's fault forever? It can't possibly be the government; it can't possibly be the Tory's; I mean, how can all those important austerity cuts and tax incentives for the rich have made us unfit for purpose and with one of the highest rates of poverty and lowest pensions in the bloc we don't want to be part of any more? It must be Corbyn. It must be the EU. It must be those elitists who are trying to ruin our quest for the return of sunlit uplands and a cornucopia of ambrosia fed to us by Page 3 girls riding on rainbow-tailed unicorns...
The current problems are simply all that's wrong with our country, minus what's really wrong with our country.
Now, I'm in a weird position in many ways. I've been a lifelong socialist; as I've grown older I've not leaned to the right, because as I got older I actually worked with people who have been left behind; people who are actual victims of an unfair society, who wouldn't know how to screw the system as long as they have holes in their arses. These same people are usually the ones penalised by the system because they don't know how to fiddle; they probably wouldn't dream of telling a lie or misrepresenting their actual circumstantial facts; it would be against the kind of decent people they were. So, as a result, as I got older I saw how we have marginalised people and essentially destroyed their lives by making it more difficult for them.
However, now I live in Scotland, I've seen how politics has changed up here in recent years and how Labour is no longer the force it was and how the Scottish National Party has taken their place; delivering a kind of left-wing Blairite agenda but with more social conscience and funnier leaders. A vote for Labour in my constituency is a bit like a vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Scotland is very much a slightly centre left country; so much so that even Scottish Conservatives are bearable; less... nasty. Up here, unless you're wealthy or can't change your ways, you vote to keep the Tories out.
Now that Nigel Farridge's political party has shown its true colours and opted not to contest Tory held seats, the election looks pretty much sewn up for at least a 90 seat majority, for a party that has realised during the early part of this campaign that they can literally do what Donald Trump said and say or do anything because... they know even Labour voters view Corbyn as a toxic brand. That's how crazy we are; a 70-year-old politician with some principles has been made into something he's clearly not and it's easier to believe what you read or hear than actually go and find out if what he's saying makes more sense than suggesting that people who live in highly-inflammable blocks of flats are stupid. But it just won't happen and his obstinance and the ridiculous tactics of supposed Labour-supporting MPs have ensured that Boris will ride roughshod over everything.
I fell out with my Tory-supporting brother recently because of a number of reasons, but he did something that is happening all over the country; he took something I said, omitted a word and made me sound as though I was an evil lefty. I suggested that voting Tory might mean if the cancer he successfully beat comes back, he might find it more difficult to be treated or might even cost him a lot of money. He didn't have a response; well, not one that was rational. He just accused me of wishing his cancer back so I could prove a point... There you have it. If the NHS gets privatised, in his eyes it'll be my fault. That's how fucking ignorant, insensitive and stupid we've got in our haste to not vote for someone we dislike more than the other guy.
I will also hear the 'better the devil we know' excuse, one that has been wheeled out since 1992. How often does the sticking with 'the devil we know' worked out better for us? I'll give you a clue - never. Governments need to change to affect change; if you keep repeating the same mistake in the hope it'll be better this time, you are succumbing to a very real kind of madness. The press warned us of the end of the world if Labour were elected in 1997. They had a second landslide victory 4 years later. That's how change works, even if you didn't like the Iraq war and Tony Blair is really just a pink Tory. The change happened and for ten years the country prospered like no other time than before Edward Heath. Change is good; stagnation often leads to the marginalised becoming even more so; usually for the benefit of the rich.
If you don't want to vote Corbyn, why not look at their manifesto and then try to reconcile the fact we're not a republic where the PM is in charge of everything. Ministers and cabinets are there not for show but to do the work, otherwise why do we bother with politicians, why not just retire the Royal family and appoint a dictatorial President who can keep all of the recently converted heartless bastards happy and screw the rest? You're not supposed to like PMs or ministers, really, but we do trust them with making the right decisions for the benefit of the country and not just their rich mates and that's where your anger and hatred should be directed. Blaming people worse off than you doesn't really affect your life, does it? But if the rich weren't so rich, that might affect your lives in a multitude of positive ways, from buses running on time, to prompt refuse collection to job creation and the retraining of those left behind so they can contribute to society again. Surely that's better than worrying about your workers rights if you get ill or fearing for your bank balance if you break an arm?
If you still can't vote Labour, then work out who is going to have the best chance of stopping the Tory intent on stripping you of all the rights your parents and grandparents fought for you to have.
But, you know, we're obviously a nation of masochists, because we seem to want the same. The Tories have come in for every kind of criticism under the sun in the last 9 years, but... Jeremy Corbyn? Do you know how hopeless and pathetic that actually sounds? I want a better life, but because I don't like that man, I'll stick with the shit one I've got, thanks (Or in many cases, I'm all right, I don't care about the rest).
Last week, I made a claim about something that I believed to be correct and someone 'on the other side' put me right. I neglected to fact check and fell foul of the same thing I accuse others of doing. Instead of being insulting; calling the person a 'Nazi' or lowering myself to the level I see others - from both sides - go, I took a deep breath and said I was mislead and wouldn't make the same mistake again. At the same time, I showed someone who had made a false statement about something - aid we give to India (or don't as the case was) - and I received quite a considerable amount of personal abuse because I was ... er... right. I'm not exempt from getting apoplectically angry at people who do this kind of thing, and usually because I see the same person make the same allegation on another forum ten minutes later, because he simply didn't want to believe I was right or chose to continue misleading others. That's pretty low and wilfully ignorant or cynically distasteful.
It also shows just how uncaring and nasty some people (or bots) can be (or are programmed). It takes away any optimism, any hope I might have for the immediate future.
The last few years have all been about hope. I hope things don't get too bad. I hope we leave the EU as painlessly as possible. I hope there's a bit more compassion towards our fellow man, because I'd like to think that some people believe in a god who would want them to be the Samaritan, even if it's only in the way they try to view others.
All that hope gets ground under the boot heels of real life and real people who don't, for some reason, want that as well. We're at the stage where reason isn't even on the table; the era of blame and belief now dominates. It's always someone else's fault and never our own.
We live in a country where Extinction Rebellion can block a few roads and make people inconvenienced and that is more important than the lives of hundreds of thousands of people whose houses are currently under water from unprecedented rainfall. We've lost sight of how to be human and as a result hope has to go back inside a little box, tucked away for the next time we think we see a glimmer of change.
If nothing bad happens in the next five years and the world gets better then I'll be the first to say, I was wrong, but I was scared and I won't care who thinks I'm a snowflake. It's the last hope I currently have. However, if the country gets much worse in the next five years, will the people who couldn't hold their noses and give change a chance actually realise it was their fault? That's a hope I have no faith in.
The other was of a American-Hispanic border patrol officer in southern California, who, when asked about the supposed swathe of migrants (actually there's no 'supposed' about it, but that's a story for another time and probably another person) attempting to cross the border into the USA. "I can't understand, anymore, why they want to come here?" This tacit comment was alluding to the fact that immigrants are now persona non grata in the Land of the Free. A country built on immigration now wants to be so selective about who they allow in, it's like Rosa Parks was never born.
I read this morning that Canadian-born hippy-rock-70s-icon Neil Young is having problems with his citizenship application because of previous misdemeanours with pot. My first thought, as it is with whoever wants to apply for American Citizenship is 'Why?' Why would you want to go to a country that, from the outside, looks like a thoroughly unpleasant place to live apart from the scenery? I went to the USA 25 years ago and I've never had the urge to go back. But that's just me; I'm not wealthy and I'm also a lefty vegetarian.
The thing about the USA is that since the mid-1980s, a growing number of Tory MPs have looked at the USA, with its rampant inequality; monefied health care system and its reliance on wealthy philanthropists to prop up ailing communities and liked what they saw. In many ways, despite its size and free-thinking, the USA is the authoritarian utopia many wealthy Tories aspire to bringing to the UK and they're pretty much on the cusp of doing just that.
Now, I've changed my stance on the Leaving the EU situation. I believe that it could work if we have the right government in place; the problem there is whoever is in charge of the separation when it finally happens, because, let's not kid ourselves, we're leaving the EU on January 31st barring some kind of countrywide epiphany, needs to have the entire country's best interests at heart.
One side of the divide wants deregulation, removal of personal employment rights, amongst other civil liberties and to turn the UK into a massive Service Industry Island for money to be kept - but not spent - and to pay the same kind of wages for the poor that would make them competitive against Third World growth economies. This isn't 'lefty bullshit', there is evidence out there to prove that many of the members of Boris Johnson's pre-election cabinet were and are all for making it easier for employers and harder for employees. You might think this is a good thing; it might stamp out the fecklessness that has crept into the British workforce, but history suggests happy workers are more efficient workers, therefore more profitable. But, they can have a go at flogging a centuries dead horse again, with a modern twist, to see how long it'll last this time.
The other side wants us to stay pretty much where we are, but with more investment, even if it means borrowing, but borrowing to pay back through productivity.
As an aside, are people aware that if you look at theoretical political structures throughout history, the most successful have been co-operative societies? These have lasted the longest, by a long chalk, than capitalism, fascism, communism, socialism, neo-liberalism - which, are actually mostly quite modern and are surpassed by such things as feudalism and monarchies. The overriding thing from it is that co-operative societies have always lasted a long time and arguably because they were the happiest; as soon as you put someone 'in charge' or appoint governments to decide what's best, things start to go wrong and this is usually by implementing societal changes or laws - usually ones people didn't want and which benefit the people who made them more than others. Once constraints of whatever nature are applied to some but not all, you get division and it is how class structures develop. In co-operative societies, most things were done by consensus, usually a 2/3rd majority, and everything was discussed or allowed time to be discussed by whoever in the community wanted to; governance was usually by the elders and people accepted things that didn't agree with their way of thinking, usually because the next decision probably would. Political division - the one we're used to - has existed a lot longer than organised politics.
The problem with humans is they are essentially greedy, selfish or prejudiced - three things that have consistently happened as a result of politics and have polarised since the arrival of communications.
The thing about the upcoming UK election that I find the most frustrating is the obstinacy of a certain demographic of voter. I don't know if it really is cognitive dissonance or if the constant drip drip drip leading to some form of ideological osmosis has truly made the citizens of a lot of the UK no longer actually care.
Care about what?
Nothing. Except themselves. I'm not even sure you can include 'their own' in that.
My overriding memory of the Thatcher Years was how the country I'd returned to in 1969 had changed from a community-based, caring society, that was extremely naive, yet oddly happy to something a lot different. The late 1950s and 1960s had seen Britain boom; we were coming out of the post-war years like a bullet train and things were looking good. There was a divide and very much a class-based society, but people worked, they saved, they planned for the future, they were 'the best years' according to many Baby Boomers yearning for today's technology to be married with that sense of the UK going places. When people remind these thinkers about all the shit things that happened during this time, it is rightly dismissed - in the 21st century, we won't have things like the threat of nuclear war, or rickets or TB or unions to drag us down; we should live a long happy life of prosperity where everyone is happy and the lowlier inhabitants doff their caps at the gentry with an admiring and loving smiles on their faces. Margaret Thatcher dispelled the image of old happy Britain in the early 1980s; instead of Love Thy Neighbour she turned it around 180 degrees and suggested we should Shop Our Neighbours. The community was our enemy; there were dole scroungers, drug dealers, child abusers and slubberdegullions littering our streets and they needed to be removed so that people could live without the risk.
I remember a few years ago, an old boss of mine telling about how he was a newly-qualified social worker, just starting his journey, in the 1980s when the 'hotline' was introduced; the telephone number that was created for people to ring in anonymously and express your fears or whatever you have witnessed about what was going on in your neighbours houses. It obviously wasn't worded like that; it was hidden inside a concern for the welfare of children, so if people were fearful for the safety of a neighbour's child, they should be able to report this without having to get themselves involved. My old boss said at the end of the 3rd year of this telephone number being introduced, almost 80% of the calls were hoax or worse still, angry or disgruntled neighbours trying to get people into trouble because they didn't like them.
It didn't take us long to Hate Thy Neighbour. Thatcher might have done many good things for this country (according to others), but her dismantling of the community structure was probably the reason we're where we are now.
Things haven't exactly got better. We now demonise everyone who isn't 'normal' (Normal meaning in work, with money, home-owning, latte drinking, Netflix watching and Tory voting) and use them as a scapegoat because... get this... we have absolutely no point of reference to compare our lives with the rich, so we look at what is worse and say, 'I'm not having any of that,' like, if we kill off all the poor, through one means or another, there won't be any more left and we can not have anyone to blame because it'll all be okay. Except if it is, then maybe get rid of all the foreigners because they steal jobs (how, exactly does someone 'steal' a job?), they put pressure on our (almost non-existent) services, they clog up A&E with their foreign emergency illnesses or physical damage when some white, British [read: English], fully-employed tax paying Tory voter might need it.
