The End of the Age of Reason

I'm stuck for crazier and more sensational headlines/titles. The world continues to baffle me in ways that even Hollywood (or Eastenders) would baulk at or categorise as 'comedy' or simply 'unreal'.

Earlier this week, while out with a Tory-supporting Remain voter friend, I realised that over the last few years his politics have softened and his anti-Labour position, while not gone, was not as determined as it had been. He's a clever bloke and he doesn't need people like me to point out inequalities and unfairness in the world, he sees it himself, either through social media - where he has 'friends' who are extreme left (me for starters) and so far right their ignorance is scary (no names mentioned to protect the ignorant - although I wonder why...) so I expect that while he probably would never trust Labour with his vote, he's probably also feeling like he can't trust the Tories either.

Sanity. A wee bit of sanity.

Standing in a field, with the dogs and one of my clique of dog-walking chums, I heard, first hand, something that made my heart sink. "If I'd have known it would have caused this much trouble I would have voted Remain." The sentiment is the important thing here, because I think we're all now acutely aware that if the vote had been Remain by 52-48% we'd have Farage, Gove and co., queuing up to start legal proceedings, asking for another referendum, possibly even attacking (verbally or physically) the 'smug' Remainers. The vote needed to be 70-30 either way before defeat would have been conceded and I fear even then, the lunatic minority in the Leave camp would have started targeting foreigners with more gusto and intent than they have already been doing. The fact that a 68-year-old man, who probably doesn't read as diverse stuff as I do can draw the conclusion from just 'authorised' news services that he probably did the wrong thing suggests to me that some people have shaken off that 'feelings' thing and are now beginning to understand 'reality'.

A wee bit more sanity?

I'd be optimistic about it if it wasn't for the wilful ignorance and idiocy I'm witnessing from certain corners of the country. Take the high court ruling about parliament being responsible for the triggering of Article 50. Despite it being spelled out clearly that this was by no means a block on Brexit and was actually exactly what the campaigners to Leave wanted - our own parliament exercising their sovereign right as elected representatives of the people and making decisions as a country and not as part of some EU bloc. Yet to hear some of the rabid right wing Brexiteers talk you have to wonder how on Earth they ever got to a position to be invited to offer their ludicrously alarmist, ignorant and wrong (as in factually) opinions. The media (well, the blue topped press and Murdoch) seem keen to drive a wedge through every shred of decency left in the country by essentially promoting hate and prejudice at every opportunity (so much for the Leveson thing, eh?) while gleefully ignoring facts and just, well, making shit up.

If it was restricted to the UK I'd naturally be worried, but the fact that its happening all over the world is really fucking scary. I said a year ago that the world in 2015 was a safer place than it had been probably forever - poverty down; famine down; wars down and yet why do my friends think the world has suddenly become terrifying? It isn't just the media; we forget that only a small percentage of the population actually read a daily newspaper and that news bulletins tend to be the lowest watched programs, unless someone famous dies. It could be word of mouth (as discussed many times before); but the truth is it might just be that we no longer know how to trust anyone else because there are so many loonies out there. Loonies able to run for president, lead a political party based on laziness and lies, become unelected PMs or promote hate with impunity. I no longer feel that safe.

I'd blame social media, again, but that is just a vessel; a way of articulating frustration, anger and ignorance that already existed, even if it was just a humanitarian story about helping a refugee that broke the back of their reasoning and allowed them to show the world how their subconscious had just become their reality. One thing I've learned in my 50-odd years on this planet is racism, prejudice and hate are not a British or American (a white privileged) thing. The problem is we hate each other; humans can't live without each other but equally under the right circumstances they can't live with each other either. I know that's a terribly cynical generalisation, but, come on, for every nice person you meet there's at least two people out there you wouldn't piss on if they were on fire, because you know whatever you do for them they'll find a way to blame you for their own predicament or make you wonder why you bothered.

