Well said, Rowan Williams, for speaking out on Osama Bin Laden. No doubt you will receive reams of hate mail from the mad colonels in Gloucestershire who read the Daily Telegraph religiously over their cornflakes, but you were quite right.
Everybody seems to be missing the point that the issue here is about the principle of justice. What makes us the “good guys” or is supposed to, is that we believe in this ideal. In any case, I doubt personally that Bin Laden was any more “responsible” for the 9/11 attacks than the Lockerbie bomber was responsible for downing flight 103, but his convenient demise will prevent a lot of awkward questions for the US administration that might otherwise have emerged at any form of trial.
When you get to the stage (which I fear we have now reached) when international justice is whatever the current US President says it is, and is enforced at the point of a missile or bullet, by special forces who act as judge, jury and executioner, then any pretence we had to be more “civilised” than Bin Laden and his cronies vanishes in the wind. We are, as George Bush said (out of the mouths of babes and sucklings…) back in the days of the Wild West.
And if, as some have claimed, it was an act of war, legally I am afraid they are mistaken. Legally, you cannot have a war on a concept and anyway, if it was a state of war, then presumably the Geneva convention applies, and always applied, to Guantanamo Bay?
Showing posts with label religious fucknuggets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious fucknuggets. Show all posts
Friday, 6 May 2011
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
The Road To Weakened Fear
While I have been stuck in hospital over the summer, I have been struck by a new phenomenon, deliberately engineered by the government, to keep us all cowed and apprehensive. Austerity anxiety.
I feel many people are cowed and anxious over what the future will bring, because the government has been deliberately pumping up the volume over the cuts, precisely in order to keep people in a subdued mood and stop them asking awkward questions like "why should poor people pay for the mistakes of rich people?”
Their other trick is to practice "doublespeak" by insisting that "we are all in this together" while simultaneously spreading scare stories about so--called "benefit scroungers" to divide and rule the opposition and promote disharmony in society.
It is a fundamentally dishonest and evil policy, and it is quite deliberate, as you would expect from a fundamentally dishonest and evil government. I would echo Bevan's comment about "lower than vermin", pace Harriet Harman, but I don't want to insult the vermin.
I see that the Daily Mail is reporting Rowan Williams' attack on this idea as "Archbishop attacks proposals to make the workshy pick litter" or some such headline.
The workshy? Excuse me?? The WORKSHY?????
Who the HELL are Daily Mail journalists, with their louche lifestyle, their excesses of alcohol and drugs, their credit card bills, which they happily write about in their columns, who the HELL gave these LEECHES the right to call the long term unemployed the "workshy".
I'd like to see them do a ten hour shift in a call centre for nothing, as an "interview" for a job, only to be told the week after that "you haven't been selected for the next round", as scandalously happened recently to my friend Phil, unemployed now for getting on two years and desperate for anything in a South Yorkshire economy that is collapsing round everyones' ears because of CleggTory cuts. It’s a great way to get workers for free without any tiresome H&S, tax, PAYE or wages. I wouldn't be surprised if the bastards aren't holding "interviews" every day!
How DARE the Daily Mail? Whilever Phil is reduced to digging up his garden and growing his own winter veg to survive on the dole, there should be public burnings of the Daily Mail outside every labour exchange.
Here's my question to anyone who thinks the long term unemployed are "workshy" :-
*W H E R E * A R E * T H E * J O B S ?
Where are the jobs in
Rochdale (84% unemployment)
Middlesbrough (67% unemployment)
Sparkbrook, Birmingham (63% unemployment)
Birkenhead (62% unemployment)
Where are the jobs in Grimethorpe? Where are the jobs in Rusty Lane, West Bromwich?
I have recently been re-reading The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, and SOS: Talks on Unemployment by S. P. B. Mais, two books which in their own way bookend the unemployment crisis of the 1930s, appearing in 1937 and 1933 respectively. One of the most telling passages is where Orwell discusses the unemployment figures. It is worth quoting at length:
When you see the unemployment figures quoted at two millions, it is fatally easy to take this as meaning that two million people are out of work and the rest of the population is comparatively comfortable. I admit that till recently I was in the habit of doing so myself. I used to calculate that if you put the registered unemployed at round about two millions and threw in the destitute and those who for one reason and another were not registered, you might take the number of underfed people in England (for everyone on the dole or thereabouts is underfed) as being, at the very most, five millions.
This is an enormous under-estimate, because, in the first place, the only people shown on unemployment figures are those actually drawing the dole — that is, in general, heads of families. An unemployed man's dependants do not figure on the list unless they too are drawing a separate allowance. A Labour Exchange officer told me that to get at the real number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figures by something over three. This alone brings the number of unemployed to round about six millions. But in addition there are great numbers of people who are in work but who, from a financial point of view, might equally well be unemployed, because they are not drawing anything that can be described as a living wage. Allow for these and their dependants, throw in as before the old-age pensioners, the destitute, and other nondescripts, and you get an underfed population of well over ten millions.
Some things have changed since 1937, such as the ratio of family heads to dependents, but a similar calculation could still be done to show that the “real” consequences of unemployment are far higher than shown by the official figures.
"Underfed" might nowadays be substituted with “badly fed” though Orwell also drew attention to how easy it was, even in 1937, to buy cheap, bad food to cheer yourself up while unemployed. In that respect, Phil is doing himself a favour by growing his own veg rather than buying Micro-Chips from Iceland.
And though things have may changed in some respects since it was written, what is really chilling about going back to The Road to Wigan Pier after a period of time, as I have done, is how much of it is startlingly prescient of 2010. To look for the philosophical antecedents of David Cameron, George Osborne, and Nicholas Clegg, you have to go back not only to Thatcher, the obvious model for driving a chariot with knives on the wheels through the ranks of public service, but also to the 1930s.
I shouldn’t be at all surprised, when you add the 600,000 redundancies which may result from the cuts to whatever the current announced “public” unemployment figure is, to see hunger marches again. In fact, before they become necessary, I think we ought to re-enact them, to remind this government, which has no legitimacy, and which was cobbled together over a weekend on the back of some spurious rumour about Greece and the Euro and the markets which everyone has now conveniently forgotten, of the consequences of its actions.
Since unemployment is likely to assume huge proportions in the lives of many of us over the next year or so, as the cuts begin to bite, it is worth devoting some time to an attempt at analysing some of the common causes and solutions, if any, and also what resonances there are between today’s causes and remedies and those of the 1930s.
Unemployment and the Impact of Mechanisation
This is chiefly only felt on manufacturing industry. There are plenty of “jobs” needing doing that are not affected by increased mechanisation, and never will be. What we are really arguing about here is the nature of work itself, and the value of different types of work. Of course, it is futile trying to rank different types of work by value. One might as well try and rank potatoes and apricots. But it doesn’t stop the boors, bores and bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” and “real jobs”, as if digging a hole in the road is somehow to be ranked higher than, say, cleaning a ward in a hospital, when in fact they are just different.
Globalisation, localism, and niche marketing
The question of how far it is reasonable to expect someone to travel a) in pursuit of a job and b) to commute to work once they have got a job, is critical to the argument of “on your bike” as a means of solving unemployment. Much as the Tories and their Liberal stooges would like to see the sort of “flexible” jobs market I described earlier, where people do a little bit here, a little bit there, and travel for hours in between, there are limits of practicality. There are some jobs where catching a bus for two hours, doing and eight hour day, and then catching a bus home for two more hours, is going to be a borderline decision. True, it is (for some strange reason) always easier to get a job when you have already got a job, than to get one when you are unemployed, but that in itself is not a reason for taking a borderline job.
There is also the issue of quality of life. Otherwise, if quality of life did not matter, it would be easy for an unemployed man to go and get a job at the other end of the country, live in a hostel, and just send money home. But what sort of a life is that, when he is reduced purely to a unit of economic production and never sees his family from one month end to the next.
Globalisation merely extends this principle. If the work is in China, then get on your rickshaw, and go and get a job in China, and Fedex the money home to Bolton every week, taking the “on your bike” scenario to its nth degree. Where is the quality of life in that? I would love to see some of these fat, sleek, Tory and Liberal MPs whose life is organised for them to the last minute, put up with such disruption and inconvenience! What – no way of getting back to the constituency second home at the weekends? Why, that would never do!
The other side of the globalisation coin, of course, is that there are more than enough Chinese people in China wanting jobs already, all of whom are happy to work (probably) for far less than the incomer would require.
And that is reflected in the end cost of their products, as well. So our poor old unemployed British worker is hammered from two directions. Maybe the only job he can get involves massive sacrifices of quality of life in return for not-massive amounts of money, and moving far away from home and all that it entails, all his ties, friends, neighbours, and familiar haunts. And in the end, if he does go down the sacrificial route, he may find that he is only earning slightly more than he would have got on benefits anyway. (The Tory answer to that dichotomy is of course to seek to cut the benefit, rather than raise the wages!) He is unlikely to get a job in “mainstream” manufacturing now, because so many of our household items, goods and chattels are manufactured much more cheaply in China, or somewhere similar.
So what can we do to overcome these particularly thorny issues of globalisation and unemployment? Under the old Domestic System of Industry, of course, in England before the Industrial Revolution, most people found work in the immediate locality. The weavers, in my own West Riding of Yorkshire, found their work waiting for them downstairs! It would be good in many ways to get back to a situation where goods were made in the locality where they were needed. It would also be more sustainable. It would save us having to ship goods half way round the world in container ships and airliners. So, one solution would be if we all made what we needed, but this is hardly practicable in that it doesn’t allow for the unemployed worker to make a second bowl and sell it. Nor does it compete with the fact that it is cheaper, quicker, and more efficient, assuming you have the money, to just go and buy a plastic bowl made in China, in the local hardware shop, than to carve yourself one out of a large lump of teak, rosewood or mahogany, however satisfying the latter might be as a craft exercise.
Clearly, what is needed is for people to be able to manufacture something which is desired, useful, economic to produce in these Islands with our western overheads, and unobtainable elsewhere. This is where niche marketing, and the role of the internet, can come in. And maybe the products could be something to combat climate change?
This solution could perhaps be used to solve, or partially solve, another situation which S. P. B. Mais was criticised for, another by-product of unemployment, which is that if the unemployed take up manufacturing something at a lower rate than the existing manufacturer, or providing a service, for that matter, at a lower rate, they are undercutting commercial enterprises and potentially spreading unemployment there as well. The trick again is to manufacture something novel – more so now than in the 1930s, because now, the unemployed are unlikely to be able to undercut the wholesale prices of Chinese manufacturers anyway, and the competition is no longer between the unemployed miners’ workshop making cut price toys for the kiddies and the local high street toy shop, but rather between the miners and a factory in Shanghai. A unique product, however, sets its own price.
At he end of the day, however, perhaps we shouldn’t be over-concerned about protecting the interests of industry from the efforts of the unemployed to become entrepreneurs. We should remember what Michael Foot said, on the campaign trail in 1983.
We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do
Women in the Workplace
This was a big issue in the 1930’s. S. P. B. Mais devotes a whole programme to it in the scripts of his talks. Even though the effect of WWI had been to emancipate women in the workplace, there were still some antedeluvian voices in 1933 arguing that women should stay home and raise children (not that there is anything wrong per se with mothers who choose to do this). In fact, there are still some antedeluvian voices who say this today, but I don’t think that the genie of Mrs Pankhurst is ever going to go back in the bottle.
Today, though, what may be called the “women” argument about unemployment has been largely replaced by the “immigrant” argument. This is often simplistically represented as “there are three million unemployed and there are three million “guest” workers here (or whatever the figure currently is) – immigrants from the EU and elsewhere – send them all home, and we could have full employment!” This ignores two things: - one, that whilever we are signed up to the EU and its political projects, we have absolutely no control over our own borders. Secondly, that the jobs thus vacated would need to be in the same areas where there are native British citizens unemployed, and that the native workforce would have the equivalent portable skills to be able to step in and fill their shoes.
Neither of these is evident, or automatically true, but again, this doesn’t stop those who, from either ignorance or design, seek to conflate migrant workers, asylum seekers, and non-white British citizens, and who propagate the view that unemployment is somehow exclusively a racial issue. There is currently common ground between race and unemployment, in that certain ethnic groups are disproportionately more highly represented in the unenplyment figures: young black males for instance. But this is due to social and economic factors. They live in areas of high social and educational deprivation, lacking opportunity, many of which are the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980’s, and they suffer also the peer pressure of the American “gangsta rap” culture, which makes it “uncool” to have a “job” that doesn’t involve drugs, fast cars, or pimping. They are not unemployed inherently because they are black.
I have long argued that the only immigration policy which makes sense is to look at the range of skills and talents we need here in the UK, particularly those we are short of, and to adjust our own UK immigration policy accordingly. So much so that, as far as I am concerned, if asylum seekers have the skills we need, it would be far more sensible to let them work and pay tax and make a contribution to the UK while they wait for their cases to be decided, rather than spend public money locking them up, policing them, and deporting them. If they renege on the deal, of course, that’s it – they go back, without the option. Anyway, I digress. One important point to stress, though, is that when I say “British Jobs for British Workers”, I mean “British Workers, whatever the colour of their skin”, whereas of course the likes of the BNP mean “British Jobs for White British Workers”.
Waged versus Unwaged
The recent Tory proposal to compel the long-term unemployed to pick litter in return for their benefits, or lose the benefits, once again provides another correspondence between the modern situation and S. P. B. Mais’s 1933 SOS Talks on Unemployment. This is basically the issue of whether or not the unemployed should have to work for their benefits, and off the back of that, whether the unemployed should do things voluntarily in return for training and experience, either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis. Back in 1933, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement opposed the many philantrhopic and well-meaning schemes which SPB documents (toy making, furniture making, allotments) on the grounds that these voluntary clubs were merely a sop to the idea of keeping the unemployed occupied, at any cost. They also opposed the larger schemes, where unemployed men did heavy work such as marsh draining or tree felling, in return for a free meal or a new pair of boots.
Even though, in many cases, the 1930s schemes were not compulsory, and were mainly paternalistically aimed at improving the skills and employability of the attenders. George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, also documents the opposition of the NUWM to these schemes, on similar grounds.
Although the NUWM ceased to exist in 1946, if it objected to the 1930s clubs run by well-meaning colonels and local busybodies, it would be apopleptic about the modern-day proposal by the Tories. Indeed, it is difficult to defend it in any rational way, but then it isn’t a rational policy. A rational policy would be that if you have to do the work, in order to receive the corresponding remuneration, it should be paid at the legal, minimum wage. Plus, of course, those officious prodnoses at the Labour Exchange whose job it is to harrass the unemployed by ensuring that they have been seeking work, shouuld be forced to acknowledge that, lacking gift of bilocation, the unemployed can’t be picking litter and actively seeking employment at one and the same time.
One area of S. P. B. Mais’s work, however, which perhaps does bear reconsideration for the 2010 unemployment crisis, is that of allotments. There is a great deal of wasted land in the UK, which could be turned over to the cultivation of healthy, organic vegetables and fruit. All that is lacking is the organisation and the political will. If someone on unemployment benefits wants an allotment, they could be given one in some sort of bargain over their arrangements which would allow them the leeway to devote some time to growing their own and their family’s food while still seeking work. It would, today, as in the 1930s, get people out into the open air, teach them new skills, and save them money on food.