In fact, the crazy thing is, I see right wing people, the so-called normal people nod sympathetically at the genuine cases of hardship in this country and then get on with demonising them. Suggest to them that billionaires should be taxed and unless they're really stupid they simply say, 'Yeah, that's not good, but what about people who fiddle £50 a week from the government?' Because people understand poverty and don't comprehend having enough money to own as many yachts as there are food banks in the country. It is that simple.
You can demonise the disenfranchised because everyone knows or knows of someone who has screwed the system. These criminal people are so evil they ruin it for everyone else. I'm sure if you actually nailed a Tory voter to a seat and said, 'What's more important: someone poor who does what he can to eat or someone so rich they can buy Madagascar, but needs a few more tax breaks?' and they'd struggle to come up with an answer and even if they actually agreed that the billionaire is worse than the benefits 'scrounger' I despair when they back that up with, 'but you can't do anything about the billionaire.' That's all right then; we'll ignore the people who could wipe out poverty without losing their ability to buy a gold plated arse wiper and just focus on the people who can die, in the 21st century, because they're poor and live in the 5th or 6th richest country on the planet.
The stupid thing is if the benefits scroungers bill is £2.6billion a year and the million and billionaires tax dodging is £26billion a year, where is the obvious place you'd think of going if you wanted to ensure the benefits scroungers will stop benefits scrounging? Imagine the investment and change £26billion could do? I'd hazard a guess a lot more than sitting in the Cayman Islands avoiding tax.
"Oh, but they're billionaires, they'll always do it." People argue they'll leave the country and take their money with them. Their money has isn't here any more and is unlikely to return any time soon!
Maybe they will, but why penalise everyone who needs help to ensure these people who are richer than countries continue to get wealthier? How does that help? If we spent some money on employing the right people to ensure the correct members of society are getting what they need (and deserve) and made more - informed - checks on the people who take the system for a ride, then maybe we'd stop thinking about anyone (who we don't know or isn't related to us) needing benefits as some feckless shirker out to rob you of your tax donations.
Once upon a time we paid tax and National Insurance to guarantee we got help in the time of unemployment, sickness and disability; we don't pay that money to ensure the government withholds it from the people who need it. I mean, imagine if you suddenly needed Universal Credit and found the application alone requires half a Citizens' Advice Bureau staff and a couple of legal specialists? If you lost your job, you'd expect state aid; how would you feel if getting that state aid was designed to make you give up or not bother? What if you were disabled and were five minutes late for an appointment and lost your benefits in sanctions because the bus service you also pay towards is cancelled because of a lack of bus drivers? You wouldn't be happy and you'd be on social media complaining about - either directly or indirectly - the bastards you voted into power; wouldn't you?
There's probably a lot wrong with the welfare state, but dismantling it with no intention of rebuilding it in a way that is seen to work for everyone isn't exactly a progressive approach, is it? Maybe if we focused on making it cost efficient and less heartless and distrusting we might get a lot of people not thinking 90% of the people on benefits are there deliberately. I really don't believe people go, 'bollocks to this work lark, I'm going on Universal Credit because I like having fuck all and suffering the indignity of going to the foodbank.'
"But they all have mobile phones and widescreen TVs?"
How dare someone with nothing have something I paid for... Except they maybe did pay for it, once. Or, as many people don't understand, the DWP have ingeniously enforced all claimants to have both a mobile phone and internet access to be eligible for benefits - if they can't ring you or you can't surf the net all day for a job, then you get sanctioned by not getting to even go through the process.
So next time you see a feckless dole scrounger with a mobile, realise that our own government has forced them into getting one to be able to get the money they were entitled to; there's a massive trade in 2nd hand and knocked off phones out there; just because you're paying Apple through the nose for yours doesn't mean some poor schmuck is doing the same. Or is that wrong as well?
But people don't really care and the media enables them to continue not caring by lying and deceiving them - most of us - into thinking that a bunch of very wealthy, elitist borderline aristocrats are looking after them; or worse still, the other party are going to make it worse. That seems to be the underlying message about this election, 'We're bad, but they're awful.' Whoop-de-do; we are all doomed.
The press has done such a good job of labeling Jeremy Corbyn as some kind of evil incarnate communist terrorist sympathiser who is going to destroy the country to punish the rich, that even people who don't believe it are now saying, 'Yeah, but Corbyn.' It makes me wonder what would happen if Jesus actually came back with a message of love, peace and sharing of wealth, how well the press will go to ensure he's crucified either literally or metaphorically in the press to the point where the Daily Mail's headline will be 'Son of God is a Communist'? 'Jesus wouldn't Push the Nuke Button' or 'God Botherer Claims He Now Owns all the Churches.'
As we become less tolerant of anyone who doesn't agree with us, where do you think the UK is going to be in a few years with a right wing Tory government? I'm not even going to hazard a guess, purely and simply because forecasts cannot be made now as everything is Project Fear. The economy will crash - Project Fear; The Russian are coming - Project Fear; You'll starve to death or won't get your medicines - Project Fear; Chlorinated chicken, lower food standards - Project Fear; A nice sunny day tomorrow with light winds and warm sunshine - PROJECT FEAR!!!
Certain things have to happen first, so that all the people who voted for it and them can look around and blame someone else for the trouble we're in. It's never us. It's never the government. It's always the opposition, the people who didn't want to leave the EU, the foreigners, the gays, the blacks, the Muslims, the Jews, the EU itself, the disabled, the single mums, CND, 1970s Labour, GOD. Are people so thick that they'll buy it's everyone else's fault forever? It can't possibly be the government; it can't possibly be the Tory's; I mean, how can all those important austerity cuts and tax incentives for the rich have made us unfit for purpose and with one of the highest rates of poverty and lowest pensions in the bloc we don't want to be part of any more? It must be Corbyn. It must be the EU. It must be those elitists who are trying to ruin our quest for the return of sunlit uplands and a cornucopia of ambrosia fed to us by Page 3 girls riding on rainbow-tailed unicorns...
The current problems are simply all that's wrong with our country, minus what's really wrong with our country.
Now, I'm in a weird position in many ways. I've been a lifelong socialist; as I've grown older I've not leaned to the right, because as I got older I actually worked with people who have been left behind; people who are actual victims of an unfair society, who wouldn't know how to screw the system as long as they have holes in their arses. These same people are usually the ones penalised by the system because they don't know how to fiddle; they probably wouldn't dream of telling a lie or misrepresenting their actual circumstantial facts; it would be against the kind of decent people they were. So, as a result, as I got older I saw how we have marginalised people and essentially destroyed their lives by making it more difficult for them.
However, now I live in Scotland, I've seen how politics has changed up here in recent years and how Labour is no longer the force it was and how the Scottish National Party has taken their place; delivering a kind of left-wing Blairite agenda but with more social conscience and funnier leaders. A vote for Labour in my constituency is a bit like a vote for the Monster Raving Loony Party. Scotland is very much a slightly centre left country; so much so that even Scottish Conservatives are bearable; less... nasty. Up here, unless you're wealthy or can't change your ways, you vote to keep the Tories out.
Now that Nigel Farridge's political party has shown its true colours and opted not to contest Tory held seats, the election looks pretty much sewn up for at least a 90 seat majority, for a party that has realised during the early part of this campaign that they can literally do what Donald Trump said and say or do anything because... they know even Labour voters view Corbyn as a toxic brand. That's how crazy we are; a 70-year-old politician with some principles has been made into something he's clearly not and it's easier to believe what you read or hear than actually go and find out if what he's saying makes more sense than suggesting that people who live in highly-inflammable blocks of flats are stupid. But it just won't happen and his obstinance and the ridiculous tactics of supposed Labour-supporting MPs have ensured that Boris will ride roughshod over everything.
I fell out with my Tory-supporting brother recently because of a number of reasons, but he did something that is happening all over the country; he took something I said, omitted a word and made me sound as though I was an evil lefty. I suggested that voting Tory might mean if the cancer he successfully beat comes back, he might find it more difficult to be treated or might even cost him a lot of money. He didn't have a response; well, not one that was rational. He just accused me of wishing his cancer back so I could prove a point... There you have it. If the NHS gets privatised, in his eyes it'll be my fault. That's how fucking ignorant, insensitive and stupid we've got in our haste to not vote for someone we dislike more than the other guy.
I will also hear the 'better the devil we know' excuse, one that has been wheeled out since 1992. How often does the sticking with 'the devil we know' worked out better for us? I'll give you a clue - never. Governments need to change to affect change; if you keep repeating the same mistake in the hope it'll be better this time, you are succumbing to a very real kind of madness. The press warned us of the end of the world if Labour were elected in 1997. They had a second landslide victory 4 years later. That's how change works, even if you didn't like the Iraq war and Tony Blair is really just a pink Tory. The change happened and for ten years the country prospered like no other time than before Edward Heath. Change is good; stagnation often leads to the marginalised becoming even more so; usually for the benefit of the rich.
If you don't want to vote Corbyn, why not look at their manifesto and then try to reconcile the fact we're not a republic where the PM is in charge of everything. Ministers and cabinets are there not for show but to do the work, otherwise why do we bother with politicians, why not just retire the Royal family and appoint a dictatorial President who can keep all of the recently converted heartless bastards happy and screw the rest? You're not supposed to like PMs or ministers, really, but we do trust them with making the right decisions for the benefit of the country and not just their rich mates and that's where your anger and hatred should be directed. Blaming people worse off than you doesn't really affect your life, does it? But if the rich weren't so rich, that might affect your lives in a multitude of positive ways, from buses running on time, to prompt refuse collection to job creation and the retraining of those left behind so they can contribute to society again. Surely that's better than worrying about your workers rights if you get ill or fearing for your bank balance if you break an arm?
If you still can't vote Labour, then work out who is going to have the best chance of stopping the Tory intent on stripping you of all the rights your parents and grandparents fought for you to have.
But, you know, we're obviously a nation of masochists, because we seem to want the same. The Tories have come in for every kind of criticism under the sun in the last 9 years, but... Jeremy Corbyn? Do you know how hopeless and pathetic that actually sounds? I want a better life, but because I don't like that man, I'll stick with the shit one I've got, thanks (Or in many cases, I'm all right, I don't care about the rest).
Last week, I made a claim about something that I believed to be correct and someone 'on the other side' put me right. I neglected to fact check and fell foul of the same thing I accuse others of doing. Instead of being insulting; calling the person a 'Nazi' or lowering myself to the level I see others - from both sides - go, I took a deep breath and said I was mislead and wouldn't make the same mistake again. At the same time, I showed someone who had made a false statement about something - aid we give to India (or don't as the case was) - and I received quite a considerable amount of personal abuse because I was ... er... right. I'm not exempt from getting apoplectically angry at people who do this kind of thing, and usually because I see the same person make the same allegation on another forum ten minutes later, because he simply didn't want to believe I was right or chose to continue misleading others. That's pretty low and wilfully ignorant or cynically distasteful.
It also shows just how uncaring and nasty some people (or bots) can be (or are programmed). It takes away any optimism, any hope I might have for the immediate future.
The last few years have all been about hope. I hope things don't get too bad. I hope we leave the EU as painlessly as possible. I hope there's a bit more compassion towards our fellow man, because I'd like to think that some people believe in a god who would want them to be the Samaritan, even if it's only in the way they try to view others.
All that hope gets ground under the boot heels of real life and real people who don't, for some reason, want that as well. We're at the stage where reason isn't even on the table; the era of blame and belief now dominates. It's always someone else's fault and never our own.
We live in a country where Extinction Rebellion can block a few roads and make people inconvenienced and that is more important than the lives of hundreds of thousands of people whose houses are currently under water from unprecedented rainfall. We've lost sight of how to be human and as a result hope has to go back inside a little box, tucked away for the next time we think we see a glimmer of change.
If nothing bad happens in the next five years and the world gets better then I'll be the first to say, I was wrong, but I was scared and I won't care who thinks I'm a snowflake. It's the last hope I currently have. However, if the country gets much worse in the next five years, will the people who couldn't hold their noses and give change a chance actually realise it was their fault? That's a hope I have no faith in.
Friday 25 October 2019
The Gift
For many, Brexit is like being given the truly awful present of a colourful tank top by your favourite auntie who lives on the next street and who you bump into at least three times a week.
It is the gift that keeps on shitting on the mat.