The problem is ignorance, prejudice and a lack of compassion hides inside people in their own houses. You have no idea what goes on in other peoples lives, we only base things on our own lives, so we don't know what is said or believed or peddled inside even the most respectable members of society. I mean, if it's okay for Donald Trump to be openly offensive what are people really like when they see something on TV that tugs at their primordial hate.

How about this for a conspiracy theory? It came to me while making a cup of coffee and watching BBC News. Could this be the reason why some corners of politics and the media are doing what they're doing.

warmonger

 (ˈwɔːˌmʌŋɡə)

n

a person who fosters warlike ideas or advocates war

ˈwarˌmongering n

We all know that war is a major economic force. War through the arms trade is unbelievably lucrative and there have been many accusations and conspiracy theories bandied around to suggest that arms dealers and manufacturers create unrest in unstable countries just to make more money. We know that there are a number of people on this planet who have no problem sending others to die, or killing in the name of cash. After Colombine, sales of guns in the USA actually went up. Put the fear of God into people and they reach for a weapon; add them to the people who willingly carry weapons as a way of life and suddenly you have a situation that becomes difficult to police.

There are people out there who have vested interests in arms manufacturers; the UK government have hosted arms dealers, conventions and sales jamborees. We sell arms to some of the most despicable regimes in the world, but the press don't talk about that and as long as Britain is making money a huge percentage of the population couldn't give a toss. As long as they can be preoccupied by trivial celebrity rubbish and buying every fake gold lined lie fed to them by post-expert blokes, then we can continue doing shady and dodgy deals, in the Nation's interest.

The press appears to be stoking fires that have been suppressed, ignored or simply only remained in people instinctively. History tells us that divisions and prejudice are usually the reason for wars and peace on earth equals severely diminished profits. I said to a friend six months ago, at the start of when real life became a surreality TV show, that it was like some were angling for a war. They solve a lot of problems, you see. Sometimes it's like humanity is simply a flu virus and wars are limited, but quite effective, vaccines.

The Matrix is Broken... The Matrix is Broken...

Recently I watched one of my right on and new age friends rage with unrestrained passion about something that he didn't agree with at an event he was involved in. It made me want to use his own words and assure him that 'everything happens for a reason and perhaps he needs to embrace this set back and look for the positives in it', but I couldn't help think that it would be seen as antagonistic rather than anything else - and to be fair there would have been an element of antagonism in there, but only after a fashion.

The thing is it made me realise that even the most non-judgemental of us are exactly the opposite of what we hold as a solid human trait. Prejudices appear all the time and it isn't just the ignorant or the rich who do this. I recently made friends with a man who seemed extremely decent; his job, wife and lifestyle suggested the last thing he is was an ignorant xenophobe with obvious BNP/EDL leanings - even seemingly intelligent people can exhibit levels of fuckwittedness that beggar belief.

I've met wilfully ignorant people in the last few weeks; people who smoke while pregnant; people who work zero hour contracts and have the urine extracted from them by their employers; people who still believe the NHS will be £350billion a second better off now we're out of the EU, because they haven't taken any notice of a newspaper or a news program since the day after the referendum. I've met a school teacher who voted Leave, who told me she did it because she wanted her country back, that the country was getting to the point where there wasn't enough room and it would be nice to have the majority of kids in her class where English was the first language... A teacher... You have to start wondering about whether humanity has just subconsciously developed an absurdist self-destruct gene?

Having a wife who earns a little too much money has meant that my periods of unemployment in recent years has garnered me the absolute minimum I should be entitled to, yet someone I've known best part of my life and hasn't been remotely interested in getting a job - since 1992 - gets so much support, even now - in the wake of IDS and his purges - that it actually made me feel anger towards him (my friend that is, I've felt anger towards IDS since about 1999). After years of contributing to the economy and paying my NI, I was entitled to essentially fuck all. Had I been 'a feckless workshy wanker' I could have got just about everything I needed - like free prescriptions, bus fares or other frivolous things people with money take for granted. The sad thing is I'm not a particularly nice person but I felt slightly ashamed of myself for feeling angry towards my friend's 'life choice'.