Of course, this Tory proposal isn’t serious – at least I hope it isn’t. The answer to long term unemployment in areas of chronic economic crisis and disadvantage (again, much of which was caused by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) is not picking up litter. Or at least, not on those terms. If the government wants to create proper social enterprise companies to pay people a living wage to do socially useful work that benefits the whole community, that is, of course, a different matter. That is one of the fundamental tenets behind Rooftree. Indeed, social enterprise is one major way in which the government could start to get us out of this mess, by creating a whole new sector in the economy. But, in reality, I view this proposalas nothing more than another strand in the government’s “divide and rule” policy of simultaneously insisting that “we are all in this together” while sowing discord and disharmony and rumour, with deliberate but baseless stories of “benefit scroungers”, straight out of the “man in the pub” manual of journalism, and lapped up and reprinted almost verbatim, of course, by the likes of the Daily Mail.
On Your Bike – or way off the Bus Route?
The litter picking proposal is not the only wacky Tory solution to unemployment being bruited abroad at the moment. Tory bastard Iain Duncan Irritable-Bowel Smith seems to think that full employment is only a bus-ride away. When he was in charge of the whole shambles, a few years ago, he styled himself “The Quiet Man” and, to be fair to him, he has a lot to be quiet about. I sometimes think the Tories won’t be happy until the entire jobseeking workforce is lined up by the side of the road, with their possessions on their back, their children and their livestock, ready to ride off into the sunset on the first bus that comes along, in the hope of a few hours; fruit picking on the Gower Peninsula, then maybe over to Kent for some hopping, up to Skelmersdale for some PCB assembly, and so on. The fact that this would all be piece work, un-unionised, with minimal health and safety, and gangmaster wages, is not lost on me, either. It would be the Tory bosses’ vision of hog-heaven, freed from the schackles (as they see them) of the only progressive achivements of Blair and Brown’s era.
Again, like the litter-picking idea, I hope this is just specious nonsense and kite-flying to appeal to Middle-England bigots, but I suspect, in this case, that they may actually be serious. I think old “Irritable Bowel” really means it. So, let’s take him at his word, just assuming for the moment that this “Son of Tebbit” policy has some practical merit. Let us assume that (if you live in a rural area) there even is a bus to take you where you want to go. Where are the jobs? We come back again and again to this central mantra. Where are the jobs? Where are they?
Osborne is going to add something like 600,000 people to the dole queue as his planned cuts bite and take hold: how is the removal of so many previously economically active people from the daily round of commerce, the weekly supermarket shop, the knock on effect of their spending power – how is that going to stimulate the economy? How is it going to create any more jobs? In the same way as Orwell quite rightly noted the “hidden” numbers of unemployed behind the official figures, so there are hidden figures of “employed” whose jobs depend on other people coming into their shops and spending money.
It is all too easy, as I sit here writing these words, safe in my warm bed (yes, I am sitting writing this in bed!) listening to the wild winds of winter howling and wailing outside, and hearing the rain flung like handfuls of gravel at the window – it is all too easy for me to deride and poke fun at these stupid Tory proposals. In fact, it is all too easy to deride and poke fun at them whether you are in bed or not!
In the 1930s, S. P. B. Mais reported on rough sleepers in the iron working areas sleeping out on the slapgheaps at night, for warmth, after the furnaces had been emptied. But, out there, in the night, even now, are people who are the victims of these Tory policies. They are bedded down in doorways or under bridges, desperately trying to keep warm so that they will see another dawn. Let us be perfectly clear about this, make no mistake, as a result of these laughable yet evil policies, targeting the poor and vulnerable while safeguarding the rich, powerful and influential, people will be driven to despair, to anxiety, to homelessness, and people will die. This winter, out in the cold, in once-Great Britain, in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, people will die, as a result of Tory cuts, propped up by the Liberal Dimwits. And I, for one, would like to hear the government justify to us how they manage to sleep at night, when they know this is the case, or indeed, why they should be allowed to, until something is done about it.
In case we are in any doubt about unemployment, these chilling words are from a letter sent to S. P. B. Mais after his book was published in 1933. Seventy-seven years later, it goes a long way to explain those “houses where the curtains stay closed all day” which George Osborne was keen to tell us about in his first broadcast as Chancellor [the one where he claimed we were all in it together.]
Glad of a rest, the unemployed man does not yet begin the frantic hunt for a job – a week’s rest will do me good, he thinks, and after that, I will have a look around. I shall soon get fixed up somewhere. But even while he thinks this, the chill of doubt strokes at his heart. A week or so later, he is saying to himself that he never dreamed times were so bad. The fruitless, despairing search for work which simply cannot be found has begun … See him now that some months have passed, with hope gone. He lies in bed longer each morning, keeps to the house more, is less tidy in his appearance, though unaware of the change, the chin is sunk lower, the face is half ashamed, the glance has become wavering and irresolute. He is losing his morale … like some wounded animal, creeping to a hole to die.
This is a very accurate assessment of the life of what Osborne calls “benefit scroungers”. I know which rings truer for me. I doubt that even the most ardent long-term adherents of benefits celebrate the lifestyle. All you can possibly hope for is to reach an accommodation with each grim grey day of disappointment and low horizons that comes around.
We cannot allow the government to go on sabotaging the economy. The only remedy for this parlous state of affairs, to stop these fools in their tracks before they inflict such damage on the economy that it takes a generation to recover, is a General Strike against the cuts, starting now. Yes, in fact, let us have a GENERAL STRIKE to protest against the cuts. And if a few stray cobbles end up being thrown through the windows of 10 Downing Street, so much the better! You have nothing to lose but your P45s!
I feel many people are cowed and anxious over what the future will bring, because the government has been deliberately pumping up the volume over the cuts, precisely in order to keep people in a subdued mood and stop them asking awkward questions like "why should poor people pay for the mistakes of rich people?”
Their other trick is to practice "doublespeak" by insisting that "we are all in this together" while simultaneously spreading scare stories about so--called "benefit scroungers" to divide and rule the opposition and promote disharmony in society.
It is a fundamentally dishonest and evil policy, and it is quite deliberate, as you would expect from a fundamentally dishonest and evil government. I would echo Bevan's comment about "lower than vermin", pace Harriet Harman, but I don't want to insult the vermin.
I see that the Daily Mail is reporting Rowan Williams' attack on this idea as "Archbishop attacks proposals to make the workshy pick litter" or some such headline.
The workshy? Excuse me?? The WORKSHY?????
Who the HELL are Daily Mail journalists, with their louche lifestyle, their excesses of alcohol and drugs, their credit card bills, which they happily write about in their columns, who the HELL gave these LEECHES the right to call the long term unemployed the "workshy".
I'd like to see them do a ten hour shift in a call centre for nothing, as an "interview" for a job, only to be told the week after that "you haven't been selected for the next round", as scandalously happened recently to my friend Phil, unemployed now for getting on two years and desperate for anything in a South Yorkshire economy that is collapsing round everyones' ears because of CleggTory cuts. It’s a great way to get workers for free without any tiresome H&S, tax, PAYE or wages. I wouldn't be surprised if the bastards aren't holding "interviews" every day!
How DARE the Daily Mail? Whilever Phil is reduced to digging up his garden and growing his own winter veg to survive on the dole, there should be public burnings of the Daily Mail outside every labour exchange.
Here's my question to anyone who thinks the long term unemployed are "workshy" :-
*W H E R E * A R E * T H E * J O B S ?
Where are the jobs in
Rochdale (84% unemployment)
Middlesbrough (67% unemployment)
Sparkbrook, Birmingham (63% unemployment)
Birkenhead (62% unemployment)
Where are the jobs in Grimethorpe? Where are the jobs in Rusty Lane, West Bromwich?
I have recently been re-reading The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell, and SOS: Talks on Unemployment by S. P. B. Mais, two books which in their own way bookend the unemployment crisis of the 1930s, appearing in 1937 and 1933 respectively. One of the most telling passages is where Orwell discusses the unemployment figures. It is worth quoting at length:
When you see the unemployment figures quoted at two millions, it is fatally easy to take this as meaning that two million people are out of work and the rest of the population is comparatively comfortable. I admit that till recently I was in the habit of doing so myself. I used to calculate that if you put the registered unemployed at round about two millions and threw in the destitute and those who for one reason and another were not registered, you might take the number of underfed people in England (for everyone on the dole or thereabouts is underfed) as being, at the very most, five millions.
This is an enormous under-estimate, because, in the first place, the only people shown on unemployment figures are those actually drawing the dole — that is, in general, heads of families. An unemployed man's dependants do not figure on the list unless they too are drawing a separate allowance. A Labour Exchange officer told me that to get at the real number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figures by something over three. This alone brings the number of unemployed to round about six millions. But in addition there are great numbers of people who are in work but who, from a financial point of view, might equally well be unemployed, because they are not drawing anything that can be described as a living wage. Allow for these and their dependants, throw in as before the old-age pensioners, the destitute, and other nondescripts, and you get an underfed population of well over ten millions.
Some things have changed since 1937, such as the ratio of family heads to dependents, but a similar calculation could still be done to show that the “real” consequences of unemployment are far higher than shown by the official figures.
"Underfed" might nowadays be substituted with “badly fed” though Orwell also drew attention to how easy it was, even in 1937, to buy cheap, bad food to cheer yourself up while unemployed. In that respect, Phil is doing himself a favour by growing his own veg rather than buying Micro-Chips from Iceland.
And though things have may changed in some respects since it was written, what is really chilling about going back to The Road to Wigan Pier after a period of time, as I have done, is how much of it is startlingly prescient of 2010. To look for the philosophical antecedents of David Cameron, George Osborne, and Nicholas Clegg, you have to go back not only to Thatcher, the obvious model for driving a chariot with knives on the wheels through the ranks of public service, but also to the 1930s.
I shouldn’t be at all surprised, when you add the 600,000 redundancies which may result from the cuts to whatever the current announced “public” unemployment figure is, to see hunger marches again. In fact, before they become necessary, I think we ought to re-enact them, to remind this government, which has no legitimacy, and which was cobbled together over a weekend on the back of some spurious rumour about Greece and the Euro and the markets which everyone has now conveniently forgotten, of the consequences of its actions.
Since unemployment is likely to assume huge proportions in the lives of many of us over the next year or so, as the cuts begin to bite, it is worth devoting some time to an attempt at analysing some of the common causes and solutions, if any, and also what resonances there are between today’s causes and remedies and those of the 1930s.
Unemployment and the Impact of Mechanisation
This is chiefly only felt on manufacturing industry. There are plenty of “jobs” needing doing that are not affected by increased mechanisation, and never will be. What we are really arguing about here is the nature of work itself, and the value of different types of work. Of course, it is futile trying to rank different types of work by value. One might as well try and rank potatoes and apricots. But it doesn’t stop the boors, bores and bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” and “real jobs”, as if digging a hole in the road is somehow to be ranked higher than, say, cleaning a ward in a hospital, when in fact they are just different.
Globalisation, localism, and niche marketing
The question of how far it is reasonable to expect someone to travel a) in pursuit of a job and b) to commute to work once they have got a job, is critical to the argument of “on your bike” as a means of solving unemployment. Much as the Tories and their Liberal stooges would like to see the sort of “flexible” jobs market I described earlier, where people do a little bit here, a little bit there, and travel for hours in between, there are limits of practicality. There are some jobs where catching a bus for two hours, doing and eight hour day, and then catching a bus home for two more hours, is going to be a borderline decision. True, it is (for some strange reason) always easier to get a job when you have already got a job, than to get one when you are unemployed, but that in itself is not a reason for taking a borderline job.
There is also the issue of quality of life. Otherwise, if quality of life did not matter, it would be easy for an unemployed man to go and get a job at the other end of the country, live in a hostel, and just send money home. But what sort of a life is that, when he is reduced purely to a unit of economic production and never sees his family from one month end to the next.
Globalisation merely extends this principle. If the work is in China, then get on your rickshaw, and go and get a job in China, and Fedex the money home to Bolton every week, taking the “on your bike” scenario to its nth degree. Where is the quality of life in that? I would love to see some of these fat, sleek, Tory and Liberal MPs whose life is organised for them to the last minute, put up with such disruption and inconvenience! What – no way of getting back to the constituency second home at the weekends? Why, that would never do!
The other side of the globalisation coin, of course, is that there are more than enough Chinese people in China wanting jobs already, all of whom are happy to work (probably) for far less than the incomer would require.
And that is reflected in the end cost of their products, as well. So our poor old unemployed British worker is hammered from two directions. Maybe the only job he can get involves massive sacrifices of quality of life in return for not-massive amounts of money, and moving far away from home and all that it entails, all his ties, friends, neighbours, and familiar haunts. And in the end, if he does go down the sacrificial route, he may find that he is only earning slightly more than he would have got on benefits anyway. (The Tory answer to that dichotomy is of course to seek to cut the benefit, rather than raise the wages!) He is unlikely to get a job in “mainstream” manufacturing now, because so many of our household items, goods and chattels are manufactured much more cheaply in China, or somewhere similar.
So what can we do to overcome these particularly thorny issues of globalisation and unemployment? Under the old Domestic System of Industry, of course, in England before the Industrial Revolution, most people found work in the immediate locality. The weavers, in my own West Riding of Yorkshire, found their work waiting for them downstairs! It would be good in many ways to get back to a situation where goods were made in the locality where they were needed. It would also be more sustainable. It would save us having to ship goods half way round the world in container ships and airliners. So, one solution would be if we all made what we needed, but this is hardly practicable in that it doesn’t allow for the unemployed worker to make a second bowl and sell it. Nor does it compete with the fact that it is cheaper, quicker, and more efficient, assuming you have the money, to just go and buy a plastic bowl made in China, in the local hardware shop, than to carve yourself one out of a large lump of teak, rosewood or mahogany, however satisfying the latter might be as a craft exercise.
Clearly, what is needed is for people to be able to manufacture something which is desired, useful, economic to produce in these Islands with our western overheads, and unobtainable elsewhere. This is where niche marketing, and the role of the internet, can come in. And maybe the products could be something to combat climate change?
This solution could perhaps be used to solve, or partially solve, another situation which S. P. B. Mais was criticised for, another by-product of unemployment, which is that if the unemployed take up manufacturing something at a lower rate than the existing manufacturer, or providing a service, for that matter, at a lower rate, they are undercutting commercial enterprises and potentially spreading unemployment there as well. The trick again is to manufacture something novel – more so now than in the 1930s, because now, the unemployed are unlikely to be able to undercut the wholesale prices of Chinese manufacturers anyway, and the competition is no longer between the unemployed miners’ workshop making cut price toys for the kiddies and the local high street toy shop, but rather between the miners and a factory in Shanghai. A unique product, however, sets its own price.
At he end of the day, however, perhaps we shouldn’t be over-concerned about protecting the interests of industry from the efforts of the unemployed to become entrepreneurs. We should remember what Michael Foot said, on the campaign trail in 1983.