It has been over four months since I wrote a politics blog; a large percentage of that time has been spent writing a massive tome about why leaving the EU might not be such a stupid idea, if the right party is in power when it happens. However, since I last did any work on it, Boris Johnson has become PM (by default); Brexit has gone up several ladders and slid down as many snakes; we've gone from Treeza's 'Brexit means Brexit' and 'Nothing Has Changed' to BJ's 'Dead in a Ditch' and the Libdems abstaining from a vote which, in the event of a shit Brexit deal would stop the NHS being sold off to the highest Yankee bidder (thus proving the LibDems really can't be trusted with anything apart from taking the trash out - themselves).
What I can't understand is why Boris's first 10 attempts at getting a GE are not as important as the current one, which has the media going full scale nuclear on Labour's arse. Unless this is a rouse?
Boris is high in the polls (nearly where Treeza was when she called a GE in 2017) and everyone continues to try to demonise that Corbyn fella, blaming him for everything and then a bit more. BJ's trying every possible way to call a Christmas General Election now that's he's failed to get one any earlier. In many ways he sounds like an opposition leader trying to get the PM to resign and call a vote, and I suppose in a way he is in opposition. The thing is so many Tories (who voted for the Fix Term Parliament Act) are so desperate for a GE they really are sounding desperate; but is that desperation because they're so confident they can win big or is it, for the rather surreal reason, that they think they might lose.
There's a reason for this, which I'd like to explain because it does sound a wee bit crazoo...
There is a very good chance that a General Election will deliver us with another hung parliament; in fact, talk to any pollster and despite their affiliation to the Tories they will honestly say they couldn't put their hands on their hearts and forecast a massive Tory win. If we have a hung parliament then there's going to be a huge chance that there will be too many anti-Brexit MPs for whoever forms a government to achieve Brexit without, at minimum, a second referendum. The constitutional dilemma facing the Brexiteer Tories is another hung parliament pretty much guarantees more Brexit deadlock and can you imagine if we're still trying to sort out extracting the eggs from a baked cake in 2025? Can you imagine what the population will be like?
In a poll held in the last week of 1000 Leavers and 1000 Remainers, 63% of Leavers felt that civil unrest, violence and another MP's death was 'a price worth paying' to get Brexit done. Rather scarily (because it flies in the face of my belief) 53% of Remainers feel the same way... It might not be obvious - apart from the rise in hate crime - but tempers are simmering; hate and vile comments are increasing and it won't be long before something boils over. The division is now so great, I reckon we're on the brink of an existential civil war.
But back to the deadlock... Would Boris really want to be PM in charge of the same parliamentary numbers? Would Boris keep trying with subsequent general elections in the hope that eventually he gets the result he wants? That is a joke, but given this PM and his (lack of) success rate, I wouldn't put it past him. There's also the fact that despite being Mr Popular, he's also not particularly trusted, even by his supporters. He's seen as a slightly Machiavellian character and while that appeals to some people, he needs some victories to make him truly electable and for people to stop scrutinising him and his flippy-floppy nature.
Fortunately, he has the Mainstream Media on his side and they're not going to scrutinise him as much as they scrutinise Labour and Corbyn, but as we learnt from Treeza's botched effort in 2017, the MSM stopped trying to besmirch Corbyn because they realised it doesn't do much but make people wonder why everyone attacks this gentle man, who has an allotment and wants a fairer country for all - yes, they can call him a terrorist sympathiser (it's a shame Mo Mowlam isn't still alive to tell the wankers who keep perpetrating this myth that we wouldn't be where we are in Northern Ireland if Corbyn hadn't been on her team forging the Good Friday Agreement; but why let a fact get in the way of casting aspersions?) or they can call him a socialist or a commie, but people might also start thinking, "Well, we've had the Tories for 10 years, I'm worse off, no one trusts politicians any more, no one knows who to believe - why should I give them another go at screwing up the country they've made a good fist of screwing up already?" Labour won a lot of votes in 2017 on this fact alone; we're three years down the line and the Tories don't exactly cover themselves with glory, do they?
So, would Boris and his ERG buddies really want to be in charge of a parliament that will be as intransigent as it currently is? Or would they maybe think, 'Sod this for a game of soldiers, let's see if Commie Boy and his band of cultural misfits can do any better. If he fucks up we'll win by a landslide and can do all the things we wanted to do but legitimately and hey, we're all still young enough...'
I know this is an unlikely scenario, but Treeza's 16 point lead over Labour disappeared faster than a Boris Johnson prediction and Boris hasn't got that lead. When people start talking about the country's issues rather than Brexit, the Tories have a problem because no one really trusts them, not even their largely intelligent middle class supporters (forget working class Tory voters; they could have their children put up chimneys and they'd still vote Tory, because... [insert utter bullshit here]).
Plus there's the 1945 scenario. At the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill - a hero of BJ - was walking on water; if there were personal approval ratings in 1945 he was as popular as Jesus and the election was going to deliver a Tory government who would do whatever Tory governments did in the first half of the 20th century, except they got annihilated. People decided they wanted something new to rebuild the country; to build houses, hospitals for the new NHS, more schools, more infrastructure - create jobs so that everybody post-war could contribute to the return of GREAT Britain. This current situation isn't much different than then, or at least that's the way it's being painted.
One last thing for the benefit of the moaners - not the remoaners, but the people fed up with it all, fed up with MPs for spoiling life by dragging Brexit out. I know there's a lot of people who think we should just leave; tell the EU to fuck off and go it alone. Even if that were possible Northern Ireland is part of the UK. I know that English Brextremists couldn't give a shit about the Irish, but there are a lot of people who do, not least some of the people we hope to make free trade deals with. If Northern Ireland is even in the same universe as a return to the troubles then we really would be fucked. You can dismiss this as project fear or say I don't know what I'm talking about, but pretty much all of the problems now to do with Brexit is how to extricate Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic without causing a civil war and how to do it to keep 10 fruit and nutcase DUP MPs happy. This is akin to giving a chimp 10 Rubics cubes and telling him in Cantonese that he has 10 seconds to solve them all - pretty much impossible without some shit being thrown first and a lot of anger.
This, along with the actual fear of economic oblivion, are the two reasons why so many MPs have thwarted Brexit. We elect them to serve us, yes. But we also elect them to do the best for us; to make the decisions that are not going to cause us great hardship and that's all of us, including the people who voted remain and those that through whatever reason didn't vote at all. I know that Leave voters hate the fact that they didn't win by 99% to 1% but dem's da facts; the referendum 'victory' wasn't a win-all-and-exterminate-the-losers kind of deal; concessions have to be made to try and make as many people reasonably happy as possible and to make sure that even the most rabid of Brexiteers don't starve to death, die of a lack of medicines or most likely get blown up by an Irish Republican bomb while Christmas shopping in Sunderland.
Most people say, 'I don't do politics' but in 2019 most everyone does, even if it's to call MPs 'wankers' or wonder when it's all going to stop. What is even more crazier than my belief the Tories might actually want to lose the election is that all those people who convinced Leavers that the sunlit uplands of Britain would be awash with diamond encrusted Unicorns dispensing money and free sex to everyone are now the same people claiming they never said it would be better and people actually voted to be worse off and culturally bereft. If Aaron Sorkin introduced this kind of story when he was doing The West Wing he probably would have been told the show was trying to stay as realistic as physically possible.
Whatever happens, just remember most of the MPs have been pissing you off to ultimately save you. You might not see it and you certainly don't appreciate it, but at some point in the future you might wish they'd succeeded.
We probably need to leave to shut down the right wing; to stop all this talk and focus on how to fix the country. That depends on who is in charge when it happens. If you work for someone be very careful about who you vote for when that day comes, because one of the parties actively talks about how citizens rights prevents the country from competing with Tiger economies; that same party would be happy to see sickness, maternity and holiday pay outlawed, because it would mean employers could get rid of whoever they didn't like and replace them with people equally as expendable. That same party thinks the NHS is a drain on resources and would like swathes of it privatised and that same party wants to keep reducing public spending while giving the richest 10% more money (which, if you are a Tory voter can you explain to me how that benefits anyone apart from the already very rich?)
If you want a future of uncertainty, fear and no security, you know which party is already offering you this. It's led by a buffoon and his army of posh wankers who wouldn't piss on the average Brit unless there was a fat cash bonus involved.
You don't do politics? Maybe you should. It's as important to humans as breathing; it affects every aspect of your life whether you want to believe it or not and 99% of the time it's instigated by ourselves and has nothing to do with 'unelected' (they are) 'bureaucrats' (aren't all politicians) in Brussels. People need to understand how it works otherwise they will continue to rage at all the wrong things.
It is the gift that keeps on shitting on the mat.
It has been over four months since I wrote a politics blog; a large percentage of that time has been spent writing a massive tome about why leaving the EU might not be such a stupid idea, if the right party is in power when it happens. However, since I last did any work on it, Boris Johnson has become PM (by default); Brexit has gone up several ladders and slid down as many snakes; we've gone from Treeza's 'Brexit means Brexit' and 'Nothing Has Changed' to BJ's 'Dead in a Ditch' and the Libdems abstaining from a vote which, in the event of a shit Brexit deal would stop the NHS being sold off to the highest Yankee bidder (thus proving the LibDems really can't be trusted with anything apart from taking the trash out - themselves).
What I can't understand is why Boris's first 10 attempts at getting a GE are not as important as the current one, which has the media going full scale nuclear on Labour's arse. Unless this is a rouse?
Boris is high in the polls (nearly where Treeza was when she called a GE in 2017) and everyone continues to try to demonise that Corbyn fella, blaming him for everything and then a bit more. BJ's trying every possible way to call a Christmas General Election now that's he's failed to get one any earlier. In many ways he sounds like an opposition leader trying to get the PM to resign and call a vote, and I suppose in a way he is in opposition. The thing is so many Tories (who voted for the Fix Term Parliament Act) are so desperate for a GE they really are sounding desperate; but is that desperation because they're so confident they can win big or is it, for the rather surreal reason, that they think they might lose.
There's a reason for this, which I'd like to explain because it does sound a wee bit crazoo...
There is a very good chance that a General Election will deliver us with another hung parliament; in fact, talk to any pollster and despite their affiliation to the Tories they will honestly say they couldn't put their hands on their hearts and forecast a massive Tory win. If we have a hung parliament then there's going to be a huge chance that there will be too many anti-Brexit MPs for whoever forms a government to achieve Brexit without, at minimum, a second referendum. The constitutional dilemma facing the Brexiteer Tories is another hung parliament pretty much guarantees more Brexit deadlock and can you imagine if we're still trying to sort out extracting the eggs from a baked cake in 2025? Can you imagine what the population will be like?
In a poll held in the last week of 1000 Leavers and 1000 Remainers, 63% of Leavers felt that civil unrest, violence and another MP's death was 'a price worth paying' to get Brexit done. Rather scarily (because it flies in the face of my belief) 53% of Remainers feel the same way... It might not be obvious - apart from the rise in hate crime - but tempers are simmering; hate and vile comments are increasing and it won't be long before something boils over. The division is now so great, I reckon we're on the brink of an existential civil war.
But back to the deadlock... Would Boris really want to be PM in charge of the same parliamentary numbers? Would Boris keep trying with subsequent general elections in the hope that eventually he gets the result he wants? That is a joke, but given this PM and his (lack of) success rate, I wouldn't put it past him. There's also the fact that despite being Mr Popular, he's also not particularly trusted, even by his supporters. He's seen as a slightly Machiavellian character and while that appeals to some people, he needs some victories to make him truly electable and for people to stop scrutinising him and his flippy-floppy nature.
Fortunately, he has the Mainstream Media on his side and they're not going to scrutinise him as much as they scrutinise Labour and Corbyn, but as we learnt from Treeza's botched effort in 2017, the MSM stopped trying to besmirch Corbyn because they realised it doesn't do much but make people wonder why everyone attacks this gentle man, who has an allotment and wants a fairer country for all - yes, they can call him a terrorist sympathiser (it's a shame Mo Mowlam isn't still alive to tell the wankers who keep perpetrating this myth that we wouldn't be where we are in Northern Ireland if Corbyn hadn't been on her team forging the Good Friday Agreement; but why let a fact get in the way of casting aspersions?) or they can call him a socialist or a commie, but people might also start thinking, "Well, we've had the Tories for 10 years, I'm worse off, no one trusts politicians any more, no one knows who to believe - why should I give them another go at screwing up the country they've made a good fist of screwing up already?" Labour won a lot of votes in 2017 on this fact alone; we're three years down the line and the Tories don't exactly cover themselves with glory, do they?
