We're All Going to Burn (or Freeze)

Dump your Green credentials and you'll be elected. That's the message Rishi Sunak is being fed by many people in his party. If you're a sensible, intelligent person you'll see this as a crazy, short-sighted message, but the problem isn't with you, it's not really with the climate change deniers, the problem lies in the perception that India, Brazil, Nigeria, USA, Russia and many other economic powerhouses just aren't doing enough so why should I. What is the point of individuals being green if it equates to a grain of sand on a massive beach?

I can't answer that. 

You might wonder what the point of this is then? Well, just recently I've been doing that exercise in futility by trying to argue with climate change deniers and given we've just had a fucking awful July it makes arguing on the side of climate change very difficult, mainly because people are stupid and can't see that climate change is probably responsible for us having a shit July and could be responsible for our own island's future climate crisis because there's a chance the gulf stream might disappear and if that happens our weather will be more Iceland than England and that will be a huge shock to the system.

Yet people don't want to believe it. They don't want electric cars, they don't want heat pumps, they don't want to spend any money on green things when entire countries are flipping the middle finger to scientists and other people trying to save the planet. The Death Cult of Deniers is actually winning; I know that seems strange considering the amount of EVs you see on the road, but that isn't a fair comparison because you can see a lot of football supporters at a game but that doesn't mean the entire country is a fan of football. The thing is you just have to look at the Uxbridge by-election to see that the wealthier you are the less likely you're going to support changes for the climate; the problem is until that result came through we thought it was just the 40% of the country who aren't wealthy, can't afford green things and were poorly educated thought that way. The truth is green people are in the minority and we don't have a government or a government in waiting that wants to commit to green policies because it's not a vote winner.

That means the Tories issuing 200 more North Sea oil exploration licences; opening a coal mine in Cumbria and spending years denying licences to off shore wind farms, because it seems the country would rather look at the sea than look at wind turbines providing them with cheap green energy. The internet has allowed conspiracy theories to gain ground to the point where people would rather believe bullshit than accept that the world might be dying. Ask them about how this will affect their children or grandchildren and you might as well be asking how an air fryer works in Albanian. The thing about denial is if you're in denial you'll deny everything.

I can say that we're doomed and attach that to many things such as governments, the rise of fascism or the growth of idiocy, but in reality we are doomed because the planet is going to fuck up badly and those least affected by it will refuse to believe it's anything but weather. The growing number of climate change deniers in the UK look outside their windows and see the rain and think, 'It's a load of bollocks.' How do you convince people using experts when they want to believe the guy down the pub more?

People like me and my peers are going to be dead by the time it gets really worse (or at least I hope so) and we're going to need the children of the world to say NO, but given the amount of scepticism out there I'm not sure young people are going to be immune from this kind of indoctrination.

Enjoy the planet, over the next ten years it's going to change beyond all recognition; there will be so many refugees - because of the climate crisis that doesn't exist - the gammons will be having aneurysms on a daily basis. The world will change and that change will be its death. It might take a couple of hundred years, but we're at the start of an extinction event, I just hope the planet survives the end of mankind.

You Can't Trust Labour

I would never have believed at any point in my life where I would have said 'you can't trust Labour'. It's anathema; not just unlikely but unfathomable. Me, a lifelong socialist and lefty, looking at the Labour Party and thinking, 'Thank fuck I live in Scotland and have an alternative party to vote for.'

Obi Wan Keir Starmer lied his way to the top job - very much the way Boris Johnson lied to everybody to try and keep his job - and over the last three years every single one of his promises have been ditched in favour of what appears to be slightly watered down versions of what we've been getting for the last 13 years. This might appeal to a small section of floating voters or Tory voters not happy with how their party has swung so far right they make fascists seem like nice guys, but it doesn't appeal to a hardcore group of Labour supporters who feel Starmer has sold out far more than Tony Blair ever did.

So what have they done now that has driven me to writing this?

Well, not a lot in the last week or so; nothing has happened specifically to make me so anti-Labour, but a lot of things have happened in the last 12 months that has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Take North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll as the perfect example of everything that is wrong about Labour at the moment. Driscoll is enormously popular in his area even amongst Tory voters. Yes, he's a bit of a Corbyn supporter and is most definitely left wing, but his success rate in the area is second to none, hence why he is extremely popular and, get this, for a politician he's also a really nice guy (just listen to him on You Tube or anywhere else you can find him). He was invited by his local arts centre to interview enormously successful, Oscar nominated film director Ken Loach - famous also for being an ardent campaigner for Labour and extremely anti-Tory. This is the man who made the shockingly brilliant and horrible film I, Daniel Blake and is passionate about having a fairer society...