We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do
Women in the Workplace
This was a big issue in the 1930’s. S. P. B. Mais devotes a whole programme to it in the scripts of his talks. Even though the effect of WWI had been to emancipate women in the workplace, there were still some antedeluvian voices in 1933 arguing that women should stay home and raise children (not that there is anything wrong per se with mothers who choose to do this). In fact, there are still some antedeluvian voices who say this today, but I don’t think that the genie of Mrs Pankhurst is ever going to go back in the bottle.
Today, though, what may be called the “women” argument about unemployment has been largely replaced by the “immigrant” argument. This is often simplistically represented as “there are three million unemployed and there are three million “guest” workers here (or whatever the figure currently is) – immigrants from the EU and elsewhere – send them all home, and we could have full employment!” This ignores two things: - one, that whilever we are signed up to the EU and its political projects, we have absolutely no control over our own borders. Secondly, that the jobs thus vacated would need to be in the same areas where there are native British citizens unemployed, and that the native workforce would have the equivalent portable skills to be able to step in and fill their shoes.
Neither of these is evident, or automatically true, but again, this doesn’t stop those who, from either ignorance or design, seek to conflate migrant workers, asylum seekers, and non-white British citizens, and who propagate the view that unemployment is somehow exclusively a racial issue. There is currently common ground between race and unemployment, in that certain ethnic groups are disproportionately more highly represented in the unenplyment figures: young black males for instance. But this is due to social and economic factors. They live in areas of high social and educational deprivation, lacking opportunity, many of which are the result of Margaret Thatcher’s policies in the 1980’s, and they suffer also the peer pressure of the American “gangsta rap” culture, which makes it “uncool” to have a “job” that doesn’t involve drugs, fast cars, or pimping. They are not unemployed inherently because they are black.
I have long argued that the only immigration policy which makes sense is to look at the range of skills and talents we need here in the UK, particularly those we are short of, and to adjust our own UK immigration policy accordingly. So much so that, as far as I am concerned, if asylum seekers have the skills we need, it would be far more sensible to let them work and pay tax and make a contribution to the UK while they wait for their cases to be decided, rather than spend public money locking them up, policing them, and deporting them. If they renege on the deal, of course, that’s it – they go back, without the option. Anyway, I digress. One important point to stress, though, is that when I say “British Jobs for British Workers”, I mean “British Workers, whatever the colour of their skin”, whereas of course the likes of the BNP mean “British Jobs for White British Workers”.
Waged versus Unwaged
The recent Tory proposal to compel the long-term unemployed to pick litter in return for their benefits, or lose the benefits, once again provides another correspondence between the modern situation and S. P. B. Mais’s 1933 SOS Talks on Unemployment. This is basically the issue of whether or not the unemployed should have to work for their benefits, and off the back of that, whether the unemployed should do things voluntarily in return for training and experience, either on a compulsory or a voluntary basis. Back in 1933, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement opposed the many philantrhopic and well-meaning schemes which SPB documents (toy making, furniture making, allotments) on the grounds that these voluntary clubs were merely a sop to the idea of keeping the unemployed occupied, at any cost. They also opposed the larger schemes, where unemployed men did heavy work such as marsh draining or tree felling, in return for a free meal or a new pair of boots.
Even though, in many cases, the 1930s schemes were not compulsory, and were mainly paternalistically aimed at improving the skills and employability of the attenders. George Orwell, in The Road to Wigan Pier, also documents the opposition of the NUWM to these schemes, on similar grounds.
Although the NUWM ceased to exist in 1946, if it objected to the 1930s clubs run by well-meaning colonels and local busybodies, it would be apopleptic about the modern-day proposal by the Tories. Indeed, it is difficult to defend it in any rational way, but then it isn’t a rational policy. A rational policy would be that if you have to do the work, in order to receive the corresponding remuneration, it should be paid at the legal, minimum wage. Plus, of course, those officious prodnoses at the Labour Exchange whose job it is to harrass the unemployed by ensuring that they have been seeking work, shouuld be forced to acknowledge that, lacking gift of bilocation, the unemployed can’t be picking litter and actively seeking employment at one and the same time.
One area of S. P. B. Mais’s work, however, which perhaps does bear reconsideration for the 2010 unemployment crisis, is that of allotments. There is a great deal of wasted land in the UK, which could be turned over to the cultivation of healthy, organic vegetables and fruit. All that is lacking is the organisation and the political will. If someone on unemployment benefits wants an allotment, they could be given one in some sort of bargain over their arrangements which would allow them the leeway to devote some time to growing their own and their family’s food while still seeking work. It would, today, as in the 1930s, get people out into the open air, teach them new skills, and save them money on food.
Of course, this Tory proposal isn’t serious – at least I hope it isn’t. The answer to long term unemployment in areas of chronic economic crisis and disadvantage (again, much of which was caused by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s) is not picking up litter. Or at least, not on those terms. If the government wants to create proper social enterprise companies to pay people a living wage to do socially useful work that benefits the whole community, that is, of course, a different matter. That is one of the fundamental tenets behind Rooftree. Indeed, social enterprise is one major way in which the government could start to get us out of this mess, by creating a whole new sector in the economy. But, in reality, I view this proposalas nothing more than another strand in the government’s “divide and rule” policy of simultaneously insisting that “we are all in this together” while sowing discord and disharmony and rumour, with deliberate but baseless stories of “benefit scroungers”, straight out of the “man in the pub” manual of journalism, and lapped up and reprinted almost verbatim, of course, by the likes of the Daily Mail.
On Your Bike – or way off the Bus Route?
The litter picking proposal is not the only wacky Tory solution to unemployment being bruited abroad at the moment. Tory bastard Iain Duncan Irritable-Bowel Smith seems to think that full employment is only a bus-ride away. When he was in charge of the whole shambles, a few years ago, he styled himself “The Quiet Man” and, to be fair to him, he has a lot to be quiet about. I sometimes think the Tories won’t be happy until the entire jobseeking workforce is lined up by the side of the road, with their possessions on their back, their children and their livestock, ready to ride off into the sunset on the first bus that comes along, in the hope of a few hours; fruit picking on the Gower Peninsula, then maybe over to Kent for some hopping, up to Skelmersdale for some PCB assembly, and so on. The fact that this would all be piece work, un-unionised, with minimal health and safety, and gangmaster wages, is not lost on me, either. It would be the Tory bosses’ vision of hog-heaven, freed from the schackles (as they see them) of the only progressive achivements of Blair and Brown’s era.
Again, like the litter-picking idea, I hope this is just specious nonsense and kite-flying to appeal to Middle-England bigots, but I suspect, in this case, that they may actually be serious. I think old “Irritable Bowel” really means it. So, let’s take him at his word, just assuming for the moment that this “Son of Tebbit” policy has some practical merit. Let us assume that (if you live in a rural area) there even is a bus to take you where you want to go. Where are the jobs? We come back again and again to this central mantra. Where are the jobs? Where are they?
Osborne is going to add something like 600,000 people to the dole queue as his planned cuts bite and take hold: how is the removal of so many previously economically active people from the daily round of commerce, the weekly supermarket shop, the knock on effect of their spending power – how is that going to stimulate the economy? How is it going to create any more jobs? In the same way as Orwell quite rightly noted the “hidden” numbers of unemployed behind the official figures, so there are hidden figures of “employed” whose jobs depend on other people coming into their shops and spending money.
It is all too easy, as I sit here writing these words, safe in my warm bed (yes, I am sitting writing this in bed!) listening to the wild winds of winter howling and wailing outside, and hearing the rain flung like handfuls of gravel at the window – it is all too easy for me to deride and poke fun at these stupid Tory proposals. In fact, it is all too easy to deride and poke fun at them whether you are in bed or not!
In the 1930s, S. P. B. Mais reported on rough sleepers in the iron working areas sleeping out on the slapgheaps at night, for warmth, after the furnaces had been emptied. But, out there, in the night, even now, are people who are the victims of these Tory policies. They are bedded down in doorways or under bridges, desperately trying to keep warm so that they will see another dawn. Let us be perfectly clear about this, make no mistake, as a result of these laughable yet evil policies, targeting the poor and vulnerable while safeguarding the rich, powerful and influential, people will be driven to despair, to anxiety, to homelessness, and people will die. This winter, out in the cold, in once-Great Britain, in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, people will die, as a result of Tory cuts, propped up by the Liberal Dimwits. And I, for one, would like to hear the government justify to us how they manage to sleep at night, when they know this is the case, or indeed, why they should be allowed to, until something is done about it.
In case we are in any doubt about unemployment, these chilling words are from a letter sent to S. P. B. Mais after his book was published in 1933. Seventy-seven years later, it goes a long way to explain those “houses where the curtains stay closed all day” which George Osborne was keen to tell us about in his first broadcast as Chancellor [the one where he claimed we were all in it together.]
Glad of a rest, the unemployed man does not yet begin the frantic hunt for a job – a week’s rest will do me good, he thinks, and after that, I will have a look around. I shall soon get fixed up somewhere. But even while he thinks this, the chill of doubt strokes at his heart. A week or so later, he is saying to himself that he never dreamed times were so bad. The fruitless, despairing search for work which simply cannot be found has begun … See him now that some months have passed, with hope gone. He lies in bed longer each morning, keeps to the house more, is less tidy in his appearance, though unaware of the change, the chin is sunk lower, the face is half ashamed, the glance has become wavering and irresolute. He is losing his morale … like some wounded animal, creeping to a hole to die.
This is a very accurate assessment of the life of what Osborne calls “benefit scroungers”. I know which rings truer for me. I doubt that even the most ardent long-term adherents of benefits celebrate the lifestyle. All you can possibly hope for is to reach an accommodation with each grim grey day of disappointment and low horizons that comes around.
We cannot allow the government to go on sabotaging the economy. The only remedy for this parlous state of affairs, to stop these fools in their tracks before they inflict such damage on the economy that it takes a generation to recover, is a General Strike against the cuts, starting now. Yes, in fact, let us have a GENERAL STRIKE to protest against the cuts. And if a few stray cobbles end up being thrown through the windows of 10 Downing Street, so much the better! You have nothing to lose but your P45s!
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Just Can't Budge It
Sometimes, for about a nano-second, a tiny bit of me feels sorry for the Literal Dimwits. I mean, they sort of go back to Gladstone, they are sort of a part of history. That's also their problem, though, now. Since Clegg bet the house on vingt et un bleu, and it came up, they don't stand for anything any more.
And at the next election, unless they are VERY stupid (always a possibility) Labour are going to be shouting from the rooftops, VOTE CLEGG, GET CAMERON! and even those not taken in my that must, perforce, wonder what exactly they would get if they ever voted Lib Dem again. I'll give you a clue, it's wearing a poke, it's covered in mud, and it likes haycorns. Voting Liberal Democrat is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Either Clegg hasn't realised that he's been so comprehensively shafted by Cameron (who is still wandering around with the slightly glazed air of someone who can't quite believe it ISN'T all a dream and he ISN'T going to wake up any moment in the shower with Sue-Ellen) or he has realised and, slut that he is, with his political knickers metaphorically round his ankles, he just doesn't care. Because 20 seconds of power is so worth sacrificing 150 years of principles for.
He's seriously underestimated this Forgemasters thing though. Not only is it a PR disaster akin to crapping on your own doorstep then treading in it, in Sheffield, but people in the Lib Dims at large are starting to ask, "hang on, if our glorious leader couldn't stop the Evil Tories cancelling a LOAN (not even a subsidy or a grant, a LOAN) to innovate manufacturing technology in a city for which he is one of the MPs, what exactly, apart from being the convenient whipping boys and patsies for announcing the Tory cuts, are we GETTING from this coalition?"
The rot, as far as the Tories/Mini-Tories are concerned, starts there. That is the only good news, as I confidently expect that by this time next year, dynamiting hospitals will be on the agenda and we will all be queueing in the street to catch loaves of bread thrown off army lorries. We just have to hope the rubber wheels fall off quickly, before they can do too much damage to the recovery, to British industry, and to jobs.
Seventy years ago, if you had a policy of blowing up Britain's infrastructure and deliberately wrecking its economy, you would have been tried as a traitor, stood up against a wall, and shot. How (sadly) times have changed.
The run-up to this budget has deployed the classic black propaganda technique of making people think it was going to be worse than it actually is. Although it is worse than it seems, when you look at it in more detail, the real damage to the economy will come as some of its key measures start to kick in, in the autumn, and in the new year, assuming the coalition lasts that long.
Before the election, the Liberal Dimwits opposed any increase in VAT, calling it a Tory tax bombshell. Osborne “failed to rule out” a rise in VAT, which told us all we needed to know really. And now the Liberals have helped the Tories achieve it, because of course there are some things which are so much more important than having principles.
So, in the autumn spending review, and in the departmental budget cuts of 25%, there is going to be a steep rise in the unemployment figures. The more so, when you factor in the effect of local government redundancies as well, as councils, unable to raise council tax, shed jobs instead, to cut costs. All of these people thrown out of work in the public sector will end up on the dole, drawing benefits, instead of earning money, paying taxes and putting spending power into the economy to drive the private sector revival. That revival is now in peril, as a result.
This budget is a victory for the small-minded, short-termist bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” in the public sector; arrogant, ignorant people who talk as if mixing cement was in some way more worthwhile than balancing the overtime budget of a busy social work department, or emptying bins, or educating children. People who think the amount of income tax you pay should dictate your say in society. These people still just don’t get it, they think that it’s possible to separate the public and the private sectors, that somehow they aren’t both part of the same economy. That you can somehow decimate one, without damaging the other.
But let’s just assume for a moment that this wacky idea has validity. Are ALL of these suddenly unemployed public sector workers going to get jobs in the private sector then? Where are these jobs? Where ARE they? And by putting VAT up to 20% in the new year, adding to inflation, transport costs, and depressing retail sales, how is any of THAT going to create or sustain a private sector revival?
Housing benefit is to be capped, so anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work will now be squeezed in that area as well. The medical test qualifications for disability benefit are going to be extended and accelerated, again as a sop to those in the Tory camp who believe the concepts of “the sturdy beggar” and “the undeserving poor”, the sort of people David Cameron now refers to as benefit scroungers (now that he is showing his true colours). As if rotting on benefits, because of a complete lack of hope, prospects and opportunity, to the point where it becomes inured in your culture, is some kind of career decision! I also find myself wondering, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis on whether the COST of all this additional medical testing will outweigh any savings to be made? Because this government has a habit of talking tough, but being equally profligate and stupid in its own way as Labour was. After announcing the bonfire of the Quangos, we’ve now got a new Quango for budgetary responsibility, and a couple of Quangos to monitor international aid, and now presumably there’s going to have to be a body of some description to organise this medical testing, unless it’s going to be outsourced, and who knows what expense? And of course we can always find taxpayer money to give to whirly-eyed fundamentalists or yummy mummies who want to set up their own school because they think they can do it better than the teachers.
The DWP’s figure for fraudulent DLA claims is about 0.05%, whereas the government are expecting something like a 20% reduction in claims as a result. That disparity can only mean that a lot of people currently eligible for, and deserving of, DLA, will no longer get it. And the net result might be to make it impossible for them to continue to work, and to pay taxes.
And of course, the Tories and their stooges think that all these people can be got off benefits and into jobs in the private sector. Again, where ARE these jobs going to be created? Where are these jobs? Quite how “bipping” people off benefits and not giving them any alternative employment counts as “protecting the vulnerable” is lost on me.