So, would Boris and his ERG buddies really want to be in charge of a parliament that will be as intransigent as it currently is? Or would they maybe think, 'Sod this for a game of soldiers, let's see if Commie Boy and his band of cultural misfits can do any better. If he fucks up we'll win by a landslide and can do all the things we wanted to do but legitimately and hey, we're all still young enough...'
I know this is an unlikely scenario, but Treeza's 16 point lead over Labour disappeared faster than a Boris Johnson prediction and Boris hasn't got that lead. When people start talking about the country's issues rather than Brexit, the Tories have a problem because no one really trusts them, not even their largely intelligent middle class supporters (forget working class Tory voters; they could have their children put up chimneys and they'd still vote Tory, because... [insert utter bullshit here]).
Plus there's the 1945 scenario. At the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill - a hero of BJ - was walking on water; if there were personal approval ratings in 1945 he was as popular as Jesus and the election was going to deliver a Tory government who would do whatever Tory governments did in the first half of the 20th century, except they got annihilated. People decided they wanted something new to rebuild the country; to build houses, hospitals for the new NHS, more schools, more infrastructure - create jobs so that everybody post-war could contribute to the return of GREAT Britain. This current situation isn't much different than then, or at least that's the way it's being painted.
One last thing for the benefit of the moaners - not the remoaners, but the people fed up with it all, fed up with MPs for spoiling life by dragging Brexit out. I know there's a lot of people who think we should just leave; tell the EU to fuck off and go it alone. Even if that were possible Northern Ireland is part of the UK. I know that English Brextremists couldn't give a shit about the Irish, but there are a lot of people who do, not least some of the people we hope to make free trade deals with. If Northern Ireland is even in the same universe as a return to the troubles then we really would be fucked. You can dismiss this as project fear or say I don't know what I'm talking about, but pretty much all of the problems now to do with Brexit is how to extricate Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic without causing a civil war and how to do it to keep 10 fruit and nutcase DUP MPs happy. This is akin to giving a chimp 10 Rubics cubes and telling him in Cantonese that he has 10 seconds to solve them all - pretty much impossible without some shit being thrown first and a lot of anger.
This, along with the actual fear of economic oblivion, are the two reasons why so many MPs have thwarted Brexit. We elect them to serve us, yes. But we also elect them to do the best for us; to make the decisions that are not going to cause us great hardship and that's all of us, including the people who voted remain and those that through whatever reason didn't vote at all. I know that Leave voters hate the fact that they didn't win by 99% to 1% but dem's da facts; the referendum 'victory' wasn't a win-all-and-exterminate-the-losers kind of deal; concessions have to be made to try and make as many people reasonably happy as possible and to make sure that even the most rabid of Brexiteers don't starve to death, die of a lack of medicines or most likely get blown up by an Irish Republican bomb while Christmas shopping in Sunderland.
Most people say, 'I don't do politics' but in 2019 most everyone does, even if it's to call MPs 'wankers' or wonder when it's all going to stop. What is even more crazier than my belief the Tories might actually want to lose the election is that all those people who convinced Leavers that the sunlit uplands of Britain would be awash with diamond encrusted Unicorns dispensing money and free sex to everyone are now the same people claiming they never said it would be better and people actually voted to be worse off and culturally bereft. If Aaron Sorkin introduced this kind of story when he was doing The West Wing he probably would have been told the show was trying to stay as realistic as physically possible.
Whatever happens, just remember most of the MPs have been pissing you off to ultimately save you. You might not see it and you certainly don't appreciate it, but at some point in the future you might wish they'd succeeded.
We probably need to leave to shut down the right wing; to stop all this talk and focus on how to fix the country. That depends on who is in charge when it happens. If you work for someone be very careful about who you vote for when that day comes, because one of the parties actively talks about how citizens rights prevents the country from competing with Tiger economies; that same party would be happy to see sickness, maternity and holiday pay outlawed, because it would mean employers could get rid of whoever they didn't like and replace them with people equally as expendable. That same party thinks the NHS is a drain on resources and would like swathes of it privatised and that same party wants to keep reducing public spending while giving the richest 10% more money (which, if you are a Tory voter can you explain to me how that benefits anyone apart from the already very rich?)
If you want a future of uncertainty, fear and no security, you know which party is already offering you this. It's led by a buffoon and his army of posh wankers who wouldn't piss on the average Brit unless there was a fat cash bonus involved.
You don't do politics? Maybe you should. It's as important to humans as breathing; it affects every aspect of your life whether you want to believe it or not and 99% of the time it's instigated by ourselves and has nothing to do with 'unelected' (they are) 'bureaucrats' (aren't all politicians) in Brussels. People need to understand how it works otherwise they will continue to rage at all the wrong things.
Tuesday 25 June 2019
Excuse Me, Would I be Correct in Thinking That Digging Implement is a Spade?
You know how we get wound up by things? Doesn't matter if we're driving, walking, sitting or shitting, something happens, can happen, does happen or might happen that lets our minds have a good old whinge and a lot of times our mouths verbalise what our brains are thinking. We like a good blat.
The thing is, I've noticed recently that we're all fair game to be blatted at and it doesn't necessarily only come from individuals but also from companies. The country has become so divided that 'freedom of speech' is actually interpreted by many (and a growing number) as 'freedom to say what you think, however awful, under the guise that it's allowable in a free and modern society, you worthless cunt.'
I ran away from England because it was becoming too easy to be insulting to the ignorant and feel no remorse, but since I've been in Scotland I've seen the situation overtake what I was seeing and now almost seems perfectly normal. People I'd regard as far more tolerant and understanding than me, sounding considerably harder and less caring. I've seen, in a time of real crisis, a majority of people on TV, radio and all around me becoming more insular; drawing in their own into huddles and bubbles; and then there's the people that don't consider anything other than their own and they will justify this as being 'how it should be' because we've been taught that or have had it installed in us by a rudimentary version of mental osmosis.
What I can't understand is how we're allowing everyone but white, male, heterosexuals become allowable targets for attack and derision. And before you say that's bullshit, if I told you men were now responsible for the regulation of women's reproduction rights in several US states; or that women are still criminally underpaid in the work place; or that women are penalised for being women by the retail industry; or that women of differing religions can be told what to wear and how to behave? These are just a few examples of the prejudice and discrimination being aimed at people without penises.
Let's not forget, blacks, browns, gays, lesbians, the disabled, the mentally ill, the unemployed, foreigners, other foreigners, certain areas of society, especially if these areas involve helping any of the aforementioned targets... All of these are targets, while white straight men are not.
You can't tell me that you've not seen an example or many examples of the above on your social media travels, and if you haven't are you looking hard enough? Or maybe you're one of the growing army of angry white straight fucktards who think it's fair to bully and intimidate others because you get erections round women?
Did you know that some women don't help themselves? Take Tory wannabe fascist Priti Patel, defender of Boris and a woman from Indian heritage (where women's rights is about as comparable, if not slightly worse, than a donkey's rights in the UK), who felt it was important to both criticise BoJo's neighbours for being concerned about the welfare of BoJo's woman and to point out that the woman, apparently responsible for taping the incredibly loud and harassing convo, was also a Tory hating feminist. I mean... Really. How absolutely awful... I know that Patel is enormously wealthy and doesn't need to care about the plight of anyone other than maybe her own family, but when right wing women come out in support of arsehole right wing males you have to wonder how far we've got to sink before common sense and equality return to our lives in a tidal wave of decency and humanity?
The problem is centrists and the left wing of politics are growing as hateful and disdained about the right as the right is about anyone who can't run a factory full of slave workers. I see ordinary people sticking up for other ordinary people called out on social media as everything from Libtards to SJWs to snowflakes and this brigade of nasty feckers seem to think this is a really horrendous thing; being nice and caring to and about people... Ugh...
*I try and fight for the people who don't have others fighting for them.
What a special kind of wanker you are.
*I helped an old lady over the road the other day.
You fucking rubbish social justice warrior, I hope you get AIDS and die.
*I support gay marriage and a woman's right to govern her own body.
I hope your children get cancer and die.
These are three examples of things I've seen right wing or Brexit supporting bigots say in public, in forums and comments sections and the crazy thing is these people have endorsements in the form of likes or messages supporting their hate.
Did Brexit really just create a huge number of really nasty arseholes and as a result are we now getting normal, mild mannered people thinking, 'Fuck this, I am fed up with the abuse these cockwombles throw at me; it's time I started throwing some shit at them.' and I'm as guilty of that as anyone who has ever got fed up with reading nasty shit. I'm aware that by being nasty to nasty people you're sinking to their levels, but being reasonable doesn't fucking work; does it?
The things is, since when has caring about the welfare of those worse off than ourselves been so bad? Some of these people advocating mass murder (I kid you not) call themselves Christians. I'm betting some of them are really nice people in and around their families, but put them in front of a keyboard and everyone and their aunt is a leftie untrustworthy cunt...
Intolerance happened before the 2nd World War. There was a growing tide of it, also aimed at anyone not white, male, hetero and blonde. Not got a foreskin? Gassed. Family got some Romany in them? Gassed. Gay? Gassed. Disabled? Experimented on and then gassed. This happened 75 years ago and still happens in some fucked up right wing countries.
How is it even remotely acceptable now?
In a world where a nipple is a heinous crime, but a live beheading isn't (unless the executioner is showing off his/her nipples); surely we need to stand back from the madness a little; take a look at ourselves, decide whether we have anything in our pasts (or our family's pasts) that might eventually make us the target and work out if this is what we want in the future.
Come on, sharing your country with a brown person isn't all that bad - their food is usually good; you learn about a different culture and you're not scared that you might get executed for being their friend... or collaborator. Having a gay relative isn't that bad either; but it might be when some faux scientist suggests that the gay gene is present in all gay peoples' relatives, so they all must be executed. Because that's eventually where the Nazis ended up and we're not far from theoretically and virtually emulating them at the moment.
You think I'm being melodramatic?
Go and look at any comments section on the BBC, or the Mail Online. Pick a contentious subject; maybe one you have a problem with and after reading it all tell me if you have that much of a problem? Tell me if you get apoplectic enough to advocate violence and death and then tell me how we're going to stop us from emulating our recent, unpleasant, history?
The thing is, I've noticed recently that we're all fair game to be blatted at and it doesn't necessarily only come from individuals but also from companies. The country has become so divided that 'freedom of speech' is actually interpreted by many (and a growing number) as 'freedom to say what you think, however awful, under the guise that it's allowable in a free and modern society, you worthless cunt.'
I ran away from England because it was becoming too easy to be insulting to the ignorant and feel no remorse, but since I've been in Scotland I've seen the situation overtake what I was seeing and now almost seems perfectly normal. People I'd regard as far more tolerant and understanding than me, sounding considerably harder and less caring. I've seen, in a time of real crisis, a majority of people on TV, radio and all around me becoming more insular; drawing in their own into huddles and bubbles; and then there's the people that don't consider anything other than their own and they will justify this as being 'how it should be' because we've been taught that or have had it installed in us by a rudimentary version of mental osmosis.
What I can't understand is how we're allowing everyone but white, male, heterosexuals become allowable targets for attack and derision. And before you say that's bullshit, if I told you men were now responsible for the regulation of women's reproduction rights in several US states; or that women are still criminally underpaid in the work place; or that women are penalised for being women by the retail industry; or that women of differing religions can be told what to wear and how to behave? These are just a few examples of the prejudice and discrimination being aimed at people without penises.
Let's not forget, blacks, browns, gays, lesbians, the disabled, the mentally ill, the unemployed, foreigners, other foreigners, certain areas of society, especially if these areas involve helping any of the aforementioned targets... All of these are targets, while white straight men are not.
You can't tell me that you've not seen an example or many examples of the above on your social media travels, and if you haven't are you looking hard enough? Or maybe you're one of the growing army of angry white straight fucktards who think it's fair to bully and intimidate others because you get erections round women?
Did you know that some women don't help themselves? Take Tory wannabe fascist Priti Patel, defender of Boris and a woman from Indian heritage (where women's rights is about as comparable, if not slightly worse, than a donkey's rights in the UK), who felt it was important to both criticise BoJo's neighbours for being concerned about the welfare of BoJo's woman and to point out that the woman, apparently responsible for taping the incredibly loud and harassing convo, was also a Tory hating feminist. I mean... Really. How absolutely awful... I know that Patel is enormously wealthy and doesn't need to care about the plight of anyone other than maybe her own family, but when right wing women come out in support of arsehole right wing males you have to wonder how far we've got to sink before common sense and equality return to our lives in a tidal wave of decency and humanity?