Ken Loach is a friend of Jeremy Corbyn. He also publicly said that he felt the antisemitism row that the press foisted on Labour during Corbyn's reign was largely made up and was blown out of proportion by certain factions of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) who were prepared to lose elections to rid the party of Corbyn. This has made Loach toxic to the new Labour and he was summarily expelled from the party he'd been a member of for over 50 years. Jamie Driscoll was invited to interview and talk to Loach about his film career and subsequently Driscoll was deselected by Labour and will not fight for re-election with their support - he's effectively been kicked out of the party.

The reasons given were simple: he was on stage with Loach, he should have challenged the director - now in his 80s - about his pro-Corbyn and new Labour stance instead of, you know, talking to him about his films, which is why he, Driscoll and everyone else was there. This was an arts event not something that warranted being hijacked by politics. Driscoll's defence was simple, he was invited to talk about films not politics and the audience were there to see a film director not to see him attacked for supporting a friend. This was dismissed by Labour's chiefs without the right to appeal.

Or how about Neal Lawson, 44 years a member of the party who was expelled by the party for tweeting 'Grown up politics' to LibDem Layla Moran when she said her party would stand aside at a by-election to allow a Green candidate a better chance of unseating the Tory party. His 'grown up politics' remark wasn't even really in support of anything apart from treating politics how it should be rather than how it is.

Lawson who runs the cross-party progressive campaign organisation Compass, said that Labour had been "captured by a clique … behaving like playground bullies". In an attack on the Labour leadership, Lawson claimed that Starmer had chosen "the Rupert Murdoch path to power over the progressive majority route". In their defence, the top dogs on the Shadow cabinet all came out and essentially accused Lawson of supporting another party - blatantly not true - and therefore he needs to be kicked out. This is trial by affiliation; Lawson was something of a Corbyn fan, however he was a fan of the proposed policies rather than the bearded allotmenteer. 

This and stuff like this has been going on for months now as the right wing of the Labour Party purges everyone who is left of centre, and with prejudice. That's bad enough, but start to look at Obi Wan Keir's top dogs - Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, she advocates austerity as a way of balancing books; she's actually voted in favour of a number of Tory proposals. Or Wes Streeting, who positions himself as a working class kid from a council estate, but he's a career politician who, like his hero Tony Blair, would represent any party if he thought he had a sniff of power. Streeting is the ONLY politician currently in parliament at the moment who has publicly stated that parts of the NHS need to be sold off to private companies. Not even Jacob Fucking Rees Mogg has ever said that out loud.

The list of broken promises before they get into power is horrendously long and includes backtracking on the nationalisation of certain industries, the creation of a country-owned energy company or the refusal to abolish some of the Tories' more abhorrent and distasteful bills such as the right to protest and the so-called illegal immigrants bill. This is a Labour Party that is targeting racists, bigots and intolerant arseholes for votes while throwing genuine Labour supporters under the bus claiming there's money for the NHS now we've left Europe.

Oh and speaking of Europe. In a recent Gallop poll it was estimated that over two thirds of the people who voted Leave in the EU referendum would vote to remain if it was held now. Even some anti-Euro Tory MPs are admitting Brexit hasn't worked and we're suffering because of it, yet Starmer still talks about making Brexit work. The majority of Labour voters in 2016 voted to remain, in 2023 the majority of Labour voters would like us to re-establish closer links to Europe, maybe even rejoin eventually, but Labour are following this populist bullshit of making something work that clearly doesn't work and ignoring the fact the only way it can work is through closer ties and that means being in the single customs market or accepting certain rules and regulations on health and safety and Obi Wan Keir isn't even considering going through that door.

What is the difference now between the Tories and Labour? Well, the Tories aren't Tories any longer, that boat sailed after David Cameron fucked the country up and then ran away; what we now have is a neo-fascist libertarian government with populist policies that appeal to racists, bigots and the ignorant, while Labour has morphed into a form of moderate one nation Tories. Almost every left wing idea has been purged or been thrown under the aforementioned bus in favour of populist lite policies and rhetoric that sits uncomfortably with people who regard themselves as a bit socialist. 

But... if we don't get behind Labour the Tories will win again... I doubt it. The Tories are so unpopular now a dead cat could stand against 50% of their sitting MPs and win. The majority of people are fed up with them and their one-sided policies. However, while social media tends to be dictated to by 'bubbles' of likeminded individuals and there are huge swathes of ex-Labour voters who are looking for viable alternatives or are mobilising people to vote tactically at the next GE. Labour will win the election but they might have to do some deals or, more likely, a large number of seats won't be won because they will go to the Liberals, the Green or Independents. Just look at a recent council by-election in Newham, east London. The sitting Labour councillor was deselected and stood as an independent and won 43% of the vote, shaving 25% off the Labour share and forcing Newham council to re-evaluate as it has becomes perilously close to being a No Overall Control council. This could be reflected at a GE, especially in Labour areas with close ties to unions and the left wing of the party.