The Tories seem to think that cutting corporation tax will make rapacious international capitalists and entrepreneurs re-invest the savings, in employing more people in the UK, especially with the prospect of not having to pay NI. They won’t, they will just pocket it with a self-satisfied “kerching”, into a nice little offshore account in Belize. Just like, when the housing boom was in full swing, all those Tory politicians protested so loudly at the time that the housing bubble was unsustainable and all their chums in the city were getting usustainably rich and filling their unsustainable boots.
Fact is, if there was political will, there is the resource and the necessary plan to provide affordable housing for all in this country and to wipe out homelessness and reduce the pressure on the existing social housing stock.
Trouble is, we are NOW stuck with an unelected government which thinks it has a mandate to dynamite disused public buildings instead of converting them into social housing, because George Osborne got the idea from some redneck seal-clubber over a beer and a whaleburger in Tokyo.
It is, of course, the same old same old from the Tories, and no doubt those who have had their compassion bypassed at birth will be chortling about it and engaging in the usual triumphalism. I am surprised, though, that the Liberals haven’t had sleepless nights and considered suicide. Usually people who rat and re-rat that much suffer dreadfully from remorse and guilt. At least if they retain a spark of humanity. They have immense mental problems and guilt, because the gulf between their own innate compassion and the contradiction of their actions drives them over the edge. I can only observe that in the case of Clegg, Alexander and Cable, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving, bunch of people. The disused lift shaft awaits.
The standard Tory line is that there was no alternative, and that the finances inherited from Labour were a shambles. Labour had many faults, but nevertheless, there was another way. There still is another way. One which continues to attempt to grow the economy, while protecting the services which we all use and the benefits on which so many depend. And if the markets and the ratings agencies don’t like it, well, they can bloody well invade. They weren’t that good at picking winners when the bankers (who have got off far too lightly in this budget, but again that is only what you would expect from the Tories) were buying imaginary derivatives with non-existent money.
But the only way we will get this quickly, is if the coalition implodes. The only glimmer of light at the moment is that there are some Liberal Dimwits who are waking up to exactly how far Clegg has sold them down the river. Let’s hope they start rowing back upstream, and soon. Let’s hope they rediscover that they used to have a conscience, and that when they said they went into politics to make a difference, it wasn’t by dynamiting hospitals.
Back in the days of Thatcher, I used to have a foam rubber stress "brick" that I could throw at the television (in place of a real one, which would have been rather expensive in televisions)
Watching Osborne on telly just now, I think I may need to go and find it up in the attic.
"You shouldn't have to go off to work in the morning and see your neighbour's blinds drawn down as they spend their life on unemployment benefit"
Apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't have to do it for long, because this budget will soon result in BOTH houses with the blinds drawn down and the occupants on the dole, let's just unpick the thinking behind that statement.
How nasty, small-minded and divisive. Words calculated to appeal like a dog-whistle to those who harbour inbuilt prejudice towards the unemployed. What a gross over-simplification of the many and complex reasons for lack of opportunity, poverty and deprivation.
How *deliberately* calculated to appeal to the "there's too many of them over here with their benefits and their plasma TVs" brigade. People who have never known, or have forgotten, what economic deprivation is and who caused it (in South Yorkshire, it was the Tories)
And without offering any solution, either. So they are going to stop the benefit of the guy with his blinds down all day. What's he going to do? Get a job in the blind factory? I don't think they are hiring, right now.
Anyone who has the sheer gall and effrontery to utter such an evil, twisted, divisive message and then in the next breath to claim that we are all in this together really DOES deserve to be struck by lightning, and soon.
To those who say if we don’t do this, we will be punished by the markets,
I am sorry to say I disagree. Disregarding the fact that I think these people have no moral authority to dictate how we run our country anyway, and very little skill and judgement in financial rating anyway, at least from the evidence of their past performance, would the down-grading of the UK's rating, assuming it happened, lead to an immediate closure of any "money tap" - I don't believe it would. I believe it would make it more difficult, but not impossible, to get out of this mess.
Again, I think this is a matter of perspective. It's not surprising that having weathered the international banking crisis of 2008 when the whole of the financial sector was teetering on the brink of sliding off Canary Wharf and into the river, the nation's finances are in poor shape. But we've always had a National Debt, since the days of Walpole. And look what a mess we were in after the second World War, when basically we were in hock to the US up to our eyeballs. The difference then is that we had politicians of skill courage and vision, who in the teeth of that, established the Welfare State.
I am also becoming very skeptical about this analogy with Greece. It's trotted out regularly to explain the Damascene conversion of Clegg and Cable to the Tory hard line - the story being that, somehow, over the weekend of the coalition cabal, they also carved out the time to receive a detailed briefing on Greek economic matters and realised how bad it was. If you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy? Greece doesn't have control over its own economy, because it made the misguided decision to join the Euro, and now it's in the same position we were in on Black Wednesday, of having to take medicine that is not appropriate for it, because when it comes to the Euro, one size fits all, for good or ill. We are not, thank God, stuck with the Euro and all its problems and we do have control over our own interest rates, should that be necessary.
I have said enough on here before now about how stupid Labour were, wasting money on things like illegal wars and ID cards, and I have seen at first hand on a smaller scale how profligate government was. I also contend that at the end of the day, this lot are probably wasting just as much money in their own way, they are just wasting it on different things (unecessary new Quangos, re branding the DCSF, etc)
I have no objection to the principle of adjustment in the abstract, but I do, strongly and bitterly, resent the idea that the poorest and weakest must adjust the most, that this needs to be done with unseemly haste just to placate "the markets" - which even if this were true, then begs the question "Who Governs Britain" and once again I question this assumption that the recovery will still happen despite mass unemployment approaching three million, job losses, bankruptcies, reposessions, people being forced off benefits on the premise of non existent private sector jobs, VAT increases and the risk of high inflation.
If there were five jobs for every applicant, instead of the other way round, then George Osborne might have a point. He would still be a smarmy little squit whose face I would never tire of punching, but he might have a point. But it IS five applicants to every job, and it's going to get worse.
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?????
I often hear the phrase, when benefits are being discussed
“Those who choose not to work”
It’s an interesting concept. We're back to sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor here again. I contend that, given the chance and the opportunity, anyone and everyone wants to work, but that generations of people have been beaten down by lack of motivation, lack of opportunity, and lack of any idea how to go about it. Usually in areas of former heavy industry, where there is very little "choice" involved because there ARE NO JOBS.
I take issue with the word "choosing". But I do agree that those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work should be financially supported by a state benefit system, yes: I believe it's what sets us apart as a civilised society. Or one of the things anyway. Housing Benefit has been fuelled by the housing boom which was created by unsustainable offers of credit from irresponsible banks to people who didn't know what they were getting into, encouraged by lax regulation all around and - let us not forget - not one Tory voice was ever raised to object to this because their pals in the City were all busy filling their boots, thank you very much.
I am a little bit unclear about what people are supposed to do though, if there's no point in them applying for jobs and they "choose" not to work, and they don't get any benefits, I guess it comes down to .... oooh, a couple of days on their grouse moor for those with private incomes, and the rest ... er ... begging, I guess.
People who advocate this sort of thing do, however, make a point about the Labour market which is generally overlooked, which is the need to re-think what we have got along the lines of socially useful companies run at a profit by and for the public good. It is called Social Enterprise. This is a viable "third way" that would solve many of the problems and get people away from this "public versus private sector" class war which Osborne seems hell-bent on encouraging. I doubt, however, that he has ever heard of it.
And finally, today, we have had the most breathtaking example of doublespeak of this whole government so far, when they talk of "Revitalising Retirement"* by making old people work even longer! I feel really revitalised!
*In the same way as you could revitalise child care by sending them up chimneys (Oh, hang on, that's in NEXT year's budget)
How long, I ask, can these charlatans, this unelected government with no mandate to wreck our economy, be allowed to continue causing this damage without being challenged?
The only sane response to this budget, I think, is that of Quellcrist Falconer in the Harlan’s World novels by Richard. K. Morgan. I couldn’t put it any better. George Orwell couldn’t put it any better.
J B Priestley and S P B Mais couldn’t put it any better. So here it is.
So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal
And at the next election, unless they are VERY stupid (always a possibility) Labour are going to be shouting from the rooftops, VOTE CLEGG, GET CAMERON! and even those not taken in my that must, perforce, wonder what exactly they would get if they ever voted Lib Dem again. I'll give you a clue, it's wearing a poke, it's covered in mud, and it likes haycorns. Voting Liberal Democrat is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
Either Clegg hasn't realised that he's been so comprehensively shafted by Cameron (who is still wandering around with the slightly glazed air of someone who can't quite believe it ISN'T all a dream and he ISN'T going to wake up any moment in the shower with Sue-Ellen) or he has realised and, slut that he is, with his political knickers metaphorically round his ankles, he just doesn't care. Because 20 seconds of power is so worth sacrificing 150 years of principles for.
He's seriously underestimated this Forgemasters thing though. Not only is it a PR disaster akin to crapping on your own doorstep then treading in it, in Sheffield, but people in the Lib Dims at large are starting to ask, "hang on, if our glorious leader couldn't stop the Evil Tories cancelling a LOAN (not even a subsidy or a grant, a LOAN) to innovate manufacturing technology in a city for which he is one of the MPs, what exactly, apart from being the convenient whipping boys and patsies for announcing the Tory cuts, are we GETTING from this coalition?"
The rot, as far as the Tories/Mini-Tories are concerned, starts there. That is the only good news, as I confidently expect that by this time next year, dynamiting hospitals will be on the agenda and we will all be queueing in the street to catch loaves of bread thrown off army lorries. We just have to hope the rubber wheels fall off quickly, before they can do too much damage to the recovery, to British industry, and to jobs.
Seventy years ago, if you had a policy of blowing up Britain's infrastructure and deliberately wrecking its economy, you would have been tried as a traitor, stood up against a wall, and shot. How (sadly) times have changed.
The run-up to this budget has deployed the classic black propaganda technique of making people think it was going to be worse than it actually is. Although it is worse than it seems, when you look at it in more detail, the real damage to the economy will come as some of its key measures start to kick in, in the autumn, and in the new year, assuming the coalition lasts that long.
Before the election, the Liberal Dimwits opposed any increase in VAT, calling it a Tory tax bombshell. Osborne “failed to rule out” a rise in VAT, which told us all we needed to know really. And now the Liberals have helped the Tories achieve it, because of course there are some things which are so much more important than having principles.
So, in the autumn spending review, and in the departmental budget cuts of 25%, there is going to be a steep rise in the unemployment figures. The more so, when you factor in the effect of local government redundancies as well, as councils, unable to raise council tax, shed jobs instead, to cut costs. All of these people thrown out of work in the public sector will end up on the dole, drawing benefits, instead of earning money, paying taxes and putting spending power into the economy to drive the private sector revival. That revival is now in peril, as a result.
This budget is a victory for the small-minded, short-termist bigots who bang on about “non-jobs” in the public sector; arrogant, ignorant people who talk as if mixing cement was in some way more worthwhile than balancing the overtime budget of a busy social work department, or emptying bins, or educating children. People who think the amount of income tax you pay should dictate your say in society. These people still just don’t get it, they think that it’s possible to separate the public and the private sectors, that somehow they aren’t both part of the same economy. That you can somehow decimate one, without damaging the other.
But let’s just assume for a moment that this wacky idea has validity. Are ALL of these suddenly unemployed public sector workers going to get jobs in the private sector then? Where are these jobs? Where ARE they? And by putting VAT up to 20% in the new year, adding to inflation, transport costs, and depressing retail sales, how is any of THAT going to create or sustain a private sector revival?
Housing benefit is to be capped, so anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves out of work will now be squeezed in that area as well. The medical test qualifications for disability benefit are going to be extended and accelerated, again as a sop to those in the Tory camp who believe the concepts of “the sturdy beggar” and “the undeserving poor”, the sort of people David Cameron now refers to as benefit scroungers (now that he is showing his true colours). As if rotting on benefits, because of a complete lack of hope, prospects and opportunity, to the point where it becomes inured in your culture, is some kind of career decision! I also find myself wondering, has anyone done a cost-benefit analysis on whether the COST of all this additional medical testing will outweigh any savings to be made? Because this government has a habit of talking tough, but being equally profligate and stupid in its own way as Labour was. After announcing the bonfire of the Quangos, we’ve now got a new Quango for budgetary responsibility, and a couple of Quangos to monitor international aid, and now presumably there’s going to have to be a body of some description to organise this medical testing, unless it’s going to be outsourced, and who knows what expense? And of course we can always find taxpayer money to give to whirly-eyed fundamentalists or yummy mummies who want to set up their own school because they think they can do it better than the teachers.
The DWP’s figure for fraudulent DLA claims is about 0.05%, whereas the government are expecting something like a 20% reduction in claims as a result. That disparity can only mean that a lot of people currently eligible for, and deserving of, DLA, will no longer get it. And the net result might be to make it impossible for them to continue to work, and to pay taxes.
And of course, the Tories and their stooges think that all these people can be got off benefits and into jobs in the private sector. Again, where ARE these jobs going to be created? Where are these jobs? Quite how “bipping” people off benefits and not giving them any alternative employment counts as “protecting the vulnerable” is lost on me.
The Tories seem to think that cutting corporation tax will make rapacious international capitalists and entrepreneurs re-invest the savings, in employing more people in the UK, especially with the prospect of not having to pay NI. They won’t, they will just pocket it with a self-satisfied “kerching”, into a nice little offshore account in Belize. Just like, when the housing boom was in full swing, all those Tory politicians protested so loudly at the time that the housing bubble was unsustainable and all their chums in the city were getting usustainably rich and filling their unsustainable boots.
Fact is, if there was political will, there is the resource and the necessary plan to provide affordable housing for all in this country and to wipe out homelessness and reduce the pressure on the existing social housing stock.
Trouble is, we are NOW stuck with an unelected government which thinks it has a mandate to dynamite disused public buildings instead of converting them into social housing, because George Osborne got the idea from some redneck seal-clubber over a beer and a whaleburger in Tokyo.
It is, of course, the same old same old from the Tories, and no doubt those who have had their compassion bypassed at birth will be chortling about it and engaging in the usual triumphalism. I am surprised, though, that the Liberals haven’t had sleepless nights and considered suicide. Usually people who rat and re-rat that much suffer dreadfully from remorse and guilt. At least if they retain a spark of humanity. They have immense mental problems and guilt, because the gulf between their own innate compassion and the contradiction of their actions drives them over the edge. I can only observe that in the case of Clegg, Alexander and Cable, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving, bunch of people. The disused lift shaft awaits.
The standard Tory line is that there was no alternative, and that the finances inherited from Labour were a shambles. Labour had many faults, but nevertheless, there was another way. There still is another way. One which continues to attempt to grow the economy, while protecting the services which we all use and the benefits on which so many depend. And if the markets and the ratings agencies don’t like it, well, they can bloody well invade. They weren’t that good at picking winners when the bankers (who have got off far too lightly in this budget, but again that is only what you would expect from the Tories) were buying imaginary derivatives with non-existent money.