The problem is centrists and the left wing of politics are growing as hateful and disdained about the right as the right is about anyone who can't run a factory full of slave workers. I see ordinary people sticking up for other ordinary people called out on social media as everything from Libtards to SJWs to snowflakes and this brigade of nasty feckers seem to think this is a really horrendous thing; being nice and caring to and about people... Ugh...
*I try and fight for the people who don't have others fighting for them.
What a special kind of wanker you are.
*I helped an old lady over the road the other day.
You fucking rubbish social justice warrior, I hope you get AIDS and die.
*I support gay marriage and a woman's right to govern her own body.
I hope your children get cancer and die.
These are three examples of things I've seen right wing or Brexit supporting bigots say in public, in forums and comments sections and the crazy thing is these people have endorsements in the form of likes or messages supporting their hate.
Did Brexit really just create a huge number of really nasty arseholes and as a result are we now getting normal, mild mannered people thinking, 'Fuck this, I am fed up with the abuse these cockwombles throw at me; it's time I started throwing some shit at them.' and I'm as guilty of that as anyone who has ever got fed up with reading nasty shit. I'm aware that by being nasty to nasty people you're sinking to their levels, but being reasonable doesn't fucking work; does it?
The things is, since when has caring about the welfare of those worse off than ourselves been so bad? Some of these people advocating mass murder (I kid you not) call themselves Christians. I'm betting some of them are really nice people in and around their families, but put them in front of a keyboard and everyone and their aunt is a leftie untrustworthy cunt...
Intolerance happened before the 2nd World War. There was a growing tide of it, also aimed at anyone not white, male, hetero and blonde. Not got a foreskin? Gassed. Family got some Romany in them? Gassed. Gay? Gassed. Disabled? Experimented on and then gassed. This happened 75 years ago and still happens in some fucked up right wing countries.
How is it even remotely acceptable now?
In a world where a nipple is a heinous crime, but a live beheading isn't (unless the executioner is showing off his/her nipples); surely we need to stand back from the madness a little; take a look at ourselves, decide whether we have anything in our pasts (or our family's pasts) that might eventually make us the target and work out if this is what we want in the future.
Come on, sharing your country with a brown person isn't all that bad - their food is usually good; you learn about a different culture and you're not scared that you might get executed for being their friend... or collaborator. Having a gay relative isn't that bad either; but it might be when some faux scientist suggests that the gay gene is present in all gay peoples' relatives, so they all must be executed. Because that's eventually where the Nazis ended up and we're not far from theoretically and virtually emulating them at the moment.
You think I'm being melodramatic?
Go and look at any comments section on the BBC, or the Mail Online. Pick a contentious subject; maybe one you have a problem with and after reading it all tell me if you have that much of a problem? Tell me if you get apoplectic enough to advocate violence and death and then tell me how we're going to stop us from emulating our recent, unpleasant, history?
Monday 11 March 2019
Brextremists
Here's a meme:
The truth of this meme is it pretty much proves we've always had our own sovereignty; as it states, none of these decisions were enforced by the EU. Our governments have been responsible for all the key decisions that have effected the UK, for many years.
Our Tory government - the current one - is also responsible for the deregulation of the fracking industry; something the EU weren't keen on because it would affect the lives of too many people - detrimentally. On Saturday, I asked a Brextremist who lives less than 5 miles from the key fracking site in Lancashire about fracking's dangers and his answer was, 'As long as we're not buying Russian gas I don't care where we get our gas from.' He also pooh-poohed the idea of any long-lasting effects on the Lancashire countryside, despite evidence that earth tremors are REAL not made up by Remainers.
The sad irony is that this person wants to frack because he doesn't want Russian gas. This is the Russia that the EU has sanctions against. Russia backed Brexit because they don't like the EU being bigger and more powerful than them. Trump's USA backed Brexit because the EU regulates them too highly. The madness is that most Brextremists don't believe anything except what they believe, even if they can be categorically proven to be wrong. The moment they start losing an argument they just give you 'that smile', the smile that says, "You know nothing." The arrogance of Brextremists is going to bring the country to its knees and the scariest thing is THEY DON'T CARE.
I don't know if they simply think it won't affect them or if they really think that the sunny uplands of wealth is just around the WTO corner. What I do know is they get a far bigger voice in the media than Remain voters want; because every time a fisherman in Cornwall or a factory worker up north says, 'We voted leave, we should just leave.' I admit none of these people actually understand what they're wishing for, but it's a powerful voice and one that resonates among the fence-sitters. You hear more dissenting voices you start to think, 'Hmm, they might be right.'
The Remain vote has increased, allegedly; people have died and new voters eligible; the problem is if you go to some of the most depressed areas of the country, those who voted Leave because they actually thought it was a protest against their misery, their vote has hardened and got even more desperate and angry. The country is truly split between Leave and Remain; far worse than disagreements between Labour and Tory voters or Celtic and Rangers fans and Remainers who live in Remain strongholds cannot accept that the ignorant rest of the country doesn't agree with them...
I appreciate that simply by calling leave voters 'ignorant' is fanning the fires, the problem is I don't think that many of them really knew what they were doing, but now they've done it and one of the few times they've voted they won and they're not going to let that be taken away from them. This is why Theresa May's 'deal' has been pilloried by all sides. Remainers hate it because we're not in the EU any more and Brexiteers hate it because we still are; it was the best of both worlds deal to reflect the 52-48 split. It was a compromise that no one wants, but probably needs.
Another issue that is constantly ignored is the cognitive dissonance and subconscious nihilism of a large percentage of leavers. Faced with all kinds of worst case scenarios, if they even accept the viability they deny it or worse still accept it as 'a price worth paying' - surely a worse country than what we had isn't what these people voted for, yet 2 years down the line some of them will tell you that's exactly what they voted for. A perfect example of this is the aforementioned man who doesn't want Russian gas. When asked what his kids would do or how they'd cope with fracking, your man simply doesn't care. Like a number of other rabid Tory leavers I've met, he actually wants his children to suffer because 'They shouldn't have it as easy as we had it!' This, in my humble opinion, warrants a 'What the Actual Fuck?' response. Have we created such bitter and twisted baby boomers - the generation who honestly never had it so good - that they'd actually like to see their children and grandchildren have less opportunities than them?
Actually, probably not, because this is where the cognitive dissonance is at its worst. Brextremists are so convinced that the sunny uplands of prosperity is so close, they're children will thank them for this decision, despite them not being allowed to travel all over Europe. Some leave nutters simply argue that getting rid of all the foreigners will allow us to have FULL employment; a country that has no one on benefits because they'll all be out wiping arses and cleaning toilets - because that's what our 'feckless' youth want, yes?
I've actually met people who think Nigel Farage would be a better PM than anyone else. This has nothing to do with anything apart to highlight just how crazy some people really are. I've met people who advocate things such as WTO rules or No Deal, who refuse to believe that nothing will change; that all the countries of the world will be queuing up at our door to do business, despite there being zero evidence, just facile windbag blowhards telling us trade deals will be the easiest in history. We currently have a good deal for something with the semi-autonomous Faroe Islands - how good is that?
The problem is regardless of all the evidence, all the experts, all the warnings; it's all Project Fear and it will remain Project Fear even after we leave. It will be the EU's fault for making it difficult for us; it'll be the remainers for not believing enough; it'll be the unemployed, the foreigners, the Muslims, the single mothers, the disabled, the left wing - it'll be a long list of people to blame for the shitstorm heading our way and this blame will be attributed without even a hint of irony. Brexit for Brextremists is essentially having yourself on film killing someone and then swearing black is white that it's fake news, manipulated footage, taken out of context, just remainers smearing them - everything will be blamed, no one will say, 'Yep, I killed someone' because it is and will continue to be everyone else's fault.
The government is responsible for this huge divide and now they really don't know how to solve it. Why? Because without the EU we won't have half the money for investment that the Tories have already never invested in. Throw £1.6bn at the opposition to sweeten the deal; despite the fact that we get £20bn back from the EU - every year - in rebates to ensure the government invested in areas that need help. If you're a Tory voter, can you honestly tell me of one investment project this current government has been responsible for? Just one. I'll take anything at this point.
The Tories don't invest in the economy; they free it up to be commercialised. Look at the Probation Service as a perfect example. Or the cuts to the infrastructure of the country; such things as the reduction in police numbers and police auxiliary workers - only a Tory PM would say there's no correlation between cuts in police and rising crime. If that's the case, why is crime rising?
Okay, you hate Labour. You won't vote for Corbyn. That's fair enough; I mean Labour have been in power so little in the last 40 years there's no real way of you knowing what it would be like. It's like imbeciles I hear who said they never made money during New Labour's 13 years in power... Funny how they won two elections with landslide victories where even Tories voted for them; I wonder just how much these people really struggled compared to say 2019?
The worst case scenario and, in my now not so humble opinion, the most logical outcome is civil unrest whatever happens. Parts of the country will burn and the Tories will continue to bleat on about Labour hating Jewish people - because, you know, the future of the country hangs on whether half a dozen supposed Labour party members said something hateful - Tories say hateful things about the unprivileged Muslim community (or Sadiq Khan) all they want and never get accused of racism for very long, but 95% of all Labour antisemitism is anti-zionism - criticism of the Israeli government's rather Nazi attitude to the indigenous Palestinians; but you can't do that. You can criticise every government in the world but not Likud because they're Jewish.
The country is really fucked; it was fucked before the Brexit vote and now it's massively divided and the hate that's risen to the surface isn't going to go away quickly. Unless the Tories invest BILLIONS of pounds into the economy (and then we need to be able to deal with other countries) it will get worse, especially after Brexit. The Tories will have to do something they've avoided doing for 40 years - spending money on people who don't vote for them. Do you really think that's going to happen?
There will be no way under the sun to reunite this country. Even if us remainers are all 100% wrong and Brexit is the boost we've all needed; there will be a large percentage who will hate each other because of what they've done. As we're not likely to be 100% wrong then the hate between leave and remain will fester and eventually boil over; oh and we won't have enough police to deal with it.
The bottom line is people who hate the EU are ignorant of what they've done for this country. The laws they hate, no one can actually name. The EU's laws are protectionist at worst; to protect the people and the environment from unscrupulous idiots who did all of the things in the meme at the top of the page. The problem is, these people haven't just allowed the unscrupulous to sway their opinions, they did it without really trying. They still have no understanding of the things the EU has actually done for everyone in Europe. Yes, there are victims, but aren't there victims when you get a Tory or a Labour government? You see hairy arsed twats complaining about the treatment of Africans as an excuse why they don't want to be in the EU, but ask them how they feel about the government's treatment of the disabled or disenfranchised and you'll probably get 'Fuck them' as a throwaway excuse.
This is a situation that cannot be won because we've reduced a huge swathe of the population to bigots quoting nasty lies and believing them; people who really don't care about their neighbours, so care even less about people 'over there'. You can't divide the country into two - leave and remain - although I'm surprised our government, rooted in imperialism, haven't considered it; I mean, we did it for Israel and India and that worked out really well, didn't it? We backed white South African supremacists over indigenous peoples, so why not stick all remainers down south and all leavers up north; put a wall round Scotland because they're a problem to post-Brexit democracy.
At the weekend, I decided it was more pointless trying to show a Leaver the error of their ways than it was hoping Tottenham will win a trophy. When people would rather see their children worse off than see the country stay reasonably okay, you know you have no chance of winning an argument that they won't let you have. We need to Leave to show everyone what happens; if it works - fine, but if it doesn't you might start getting some people realising that maybe they fucked everyone over, including themselves. However horrible that idea might sound, it could be the only way to heal the rifts and get us going again.
Sunday 24 February 2019
Is it Racist?
I have some questions to ask?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the USA?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by France or Germany?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by North Korea?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by China or Russia?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the EU in general?
But why is it not acceptable for anyone to criticise decisions or actions made by the Israeli government?
Why does the media get behind outside influences attempting to overthrow an elected government in Venezuela, but ignores Palestine?
Why is it that you can criticise any race or culture in the world but one is exempt?
Why is antisemitism not just called racism? Why does it deserve a special word?
Actually, I can answer all of those questions. The IHRA - International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance - is a body who have created a 'working definition' of antisemitism. It is recognised by the UN and most countries appear to have adopted it in some form or another. It essentially defines antisemitism as any criticism of anything that is related to Jews is a criticism of the Jewish people. So if you think Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of Likud politicians are unjust in their treatment of other dwellers in a similar area to where most of them live and you voice this opinion contrary, you are a racist.
I find that disturbing.
