We [Don't] Care A Lot

My paternal grandmother, Alice Maher, was Jewish. I just want to put that out, in the public forum, before anything else. She may have been a lapsed Jew, but London, before, during and after, the Second World War wasn't as safe a place for Jewish people as you might imagine. It wasn't Germany, but they faced as much hate and segregation from some quarters as any Jews in Germany, Poland, Hungary or France. The plight of the Jewish people has, it seems, always been a struggle.

Imagine being mainly white and yet persecuted for being a religion that for many centuries has been a label to detest? Yet, here we are in the 21st century and the same thing appears to be happening to the world's largest organised religion. Muslims, especially since the turn of the century, have become the race and religion to be treated with distrust; to be sceptical about, to make up all kinds of bullshit about to reinforce people's beliefs. In the USA, there are white Christians murdering anyone, with high powered assault weapons and yet the American people are incapable of coming up with a solution to stop it and simply offer their hopes and prayers that 'God' will eventually stop the senseless killings.

The Republic of Ireland is an independent country apart from the bit at the top, which is part of the United Kingdom. It has been part of the UK for 800 years, when the British invaded Ireland and decided it was theirs. For centuries it was ruled by the British and it wasn't until 1921 when they finally escaped their captors and forged their own independent country, apart from the bit at the top... 

Imagine, if you will, that island of Ireland. Imagine that despite the Republic gaining its independence, the North decided that the area of land it had wasn't big enough, so gradually over the decades it took bits and pieces; starting with, say, Donegal, which is also at the top and to the west. Then it moved onto Louth and then Monaghan and then by the 1950s it took Cavan and Leitrim. Not content with having all of North Ireland, the British then took Connacht and moved down the west coast of Ireland 'repatriating' it and returning it to British rule until in 2000 when all that was left of an independent Ireland was Dublin, Wexford, Munster and most of Kerry - the rest were called the British Ireland Territories and the British weren't content; they still wanted lots of what was left.

Imagine this happening and it getting the full backing of the United States, and all the major European countries and as a result any dissenting voice coming out of Independent Ireland was either silenced or isolated so it sounded like feeble excuses, especially given that the Irish Liberation Organisation had been labelled a terrorist organisation and were not recognised by anyone apart from those crazy Irish people, who seem to have elected the political wing of these 'murdering terrorists' who have the audacity to challenge and fight the invading British armies...

This scenario is essentially what has happened in the Middle East since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, when the British acknowledged the right of the Jewish people to have a Middle Eastern homeland and from that point on, especially after World War Two and then the Six-Day War in 1967. In fact since that short-lived Arab-Israeli war in 1967, the Israeli governments have slowly but surely driven the Palestinian people out of their homeland and 'settled' in areas that they believe was their ancient home and their birth right to regain. While this has happened, the West has steadfastly ignored everything the Israelis have done and whenever the region gets into the news it's because Palestinians - either the PLO or now Hamas - have dared fight back against the oppression they have suffered since 1948. The example I gave you above about Ireland is essentially what has happened in the Middle East; Israel was smaller than Palestine in 1948, by 2023 there's probably going to be a region comparatively the size of Yorkshire in the UK that is for Palestinians, everywhere else has been 'settled' by the Israeli people and they do this with the full backing of the USA, the UK, most of Europe and a large percentage of 'important' countries in the world.

A fantastic example of the bubbles we live in can be found if you trawl through social media and the comments sections of all the major UK newspapers. We have been indoctrinated so well over the last 50+ years that we now think of Palestinians as 'Muslim terrorists' even if they're just young children and we also think that Israel has an almost God given right to annihilate them; almost as if they're really just an infestation rather than being the indigenous race. Everywhere we look or listen to it's about the poor Israelis and how they're suffering. It's pure indoctrination, the same way that the west has demonised left wing politics as communism or how socialism is a bad thing and like anti-Muslim rhetoric, the sheep will believe what they're told by those with a vested interest in people believing them.