It also should be noted that my friend with the unemployment fixation is also damaged goods and probably now falls into the category of 'people never likely to be able to do a real job again, ever'. Whether he arrived at this situation through nurture or nature isn't for debate (I know the answer to this specific question, though), but one thing is clear 50% of the blame, at least, has to be placed at the feet of the governments of the late 1970s and early 1980s, because they didn't do enough to change attitudes, or invest enough in education (because what sense is there investing in our future?) and it only got worse in the 80s and 90s.

After spending over 15 years working with the disenfranchised and becoming a good socialist as a result, I know the difference between the disenfranchised and those who play the system because they don't want to work or contribute - the people who think it is okay to live off of everyone else without contributing anything other than more actual cost to the taxpayer. Yes, you can argue, it isn't their fault they're in whatever predicament they're in - more the fault of successive governments doing little or nothing for the most isolated and alienated in already poor communities, while simultaneously finding something unrelated to blame - but I'm also not that left wing where I won't call a feckless wanker a feckless wanker.

Take the argument that migrant workers put too much strain on our services. The blame for this appeared to be placed firmly at the feet of the EU despite the fact that 62% of our migrants come from outside of the EU and never once, during the EU debate, did any party - Corbyn's included - point out that the strains on hospitals, schools and public services was actually the fault of the government for not investing in expanding it all when the need grew. I mean it doesn't take an idiot to realise that even if they hooked private business into the building of these things, they would all have been patronised, would have employed more people and would have injected money back into the economy. That isn't socialism, that's common sense that could have been exploited however the Tories wanted and still been beneficial to the majority of people.

I have suggested before that I'm beginning to think that politicians are mainly all idiots, or have finally decided that we're all idiots, because all politics seems to be choreographed now; even Corbyn really appears to be quite toothless because no one - apart from the lovely Mairhi Black (who is 21) - seems to asking the pertinent questions or making any salient points. Take the decision to overrule the No Fracking decision by Lancashire Council - whatever way you feel about fracking, when you consider the overall costs compared to, say, putting up an offshore wind farm, you have to wonder if our politicians are also brainless psychopaths too. Am I the only person who questions his (or her) own sanity at comments, actions or interviews given by politicians. I mean, is Priti Patel even real?

I recently spent a few hours talking to the owner of a small private hire company and he told me some astounding facts about taxis. 54% of all taxis booked are by girls/women aged between 14 and 40. But even more incredible is that upwards of 60% of all taxis are booked/hailed by people on benefits. As someone who has, at times, viewed £10 as an important third of my shopping bill, to be in a position where walking or catching a bus doesn't even feature in someone's thinking, despite having nothing makes me begin to wonder if the Tories are right and that some people exploit the system. Or perhaps kids in poor schools need more education as to how to prioritise their money better when they leave education and go straight into a career on welfare. Ironically, we've allowed TV, the media and commercialism/advertising to brainwash the young into thinking that having an iPhone is more important than eating healthily and we've seen, throughout the last few decades, common sense levels in most individuals drop to the point where (almost) statistically more than half of the people here are twats. We've all been persuaded to spend all of the money we haven't got on cheap shit that won't last while simultaneously blaming Johnny Foreigner for stealing someone else's job...

The unswerving power of commercialism has placed many of our citizens in a position where they view essentials as trivial and trivia as essential and urban ghettos and isolated areas of deprivation are as a result of no government ever addressing - in my life time, at least - the problems in any long-term way. Mix commercialism with a bit of prejudice and you create a dependent with the belief of entitlement. That's the fault of governments since the 1960s who didn't acknowledge prevention was better, and cost less, than cure. Governments never really see or understand the problem until it is too late to fix. And then you need to acknowledge that to fix just some of society's ills - the ones who wield power fancy supporting - it would cost far more money than is available and we all know money is an exclusive privilege of the rich.