What I find more disturbing is that the Labour party is systematically accused on an almost daily basis of being antisemitic, yet I've only ever heard one example of their antisemitism in almost two years and that was a tweet from a radical leftie criticising Likud over it's treatment of Palestinians. He's been expelled. For tweeting racist antisemitic comments...
I'm sorry, but, what the actual fuck?
My paternal grandmother was Jewish, albeit lapsed and ostracised because she married a gentile, but it's in my blood somewhere and I wouldn't give a holocaust denier the time of day; I'd shout down anyone who would actually be racist - calling a Jew a kike or a Yid. I wouldn't call myself antisemitic (I even worry about criticising Daniel Levy - the Spurs Chairman - for fear of having some nutter accuse me of being a racist. He's a weird looking bald guy but I don't think that has anything to do with his religion...) but by virtue of believing Likud - the current Israeli government - is a paramilitary organisation intent on some kind of radical eradication of Palestinians, I am, by definition, antisemitic. If the BBC reported this they would not report the content just that I'm an anti-Jewish racist who probably worships the alter of Jeremy Corbyn...
You know that I can call Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London and that would be 100% acceptable, but I can't include the definition 'Jewish' without being accused of racism; like saying 'Jewish' is saying 'dog shit eater' or 'child abuser'. To include one specific race in a definition is worse than any other derogatory description or labelling? If it's to do with the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, what about the number of Muslims or Hindus who died in the Partition of India? That was done in peace time, not in a war. If I said 'Jewish film producer and serial sex pest Harvey Weinstein' I'd probably get pilloried for suggesting his Jewishness had everything to do with it. But if I mention that the London mayor is a Muslim then everyone else can jump on the bandwagon; including Donald 'Man-Baby' Trump.
How does that work then?
The thing is I firmly believe if the general public who have had antisemitism rammed down their throats for years saw some of the never-mentioned exampled antisemitism most would seriously wonder what the fuss is about. The problem to that is we get no balanced coverage of what is happening in Israel and especially what is happening in Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. Whatever the politics, the rest of the world is sitting by and silently witnessing Israel obliterate a nation, without a hint of irony. Yes, the Palestinians are 'terrorists', but that's our fault and the Israelis for radicalising them through oppression (but, I can't say that because it's antisemitic). Like it was our fault that there is a rift that won't be healed on the Indian subcontinent or that much of former British Empire-controlled Africa is falling apart.
The media do not tell us what happens in Israel; we don't really know what's going on; the place is more like Soviet Russia for visiting journalists or reporters (Simon Reeve proved that recently on TV). Israel is outwardly a very welcoming country practising an aggressive isolationist politics to its neighbours - who pretty much don't and have never wanted them there.
The Labour party or a big part of it is against backing Israel [specifically Likud] in this conflict; therefore they are antisemitic. Labour party members asked questions of certain MPs of Jewish origin why they supported Likud. They were branded antisemitic? Really; this is how it started: a member for Wavertree asked how Luciana Berger could be a Labour MP and yet support the fiercely right wing Likud party and it blew up out of all proportions, with Berger defending her position by quoting the IHRA. Eventually, she received proper antisemitic abuse, but whether these were from genuine Labour members or from newly-created social media accounts has never fully been explored by our media - because they don't want to report the truth when the lie is so much better.
So, it started with almost innocent questions and exploded into something ridiculous. Berger, Margaret Hodge and a few others used this as a stick to beat the leader they didn't want and the right wing media - whether controlled by Jews or not - saw a way of undermining the Labour party, while simultaneously pushing an Islamophobic agenda and supporting the Tories.
But... You say... How come Labour MPs or Jeremy Corbyn doesn't go on telly and tell people this truth about the 'racist Labour party'? Don't you understand yet? You cannot discuss Likud or Israeli politics; it's not allowed. Apparently, it's called being antisemitic. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't discuss the elephant in the room in case the elephant gets offended that you might be talking about it, even if it's to comment on the colour of its painted toenails or how it produces nice oranges.
If you can't talk about or address the elephant in the room about why you can't talk about it you can't debate it. Accusations of antisemitism are 97% this. If you mention the Israel government or Likud you are a racist. I can't say it enough, because if the 'press' won't explain it to people who don't care then it's up to me and people I know to do it; without fear of being called a racist (because I will be, especially if people read this and can use it as another stick to beat the Labour party... Except, I'm not a member any more).
No one has ever told me why Jews have to have their own word for racism, unless it's not really racism as we understand it. Zionism is also a word that just to say it has you teetering on the edge of antisemitism. Zionist doctrine is followed by Likud; Zionism is not allowed to be criticised because it is Jewish. That's like the Tories passing a law saying any criticism of their party is an act of racism - a hate crime. Let that sink in and if you think I'm wrong, please tell me why.
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the USA?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by France or Germany?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by North Korea?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by China or Russia?
Why is it acceptable for British politicians to criticise decisions or actions made by the EU in general?
But why is it not acceptable for anyone to criticise decisions or actions made by the Israeli government?
Why does the media get behind outside influences attempting to overthrow an elected government in Venezuela, but ignores Palestine?
Why is it that you can criticise any race or culture in the world but one is exempt?
Why is antisemitism not just called racism? Why does it deserve a special word?
Actually, I can answer all of those questions. The IHRA - International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance - is a body who have created a 'working definition' of antisemitism. It is recognised by the UN and most countries appear to have adopted it in some form or another. It essentially defines antisemitism as any criticism of anything that is related to Jews is a criticism of the Jewish people. So if you think Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of Likud politicians are unjust in their treatment of other dwellers in a similar area to where most of them live and you voice this opinion contrary, you are a racist.
I find that disturbing.
What I find more disturbing is that the Labour party is systematically accused on an almost daily basis of being antisemitic, yet I've only ever heard one example of their antisemitism in almost two years and that was a tweet from a radical leftie criticising Likud over it's treatment of Palestinians. He's been expelled. For tweeting racist antisemitic comments...
I'm sorry, but, what the actual fuck?
My paternal grandmother was Jewish, albeit lapsed and ostracised because she married a gentile, but it's in my blood somewhere and I wouldn't give a holocaust denier the time of day; I'd shout down anyone who would actually be racist - calling a Jew a kike or a Yid. I wouldn't call myself antisemitic (I even worry about criticising Daniel Levy - the Spurs Chairman - for fear of having some nutter accuse me of being a racist. He's a weird looking bald guy but I don't think that has anything to do with his religion...) but by virtue of believing Likud - the current Israeli government - is a paramilitary organisation intent on some kind of radical eradication of Palestinians, I am, by definition, antisemitic. If the BBC reported this they would not report the content just that I'm an anti-Jewish racist who probably worships the alter of Jeremy Corbyn...
You know that I can call Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London and that would be 100% acceptable, but I can't include the definition 'Jewish' without being accused of racism; like saying 'Jewish' is saying 'dog shit eater' or 'child abuser'. To include one specific race in a definition is worse than any other derogatory description or labelling? If it's to do with the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust, what about the number of Muslims or Hindus who died in the Partition of India? That was done in peace time, not in a war. If I said 'Jewish film producer and serial sex pest Harvey Weinstein' I'd probably get pilloried for suggesting his Jewishness had everything to do with it. But if I mention that the London mayor is a Muslim then everyone else can jump on the bandwagon; including Donald 'Man-Baby' Trump.
How does that work then?
The thing is I firmly believe if the general public who have had antisemitism rammed down their throats for years saw some of the never-mentioned exampled antisemitism most would seriously wonder what the fuss is about. The problem to that is we get no balanced coverage of what is happening in Israel and especially what is happening in Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. Whatever the politics, the rest of the world is sitting by and silently witnessing Israel obliterate a nation, without a hint of irony. Yes, the Palestinians are 'terrorists', but that's our fault and the Israelis for radicalising them through oppression (but, I can't say that because it's antisemitic). Like it was our fault that there is a rift that won't be healed on the Indian subcontinent or that much of former British Empire-controlled Africa is falling apart.
The media do not tell us what happens in Israel; we don't really know what's going on; the place is more like Soviet Russia for visiting journalists or reporters (Simon Reeve proved that recently on TV). Israel is outwardly a very welcoming country practising an aggressive isolationist politics to its neighbours - who pretty much don't and have never wanted them there.
The Labour party or a big part of it is against backing Israel [specifically Likud] in this conflict; therefore they are antisemitic. Labour party members asked questions of certain MPs of Jewish origin why they supported Likud. They were branded antisemitic? Really; this is how it started: a member for Wavertree asked how Luciana Berger could be a Labour MP and yet support the fiercely right wing Likud party and it blew up out of all proportions, with Berger defending her position by quoting the IHRA. Eventually, she received proper antisemitic abuse, but whether these were from genuine Labour members or from newly-created social media accounts has never fully been explored by our media - because they don't want to report the truth when the lie is so much better.
So, it started with almost innocent questions and exploded into something ridiculous. Berger, Margaret Hodge and a few others used this as a stick to beat the leader they didn't want and the right wing media - whether controlled by Jews or not - saw a way of undermining the Labour party, while simultaneously pushing an Islamophobic agenda and supporting the Tories.
But... You say... How come Labour MPs or Jeremy Corbyn doesn't go on telly and tell people this truth about the 'racist Labour party'? Don't you understand yet? You cannot discuss Likud or Israeli politics; it's not allowed. Apparently, it's called being antisemitic. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can't discuss the elephant in the room in case the elephant gets offended that you might be talking about it, even if it's to comment on the colour of its painted toenails or how it produces nice oranges.
If you can't talk about or address the elephant in the room about why you can't talk about it you can't debate it. Accusations of antisemitism are 97% this. If you mention the Israel government or Likud you are a racist. I can't say it enough, because if the 'press' won't explain it to people who don't care then it's up to me and people I know to do it; without fear of being called a racist (because I will be, especially if people read this and can use it as another stick to beat the Labour party... Except, I'm not a member any more).
No one has ever told me why Jews have to have their own word for racism, unless it's not really racism as we understand it. Zionism is also a word that just to say it has you teetering on the edge of antisemitism. Zionist doctrine is followed by Likud; Zionism is not allowed to be criticised because it is Jewish. That's like the Tories passing a law saying any criticism of their party is an act of racism - a hate crime. Let that sink in and if you think I'm wrong, please tell me why.
Wednesday 20 February 2019
On Your Marks... Get Set... Split
Parliament is currently going through a kind of amoeba stage; it's breaking up into groups of like-minded individuals. At the moment we have: the Conservatives, Labour, SNP, LibDems and then you have Plaid Cymru, the DUP, Sinn Fein, a few actual independents and now the Independent Group. But... If it was only as simple as that.
You have a hard left wing of the Labour party which is, by and large, anathema to the rest. You have your moderate Labour MPs, those who won't move because they're in cosy seats. Then you have your centrist or Blairite Labour MPs and you have the defectors. Over on the Tory benches, you have the ERG - the hardline, right wing, Pro-Brexit fanatics who want to literally rip up the rule book and start again in 1840; you have your Conservatives - the likes of Ken Clarke, who are old school politicians and you have your centrists - three of which have jumped ship and arguably as many as 10 more who would join them.
The LibDems could be rubbing their hands together over a possible 'deal' which would, at present, see a block of 22 MPs, which would begin to look like a movement rather than a rebellion. In my mind, the likely outcome of this is a re-branding of the entire set, which essentially would be a new right-centre-left coalition under one umbrella, with a probable manifesto consisting of more investment, more social conscience and a continuation of Blairite-themed economics; trying to please both sides without giving either an orgasm.
As much as I want to sneer at the Independent Group - a limited company, not a political party (so therefore they don't have to name their investors or sponsors) consisting of career or no-mark politicians, the nihilist in me wants to see it flourish. The same nihilist that talked three years ago about being interested in seeing what the hell would happen if we left the EU. For newcomers; while I could never have been correct in what actually happened, I was closer to the mark than many others and in reality we haven't actually left until the end of next month. Therefore many of the worst Project Fear scenarios I might have come up with haven't had a chance to happen yet.
As we won't get what I and many of my friends want; which is a General Election and a Labour government; the realist in me now sees that Corbyn probably isn't going lead the country; the best chance of anything close to his vision might be Keir Starmer - an astute politician but with a personality that makes Theresa 'Skeksis' May sound like an ideal dinner date. He retains his respect and he seems aligned but distant from Corbyn. Starmer isn't what I'd call a socialist, but he has shown he is also a man of integrity. The problem is, if you read my last entry - A Pox on All Your Houses - you'd see I was advocating a new type of politics and political structure in this country and I think, being conceited for a moment, that I'm a bit of a prophet... The thing is a new leader might be too little too late.