But the only way we will get this quickly, is if the coalition implodes. The only glimmer of light at the moment is that there are some Liberal Dimwits who are waking up to exactly how far Clegg has sold them down the river. Let’s hope they start rowing back upstream, and soon. Let’s hope they rediscover that they used to have a conscience, and that when they said they went into politics to make a difference, it wasn’t by dynamiting hospitals.
Back in the days of Thatcher, I used to have a foam rubber stress "brick" that I could throw at the television (in place of a real one, which would have been rather expensive in televisions)
Watching Osborne on telly just now, I think I may need to go and find it up in the attic.
"You shouldn't have to go off to work in the morning and see your neighbour's blinds drawn down as they spend their life on unemployment benefit"
Apart from the fact that you probably wouldn't have to do it for long, because this budget will soon result in BOTH houses with the blinds drawn down and the occupants on the dole, let's just unpick the thinking behind that statement.
How nasty, small-minded and divisive. Words calculated to appeal like a dog-whistle to those who harbour inbuilt prejudice towards the unemployed. What a gross over-simplification of the many and complex reasons for lack of opportunity, poverty and deprivation.
How *deliberately* calculated to appeal to the "there's too many of them over here with their benefits and their plasma TVs" brigade. People who have never known, or have forgotten, what economic deprivation is and who caused it (in South Yorkshire, it was the Tories)
And without offering any solution, either. So they are going to stop the benefit of the guy with his blinds down all day. What's he going to do? Get a job in the blind factory? I don't think they are hiring, right now.
Anyone who has the sheer gall and effrontery to utter such an evil, twisted, divisive message and then in the next breath to claim that we are all in this together really DOES deserve to be struck by lightning, and soon.
To those who say if we don’t do this, we will be punished by the markets,
I am sorry to say I disagree. Disregarding the fact that I think these people have no moral authority to dictate how we run our country anyway, and very little skill and judgement in financial rating anyway, at least from the evidence of their past performance, would the down-grading of the UK's rating, assuming it happened, lead to an immediate closure of any "money tap" - I don't believe it would. I believe it would make it more difficult, but not impossible, to get out of this mess.
Again, I think this is a matter of perspective. It's not surprising that having weathered the international banking crisis of 2008 when the whole of the financial sector was teetering on the brink of sliding off Canary Wharf and into the river, the nation's finances are in poor shape. But we've always had a National Debt, since the days of Walpole. And look what a mess we were in after the second World War, when basically we were in hock to the US up to our eyeballs. The difference then is that we had politicians of skill courage and vision, who in the teeth of that, established the Welfare State.
I am also becoming very skeptical about this analogy with Greece. It's trotted out regularly to explain the Damascene conversion of Clegg and Cable to the Tory hard line - the story being that, somehow, over the weekend of the coalition cabal, they also carved out the time to receive a detailed briefing on Greek economic matters and realised how bad it was. If you believe that, how do you feel about the tooth fairy? Greece doesn't have control over its own economy, because it made the misguided decision to join the Euro, and now it's in the same position we were in on Black Wednesday, of having to take medicine that is not appropriate for it, because when it comes to the Euro, one size fits all, for good or ill. We are not, thank God, stuck with the Euro and all its problems and we do have control over our own interest rates, should that be necessary.
I have said enough on here before now about how stupid Labour were, wasting money on things like illegal wars and ID cards, and I have seen at first hand on a smaller scale how profligate government was. I also contend that at the end of the day, this lot are probably wasting just as much money in their own way, they are just wasting it on different things (unecessary new Quangos, re branding the DCSF, etc)
I have no objection to the principle of adjustment in the abstract, but I do, strongly and bitterly, resent the idea that the poorest and weakest must adjust the most, that this needs to be done with unseemly haste just to placate "the markets" - which even if this were true, then begs the question "Who Governs Britain" and once again I question this assumption that the recovery will still happen despite mass unemployment approaching three million, job losses, bankruptcies, reposessions, people being forced off benefits on the premise of non existent private sector jobs, VAT increases and the risk of high inflation.
If there were five jobs for every applicant, instead of the other way round, then George Osborne might have a point. He would still be a smarmy little squit whose face I would never tire of punching, but he might have a point. But it IS five applicants to every job, and it's going to get worse.
WHERE ARE THE JOBS?????
I often hear the phrase, when benefits are being discussed
“Those who choose not to work”
It’s an interesting concept. We're back to sturdy beggars and the undeserving poor here again. I contend that, given the chance and the opportunity, anyone and everyone wants to work, but that generations of people have been beaten down by lack of motivation, lack of opportunity, and lack of any idea how to go about it. Usually in areas of former heavy industry, where there is very little "choice" involved because there ARE NO JOBS.
I take issue with the word "choosing". But I do agree that those unfortunate enough not to be able to find work should be financially supported by a state benefit system, yes: I believe it's what sets us apart as a civilised society. Or one of the things anyway. Housing Benefit has been fuelled by the housing boom which was created by unsustainable offers of credit from irresponsible banks to people who didn't know what they were getting into, encouraged by lax regulation all around and - let us not forget - not one Tory voice was ever raised to object to this because their pals in the City were all busy filling their boots, thank you very much.
I am a little bit unclear about what people are supposed to do though, if there's no point in them applying for jobs and they "choose" not to work, and they don't get any benefits, I guess it comes down to .... oooh, a couple of days on their grouse moor for those with private incomes, and the rest ... er ... begging, I guess.
People who advocate this sort of thing do, however, make a point about the Labour market which is generally overlooked, which is the need to re-think what we have got along the lines of socially useful companies run at a profit by and for the public good. It is called Social Enterprise. This is a viable "third way" that would solve many of the problems and get people away from this "public versus private sector" class war which Osborne seems hell-bent on encouraging. I doubt, however, that he has ever heard of it.
And finally, today, we have had the most breathtaking example of doublespeak of this whole government so far, when they talk of "Revitalising Retirement"* by making old people work even longer! I feel really revitalised!
*In the same way as you could revitalise child care by sending them up chimneys (Oh, hang on, that's in NEXT year's budget)
How long, I ask, can these charlatans, this unelected government with no mandate to wreck our economy, be allowed to continue causing this damage without being challenged?
The only sane response to this budget, I think, is that of Quellcrist Falconer in the Harlan’s World novels by Richard. K. Morgan. I couldn’t put it any better. George Orwell couldn’t put it any better.
J B Priestley and S P B Mais couldn’t put it any better. So here it is.
So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it PERSONAL. Do as much damage as you can. GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous makes the difference, the ONLY difference in their eyes, between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life and that IT'S NOTHING PERSONAL. Well, fuck them. Make it personal
Friday, 8 January 2010
Dear Anjem...
Dear Anjem
I have read your open letter to the families of British troops who have died in Afghanistan, and I hope you won’t feel it presumptuous of me if I reply with an “open letter” of my own. I have one or two points in addition to those covered in your letter, but I think the best starting point if probably if I quote your letter, with my response underneath.
May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon those who follow the guidance.
Thanks, same to you, but I will reserve my judgement until I find out what “the guidance” consists of. Plus, why are we limiting peace and blessings only to “those who follow the guidance”, whatever it is?
Following the public announcement of an impending procession by islam4uk (a branch of Al-Muhajiroun) through the Market Town of Wootton Basset we thought it only appropriate that we provide an explanation and a little more about the purpose behind the procession, especially to the family and friends of those who have died there and who may have been led to believe that it is merely an act of incitement or provocation.
Well, I don’t think it is “merely” an act of incitement or provocation. I think you have other intentions besides merely incitement or provocation.
We begin by inviting all non-Muslims to Islam, the perfect and most beautiful way of life, a favour from Allah (God) to mankind to take him out of the darkness of worshipping his own desires to the exclusive worship, submission and obedience of Allah alone, without partners and to testify the Messenger-ship of the final Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). We urge you to embrace Islam and save yourselves and your family from the hellfire and not to believe the lies and distortions which the Western media and non-Islamic regimes would have you believe about Muslims and their true intentions. Islam means submission and the Muslim is the one who submits to the will of God in his life. Verily the Messenger Muhammad told us that whoever heard his name from the Jews and Christians and did not believe would be held accountable for that on the day of judgement.
Yeah yeah yeah, yadda yadda whatever: heard it all before, from the Catholics, I am afraid. It doesn’t scare me, I’ll take my chance. God knows I have striven to find him and keep up a relationship with him all my adult life, despite my many imperfections, and if he’s really all-knowing, all powerful and all-merciful, he’ll cut me a bit of slack on judgement day. Next!
We start by pointing out what many wise people already know i.e. that the British public have once again been lied to by their politicians about the war in Afghanistan. What began as a fight for freedom and democracy and to protect the human rights of the civilians and to find Sheikh Usama Bin Laden (by the use of B52 bombers) has today become a campaign to protect the security of the British public back home and it has gone from being a campaign which could be completed without firing a weapon within 3 years to one which could go on for 40 or 50 years with a heavy cost to the participants.
We seem to agree about the origins of the war in Afghanistan at any rate. I am not sure about the B52 bombers, I rather think the Americans use a variety of more modern aircraft. War aims do have a habit of shifting as the situation develops, though. One of the other things we are currently supposed to be doing in Afghanistan is establishing a secular democracy as an alternative to the Taleban. Surprisingly, I also agree with you about the fact that the security of the UK cannot be guaranteed by fighting on the streets of Helmand. In fact, in that respect, we are probably making the situation worse because we are creating more fundamentalist nutters by being there, and in truth, the only real reason we can’t just pull out and leave you to it is that if we did, Pakistan would be the next to go.
In actual fact the foreign policy of the USA and UK is not about protecting the rights of Muslims or propagating democracy and freedom nor is it about the threat posed by the people in Afghanistan to the British public at all, but rather it is to establish their own military, economic, strategic and ideological interests in the region. The rich resources of Afghanistan, its position on the cusp between the Indian sub-continent, Southern Russian, Asia and China and its populations call for the Shari'ah are the real reasons why the military has sought to establish a permanent role there, no matter what the cost to the lives and wealth of the indigenous people or indeed their own.
The “rich resources of Aghanistan? " You are kidding, right? – the place is an inhospitable shithole with a medieval infrastructure. If it was that great, we’d all go and live there. I prefer to live in Yorkshire. That tells you all you need to know about Afghanistan. And “its population’s call for Shari’ah” - does that include all the women who are denied opportunity under the Taleban’s version of Islam?
Pivotal in this is the desire to prevent Muslims from running their own affairs and establishing an Islamic State if they so wish but rather to maintain a puppet in the area (Mr Karzia) to maintain and protect Western interests.
The problem with that assertion is that however much you may dislike Karzai or think he is a puppet, equally I can’t see the Tabelan allowing a free election where the population are allowed to put up anti-Taleban candidates, can you? So the depressing choice for the ordinary people of Afghanistan seems to be between a US puppet government that may at some point lead to a secular democracy, or backsliding into authoritarian rule by a set of humourless beardy twonks making up rules on the spot to oppress women, gays and anyone else who they decide their imaginary friend has told them not to like. A group who would be ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that they have access to weapons and high explosive.
In order to create an atmosphere where these greedy objectives can be accomplished the Western and even Eastern media have constantly shown atrocities being committed against the ordinary people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in markets, universities and public gathering places and have then blamed these on the perceived enemy, in order to discredit any legitimate struggle for liberation and in order to demonise them in the eyes of the world and thereby justify the occupation and real intentions. The truth about such bloodshed and mayhem is only now becoming public knowledge after information about the real perpetrators has emerged (such as the CIA related agency Black Water). The billions of dollars paid to the Pakistan regime by the USA/UK alliance and to the Secret services in Pakistan, their army and to the Karzai Afghan regime by way of bribes has led them to slaughter their own citizens with the help of the USA/UK and to then blame the Taliban in an attempt to subdue those seeking liberation to fulfil their right to run their lives by divine law and to protect the US/UK military and economic interests.
I am a great one for conspiracy theories, but even I draw the line here. So the Taleban are entirely blameless and the people who are shooting at our troops and setting roadside bombs are actually the CIA and Blackwater. If you believe that, how do you feel about the Tooth Fairy, Elvis working in the chip shop, and the B-17 bomber on the moon?
With additional atrocities being committed by the USA and UK through indiscriminate air raids and other operations the number of ordinary Muslim men, women and children who have been killed has reached horrendous proportions. Not to mention the torture and abuse of basic rights by the occupiers in Afghanistan, such as in Bagram Air Base, the case of Dr Affia Siddiqui being a clear and brutal example.
I agree it is regrettable that when it comes to targeting, the USAF sometimes seems as if it couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, and I would remind you that our troops have suffered from this as well.
There is no doubt in most people's minds that the final conclusion to the current conflict in Afghanistan has already been written. Ultimate victory for those fighting in their own backyard, familiar with the mountains and plains and their supporters who struggle to protect their sanctities from the foreign aggressors cannot be denied. The signs for this are already appearing with incohesive thinking among the British and American chain of command, the crippling effect of the war on their economies back home and the depression of the soldiers realising that there is no real moral or ethic reason for them to murder innocent men, women and children to fulfil their politicians agenda. Blaming a lack of equipment is one of the ways in which politicians have tried to shift the focus. It is noteworthy that unlike among the US and UK soldiers, there has not been one reported suicide or attempted suicide among those resisting occupation.
I don’t think either side has the capacity to win outright militarily in Afghanistan, and “ultimate victory” would depend on our forces withdrawing. And the fact that our soldiers may have committed suicide probably indicates that unlike the Taleban, they have a conscience and think about what it is they are doing.
As a consequence this can only mean much more destruction for the USA and UK sons and daughters sent by their uncaring leaders to their deaths. After all this would not be the first time that this region has acted as a grave yard for empires in history, notably the British and Russians.
Yes, and the professionalism and dedication of our armed forces means that they will stick it out as long as they are asked to.
It is worth reminding those who are still not blinded by the media propaganda that Afghanistan is not a British Town near Wootton Basset but rather Muslim land which no one has the right to occupy, with a Muslim population who do not deserve their innocent men, women and children to be killed for political mileage and for the greedy interests of the oppressive US and UK regimes.
You can’t fool me, I have an A level in Geography. Nobody deserves to be killed for political mileage on either side. Tell it to the Taleban and Al Quaida.
The procession in Wootton Basset is therefore an attempt to engage the British publics minds on the real reasons why their soldiers are returning home in body bags and the real cost of the war. The conflict in Afghanistan is not an ‘honourable' defence of British values and a cause for the British to remain secure,
Insofar as is about exporting democracy, it is a defence of British values of a sort, though again I agree with you that it is not making us more secure.
rather the presence of the US and UK forces in Afghanistan is the cause of instability in the region and a cause of insecurity for the British people back home. The parades, the speeches about soldiers doing their duty and the feeling of patriotism has obfuscated the reality of the conflict and the murderous crimes being committed by the occupiers and their agents. The British public is blissfully unaware of what is being done in their name by the Blair/Brown regimes and were the truth known no doubt the pressure to withdraw all troops immediately would be much greater.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it is perfectly possible to be proud of the armed forces and their professionalism, and our country, while disagreeing with the current rationale for the war. Also, please remember, our troops are bound by rules of engagement, whereas the Taleban are free to plant bombs wherever they want and undertake random acts of suicide bombing, safe in the knowledge that if by any mischance they also kill a few innocent civilians, they can rely on useful idiots like you to blame it on the CIA. Fortunately, I don’t know anyone who has died in Afghanistan, but I do know that the son of someone I work with was badly wounded out there, including possible permanent damage to his eyesight, in an explosion. He was trying to help a wounded Afghan when it happened.