***

Over the last few days we've seen the right-leaning media ratchet up the hate and racism against migrants, or in fact anyone not from the UK. I fail to see what the ultimate aim is, unless Murdock, Beaverbrook and the rest actually want the UK to become a xenophobic, isolated island with no trade deals and vilified by the rest of the world.

What good are these 'rags' doing? What possible positive outcomes can we hope to get when facts are ignored in favour of jingoistic hate and bile? With at least 52% of the country's voters prone to believe sensationalist bullshit and lies you have to start wondering if there's a crazy agenda being set out by the media. Because it has to be crazy - Jeremy Corbyn is a fair politician but is treated and talked about like he was a former Nazi death camp guard, while the Tories and their supporters get nastier and the only places these are covered are in blogs, news sites (not affiliated to money) and Twitter - thus having little or no credence to the 52% because it wasn't seen on the BBC or read in the Sun or Daily Mail.

We're in the depths of a self-fulfilling prophecy; I'm not sure what the prophecy is, just that it appears to involve hate and ultimately violence.

Crazy crazy world

Honestly, you couldn't make it up.

If, say 15 years ago, you were told that the UK would elect a Tory government despite more than 50% of the country being pissed off with poverty and misery, and would also vote to come out of the EU based on a mixture of feelings, misplaced patriotism and idiocy and then we might witness the election of a President of the USA who, frankly, is crazier than batshit daiquiris, you'd probably think I was describing a new Armando Iannucci political comedy, because I'd think all of that and I'm a) writing this and b) living it too.

We live in a Post-fact, post-expert, post-logical world where people simply don't give a fuck about facts - especially those who voted for Leave. Experts are just there to scare us. Logic is there to confuse us and Facts are there to be ignored and derided because Feelings and Pride are far more important to the future of everyone.

The problem is we're talking about a majority of people now. You know and I know that it isn't really a true majority, but it's big enough and ugly enough to dictate the country's rhetoric. The sad truth is a large percentage of the 52% voted as a protest to the shit they've been suffering for years without really understanding that the referendum had nothing to do with what has been happening to them and no one made a big enough issue out of the fact that it was the EU that stopped the worst off and most disenfranchised among us from being marginalised even more. If you weighed up the difference between what Westminster and Brussels has given to the people of South Wales you would have thought they would have voted 99% to remain, instead of 61% of them opting for the exit button. What's worse is these people think that our government is going to save them... That's how stupid people are now. 

There are people in Sunderland facing economic oblivion as their largest employer scales back and considers moving elsewhere who actually feel happy and proud that they've helped precipitate their own downfall. I'm amazed Cameron quit; the referendum gave a warped legitimacy to everything him and Gideon were doing; the fact that Treeza May is actually attempting to reverse some of their less humane achievements almost smacks of the same level of crazy.

I loved a short statement made by *Yasmin Ali - "Tonight I went to a Tory Party meeting on Brexit. More specifically, I went to a Tory meeting on what happens after Brexit to bring the nation together again.   So what did I learn? If I distil it down, it is that they have no idea. No idea how to leave the EU. No idea what happens now. All they know is that they are so loved up with their vote that all these tedious questions are nothing but Party pooping nonsense."

Doesn't this just about sum up the feeling of the Brexiteers across the country? The same people who claim quite self-righteously that if they'd lost they wouldn't be making such a big issue about it... Yeah, right and if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle...

It isn't just us; there's this Rodrigo Duterte fellow in the Philippines who is basically advocating and promoting a criminal-cleansing spree, allowing his citizens to kill anyone they suspect is a drug dealer or taker or friend of either. The weird thing about Duterte is despite caterwauls of horror and disgust from the rest of the world, he's a bloody popular bloodthirsty tyrant among his own people - the right wing/Libertarian supporting Philippinos think 'Digong' is top banana and his popularity has grown as the graves of the criminals have filled up.