Let's look at a hypothetical: if another 15 Labour MPs and 8 Conservatives join the new Independent Group that would put them into 3rd Party territory; this will be an important thing because it would give them more time in the Commons, it would allow them certain permissions. If over the next couple of months and post March 29, we see more defections, we could start seeing some serious inward thinking by the two main parties. As much as I dislike Anna Soubry, she was dead right in saying that the far right of the Tory party is in control of it. They have fought the leaders for 40 years and now they have one who will [happily lie on her back and have her belly tickled] acquiesce.
The press have been attempting to create a schism within the Labour party for three years and even if they lose 30 MPs this won't cause one. However, the Tories have always needed something like this happening if normal people want to have a fairer future. The schism could happen there. The only thing that used to keep their party together was greed; Tories are as disparate as Labour, but the term 'a broad church' is used rather than in-fighting; we have got to a position where so many moderate Tories no longer recognise their party and refuse to accept the ERG as true part of it. The ERG are a party within a party and like Red Wedge in the 1970s, this is unpalatable for a lot of Tories.
However, trust me on this one; there is a lot of right wing sentiment in this country; the divisions between Leave and Remain run deeper than the Mariana Trench and there are a large number of Leavers or Brextremists who would be very supportive of a party headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, with Boris Johnson and the rest of these elite clowns. The level of intolerance growing in this country is astounding and we're beginning to see Tory MPs looking at this in horror. I said it last time and I still think that there's going to be a massive split between the right wing Tories - the Disaster Capitalists - and the moderate Tories who will not allow the country to be dragged into some un-quantifiable unknown.
We may get to the stage where there are seven parties in parliament and none of them can form a government without the aid of others. People think coalitions don't work; the truth is they do, we've just been a socially divided country that has become even more divided, using unbalanced coalitions as the blame. Consensus politics has allowed Germany to become a world leader. It would work if there is a balance between controlling parties.
Whatever happens the elephant in the room has to be addressed; a large percentage of the UK is xenophobic; we've kidded ourselves for a long time that we're a culturally diverse nation; but outside of the major towns and cities there's a deep distrust and casual racism towards most who aren't British. We are going to be screwed as a nation if we don't deal with this. Not just racism but any -ism or phobia. The Blame Game has to stop. The Whataboutery needs to end. The nation's conversation should not be driven by the Media, yet you need a solution that pleases the Libertarians and doesn't annoy the socialists and the newspapers and TV stations would be the obvious way to disseminate that message. So there's a massive immovable mountain that won't be moved.
Civil War is not such a stupid idea. Countries have torn themselves apart over less. The problem is if there isn't the money to solve these problems now, there's not going to be after Brexit. If the country benefits from any of the money we won't be paying out to areas that didn't vote for the government, will we? Any money will go to the privatised sector, either in tax avoidance or simply as shareholders. Like they were with Brexit, the politicians are ignorant of the fact that in many parts of the country, the divisions are spilling into the streets. There was an interesting bit of news that didn't make the nationals or the TV; in a number of areas post-pub and club violence has increased exponentially and more and more police reports are citing 'disagreements over Brexit'. Families have been torn apart. The ever-tenuous truce between the old and the young has been napalmed. These divisions are being played out in a reasonably civil way by parliament but outside in the real world there's an underlying hatred building - for someone - anyone.
Don't get me wrong; I'd have a 2nd referendum tomorrow, but I really don't think that will solve anything. If it is anything but decisive it will be more divisive. What happens when the Remain MPs have to accept that the population has spoken again and not their way? I wouldn't bet a fiver on Remain winning another vote; I'm not confident. If the vote is Remain by a similar margin, how do you quell the right wing? How do you calm the Eurosceptics? How do you stop the violence and recriminations? I'm not being melodramatic; people fight about football teams in this country; Brexit makes football pale into insignificance.
I've got to conclude that as things stand, we're all fucked.
You have a hard left wing of the Labour party which is, by and large, anathema to the rest. You have your moderate Labour MPs, those who won't move because they're in cosy seats. Then you have your centrist or Blairite Labour MPs and you have the defectors. Over on the Tory benches, you have the ERG - the hardline, right wing, Pro-Brexit fanatics who want to literally rip up the rule book and start again in 1840; you have your Conservatives - the likes of Ken Clarke, who are old school politicians and you have your centrists - three of which have jumped ship and arguably as many as 10 more who would join them.
The LibDems could be rubbing their hands together over a possible 'deal' which would, at present, see a block of 22 MPs, which would begin to look like a movement rather than a rebellion. In my mind, the likely outcome of this is a re-branding of the entire set, which essentially would be a new right-centre-left coalition under one umbrella, with a probable manifesto consisting of more investment, more social conscience and a continuation of Blairite-themed economics; trying to please both sides without giving either an orgasm.
As much as I want to sneer at the Independent Group - a limited company, not a political party (so therefore they don't have to name their investors or sponsors) consisting of career or no-mark politicians, the nihilist in me wants to see it flourish. The same nihilist that talked three years ago about being interested in seeing what the hell would happen if we left the EU. For newcomers; while I could never have been correct in what actually happened, I was closer to the mark than many others and in reality we haven't actually left until the end of next month. Therefore many of the worst Project Fear scenarios I might have come up with haven't had a chance to happen yet.
As we won't get what I and many of my friends want; which is a General Election and a Labour government; the realist in me now sees that Corbyn probably isn't going lead the country; the best chance of anything close to his vision might be Keir Starmer - an astute politician but with a personality that makes Theresa 'Skeksis' May sound like an ideal dinner date. He retains his respect and he seems aligned but distant from Corbyn. Starmer isn't what I'd call a socialist, but he has shown he is also a man of integrity. The problem is, if you read my last entry - A Pox on All Your Houses - you'd see I was advocating a new type of politics and political structure in this country and I think, being conceited for a moment, that I'm a bit of a prophet... The thing is a new leader might be too little too late.
Let's look at a hypothetical: if another 15 Labour MPs and 8 Conservatives join the new Independent Group that would put them into 3rd Party territory; this will be an important thing because it would give them more time in the Commons, it would allow them certain permissions. If over the next couple of months and post March 29, we see more defections, we could start seeing some serious inward thinking by the two main parties. As much as I dislike Anna Soubry, she was dead right in saying that the far right of the Tory party is in control of it. They have fought the leaders for 40 years and now they have one who will [happily lie on her back and have her belly tickled] acquiesce.
The press have been attempting to create a schism within the Labour party for three years and even if they lose 30 MPs this won't cause one. However, the Tories have always needed something like this happening if normal people want to have a fairer future. The schism could happen there. The only thing that used to keep their party together was greed; Tories are as disparate as Labour, but the term 'a broad church' is used rather than in-fighting; we have got to a position where so many moderate Tories no longer recognise their party and refuse to accept the ERG as true part of it. The ERG are a party within a party and like Red Wedge in the 1970s, this is unpalatable for a lot of Tories.
However, trust me on this one; there is a lot of right wing sentiment in this country; the divisions between Leave and Remain run deeper than the Mariana Trench and there are a large number of Leavers or Brextremists who would be very supportive of a party headed by Jacob Rees-Mogg, with Boris Johnson and the rest of these elite clowns. The level of intolerance growing in this country is astounding and we're beginning to see Tory MPs looking at this in horror. I said it last time and I still think that there's going to be a massive split between the right wing Tories - the Disaster Capitalists - and the moderate Tories who will not allow the country to be dragged into some un-quantifiable unknown.
We may get to the stage where there are seven parties in parliament and none of them can form a government without the aid of others. People think coalitions don't work; the truth is they do, we've just been a socially divided country that has become even more divided, using unbalanced coalitions as the blame. Consensus politics has allowed Germany to become a world leader. It would work if there is a balance between controlling parties.
Whatever happens the elephant in the room has to be addressed; a large percentage of the UK is xenophobic; we've kidded ourselves for a long time that we're a culturally diverse nation; but outside of the major towns and cities there's a deep distrust and casual racism towards most who aren't British. We are going to be screwed as a nation if we don't deal with this. Not just racism but any -ism or phobia. The Blame Game has to stop. The Whataboutery needs to end. The nation's conversation should not be driven by the Media, yet you need a solution that pleases the Libertarians and doesn't annoy the socialists and the newspapers and TV stations would be the obvious way to disseminate that message. So there's a massive immovable mountain that won't be moved.
Civil War is not such a stupid idea. Countries have torn themselves apart over less. The problem is if there isn't the money to solve these problems now, there's not going to be after Brexit. If the country benefits from any of the money we won't be paying out to areas that didn't vote for the government, will we? Any money will go to the privatised sector, either in tax avoidance or simply as shareholders. Like they were with Brexit, the politicians are ignorant of the fact that in many parts of the country, the divisions are spilling into the streets. There was an interesting bit of news that didn't make the nationals or the TV; in a number of areas post-pub and club violence has increased exponentially and more and more police reports are citing 'disagreements over Brexit'. Families have been torn apart. The ever-tenuous truce between the old and the young has been napalmed. These divisions are being played out in a reasonably civil way by parliament but outside in the real world there's an underlying hatred building - for someone - anyone.
Don't get me wrong; I'd have a 2nd referendum tomorrow, but I really don't think that will solve anything. If it is anything but decisive it will be more divisive. What happens when the Remain MPs have to accept that the population has spoken again and not their way? I wouldn't bet a fiver on Remain winning another vote; I'm not confident. If the vote is Remain by a similar margin, how do you quell the right wing? How do you calm the Eurosceptics? How do you stop the violence and recriminations? I'm not being melodramatic; people fight about football teams in this country; Brexit makes football pale into insignificance.
I've got to conclude that as things stand, we're all fucked.
Tuesday 5 February 2019
A Pox on All Your Houses
One of the interesting (for me) things about writing all of this stuff over the last few years is that the way I've often written about the same thing from an enormous amount of angles or perspectives. Politics is a serious interest for me from an anthropological point of view and toa sit in my armchair and comment on it degree of activism; it has caused arguments and loss of friendships on both sides of the political spectrum - because, I do have friends who vote differently to me, but life is too short to allow flare ups to hinder the big picture. We all have to live together whatever the outcome.
This is the underlying problem with Brexit. We cannot split the country in half and let the Leave side have the bit that's furthest away from mainland Europe; even if it was as simple as that, I don't think even our current government would consider it. So, whatever the Brexit outcome the country is going to have to heal and the shock of the lack of money for investment in all the areas who want change will probably be the most devastating in the long run; the spectre of Brexit is going to linger for generations - even if it turns out much better for many.
A great example of what the UK might end up being like would be if you talked to any social historian who knows Corby, in Northants. 'Little Scotland' is notorious in my old stomping ground, but it is everything that might happen to the UK encapsulated inside 40 years. It boomed, it wavered, it crashed and it was ignored. It took generations to change the attitude of resentment towards any government, any council or anything politics. Corby's working class suffered like almost no one else in the country in the late 1970s and throughout the 80s and 90s. Despite the investment and improvement; the growth and the influx of new people, there are areas that are almost ghettos - yes, I know, there are almost everywhere, but these are enclaves of the habitual unemployed; the petty criminal, a black market and a place that has always existed slightly outside of the rest of the world. The hate of government is so strong, there are areas that do the worst things a right wing government would love. The 21st century brought new opportunities, but the unemployed - long-term and the children of, blamed Poles and foreigners for taking the jobs they believed were rightfully theirs despite probably only a handful actually applying. Unemployment as a career was a life option and it was through government neglect not some plot devised by someone other than cynical governments.
No one has done enough or the right things. What are the right things? Who knows any more. We don't have the equipment to do anything on the scale the country needs; we don't have the politicians who can change things because the powers that be will resist that kind of change regardless of the consequences. Yet, we are seeing the death of politics as we know it. 100 plus years of the status quo being held between two parties and a couple of also-rans could, foreseeably, be destroyed over the next few years. The disdain, lack of trust and anger under the surface from all corners of society is palpable. The blame game is out in force like nobody's business and the information war ratchets up another notch. The problem is the political parties who encouraged their factions and supporters to champion their causes via the internet have created marginalised fundamentalists, unseen in this country before. It is the fault of all the governments of the last 50 years, but escalated with the advent of faster digitalisation.
What can be done about it?
Nothing; is the simple answer. We actually had a referendum a few years ago about some form of proportional representation and that was convincingly dismissed without so much as a complaint from either side about reruns or unfairly handled, but it was the LibDems and they don't really do much at all any more. They're just this small party with 9 seats and a history of propping up the scumbags who caused this mess we find ourselves in. There won't be a change to the way we elect people, so presumably there needs to be a bunch of new parties to sit alongside the Conservatives and Labour, offering a hybrid of policies but with differing ... national... concerns.