What Hamas did on October 7th was a heinous and cowardly act of aggression, probably akin in many ways to a mass suicide bombing. Palestine was going to be assimilated inside the next 20 years anyhow; the Israeli government have been looking for an excuse to raze the place to the floor to make occupying it much easier and allow other countries to come in and rebuild it for them, thus cementing the brilliant relationship between Israel and its Western allies. What Hamas did was essentially sacrifice its own people so that the world would start to look at Israel in a different way. The problem is despite the hundreds of thousands of people who have marched in protest last weekend, the rest of the world doesn't care. We've had 22 years of constant bombardment from the press about wicked, extremist or bonkers Muslims, so in many eyes around the world this is just pay back for all the terrorism caused by Muslims - which, of course, represents less than 10% of all actual terrorism caused since 11th September 2001, but why let facts get in the way of hatred?

The unbelievable silence from world leaders about the mass murder of women and children in Gaza, dismissed away by the flimsiest of excuses, 'there were Hamas fighters in that hospital' and the acceptance that anything the murderous IDF or the Nazi Likud party tells us and the scepticism from the same world leaders at the amount of women and children who have died in Gaza is reprehensible; it's like anathema against Palestine because they exist and it would be far more convenient if they didn't.

However, if you look at social media or news media or newspaper comments sections you will see that if you support Palestine you're the enemy - you're anti-Semitic - as well; because people don't see other people, they see terrorists and if children die it's one less future terrorist for their own children to worry about. If Israel says that a hospital bombing killing hundreds of people was caused by a rogue Hamas missile that malfunctioned and landed in the courtyard which as well as containing 1000 refugees also has a explosives dump, then people will believe that flimsy excuse because people will believe that Palestinians sleep with their missiles as pillows. They don't believe that Israel is capable of committing the kind of atrocities that the Nazis committed against them, despite extreme Zionists stating in their holy book the Talmud that no gentile (non Jew) is important and their lives don't matter.

Social media and comments section show that most people support Israel, despite there apparently being 78% of the population supporting an immediate ceasefire on humanitarian grounds; the problem is half of that number want a ceasefire because they're fed up with Palestine filling up the news and current affairs programmes; they're fed up with it being all over their newspapers and on-line, just the same way as people have almost already forgotten the Ukraine crisis - out of sight, out of mind. People don't really care; especially not when there's a cost of living crisis, or when there's a zombie government doing nothing for them but seemingly raising interest rates, food prices and everything else while turning a blind eye to the profiteers wringing their last drops of profit out of people before the Labour Party come into power and might possibly stop that (which they won't). People don't care. They didn't really care when they put Ukrainian flags on their Facebook pages; the gammons in this country were happy for Ukrainians to come here as refugees because a) we weren't having that many and b) they weren't brown and didn't worship a God they were unfamiliar with. People don't really care and they regard the actual people that do as 'woke' or 'lefties' - that is how numb a large part of humanity has become to the lives of people who are dying.

If the UK allowed Palestinian refugees, which it probably wouldn't, how long before they get labelled 'economic migrants' or are pilloried because they have mobile phones or Nike trainers? How long before the faux fascists in this country start supporting the eradication of all Palestinians, in the same way that many of them felt we should shoot asylum seekers in the channel and let the French clean up the bodies? Saying you care is a whole lot different than actually caring. We live in a country where people don't even like their own neighbours and have been indoctrinated with a 'shop they neighbour' mentality, especially if they feel their neighbours have something these ignorant heartless bastards don't have.

But I'm getting away from the point - no country has any justification to target children or hospitals regardless of what they believe, especially not with missiles against a country that doesn't have a navy, an air force or an existing proper army. Yes, Hamas might be bankrolled by Iran, who we regard as our enemies, but Israel have state of the art weapons technology, sold to them by the UK and the USA, which they are using to kill children and then when challenged they feign incredulity and get angry that gentiles could be so harsh by criticising their right to defend their stolen country. 

But what's the point of telling you this; of explaining the actual facts of the situation and the reasons for why this has happened when most of you simply don't care? Maybe we need to be under threat before people start to realise that our leaders allow genocide as long as it suits their political aims and purposes. Maybe it's time people started to look at the bigger picture, explore the history, ask why this has happened rather than shout angrily at some 'rag head' or 'wog' they don't want to understand or sympathise with. The human race is lauded for its humanity, so where is that humanity when innocents are dying?

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.

Time to Change?