Hungary has been trying to out-Farage Nigel by having a referendum that I'm still not entirely sure about. I could check this but that takes the fun out of it, but apparently they've just had a referendum to reject the EU's migrant policy, which kind of doesn't make any sense because as part of the EU they've already caused ructions by putting a bloody great fence around their country and restricting movement (you know, the thing 52% of our population would get massive erections about if offered the chance). The fact that not enough Hungarians actually voted to make it officially recognisable is, hopefully, a testament to nice Hungarians, because, according to my Romanian neighbour, 'Most peoples from Hungaria are shit.'

I'm sure Hillary Clinton isn't all the things she's being accused of, because if she is then the USA has finally succumbed to Total Dumb by having two unbelievably crooked and dislikable people vying for the job of Chief Button Pusher. I know it's more about how much money you can throw at it than politics, but if the USA wants to be treated with the respect it deserves it should really take a good hard long look at itself. Sometimes the idea of the Yellowstone Caldera Extinction Event seems like a damned fine idea.

Oh and while this isn't strictly politics, you have to wonder what kind of world we're now living in if fear, scaremongering and worst case scenarios are touted as news... At least four tabloids in the last week have picked up on the 'Britain is headed for an apocalyptic winter' news story. This incredible prophecy of doom first appeared in the Daily Express - the paper that essentially talks about three things: the weather, Princess Diana and the evil Labour party. The Express actually just rehashed a story written last October, with a slight edit to suggest they were a hair's width from being totally right about saying 2015 would be the worst winter since the opening sequence of The Empire Strikes Back. The truth was last winter was one of the mildest on record. The Express would have been more accurate had they said 'Pretty bog standard winter with some cold days and some mild days, lots of wind and a cold spring', because this is essentially what six of the last 10 years have been. Of the other four we had two colder than average winters and two warmer than average winters and warm springs (both of these years my apricot tree fruited).

The thing is as the Met Office says on a regular basis - anything over a week and you get into chaos theory and frankly you can only base long range forecasts on trends and computer models, therefore the Met Office has said what I said in the paragraph above - 2016/17: an average winter with colder spells and milder ones. Yet this is the sixth time in seven years the Express has told us we're all going to freeze to death.

Why?

What does scaring the shit out of Brexit-voting pensioners achieve? Do governments just say to newspapers that parts of the economy need stimulating so make up some shite that'll get pensioners in Bournemouth bulk buying bog paper from the local Asda, or is that just a crazy conspiracy theory too far?

* Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (left-ish UK Muslim journalist)

Can we Trust Politics Now?

£350 million to be redirected to the NHS.
A points-based immigration system and a block on unwanted foreigners.
The scrapping of VAT on fuel.

These are just three of the promises made by the Brexit campaign to woo voters to opt for leave. Three Brexit pledges made, supposedly in good faith and all three disregarded and now seen as lies by some people - but not all, some people still believe the country has made the best decision.

Is there any suggestion that the Brexit campaign should, in some way, be held responsible for the mess we could be in. Or even a call for a report on how people were mislead about certain aspects or even the simple fact that the 'powers that be' were so convinced we would vote Remain, they had no actual plan.

So we stumble almost blindly into the unknown and the pressure is growing for an actual action increases. The feeling I'm getting from the other 19 members of the recent G20 summit appear to be one of 'don't expect any favours' and that doesn't surprise me. This advisory referendum has become an edict which threatens the economic stability of the world or that's how some people view it.

The fact that David Davis - the Brexit bloke - has said the country has to work with the other EU countries to work out the best trade deals given that another one of the key points of the Brexit campaign was the inability for us an EU member to strike up deals outside of the EU, suggests to me that some of our politicians haven't got a clue about how things work and are just making stuff up as they go along.