The problem is the press, who for years have warned us about the dangers of Labour, are now warming towards them because they're offering NOTHING different and they see themselves being unharmed by a Labour government, much like they did when Tony Blair came along and while the press don't have the sway they once did, there are many people out there who will read blogs like this or see independent headlines bemoaning the actions of the party and they'll dismiss them the same way they dismissed all the allegations against Boris Johnson, because it's what they want to believe rather than what the facts tell them. 

If I was still in England I'd be looking at what the alternatives for the seat I reside in are and whether they stand a chance of winning, especially if there was an alternative to Labour or Conservative that stand a chance and if that was the case I'd be urging people to vote tactically, primarily to get rid of the Tories (because they need a decade in opposition), but also to ensure Labour doesn't get an overall majority. This country needs a progressive centre left alliance, with the Greens, SNP and possibly the LidDems ensuring Starmer and his pink Tories don't allow the injustices and unfairness we've suffered for so long to continue. 

Our Government is Shit

In February, I posted a blog about this being the Final Season of the Tories or words to that effect, because back in February, under Boris and with things starting to go wrong from almost every direction. At the time, the Tories looked rudderless, directionless and a little bored with being in power and yet now six months on under Rishi Sunak, the third leader of the UK in roughly the same time, it's just got worse and when the Tories aren't absent they do things that make the average person reel in horror.

The racist rhetoric, the lack of empathy, no help in a cost of living crisis, allowing corporations to strip mine once nationalised industries or defile the countryside and rivers. The latest is Robert Jenrick having a cartoon mural painted over in a children's asylum centre in Kent because they need to realise this is a law enforcement establishment and not a creche. What a heartless bastard! Yet, these low level snake shit salesmen do this almost on a monthly basis - stop benefits rises, stop free school meals for the poor, stop benefits, stop the boats, stop foreigners, stop protests, stop anything that means they're not paying money to the poor and happily give it to the rich, who hoard it and force interest rates up so high that thousands of people, already facing huge costs now have seen their mortgages increase almost double in some cases.

Just what are this mob doing? And why are they so uninterested and callous? What makes them think that the way forward is through division, racism and corruption? Sunak is always absent and when he isn't he says things that can be interpreted in a number of evil ways. There's a big bunch of Tory MPs who think the country needs to be more racist and prevent foreign care workers from wiping the old and disabled bottoms because some feckless 18 year old unemployed kid from Wisbech will do it or won't get any benefits - the perfect storm of disregarding safeguarding.

We have shit roads, dead rivers, more food banks than Big Mac outlets, rotting schools, rotting rented accommodation, the NHS on its knees, businesses going under because of lack of staff because locals won't do the jobs. Then there's the climate crisis and we decided not to spend the £11.2bn we pledged to it - not only does that infuriate the rest of the world it makes us look like liars and not Statesmen. I can list so many things that the Tories have fucked up since 2010 it makes depressing reading considering they're constantly voted in despite the destruction they bring; it's madness.

What we're witnessing is a dereliction of duty. They have given up. Loads of MPs are standing down at the end of this parliament - some are going because they know they're going to lose their own seats, some because they feel Parliament is now a toxic environment with undercurrents of sexism, misogyny, nepotism and corruption and to all the people who say 'what else can they do' or 'it's not their fault' - these scumbags gave away £40bn at the start of the pandemic on shit PPE, their mates and let's not forget the parties and the One Rule For Them But Not For Us lifestyle. They had the money to fix everything but they pissed it up a wall.

Just for parity - Keir Starmer and his cadre of Deep Blue Labourites have done so many policy U turns in the last year they sound like they're now selling themselves as Tory Lite just to attract the votes of about 12% of the population who are racist and want the country to suffer as much as possible by not blaming Brexit. Labour has no progressive ideas any more, they just offer Not The Tories.

Politics is fucked. No one seems to be able to do any good because of the scandals, corruption, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Cancel Culture - no one is doing anything because they're too busy obsessing over each other. Mhairi Black - at 28 - is quitting her SNP seat because she's had enough of the horrible atmosphere and hateful vibes parliament spews out. We're losing the good as well as the bad and I suppose we're going to have a much different parliament after the next General Election. This might be good or it might be an influx of new serial politicians who are there for their own benefits before those of the people who voted them in.

We need a party to win the election and then say everything needs reforming; that parliament and the way it is run needs overhauling; that they need an independent ombudsman to police the MPs; they need to stamp out second jobs and lobbying. Someone needs to get into power and change the way we do and participate with politics. We need the education system overhauled with more emphasis on years 9 thru 11 about life and how to live it and how to understand how we fit into society and how others do as well. We also need proper leadership for the people.