It is our desire to end the cycle of violence and the quagmire in which we find ourselves in today in Afghanistan.
Well, I am with you there. However, I suspect your methods and motives would be more likely to create a similar style war on the streets of the UK, rather than ending one in Afghanistan.
For the British public to do their duty and force their regime to save their children from death and destruction, from an oppressive and costly campaign and to stop the occupation of Muslim land. We realise that, especially in times of war, we are up against a very sophisticated propaganda machine and no doubt raising awareness about the painful truth of this conflict will unleash a torrent of abuse from the media and government against us, who have their own predetermined agenda, however the world is today also small enough for those wishing to verify the truth to be able to do so via the many news and information outlets.
Well, you surely knew when you announced the intention of marching through Wootton Bassett that you would unleash a veritable shitstorm of abuse and hatred, which of course you immediately seize upon for your own ends to prove the supposed anti-Muslim hatred you believe in and see everywhere, to provoke precisely the response you received from the dimwits and meatheads who make up the BNP and the English Defence League, and who have started the “Stop Islam4UK” pages on Facebook, where morons a-plenty have been posting semi-literate racism. You must have been chortling into your beard at all the additional publicity, when previously you were the decorative border on the edge of the lunatic fringe and, if truth was told, you probably represent about a dozen people, if that. Moderate Muslims have certainly distanced themselves from you, although of course this hasn’t been picked up by the media you purport to despise so much, who have in fact preferred to speak to you instead of the more moderate practitioners of your supposed faith.
So it’s a bit rich to be complaining about the reaction to your announcement when in fact, getting precisely that reaction was precisely your aim in making the announcement in the first place!
In common with many people, Anjem, I must admit I was a bit hazy about you and your group, in fact I was under the impression that it had been banned. I have had a look at your web site and I have to say it cheered me up no end. I am not saying some of your ideas are beyond Barking, let’s just say they are a long way off the A12. The chief religious justification seems to be that Shari’ah law is a good thing because Allah said so, and because Allah said so, that makes it a good thing.
We had a group of people in this country who used to think like you. They were called the Puritans, and it was 300 years ago. Since then, we’ve developed universal suffrage, democracy, healthcare, women’s rights and free speech. You ought to give it a try. Meanwhile, my answer to your posturing on the web site is the same one as Shakespeare put into the mouth of Feste in Twelfth Night, talking to Malvolio: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
Obviously, the irony of the fact that it is only in the UK, whose values you seem to despise so much, that you have the freedom of speech to spout such tosh, is completely lost on you. Try posting anti-government propaganda web sites in Iran, or having a provocative march through Teheran.
Well, for what it’s worth, Anjem, I think they should let you have your march. And I think the people of Wootton Bassett should come out and line the streets in silence, just to show you that this is what makes Britain different. We do, still, just, have free speech and you can demonstrate to make your point, however unpopular, as long as you do it under the rule of law. The same law that applies to every citizen equally, established and refined through nine centuries of practice and precedent, not handed down by some beardyweirdy cleric and made up on the spot. I’d also like you to hold your march because I would like to see, once and for all, just how many supporters you can muster. I would guess at about 15.
Which is why I find it very depressing when I see your views represented as being those of Muslims. There are apparently 2.4 million Muslims in Britain today, the vast majority of whom want to get on with their lives in peace. That is anathema to you of course, because your raison d’etre seems to be to foment disharmony and conflict and stir up hatred of Muslims, in the pursuit of some mythical “Islamic” state that neither they, nor the remainder of the population, apart from you and your acolytes actually want.
When the Puritans couldn’t get their own way, they eventually packed up and sailed off abroad to find a new world. Sadly, though, not before their legacy led to a bitter and divisive civil war for two decades in England.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that you would do likewise and sail off into the sunset, before your calculated stupidity causes something similar to happen again?
I have read your open letter to the families of British troops who have died in Afghanistan, and I hope you won’t feel it presumptuous of me if I reply with an “open letter” of my own. I have one or two points in addition to those covered in your letter, but I think the best starting point if probably if I quote your letter, with my response underneath.
May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon those who follow the guidance.
Thanks, same to you, but I will reserve my judgement until I find out what “the guidance” consists of. Plus, why are we limiting peace and blessings only to “those who follow the guidance”, whatever it is?
Following the public announcement of an impending procession by islam4uk (a branch of Al-Muhajiroun) through the Market Town of Wootton Basset we thought it only appropriate that we provide an explanation and a little more about the purpose behind the procession, especially to the family and friends of those who have died there and who may have been led to believe that it is merely an act of incitement or provocation.
Well, I don’t think it is “merely” an act of incitement or provocation. I think you have other intentions besides merely incitement or provocation.
We begin by inviting all non-Muslims to Islam, the perfect and most beautiful way of life, a favour from Allah (God) to mankind to take him out of the darkness of worshipping his own desires to the exclusive worship, submission and obedience of Allah alone, without partners and to testify the Messenger-ship of the final Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). We urge you to embrace Islam and save yourselves and your family from the hellfire and not to believe the lies and distortions which the Western media and non-Islamic regimes would have you believe about Muslims and their true intentions. Islam means submission and the Muslim is the one who submits to the will of God in his life. Verily the Messenger Muhammad told us that whoever heard his name from the Jews and Christians and did not believe would be held accountable for that on the day of judgement.
Yeah yeah yeah, yadda yadda whatever: heard it all before, from the Catholics, I am afraid. It doesn’t scare me, I’ll take my chance. God knows I have striven to find him and keep up a relationship with him all my adult life, despite my many imperfections, and if he’s really all-knowing, all powerful and all-merciful, he’ll cut me a bit of slack on judgement day. Next!
We start by pointing out what many wise people already know i.e. that the British public have once again been lied to by their politicians about the war in Afghanistan. What began as a fight for freedom and democracy and to protect the human rights of the civilians and to find Sheikh Usama Bin Laden (by the use of B52 bombers) has today become a campaign to protect the security of the British public back home and it has gone from being a campaign which could be completed without firing a weapon within 3 years to one which could go on for 40 or 50 years with a heavy cost to the participants.
We seem to agree about the origins of the war in Afghanistan at any rate. I am not sure about the B52 bombers, I rather think the Americans use a variety of more modern aircraft. War aims do have a habit of shifting as the situation develops, though. One of the other things we are currently supposed to be doing in Afghanistan is establishing a secular democracy as an alternative to the Taleban. Surprisingly, I also agree with you about the fact that the security of the UK cannot be guaranteed by fighting on the streets of Helmand. In fact, in that respect, we are probably making the situation worse because we are creating more fundamentalist nutters by being there, and in truth, the only real reason we can’t just pull out and leave you to it is that if we did, Pakistan would be the next to go.
In actual fact the foreign policy of the USA and UK is not about protecting the rights of Muslims or propagating democracy and freedom nor is it about the threat posed by the people in Afghanistan to the British public at all, but rather it is to establish their own military, economic, strategic and ideological interests in the region. The rich resources of Afghanistan, its position on the cusp between the Indian sub-continent, Southern Russian, Asia and China and its populations call for the Shari'ah are the real reasons why the military has sought to establish a permanent role there, no matter what the cost to the lives and wealth of the indigenous people or indeed their own.
The “rich resources of Aghanistan? " You are kidding, right? – the place is an inhospitable shithole with a medieval infrastructure. If it was that great, we’d all go and live there. I prefer to live in Yorkshire. That tells you all you need to know about Afghanistan. And “its population’s call for Shari’ah” - does that include all the women who are denied opportunity under the Taleban’s version of Islam?
Pivotal in this is the desire to prevent Muslims from running their own affairs and establishing an Islamic State if they so wish but rather to maintain a puppet in the area (Mr Karzia) to maintain and protect Western interests.
The problem with that assertion is that however much you may dislike Karzai or think he is a puppet, equally I can’t see the Tabelan allowing a free election where the population are allowed to put up anti-Taleban candidates, can you? So the depressing choice for the ordinary people of Afghanistan seems to be between a US puppet government that may at some point lead to a secular democracy, or backsliding into authoritarian rule by a set of humourless beardy twonks making up rules on the spot to oppress women, gays and anyone else who they decide their imaginary friend has told them not to like. A group who would be ridiculous if it weren’t for the fact that they have access to weapons and high explosive.
In order to create an atmosphere where these greedy objectives can be accomplished the Western and even Eastern media have constantly shown atrocities being committed against the ordinary people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in markets, universities and public gathering places and have then blamed these on the perceived enemy, in order to discredit any legitimate struggle for liberation and in order to demonise them in the eyes of the world and thereby justify the occupation and real intentions. The truth about such bloodshed and mayhem is only now becoming public knowledge after information about the real perpetrators has emerged (such as the CIA related agency Black Water). The billions of dollars paid to the Pakistan regime by the USA/UK alliance and to the Secret services in Pakistan, their army and to the Karzai Afghan regime by way of bribes has led them to slaughter their own citizens with the help of the USA/UK and to then blame the Taliban in an attempt to subdue those seeking liberation to fulfil their right to run their lives by divine law and to protect the US/UK military and economic interests.
I am a great one for conspiracy theories, but even I draw the line here. So the Taleban are entirely blameless and the people who are shooting at our troops and setting roadside bombs are actually the CIA and Blackwater. If you believe that, how do you feel about the Tooth Fairy, Elvis working in the chip shop, and the B-17 bomber on the moon?
With additional atrocities being committed by the USA and UK through indiscriminate air raids and other operations the number of ordinary Muslim men, women and children who have been killed has reached horrendous proportions. Not to mention the torture and abuse of basic rights by the occupiers in Afghanistan, such as in Bagram Air Base, the case of Dr Affia Siddiqui being a clear and brutal example.
I agree it is regrettable that when it comes to targeting, the USAF sometimes seems as if it couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, and I would remind you that our troops have suffered from this as well.
There is no doubt in most people's minds that the final conclusion to the current conflict in Afghanistan has already been written. Ultimate victory for those fighting in their own backyard, familiar with the mountains and plains and their supporters who struggle to protect their sanctities from the foreign aggressors cannot be denied. The signs for this are already appearing with incohesive thinking among the British and American chain of command, the crippling effect of the war on their economies back home and the depression of the soldiers realising that there is no real moral or ethic reason for them to murder innocent men, women and children to fulfil their politicians agenda. Blaming a lack of equipment is one of the ways in which politicians have tried to shift the focus. It is noteworthy that unlike among the US and UK soldiers, there has not been one reported suicide or attempted suicide among those resisting occupation.
I don’t think either side has the capacity to win outright militarily in Afghanistan, and “ultimate victory” would depend on our forces withdrawing. And the fact that our soldiers may have committed suicide probably indicates that unlike the Taleban, they have a conscience and think about what it is they are doing.
As a consequence this can only mean much more destruction for the USA and UK sons and daughters sent by their uncaring leaders to their deaths. After all this would not be the first time that this region has acted as a grave yard for empires in history, notably the British and Russians.
Yes, and the professionalism and dedication of our armed forces means that they will stick it out as long as they are asked to.
It is worth reminding those who are still not blinded by the media propaganda that Afghanistan is not a British Town near Wootton Basset but rather Muslim land which no one has the right to occupy, with a Muslim population who do not deserve their innocent men, women and children to be killed for political mileage and for the greedy interests of the oppressive US and UK regimes.
You can’t fool me, I have an A level in Geography. Nobody deserves to be killed for political mileage on either side. Tell it to the Taleban and Al Quaida.
The procession in Wootton Basset is therefore an attempt to engage the British publics minds on the real reasons why their soldiers are returning home in body bags and the real cost of the war. The conflict in Afghanistan is not an ‘honourable' defence of British values and a cause for the British to remain secure,
Insofar as is about exporting democracy, it is a defence of British values of a sort, though again I agree with you that it is not making us more secure.
rather the presence of the US and UK forces in Afghanistan is the cause of instability in the region and a cause of insecurity for the British people back home. The parades, the speeches about soldiers doing their duty and the feeling of patriotism has obfuscated the reality of the conflict and the murderous crimes being committed by the occupiers and their agents. The British public is blissfully unaware of what is being done in their name by the Blair/Brown regimes and were the truth known no doubt the pressure to withdraw all troops immediately would be much greater.
I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it is perfectly possible to be proud of the armed forces and their professionalism, and our country, while disagreeing with the current rationale for the war. Also, please remember, our troops are bound by rules of engagement, whereas the Taleban are free to plant bombs wherever they want and undertake random acts of suicide bombing, safe in the knowledge that if by any mischance they also kill a few innocent civilians, they can rely on useful idiots like you to blame it on the CIA. Fortunately, I don’t know anyone who has died in Afghanistan, but I do know that the son of someone I work with was badly wounded out there, including possible permanent damage to his eyesight, in an explosion. He was trying to help a wounded Afghan when it happened.
It is our desire to end the cycle of violence and the quagmire in which we find ourselves in today in Afghanistan.
Well, I am with you there. However, I suspect your methods and motives would be more likely to create a similar style war on the streets of the UK, rather than ending one in Afghanistan.
For the British public to do their duty and force their regime to save their children from death and destruction, from an oppressive and costly campaign and to stop the occupation of Muslim land. We realise that, especially in times of war, we are up against a very sophisticated propaganda machine and no doubt raising awareness about the painful truth of this conflict will unleash a torrent of abuse from the media and government against us, who have their own predetermined agenda, however the world is today also small enough for those wishing to verify the truth to be able to do so via the many news and information outlets.
Well, you surely knew when you announced the intention of marching through Wootton Bassett that you would unleash a veritable shitstorm of abuse and hatred, which of course you immediately seize upon for your own ends to prove the supposed anti-Muslim hatred you believe in and see everywhere, to provoke precisely the response you received from the dimwits and meatheads who make up the BNP and the English Defence League, and who have started the “Stop Islam4UK” pages on Facebook, where morons a-plenty have been posting semi-literate racism. You must have been chortling into your beard at all the additional publicity, when previously you were the decorative border on the edge of the lunatic fringe and, if truth was told, you probably represent about a dozen people, if that. Moderate Muslims have certainly distanced themselves from you, although of course this hasn’t been picked up by the media you purport to despise so much, who have in fact preferred to speak to you instead of the more moderate practitioners of your supposed faith.
So it’s a bit rich to be complaining about the reaction to your announcement when in fact, getting precisely that reaction was precisely your aim in making the announcement in the first place!
In common with many people, Anjem, I must admit I was a bit hazy about you and your group, in fact I was under the impression that it had been banned. I have had a look at your web site and I have to say it cheered me up no end. I am not saying some of your ideas are beyond Barking, let’s just say they are a long way off the A12. The chief religious justification seems to be that Shari’ah law is a good thing because Allah said so, and because Allah said so, that makes it a good thing.