To be fair, I was actually struggling to criticise the May administration, but that might have be down to the fact they appear to have realised the country is all politicked out, so they were just keeping their heads below the pulpit. Then the reintroduction of grammar schools made me realise that the drive backwards to Victorian times was just delayed.

People are fed up with it all - politics, that is - and no more so than Labour supporters who, to the uninformed, are members of a chaotic warring party with no interest in government when they can destroy themselves instead and generate all the headlines while the Tories get little or no coverage of their master plan - if it isn't particularly fair or just.

The Brexit vote was a protest vote; the problem was it was a protest against no one really knows what. The government? Europe? Politicians? The establishment? Goats?

Some people seemed to think that by voting Leave they were emancipating themselves and forcing the government to realise they wanted an end to austerity and a return to prosperity; the problem was the government and all politicians didn't listen, won't listen and we won't see things get better for the average person. For them it was never about and should never be about that - the poor and disenfranchised are pretty much collateral damage - just ask Gideon.

Last week businesses were suggesting our food bills will ultimately rise and some suggested they might move their businesses to Europe, because of costs (over profits... see, for the rich Brexit is nothing more than logistics). This means the salads you used to buy that were locally grown by local farmers, will be grown in Poland by  those (no longer) 'local' farmers, who relocated to ensure they can continue in business (while paying staff much less than they would have to here). One man on telly the other day - a grower of iceberg lettuces - showed how prices for his product have dropped by 50% in the last 15 years and he was 100% sure that prices would now have to increase - because of everything from the devaluation of the £ to the unease amongst the people they banked on getting their crops in.

Some people think it's a price worth paying. My guess is those people will be making money either way. Other people - your average Joes of life - will also think it's a price worth paying for our 'independence' and you tell them that things will get worse because of it and they are unfazed, like less for more won't affect them.

To quote a friend, 'we live in a post-expert world' and if the referendum is anything to go by this is totally correct, except that isn't strictly true because now everyone is an expert - based on faith and feeling rather than anything rational or learnt. Politicians are now hard targets and, outside of the glossed over media, people are just growing angry with nothing seemingly happening to change their lives.

If Fred Bloggs thinks or feels something this becomes far more important than actual fact. Social media has made people remarkably self-aware and it has made some people think that by giving the public access to comment, their voice is as important as anyone else's, despite it just being a grain of sand on a country-sized beach. However, link these individual commentators with a common theme - xenophobia in this particular case - and you are no longer an individual, you have become a movement. Even if you're not.

People want something to change - even the Remain vote acknowledge this - but more importantly, people in depressed areas expect positive change (ironically unaware, it seems, that any money they received in the past 40 years was largely down to the EU and not their own governments) and if that doesn't happen then who knows how they will react. I'm not suggesting we're going to have riots or mass insurrection, but since Brexit some people have shown their true colours and the unprecedented rise in hate crime hasn't really been addressed by holidaying, coke-sniffing, allotment-tending, rent-boy leasing or Swiss mountain visiting politicians. People are now being murdered because they're foreign. People being abused in cafes, bus stops, pubs and on the street because of a different language, a hijab, a beard, anything that some idiots find unBritish.

I remember 'Paki-bashing' from the 1970s. Not just gangs of skinheads, but average people, getting involved in fascistic activities because they didn't have the emotional intelligence to accept people from different cultures. No wonder there are a huge number of people out there more interested in war than peace.

Decent and seemingly honest politicians all over the world are vilified by the corporate overlords who probably really run the world and yet we hear that politicians like George Osborne showed nothing but contempt for people who didn't vote for his party and even suggested that helping the poor only creates more Labour voters... Surely being an MP gives you the responsibility of care for all the electorate, not just your mates? Jeremy Corbyn, whatever his faults are, isn't being attacked for his desire for a fairer society, he's being attacked for everything else. The media isn't that stupid, they ignore the policies that might get people thinking and focus on anything that is bad. Because people, especially now, want the shit; the shit is interesting, helping some 'scrounging single-parent disabled lesbian' isn't.