This isn't actually a joke. Say all the Tories right of Anna Soubry and left of Michael Gove decided that they were not going to be held to ransom and weren't going to have a No Deal Brexit; a far right 'Tory' party could emerge, maybe stealing the name the Commonwealth Party, looking at Nationalism, independence, reunification of Empire and following the ideology of Rees-Mogg and his cronies. This might sound like a far right party, but it would be marketed as a party that looks after National interests; has many policies that would attract a lot of Tory voters; arguably it would concern CCHQ in seats where being slightly right of fascist is a way of life.
Over on the left, Corbyn's Labour party may end up deselecting a number of MPs who have, frankly, been a thorn in the Labour party's side since Corbyn was elected. Like the Tory Eurosceptics, the Anti-Corbyn MPs are just as dangerous because they represent a very middle ground of the party. If the Tory party drift further right and the likes of Anna Soubry and left of Jo Johnson might be tempted to join up with the middle ground Labour MPs and form a British Democracy Party - as dull and status quo maintaining as you can imagine; but, more important than anything else, with a inclusion manifesto with enough constraint to keep as many happy as possible. Economic policy might not ever do enough to convince more left wing voters, but the point is there would be, at least, four factions of MPs and something's got to give (The reality is there are actually about 10 differing ideologies at play across all parties; but the lines are starting to blur which is why talk of splits and new parties has risen - it shouldn't be ignored; it's the best idea politics has had in years).
There is also the other possibility; a new party that is both a mix of socialist - investment in people and industry - while being slightly protectionist with a sprinkling of national pride and understanding the things that the people are concerned about. A party that steals as many ideas from others in a way that interests voters, the way UKIP did with their 'It's Fun to Be a Racist' slogans and fine line in hate crimes and stupidity.
What is really needed is for someone to look at the major issues that affect different regions; see if these issues can be solved or if they need major surgery in and around to ensure the issues can be solved. If racism and anti-foreign is a problem, then educate people about the benefits of multiculturalism but have enough constraints that people coming to this country cannot expect the same freedoms as they would have once - however you word it, it's going to sound racist.
Equally, we desperately need someone to slowly change the way Brits think about others. Xenophobia - because, deep down it is a fear more than a blatant KKK-styled racism, this is probably the largest part of the problem; the giant pink fluorescent elephant in the room playing the trombone and drums. Yet it isn't just this, it's educating rural people about towns and cities and city people about rural lives. It's ensuring that the social problems of regions stay regional. To get the newspapers to stop fuelling what can only be described as hate crimes in order to continue selling newspapers about the hate they stir up. This is not censorship, this is prevention of propaganda, whether overt or covert and ultimately a public service, even if some red-faced twat in Barnsley thinks it's wrong - tough. Frankly, the media has far too much power now; we once believed that corporations owned the planet, but the media does, and the media is a desperate rabid beast. It is narcissistic and self-destructive; it has essentially become everything science fiction films brushed over because it was too long and drawn out to make interesting. Digital made the media into monsters and the people who own them are beginning to treat the world like it's actually a giant soap opera.
So, we need new types of politics to suit the way the world is. That, ultimately will be two kinds of people - generally speaking - socialist/liberal/conscientious humans or national/libertarian/introspect tribes or tolerance against intolerance. These two 'political' positions are like oil and water - they don't mix and both sides have militants who will go to extremes for their ideologies. History tells us that whenever the Right rises beyond tolerable levels we have a war; the world doesn't look that safe at the moment. If the world continues to fuel wars, civil or major, then the displacement of people will continue; we struggle to 'keep them out' at the moment, if things get worse...
In an existence that has peaceful humans on one side and confrontational humans on the other, confrontation always wins out. Humans are the epitome of chaos.
At home, we do need new parties that offer different agendas and ideas. We need, as crazy as it sounds, more coalitions but less perilous than the last two; we need two parties sitting on 400 seats, split in a way that one cannot bully the other into things that could destroy them for a generation. We need politicians who will work for the country's interest but prioritise its people. If not all of them, then as many as possible - no one is perfect, this world has too many imperfections, but it could be fairer. We have to acknowledge there are a lot of people in this country that would probably vote for a party because of one issue because people have grown so accustomed to economic restrictions they like their scapegoats to become sacrificial lambs. It could be because no one really feels that the government can be stopped and if Brexit goes badly that feeling will fester. The divisions are already too far gone for reconciliation; democracy needs to work and it won't with the present incumbents. The people need to trust politics is working for the people; it needs to be seen doing things in the public interest.
Too much of what is happening recently is about preserving political institutions while looking after personal interests. Governments are not private industry franchises for MPs to make gain; it should never be like that and it should never be so laissez-faire about the way it uses parliament to supplement already largely wealthy existences. Government should be run by people who want the best for as many people as possible. Lobbying should be abolished to be replaced with procedures to make cases for and against things; money should never be more important than a human life. We need to change politics to change the country.
Then, maybe, we need to spend less looking over our shoulders at what others might be doing and more looking forward, together.
This is the underlying problem with Brexit. We cannot split the country in half and let the Leave side have the bit that's furthest away from mainland Europe; even if it was as simple as that, I don't think even our current government would consider it. So, whatever the Brexit outcome the country is going to have to heal and the shock of the lack of money for investment in all the areas who want change will probably be the most devastating in the long run; the spectre of Brexit is going to linger for generations - even if it turns out much better for many.
A great example of what the UK might end up being like would be if you talked to any social historian who knows Corby, in Northants. 'Little Scotland' is notorious in my old stomping ground, but it is everything that might happen to the UK encapsulated inside 40 years. It boomed, it wavered, it crashed and it was ignored. It took generations to change the attitude of resentment towards any government, any council or anything politics. Corby's working class suffered like almost no one else in the country in the late 1970s and throughout the 80s and 90s. Despite the investment and improvement; the growth and the influx of new people, there are areas that are almost ghettos - yes, I know, there are almost everywhere, but these are enclaves of the habitual unemployed; the petty criminal, a black market and a place that has always existed slightly outside of the rest of the world. The hate of government is so strong, there are areas that do the worst things a right wing government would love. The 21st century brought new opportunities, but the unemployed - long-term and the children of, blamed Poles and foreigners for taking the jobs they believed were rightfully theirs despite probably only a handful actually applying. Unemployment as a career was a life option and it was through government neglect not some plot devised by someone other than cynical governments.
No one has done enough or the right things. What are the right things? Who knows any more. We don't have the equipment to do anything on the scale the country needs; we don't have the politicians who can change things because the powers that be will resist that kind of change regardless of the consequences. Yet, we are seeing the death of politics as we know it. 100 plus years of the status quo being held between two parties and a couple of also-rans could, foreseeably, be destroyed over the next few years. The disdain, lack of trust and anger under the surface from all corners of society is palpable. The blame game is out in force like nobody's business and the information war ratchets up another notch. The problem is the political parties who encouraged their factions and supporters to champion their causes via the internet have created marginalised fundamentalists, unseen in this country before. It is the fault of all the governments of the last 50 years, but escalated with the advent of faster digitalisation.
What can be done about it?
Nothing; is the simple answer. We actually had a referendum a few years ago about some form of proportional representation and that was convincingly dismissed without so much as a complaint from either side about reruns or unfairly handled, but it was the LibDems and they don't really do much at all any more. They're just this small party with 9 seats and a history of propping up the scumbags who caused this mess we find ourselves in. There won't be a change to the way we elect people, so presumably there needs to be a bunch of new parties to sit alongside the Conservatives and Labour, offering a hybrid of policies but with differing ... national... concerns.
This isn't actually a joke. Say all the Tories right of Anna Soubry and left of Michael Gove decided that they were not going to be held to ransom and weren't going to have a No Deal Brexit; a far right 'Tory' party could emerge, maybe stealing the name the Commonwealth Party, looking at Nationalism, independence, reunification of Empire and following the ideology of Rees-Mogg and his cronies. This might sound like a far right party, but it would be marketed as a party that looks after National interests; has many policies that would attract a lot of Tory voters; arguably it would concern CCHQ in seats where being slightly right of fascist is a way of life.
Over on the left, Corbyn's Labour party may end up deselecting a number of MPs who have, frankly, been a thorn in the Labour party's side since Corbyn was elected. Like the Tory Eurosceptics, the Anti-Corbyn MPs are just as dangerous because they represent a very middle ground of the party. If the Tory party drift further right and the likes of Anna Soubry and left of Jo Johnson might be tempted to join up with the middle ground Labour MPs and form a British Democracy Party - as dull and status quo maintaining as you can imagine; but, more important than anything else, with a inclusion manifesto with enough constraint to keep as many happy as possible. Economic policy might not ever do enough to convince more left wing voters, but the point is there would be, at least, four factions of MPs and something's got to give (The reality is there are actually about 10 differing ideologies at play across all parties; but the lines are starting to blur which is why talk of splits and new parties has risen - it shouldn't be ignored; it's the best idea politics has had in years).
There is also the other possibility; a new party that is both a mix of socialist - investment in people and industry - while being slightly protectionist with a sprinkling of national pride and understanding the things that the people are concerned about. A party that steals as many ideas from others in a way that interests voters, the way UKIP did with their 'It's Fun to Be a Racist' slogans and fine line in hate crimes and stupidity.
What is really needed is for someone to look at the major issues that affect different regions; see if these issues can be solved or if they need major surgery in and around to ensure the issues can be solved. If racism and anti-foreign is a problem, then educate people about the benefits of multiculturalism but have enough constraints that people coming to this country cannot expect the same freedoms as they would have once - however you word it, it's going to sound racist.
Equally, we desperately need someone to slowly change the way Brits think about others. Xenophobia - because, deep down it is a fear more than a blatant KKK-styled racism, this is probably the largest part of the problem; the giant pink fluorescent elephant in the room playing the trombone and drums. Yet it isn't just this, it's educating rural people about towns and cities and city people about rural lives. It's ensuring that the social problems of regions stay regional. To get the newspapers to stop fuelling what can only be described as hate crimes in order to continue selling newspapers about the hate they stir up. This is not censorship, this is prevention of propaganda, whether overt or covert and ultimately a public service, even if some red-faced twat in Barnsley thinks it's wrong - tough. Frankly, the media has far too much power now; we once believed that corporations owned the planet, but the media does, and the media is a desperate rabid beast. It is narcissistic and self-destructive; it has essentially become everything science fiction films brushed over because it was too long and drawn out to make interesting. Digital made the media into monsters and the people who own them are beginning to treat the world like it's actually a giant soap opera.
So, we need new types of politics to suit the way the world is. That, ultimately will be two kinds of people - generally speaking - socialist/liberal/conscientious humans or national/libertarian/introspect tribes or tolerance against intolerance. These two 'political' positions are like oil and water - they don't mix and both sides have militants who will go to extremes for their ideologies. History tells us that whenever the Right rises beyond tolerable levels we have a war; the world doesn't look that safe at the moment. If the world continues to fuel wars, civil or major, then the displacement of people will continue; we struggle to 'keep them out' at the moment, if things get worse...
In an existence that has peaceful humans on one side and confrontational humans on the other, confrontation always wins out. Humans are the epitome of chaos.
At home, we do need new parties that offer different agendas and ideas. We need, as crazy as it sounds, more coalitions but less perilous than the last two; we need two parties sitting on 400 seats, split in a way that one cannot bully the other into things that could destroy them for a generation. We need politicians who will work for the country's interest but prioritise its people. If not all of them, then as many as possible - no one is perfect, this world has too many imperfections, but it could be fairer. We have to acknowledge there are a lot of people in this country that would probably vote for a party because of one issue because people have grown so accustomed to economic restrictions they like their scapegoats to become sacrificial lambs. It could be because no one really feels that the government can be stopped and if Brexit goes badly that feeling will fester. The divisions are already too far gone for reconciliation; democracy needs to work and it won't with the present incumbents. The people need to trust politics is working for the people; it needs to be seen doing things in the public interest.
Too much of what is happening recently is about preserving political institutions while looking after personal interests. Governments are not private industry franchises for MPs to make gain; it should never be like that and it should never be so laissez-faire about the way it uses parliament to supplement already largely wealthy existences. Government should be run by people who want the best for as many people as possible. Lobbying should be abolished to be replaced with procedures to make cases for and against things; money should never be more important than a human life. We need to change politics to change the country.
Then, maybe, we need to spend less looking over our shoulders at what others might be doing and more looking forward, together.
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