We had a group of people in this country who used to think like you. They were called the Puritans, and it was 300 years ago. Since then, we’ve developed universal suffrage, democracy, healthcare, women’s rights and free speech. You ought to give it a try. Meanwhile, my answer to your posturing on the web site is the same one as Shakespeare put into the mouth of Feste in Twelfth Night, talking to Malvolio: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”
Obviously, the irony of the fact that it is only in the UK, whose values you seem to despise so much, that you have the freedom of speech to spout such tosh, is completely lost on you. Try posting anti-government propaganda web sites in Iran, or having a provocative march through Teheran.
Well, for what it’s worth, Anjem, I think they should let you have your march. And I think the people of Wootton Bassett should come out and line the streets in silence, just to show you that this is what makes Britain different. We do, still, just, have free speech and you can demonstrate to make your point, however unpopular, as long as you do it under the rule of law. The same law that applies to every citizen equally, established and refined through nine centuries of practice and precedent, not handed down by some beardyweirdy cleric and made up on the spot. I’d also like you to hold your march because I would like to see, once and for all, just how many supporters you can muster. I would guess at about 15.
Which is why I find it very depressing when I see your views represented as being those of Muslims. There are apparently 2.4 million Muslims in Britain today, the vast majority of whom want to get on with their lives in peace. That is anathema to you of course, because your raison d’etre seems to be to foment disharmony and conflict and stir up hatred of Muslims, in the pursuit of some mythical “Islamic” state that neither they, nor the remainder of the population, apart from you and your acolytes actually want.
When the Puritans couldn’t get their own way, they eventually packed up and sailed off abroad to find a new world. Sadly, though, not before their legacy led to a bitter and divisive civil war for two decades in England.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that you would do likewise and sail off into the sunset, before your calculated stupidity causes something similar to happen again?
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Silly Buggers and Silly FOCAs
I was not amazed at the story which emerged recently of the News of the World allegedly using snooping agencies to try and tape the voicemails of the rich and famous. After all, there was a court case about it a while ago now, and someone even went to jail as a result. Whether he was the right person of course is a moot point, given the wider prevalence of the practice now being suggested. It was not even surprising that the practice was more widespread. After all, the speed and ease of modern digital communications has made mass e-mailings and mass SMS-texting a reality. No, what amazed me is that allegedly the police knew all about it and did nothing! I am not a lawyer, but I would have thought that snooping on someone else’s voicemail must contravene some statute or other, even if it is only the Data Protection Act, which local authorities and call centres are so fond of quoting whenever they want to get out of actually being helpful.
I am not surprised, either, that the News of the World – if they did it, which is still unproven – actually got away with it. In general, the tabloid press in the UK has an incredible power, frequently misused. Their constant mixture of dirty tricks and surveillance with “celebrity” news and gossip makes for the worst of both worlds and risks eventually bring down a draconian “privacy law” on the heads of all the media, which will prevent even legitimate investigation of stories which are in the public interest. To a certain extent, we get the press we deserve, or so runs the well-rehearsed argument. But I am not so sure that the tail does not wag the dog. After all, it’s not as if there is any real choice of an alternative media to peruse and choose instead, for those of us who don’t want salacious red-top tittle-tattle about who is currently going to be evicted from the Big Brother House.
I would love to hear the excuse used by the police for not pursuing this, and I look forward to a successful private prosecution opening the floodgates for many more of the same.
*
I wonder if any of those allegedly bugged by the News of the World’s agents were bishops? Specifically, I wonder if they were the bishops who seem unusually exercised by the word “bugger” in alternative connotations. I refer of course to the Fellowship of Committed Anglicans, or FOCA for short, the hard-line faction within the Church of England who have set out to challenge the authority of Rowan Williams by “upholding” “traditional” Anglican values (such as being anti-Gay). This of course is just what we need in the world today – yet more gay-bashing religious fundamentalism. As if the Taliban were not enough! What really irks me about these people is not so much their fundamentalist views – they are, after all, entitled to their opinions, however loopy. It is the fact that the whole “are gays OK by God” argument (and its offshoot on women bishops) is so massively irrelevant.
I don’t know what it is that gives FOCA the right to assume they are more “committed” than any other Anglican (unless the “committed is taken in the legal sense and they have all been getting pissed on communion wine or fondling choirboys); and in any case, the idea of an Anglican fundamentalist doesn’t exactly conjure up visions of suicide vests. If an Anglican were really angry with you, he might serve you sweet sherry instead of dry.
But FOCA should wake up and smell the coffee. There are lots of problems they could be bending their not inconsiderable traditionalist talents towards the slowing of: for a start, not many people actually go to church any more. Then there’s all those people dying of hunger, lack of clean water and disease. Oh, and the odd war needing sorting out as well. Tell you what, FOCA, here’s the deal. Let’s get all that sorted out and when it’s done and dusted, and churches up and down the land are rammed to the rafters with throngs of happy worshipers, then we can have an international conference, somewhere warm and sunny if you like, to decide whether or not Leviticus says it’s OK for gays to dance on the head of a pin, or what the original Aramaic text of the Apocryphal Book of Spartacus has to say about women bishops and whether they can only move diagonally. Can’t say fairer than that, can we? Or, failing that, bugger off and let these other committed Anglicans sort things out without you sniping from the wings.
I am not surprised, either, that the News of the World – if they did it, which is still unproven – actually got away with it. In general, the tabloid press in the UK has an incredible power, frequently misused. Their constant mixture of dirty tricks and surveillance with “celebrity” news and gossip makes for the worst of both worlds and risks eventually bring down a draconian “privacy law” on the heads of all the media, which will prevent even legitimate investigation of stories which are in the public interest. To a certain extent, we get the press we deserve, or so runs the well-rehearsed argument. But I am not so sure that the tail does not wag the dog. After all, it’s not as if there is any real choice of an alternative media to peruse and choose instead, for those of us who don’t want salacious red-top tittle-tattle about who is currently going to be evicted from the Big Brother House.
I would love to hear the excuse used by the police for not pursuing this, and I look forward to a successful private prosecution opening the floodgates for many more of the same.
*
I wonder if any of those allegedly bugged by the News of the World’s agents were bishops? Specifically, I wonder if they were the bishops who seem unusually exercised by the word “bugger” in alternative connotations. I refer of course to the Fellowship of Committed Anglicans, or FOCA for short, the hard-line faction within the Church of England who have set out to challenge the authority of Rowan Williams by “upholding” “traditional” Anglican values (such as being anti-Gay). This of course is just what we need in the world today – yet more gay-bashing religious fundamentalism. As if the Taliban were not enough! What really irks me about these people is not so much their fundamentalist views – they are, after all, entitled to their opinions, however loopy. It is the fact that the whole “are gays OK by God” argument (and its offshoot on women bishops) is so massively irrelevant.
I don’t know what it is that gives FOCA the right to assume they are more “committed” than any other Anglican (unless the “committed is taken in the legal sense and they have all been getting pissed on communion wine or fondling choirboys); and in any case, the idea of an Anglican fundamentalist doesn’t exactly conjure up visions of suicide vests. If an Anglican were really angry with you, he might serve you sweet sherry instead of dry.
But FOCA should wake up and smell the coffee. There are lots of problems they could be bending their not inconsiderable traditionalist talents towards the slowing of: for a start, not many people actually go to church any more. Then there’s all those people dying of hunger, lack of clean water and disease. Oh, and the odd war needing sorting out as well. Tell you what, FOCA, here’s the deal. Let’s get all that sorted out and when it’s done and dusted, and churches up and down the land are rammed to the rafters with throngs of happy worshipers, then we can have an international conference, somewhere warm and sunny if you like, to decide whether or not Leviticus says it’s OK for gays to dance on the head of a pin, or what the original Aramaic text of the Apocryphal Book of Spartacus has to say about women bishops and whether they can only move diagonally. Can’t say fairer than that, can we? Or, failing that, bugger off and let these other committed Anglicans sort things out without you sniping from the wings.
Sunday, 10 May 2009
UN - believable!
The Israeli Defence Force has reacted to the report issued by the UN, which blames them for the deaths of some civilians at UN sites within Palestine during the most recent Israeli incursion. The IDF says the report is “biased”.
Biased? I should bloody well cocoa! What did the IDF expect? If someone invaded my territory and killed innocent people by wanging off tank rounds left right and centre, I’d be a teensy bit biased, wouldn’t you? What did they expect? Probably something like:-
“Well, a few of our people got killed indiscriminately by Israeli tanks but hey, shit happens you know, and those Israeli soldiers, well, they probably had a rough childhood, so we shouldn’t rush to judgement, and then there’s always The Holocaust”
There you go, Israel, I’ve written it for you. Better now?
I’m sorry, but I don’t see why we should make allowances for war criminals. I would love to know how these people sleep at night. Not only content with getting away, literally , with murder, they are allowed on top of that to rubbish the findings of a UN report.
Well, Israel, why don’t you just resign from the UN if it’s that biased. After all, you already ignore most of its resolutions.
Biased? I should bloody well cocoa! What did the IDF expect? If someone invaded my territory and killed innocent people by wanging off tank rounds left right and centre, I’d be a teensy bit biased, wouldn’t you? What did they expect? Probably something like:-
“Well, a few of our people got killed indiscriminately by Israeli tanks but hey, shit happens you know, and those Israeli soldiers, well, they probably had a rough childhood, so we shouldn’t rush to judgement, and then there’s always The Holocaust”
There you go, Israel, I’ve written it for you. Better now?
I’m sorry, but I don’t see why we should make allowances for war criminals. I would love to know how these people sleep at night. Not only content with getting away, literally , with murder, they are allowed on top of that to rubbish the findings of a UN report.
Well, Israel, why don’t you just resign from the UN if it’s that biased. After all, you already ignore most of its resolutions.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Don't rain on my parade
The demonstrations by a small but vociferous gaggle of protestors during a "homecoming" march of the Royal Anglian Regiment in Luton on Saturday has led to a predictable outbreak of Muslim bashing in the media, with the Daily Mail and the Telegraph leading the charge, and commentators on their articles online suggesting everything from charging them with treason to deporting them, or both.
What these people don't get is that free speech is free speech for everyone. Even people who you might consider to be well beyond the lunatic fringe, people like Omar Bakri who are one stop beyond Barking and quite a long way off the bus route.
Free speech is what makes us the good guys. You may not like what these people claim, or say, and personally, I think that many of them put the "mentalist" into "fundamentalist" but as long as they do not break the law, they have a right to protest.
Whether they were protesting in the right place, at the right time, against the right people, is another matter. Personally I think it is possible to respect and admire the professionalism of our armed forces, who are doing a fairly difficult job since our politicians turned them into professional targets in two distant and nasty battlefields that were never, and never should have been, of our choosing.
I do so despite being an implacable opponent of the Iraq war (the wrong war against the wrong enemy, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons) and despite being ambivalent about the engagement in Afghanistan. I think our friends in Al Mujiharoun or whatever it's called were shooting at the wrong target. If their banners had accused Bush and Blair of being terrorists and baby-killers, it might have been nearer the mark.
As it is, all these dismal fanatics have done is add a few hundred new recruits to the BNP's ranks, fuelled the mad xenophobic rantings of The Sun with its gung-ho BNP-lite campaign of "Help for Heroes" and hasten the day when we have white v. Muslim civil war on our streets. They may well view the latter as "progress" in their own warped way, a self-fulfilling prophecy, part of a philosophy similar to the cowards who gun down unarmed pizza delivery men in Northern Ireland.
People like Melanie Philips in the Daily Mail have been quick to condemn the protestors, whereas previously she was arguing in favour of Geert Wilders being allowed to enter the UK and show his anti-Muslim film, in the name of that very same "free speech". We must draw the inevitable conclusion that she believes in free speech, but only when it is on a topic she agrees with. The media of course has done its predictable thing of seeking out the most extreme Muslim loopy fruits it can find and asking them to refuse to condemn the protest. It's a bit like interviewing Jack the Ripper for a piece on prostitution. You sort of know what you are going to get.
I am glad at any rate that moderate Muslim leaders came out against the demonstration, even though they were largely ignored for doing so and even though in some cases, their mandate to speak for all British Muslims is in any case, at best, questionable, especially since a whole younger generation has been radicalised and alienated by the war in Iraq.
I don't suppose this will be the last instance of this sort of thing. There may be other, nastier confrontations ahead. The army isn't going to stop holding homecoming parades because they are in turn under pressure from the government and the MOD to behave as if there is nothing to be ashamed of, and something to be proud of. There is, in a sense, something to be proud of, but it's not the glib assertions of the politicians.
I really do hope though that if this crowd of rentamob would-be mujihadeen shows up at another event, that the crowd takes its cue from the behaviour of the troops of the Royal Anglian Regiment last weekend, and roundly and comprehensively ignores them.
And I also hope that the police will demonstrate that there is not - as some commentators claim - one law for them and one for us by arresting and charging any protestors whose banners they consider constitute incitement. There are perfectly workable, servicable laws on this topic. and they should be employed where necessary, and like all laws, without fear or favour.
What these people don't get is that free speech is free speech for everyone. Even people who you might consider to be well beyond the lunatic fringe, people like Omar Bakri who are one stop beyond Barking and quite a long way off the bus route.
Free speech is what makes us the good guys. You may not like what these people claim, or say, and personally, I think that many of them put the "mentalist" into "fundamentalist" but as long as they do not break the law, they have a right to protest.
Whether they were protesting in the right place, at the right time, against the right people, is another matter. Personally I think it is possible to respect and admire the professionalism of our armed forces, who are doing a fairly difficult job since our politicians turned them into professional targets in two distant and nasty battlefields that were never, and never should have been, of our choosing.
I do so despite being an implacable opponent of the Iraq war (the wrong war against the wrong enemy, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons) and despite being ambivalent about the engagement in Afghanistan. I think our friends in Al Mujiharoun or whatever it's called were shooting at the wrong target. If their banners had accused Bush and Blair of being terrorists and baby-killers, it might have been nearer the mark.
As it is, all these dismal fanatics have done is add a few hundred new recruits to the BNP's ranks, fuelled the mad xenophobic rantings of The Sun with its gung-ho BNP-lite campaign of "Help for Heroes" and hasten the day when we have white v. Muslim civil war on our streets. They may well view the latter as "progress" in their own warped way, a self-fulfilling prophecy, part of a philosophy similar to the cowards who gun down unarmed pizza delivery men in Northern Ireland.
People like Melanie Philips in the Daily Mail have been quick to condemn the protestors, whereas previously she was arguing in favour of Geert Wilders being allowed to enter the UK and show his anti-Muslim film, in the name of that very same "free speech". We must draw the inevitable conclusion that she believes in free speech, but only when it is on a topic she agrees with. The media of course has done its predictable thing of seeking out the most extreme Muslim loopy fruits it can find and asking them to refuse to condemn the protest. It's a bit like interviewing Jack the Ripper for a piece on prostitution. You sort of know what you are going to get.
I am glad at any rate that moderate Muslim leaders came out against the demonstration, even though they were largely ignored for doing so and even though in some cases, their mandate to speak for all British Muslims is in any case, at best, questionable, especially since a whole younger generation has been radicalised and alienated by the war in Iraq.
I don't suppose this will be the last instance of this sort of thing. There may be other, nastier confrontations ahead. The army isn't going to stop holding homecoming parades because they are in turn under pressure from the government and the MOD to behave as if there is nothing to be ashamed of, and something to be proud of. There is, in a sense, something to be proud of, but it's not the glib assertions of the politicians.