Politics has stopped being about you because you stopped caring about the big picture, this allowed politics to become an almost elitist privilege and cemented the rift between 48% of the population and the people they view as only in it for themselves. Perhaps this was the ultimate goal, to reduce the voting electorate to the bare bones by convincing people it isn't worth voting for any of them as it only encourages them more? The lower the turn out the higher the chance of a Tory victory.

Political attrition has been going on for nearly 40 years and we now have no trust in politicians to do the right thing for the country and its people.

Simple Truths

The Anti-Corbyn/Real Labour bandwagon continues on at a cracking pace with the London mayor jumping onto the float and waving his anodyne Owen Smith placard.

It's getting annoying now and it could have been handled so differently and it might have won this futile battle for the centre of the party, without the hostility and humiliation; the problem is that the one thing that could have played this out so differently won't be approached by the Pink Tories in the party, presumably because it would mean admitting something slightly distasteful...

Jeremy Corbyn doesn't become unelectable because lots of people say it. Jeremy Corbyn isn't unelectable because of his politics, his beard, his allotment or his actual successes. However, if the bits of the Labour Party that really don't want him were to be factually accurate about the situation, then maybe even hard left supporting Trots - like me - would admit defeat, or be prepared to discuss compromises (that do not involve Owen Smith, because if Corbyn is toxic, Smith is rancid, festering and sickness inducing - he's as electable as Kinnock.

What do I mean? How is this simply resolved?

As I recently liked to remind people - I have ZERO political qualifications, yet I seem to have more of a grasp on reality (despite the years of drug abuse) than anyone in politics, therefore it seems obvious that the easiest way to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn is to make the following statement:

Jeremy Corbyn will not win the next General Election because the media, the press and the corporations, organisations and economic powerhouses that do run the country won't allow it.

Cut this BS about being unelectable, because so far that is totally provable as a lie and a falsehood. Evidence suggests he is electable from his landslide leadership victory to the massive number of gains in by-elections (council and Westminster); but the refusal of even the most non-right-wing papers to print anything that resembles the truth, or the failure of all the TV news agencies to also report anything positive without spinning the negative bigger.

The reason this is being done is because Corbyn is all too electable. If he wasn't, he'd be treated with the same disdain and ignorance as the Green Party or the Monster Raving Loony candidate. The fact we are constantly having it rammed down our throats how unelectable he is is a little like protesting too much. Now, you could say I'm clutching at straws or just reading into a bad situation some conspiracy theory to make me feel better, but ask yourself this - how many people out there are truly un-electable? That'll be most political parties. How many of them are relentlessly hounded by Tory-backed papers telling us how bad it will be if they get elected? That'll be NONE. 

Tories like mandates; hell, most of their extreme ideas come from this fictitious mandate of the people bollocks. What better way of having that mandate in spades with cream and a cherry on top, especially if Corbyn and Labour are so awful they'll be lucky to get 20 votes nationally? Just call a GE, win 400 seats and rebuild it in a neo-liberal/neo-Nazi way with the blessing of the people. How come that hasn't happened then? Are the Tories really that worried that UKIP - now kind of officially obsolete - might suddenly increase their vote share by another 40%? Or perhaps it's the secret Lib Dem resurgence? Heck, even with voter dissatisfaction at an all time low, surely this completely useless, warmongering, peacenik vegetarian allotment user doesn't stand a chance... So how come the gamble hasn't been taken - the lower the turn out the better chance of a Tory landslide?

So remember, if the papers, the TV and all your mates down the pub, not influenced by either the media, social media or their other mates, and because they obviously form their own opinions based on their own research rather than hearsay and propaganda, say Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable then it must be true.

Oh yeah; we'd never vote to leave Europe and people trust things 'normal' politicians say, too.