Before any of my 'not lefty' friends baulk at the title of this expecting it to be another attack on the Tories and why we should all vote Labour, you can put that notion to bed straight away. No ordinary Tory should be fearful of voting Labour at the moment unless you thought Ted Heath's Tories in the early 1970s radical loose cannons. Left wing political representation is almost non-existent in UK politics at the moment, so you can put that 'woke socialist takeover' on hold and concentrate on which party will privatise National Health first.

However, what I am going to talk about is trust in politicians and politics, because no one has trusted politics for about 15 years now and it doesn't matter what colour you wear, the average man in the street thinks you have yourself, your party and your party's friends interests at heart and the rest of us will have whatever's left of their time and inclination. The idea that a local MP has entered politics for altruistic reasons might have been the original narrative, but most MPs become so corrupted by what's on offer to them that principles often get thrown out with the rubbish and if you remain a man of principle then you're often the target of ludicrous smears and accusations.

Just remember kids, if you call your neighbour a cunt and then write it down on paper and post it through other neighbours letterboxes, at least two things you'll have is libel and slander; your neighbour can have you on those two things without hesitation. In politics, decent people can be called anything the press fancies and the victims have zero recourse unless they want their careers replaced with long-running libel/slander cases. The haters always win this scenario because if you want to stay true to your beliefs then you have to accept and ignore the shit that is thrown at you and if you decide to argue with these people you're therefore prevented from doing what you want to do, so your opponents always win.

Today's episode of 'What the fuck has my politician been up to today?' is about the Tory MP who thought he could put the cost of his own birthday card on his expenses. Remember something here, there are actual genuine cases of poverty and hardship out there that even gammons accept are not dole scroungers or liggers, but all Tory MPs for the last umpteen years have voted consistently to prevent the poorest people from getting more in benefits, yet he thinks he can put the cost of his own living as an MPs expense?

If it wasn't so horrendously stupid and ignorant it would be offensive. These people are on a minimum of £84,000 a year; they only have to breath and it can go on expenses. More than half of them have other jobs, whether actual physical jobs or acting as 'consultants' and some of these people get £3000 an hour for doing these extra jobs. They'd rather see a child starve than pay £2.50 for a birthday card (let alone try to claim someone else's expenses as your own).

What we need, whoever is in power, is a code of conduct for MPs that strips away all of the things that make being an MP a cushy job with no need to do much apart from say 'hear hear' or laugh at the opposition. No subsidies on second homes; no jobs for the wives and children if they're not actually working; no putting everything from cards to stables to coy carp ponds as MPs expenses. We need to stop normalising this kind of casual corruption, especially as these people would be the first to fire someone if they nicked so much as a Post-It note. 

MPs are elected by US to serve US and be responsible to and for US. That seems to have gone. It now seems to be we elect these charlatans to go and do whatever they want with no fear of recriminations. This is wrong and needs to stop. Then people might start to trust MPs again.

Subdivisions

One thing that most people in this country would agree on is we've never been so divided as a nation. I'd rather not spend time trying to separate all the different Tribes of Britain, but we have a new kind of politics in this country, one that embraces certain elements of Conservatism but also has a many Labour ideals, such as social justice and equity - these people aren't Liberals; let's get that straight from the word go - a liberal isn't what a lot of citizens of England have become. 

I know people who you would call Conservative through and through calling for more support for the poor and disenfranchised, while there are people who call themselves Labour supporters who display all the traits of racists and intolerant bigots towards selective audiences. I know socialists who had meltdowns when one of their children came out of the closet, while I know a Conservative who thinks voting for Brexit was a stupid thing and he wishes we could have a referendum again. Politics isn't simply red and blue with a dash of yellow thrown in; politics is multi-coloured and people are allowed to be socialists and not like European people.

Oddly enough I've never met a single person who thinks food banks are good and I've met no one who thought Gary Lineker was out of order for being a decent human being, but that might be down to the fact that in real life you rarely meet anyone with the specific views you often see on social media and where I live you rarely see anyone doing something like protest, not because we're following the example set by hypercritical newspapers, but because in the stick protests are few and far between; in fact the most contentious thing to happen to me in my quiet rural corner of Scotland has been the upcoming Coronation of Chaz the Third.