The Momentum of Progress or the Progress of Momentum

At some point at the end of September a group of people are going to put their political lives at stake and form a new - progressive - political party. This new party will either advertise itself as the true socialist party or will position itself as the only viable alternative to the now Trotsky-esque Labour Party if you care a wee bit about social justice and the poor not being butt-fucked that regularly.

These parties will be called Momentum (a trendy name for a progressive left wing party) or Progress (a cover for neo-liberalism and Blairite die-hards). Both will try and sell itself as the true Labour party.

It will happen because the Parliamentary Labour Party just ensured it by spending money that could have been put towards an election war chest to get a decision that will have no bearing on the ultimate outcome of the leadership vote overturned. The PLP are effectively crippling a Corbyn-led party's finances so they can't possibly compete with anyone. If you vote Labour in a rebel's area, are you aware that your own party is undemocratically trying to screw itself - at your cost - just to ensure they all keep their cushy jobs.

But more importantly, by doing this and winning they alienate another x number of pro and anti-Corbyn voters who are going to blame them, not Corbyn, for any election defeat or any undemocratic decision. They have, essentially, killed their own party.

It doesn't matter whether Jeremy Corbyn is electable, eats cheese, likes porn, wears sandals, doesn't sing anthems, has an allotment, he hasn't tried to undo a democratic process - repeatedly - because he's selfish, irresponsible and didn't like the ending. He hasn't looked petulant and angry because things haven't gone his way. He hasn't repeatedly tried to overthrow the will of the largest single party leader vote ever, therefore if he remains leader the only option he has is to expel the dissenters from the party for undemocratic breaches of Labour ethics and morals.

He needs to cut these selfish self-centred political careerists out of Labour and see how they fare elsewhere, because never in anyone's life has there been such an obvious and desperate attempt by frightened politicians to change the rules to suit them.

Obviously, if the impossible happened and Owen Smith won the battle - somehow, the party is also finished because most CLPs and party members don't support him and would defect.

I fully expect to still be voting Labour at the next election. Good luck to those Machiavellian former Labour MPs at Progress.

Extreme Reality TV

"Yo, T-Man! How's it hangin' bro?"
"Klytus, I'm bored. What new play thing have you got for me?"
"Home boy, I got you something that will blow your mind."
"You said that about the last series of The Apprentice..."
"Yeah, but this is different, with a capital DIF."
"What are you suggesting, my questionable friend of dubious racial stereotype?"
"The T-Man for the Prez! BOOM! Donny's got his finger on the button world, watch out! BOOM! Yo is gonna run for the number 1 spot, big fella."
"They won't buy that."
"You better believe they will, sister."
"Okay, I'll buy that for a dollar. Explain to me how this is going to work?"
"We pretend you're standing for the Presidency. We throw you in there with all those faceless wannabes and all you have to do is be yourself - be the T-Man and blind them with your common sense and straight talking."
"But... I'm regarded as a bit of a dim-witted redneck..."
"Perfect, man, perfect!"
"The what?"
"TV. We make the best darned reality TV show ever - the biggest and the best - spotlight on the most powerful man in the world and your desire to be that man."
"What if we lose?"
"That's the whole point, T-Man. We lose but the rest of those losers are exposed for what they are."
"It won't last very long, this TV show. I can't see the Merican public buying the likelihood of me running for president."
"Tell them you'll build a wall along the Mexican border. You'll ban all Muslims from entering the USA. Be horrible to cripples and women. If there's a minority group to defend you'll attack them and vice versa. The more you offend them the more the ignorant racists will come out of the woodwork and support you."
"This is all well and good, but what if we win?"
"T-Man? Are you on something? We can't possibly win."

...

And so it began.

The T-Man's band of august ferrets began by fashioning their boy slightly to the right of Adolf Hitler and the first rule of their 'campaign' was 'Nothing is too outrageous'. Naturally, no one took any notice of the hordes of TV cameramen and auxiliary staff because that is what usually follows presidential candidates around ...