You see I think people have learned over the last few years that sometimes keeping what you think to yourself is probably the best thing to do. I saw this happen on Twitter when the Queen died; the people most likely to be disrespectful to a family about their deceased mother took a few days off, let the world do its thing; they ruffled no feathers. It was a wise decision. So as my very loyal Royalist 'town' is gearing up for the kind of public participation event we haven't seen since the Queen's silver jubilee in 1977, it's interesting to see what the anti-Royal and the ambivalent will do or say. Probably nothing because a lot of people in rural communities live and let live; there's plenty of other things to do. Obviously the same can't be said the closer you get to London and as you get closer to ground zero the veins in people's necks begin to pulse and twitch; more people froth at the mouth and talk about respect like it isn't a two-way street, because in 2023 respect isn't; it's a weapon used by whoever wants to take the moral high ground in a divisive issue.

Nothing is proving more divisive at the moment than the Royal family and the crowning of a man with quite a lot of money that's being paid for by his subjects, who currently are struggling to rub two halfpennies together. If this was 11th century Britain you'd understand it, but in 2023? 

British politics is also at a crossroads; the Tories are now slightly right wing of UKIP, while the Labour Party in a desperate attempt to please as many people as possible have morphed into a kind of Cameron-lite Tory Party, leaving the Libdems to feel a bit left wing and the Greens hoping they'll pick up votes from disgruntled left wing Labour voters who would rather remove a testicle or ovary with a rusty spoon than vote for Obi Wan Keir. 

Monarchists however are a curious subdivision; it crosses the political divide and becomes more of an us and them issue with people who do not have the same fawning worship of a bunch of ancestral Germans who gained the thrown through probable unfair shenanigans back around the turn of the 19th century. Where I live there are a number of devout Monarchists who put Pope worshippers to shame and I'm ambivalent towards them as I am towards it all. However, I don't think Monarchists feel the same way; there's a fealty between them that is almost as strong as the one they hold for the crown and they will fight for them; they will stand with hand on heart and recite the pledge of allegiance on Sunday and they will expect every other person in the country to be doing the same or they will be classed as traitors or worse, not British.

You can now be tarred with a brush for not wanting to be involved. I didn't realise that life was a case of choosing sides and if you opt out it's an offence?

Another Reason Why the BBC is Shit

The fact that BBC News now has about 30% outside content suggests the channel is desperate to stay on air with all the cuts being aimed at them. The weird thing about this is BBC News has, at least for the last eight or nine years, been a mouthpiece for the Tory government. Scrutiny has been in short supply of the Tories, the focus has been on anyone but them. So you'd imagine the BBC, in the knowledge that there's a good chance their evil overlords will be ousted from power next year, would be more 'inclined' to be a little more circumspect of the government and not appear to be gaslighting the country for them, still.

I know that theories abound about the BBC and how their impartiality, especially towards the Conservatives, has never been more absent, but one wonders if the actual standard of journalism has been reduced to a level that the average intelligent person will switch off?

This morning on the offensive Nicky Campbell radio phone in - now televised on the news channel for two hours a day to cut costs - one of the many arseholes they invite on to spout bullshit made the comment: 'I completely support the teachers, nurses and other public sector workers desperate for a wage rise, BUT surely there's a more effective way of getting what they want rather than going on strike and effecting the lives of the people who support them?' This is a passive aggressive form of attack, something the right wing has become very good at. It used to be called whataboutery, but now it's more subtle. 

I wanted to be on that show, I wanted to have Twitter open in front of me or my mobile to text the programme. I wanted to say, "If striking doesn't work, what do you suggest they do? Writing a strongly worded letter to the Health Secretary? Stop caring about their patients? How does the caller think a pay issue will be resolved unless the people wanting a pay rise roll over and show their employers' their bellies and hope that's enough?" What an absolute fucking wanker and what a shower of cunts the BBC are for even allowing this idiot onto the show; but what should we expect? Yesterday, Jonty from Chichester phoned up to tell the listening public, in his posh voice, that nurses were greedy, already paid enough and need to stop being greedy! This was like when they invited Nigel Lawson on to argue the case for why climate change is a myth...

I love the way the BBC has managed to make people we were cheering for three years ago into villains now. Every time there's a strike, it never focuses on the needs of those on strike, but always attaches itself to the selfish wants and needs of the individual. "This strike is affecting my life and I don't like it!" Well tough shit, it's ruining the lives of the people who want more money, but don't you worry about them, until you need to have your life saved.