I really do hope though that if this crowd of rentamob would-be mujihadeen shows up at another event, that the crowd takes its cue from the behaviour of the troops of the Royal Anglian Regiment last weekend, and roundly and comprehensively ignores them.
And I also hope that the police will demonstrate that there is not - as some commentators claim - one law for them and one for us by arresting and charging any protestors whose banners they consider constitute incitement. There are perfectly workable, servicable laws on this topic. and they should be employed where necessary, and like all laws, without fear or favour.
Monday, 19 January 2009
We don't discuss individual cases
Israel's war crimes in Gaza are even now slipping into collective memory, overtaken by other news of more pressing urgency (at least in the view of the people who decide what the news agenda should be).
Plus, of course, the BBC has decided that it is now the arbiter of which disasters are worthy of publication and which are not to be aired under any circumstances, which is another collectively unconscious nail in the coffin of publicity.
I won't waste too many words on the BBC. Their decision not to show the Gaza appeal is so determinedly wrongheaded that I can only assume it is a result of their having been nobbled by either Mossad or the IDF, letting them know covertly that if the appeal went ahead, they would treat BBC journalists as combatants in future conflicts in the area.
I do, however, want to talk about the Israelis and their well-tried, practised methods for deflectivng criticism, whenever they have done something that they get picked up on, such as disabling a four year old girl who got caught in the white phosphorous shellfire.
The first thing they do is to say they have no knowledge of the incident, then they say they are investigating, and finally, if they are really pressed, they fall back on "we don't discuss individual cases". You can hear the pattern repeated over and over again, whenever a journalist tries to get beyond the self-justifying propaganda that usually starts such interviews.
Well, I would like to speak about a few individual cases. Just to be going on with. Just so they are not forgotten.
Such as:
Two brothers, aged five and seven, were killed at a school sheltering up to 1,800 local residents in Biet Lahiya, in northern Gaza. The mother of the children lost both her legs in the incident and another 13 people were injured. Christopher Gunness, a United Nations official, called on Israel to investigate the incident, which he said could constitute a "war crime."
The main United Nations compound inside Gaza City was set on fire as fierce fighting erupted when Israeli tanks advanced towards the Tel El Howa district.
UN sources said the blaze was started by Israeli shells containing white phosphorus, the controversial material used to create a smokescreen for advancing troops.
Eye witnesses said the tank advance led to thousands of civilians fleeing on foot, some seeking shelter in the nearby al-Quds hospital.
Under the rules of war, white phosphorus can only be used in open spaces away from large civilian populations.
There have been repeated allegations in Gaza that civilians have suffered disfiguring burn injuries after being hit by white phosphorus.
The UN compound housed the headquarters and logistical centre of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the group that feeds and supports about a million refugees inside Gaza.
Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, said three members of staff had been injured.
"Three white phosphorus shells have hit the compound and right now the pallets on which we are meant to deliver aid are on fire," he said.
"What more powerful symbol can there be than pallets used for aid being set alight by the fighting? With white phosphorus you cannot put out the flames with water. You need sand and right now there is too much fighting for our staff to get sand."
Or this, from Oxfam's Gaza Blog:
More from the same source:-
I don't see how anyone, faced with evidence like this, can view Israel's actions as being anything other than a massively disproportionate collective punishment of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza for having the temerity to vote democratically for control by Hamas.
This is not to say that Hamas are blameless. They may well have cynically manipulated the situation for publicity purposes. Neither side in the conflict is capable of grasping (or wilfully ignores) the fact that two wrongs don't make a right. The conflict will never be resolved until the Israelis are forced to sit around a table and discuss the two-state solution.
But when it comes to individual cases, right now, where the blame, and the responsibility for paying for it to be put right, should currently be apportioned, is crystal clear.
Plus, of course, the BBC has decided that it is now the arbiter of which disasters are worthy of publication and which are not to be aired under any circumstances, which is another collectively unconscious nail in the coffin of publicity.
I won't waste too many words on the BBC. Their decision not to show the Gaza appeal is so determinedly wrongheaded that I can only assume it is a result of their having been nobbled by either Mossad or the IDF, letting them know covertly that if the appeal went ahead, they would treat BBC journalists as combatants in future conflicts in the area.
I do, however, want to talk about the Israelis and their well-tried, practised methods for deflectivng criticism, whenever they have done something that they get picked up on, such as disabling a four year old girl who got caught in the white phosphorous shellfire.
The first thing they do is to say they have no knowledge of the incident, then they say they are investigating, and finally, if they are really pressed, they fall back on "we don't discuss individual cases". You can hear the pattern repeated over and over again, whenever a journalist tries to get beyond the self-justifying propaganda that usually starts such interviews.
Well, I would like to speak about a few individual cases. Just to be going on with. Just so they are not forgotten.
Such as:
Two brothers, aged five and seven, were killed at a school sheltering up to 1,800 local residents in Biet Lahiya, in northern Gaza. The mother of the children lost both her legs in the incident and another 13 people were injured. Christopher Gunness, a United Nations official, called on Israel to investigate the incident, which he said could constitute a "war crime."
The main United Nations compound inside Gaza City was set on fire as fierce fighting erupted when Israeli tanks advanced towards the Tel El Howa district.
UN sources said the blaze was started by Israeli shells containing white phosphorus, the controversial material used to create a smokescreen for advancing troops.
Eye witnesses said the tank advance led to thousands of civilians fleeing on foot, some seeking shelter in the nearby al-Quds hospital.
Under the rules of war, white phosphorus can only be used in open spaces away from large civilian populations.
There have been repeated allegations in Gaza that civilians have suffered disfiguring burn injuries after being hit by white phosphorus.
The UN compound housed the headquarters and logistical centre of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the group that feeds and supports about a million refugees inside Gaza.
Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, said three members of staff had been injured.
"Three white phosphorus shells have hit the compound and right now the pallets on which we are meant to deliver aid are on fire," he said.
"What more powerful symbol can there be than pallets used for aid being set alight by the fighting? With white phosphorus you cannot put out the flames with water. You need sand and right now there is too much fighting for our staff to get sand."
Or this, from Oxfam's Gaza Blog:
I met with Sameh Al Sawaferi who is 58 years old; he is a father for 11 and the biggest chicken and egg farmer in the Gaza Strip. Every day he sold 1,000 chickens and produced 120,000 packs of eggs, each pack containing 30 eggs. He supplied Oxfam with eggs just before the Israeli military offensive started.
The smell and sight as I went to greet him made me retch, 60,000 chickens were laying there, dead.
Israeli tanks had destroyed the entire farm including the chickens, those that were spared probably died later of dehydration and hunger. Sameh was told by the Israeli troops that occupied the area to leave so he could not tend to them.
“Along with many other people from the area, I was asked by the Israeli military to go into one room. Among us were people who had just been injured. We were told to leave immediately or face death. We asked if we could take the injured with us, the answer was no. When we returned, those whom we were forced to leave behind were dead, ” Sameh told me. I said he must report this to Oxfam partner the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, who are documenting allegations of war crimes.
Sameh was only able to go back when the attacks ended, he returned to find 50 years of his hard work destroyed. ” I never imagined I would lose everything. The sight of my farm destroyed was devastating and then I entered my house only to see soldiers’ footprints, they had left their food and defecated around my home,” he said. As he was telling me this I looked up and saw the words, ‘Leave, or you will be killed’, scribbled on the wall.
More from the same source:-
But the worst thing I saw was just outside of Beit Lahia (North East of Gaza Strip) in the area of Atta Abed Rabo. I could not recognise Beit Lahia! Entire neighbourhoods have disappeared. In place of houses and street there is nothing. It’s like looking at fields of ruins. I cannot imagine how long it will take to rebuild. How much money will be needed.
The people of Atta Abed Rabo have suddenly lost everything. This community is composed of original residents of Gaza, who were here before the influx of refugees in 1948. They were the middle class and now even they are badly affected. I met a family who lost their house and the taxi cars that constituted their only source of income. When I met them they were sitting in front in the rubble where their house used to be, preparing tea on a small burner. They are not used to receiving aid, as they were among those donating to charities like Dr. Risek’s. They don’t understand what has happened, they are still in shock.
I don't see how anyone, faced with evidence like this, can view Israel's actions as being anything other than a massively disproportionate collective punishment of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza for having the temerity to vote democratically for control by Hamas.
This is not to say that Hamas are blameless. They may well have cynically manipulated the situation for publicity purposes. Neither side in the conflict is capable of grasping (or wilfully ignores) the fact that two wrongs don't make a right. The conflict will never be resolved until the Israelis are forced to sit around a table and discuss the two-state solution.
But when it comes to individual cases, right now, where the blame, and the responsibility for paying for it to be put right, should currently be apportioned, is crystal clear.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
The Orphans' Picnic
When I was little, we used to have a joke in our family about "Mummy, can I shoot you so that I can go to the orphans' picnic?"
It seems that the Israeli Defence Force has a similar disconnected approach to morality. Just let me get this right. They are going to stop bombing people in Gaza for three hours a day so that they can distribute aid and medical supplies, then three hours later they are going to start bombing again?
What fucking planet are these people on?
Also I would like to know what the rules of engagement are for the IDF when it comes to shooting at schools. It's a fairly devastating question, because either way, if they have been given the coordinates of the school and told NOT to fire at it, then they are in breach of their own rules of engagement, and if their rules of engagement allow them to shoot at schools, then presumably that implies the deliberate disregard of civilians and - is that not against the Geneva convention?
Back briefly to the issue of proportionality.
What is Israel hoping to achieve? Unless they occupy every square foot of Gaza, which they just don't have the military wherewithal to do, there will always be some neglected back lot somewhere where the jihadists will appear as if by magic, set up their rockets, and then shoot and scoot. There's also the issue of the relative totals of casualty figures. I know that war is not a game of cricket, and that in a sense, the five Israeli dead are just as 100% dead as each of the supposed 500 Palestinians is.
But these rocket attacks that are being advanced as the primary casus belli in this case. According to figures published by its own central bureau of statistics, road accident deaths in Israel 2000-2006 averaged at 7.1 people per 100,000. Given a population of 7.73 million, I make that 523 people. Just over 87 per year. According to stats published by The Israel Project, in the period June 2004 to December 2008, 17 Israeli citizens were killed by Qassam Rockets and Mortars fired into Israel by Hamas from Gaza.
Now, like I said, I freely accept that every one of those 17 innocent people is 100% dead and probably leaves grieving families. None of them deserved to die, probably, but the thing is, one of the things governments should do is look at the bigger picture. If Israel is concerned about the threat of the deaths of its citizens, on the face of it, they should be bombing their own ministry of transport this morning.
Which is what leads me to conclude that Israel knows as well as I do that there is no military solution to prevent the rocketing from Gaza, and no justification for the massively disproportionate response apart from to make certain members of the Israeli cabinet look good at election time. Plus, they are handing a massive propaganda victory to Hamas and their cohorts.
To the outside world, it looks like "collective punishment" rather than a military campaign. And every shot they fire, every Palestinian they kill, is creating another vendetta, another family who will be exploited by the loopy fundamentalist twisters of Islam, another kid who will end up wearing a suicide bomber's vest.
I do know, also, that there are decent, humane people in Israel who want the peaceful, two-state solution that seems to me to offer the only glimmer of hope in the whole sorry mess, and I do acknowledge that their voices get drowned out in the brash pronouncements of the likes of the IDF.
I don't deny Israel's right to exist, you can't wind time back to 1948, you have to start from where you are now. Which implies a two-state solution.
It seems that the Israeli Defence Force has a similar disconnected approach to morality. Just let me get this right. They are going to stop bombing people in Gaza for three hours a day so that they can distribute aid and medical supplies, then three hours later they are going to start bombing again?
What fucking planet are these people on?
Also I would like to know what the rules of engagement are for the IDF when it comes to shooting at schools. It's a fairly devastating question, because either way, if they have been given the coordinates of the school and told NOT to fire at it, then they are in breach of their own rules of engagement, and if their rules of engagement allow them to shoot at schools, then presumably that implies the deliberate disregard of civilians and - is that not against the Geneva convention?
Back briefly to the issue of proportionality.
What is Israel hoping to achieve? Unless they occupy every square foot of Gaza, which they just don't have the military wherewithal to do, there will always be some neglected back lot somewhere where the jihadists will appear as if by magic, set up their rockets, and then shoot and scoot. There's also the issue of the relative totals of casualty figures. I know that war is not a game of cricket, and that in a sense, the five Israeli dead are just as 100% dead as each of the supposed 500 Palestinians is.
But these rocket attacks that are being advanced as the primary casus belli in this case. According to figures published by its own central bureau of statistics, road accident deaths in Israel 2000-2006 averaged at 7.1 people per 100,000. Given a population of 7.73 million, I make that 523 people. Just over 87 per year. According to stats published by The Israel Project, in the period June 2004 to December 2008, 17 Israeli citizens were killed by Qassam Rockets and Mortars fired into Israel by Hamas from Gaza.
Now, like I said, I freely accept that every one of those 17 innocent people is 100% dead and probably leaves grieving families. None of them deserved to die, probably, but the thing is, one of the things governments should do is look at the bigger picture. If Israel is concerned about the threat of the deaths of its citizens, on the face of it, they should be bombing their own ministry of transport this morning.
Which is what leads me to conclude that Israel knows as well as I do that there is no military solution to prevent the rocketing from Gaza, and no justification for the massively disproportionate response apart from to make certain members of the Israeli cabinet look good at election time. Plus, they are handing a massive propaganda victory to Hamas and their cohorts.
To the outside world, it looks like "collective punishment" rather than a military campaign. And every shot they fire, every Palestinian they kill, is creating another vendetta, another family who will be exploited by the loopy fundamentalist twisters of Islam, another kid who will end up wearing a suicide bomber's vest.
I do know, also, that there are decent, humane people in Israel who want the peaceful, two-state solution that seems to me to offer the only glimmer of hope in the whole sorry mess, and I do acknowledge that their voices get drowned out in the brash pronouncements of the likes of the IDF.
I don't deny Israel's right to exist, you can't wind time back to 1948, you have to start from where you are now. Which implies a two-state solution.
Tuesday, 23 December 2008
Scilly Buggers' Outing
Well, it's been another week for exponents of Cornish offshore electronic surveillance.
Pope Benedict - gay people are a bigger threat than the destruction of the rain forests? What's that all about then? He needs to get off his throne, take the jiffy bag off his head, and read what it says in the Bible about loving each other.
I cannot believe, in a world where people are dying because they don't have enough food and clean water, or being slaughtered in arbitrary wars in Africa and the Middle East, that this is all the Catholic church has to concern itself with.
Richard Branson - the NHS can be freed of MRSA by simply isolating the staff who are MRSA sufferers and keeping them in the back room? And presumably feeding them through a grille in the door? Why not go the whole hog and paint a red cross on the entrance with "Lord Have Mercy On Our Souls"? Has anyone worked out how the front line staff are to avoid coming into contact with the back room staff? Or how we're going to manage with surgeons doing the filing?
Idiot. Shut up, you beardy fool.
All we need now is for Cameron to suggest putting rubber wheels on the Underground again, and we'll have a set!
Pope Benedict - gay people are a bigger threat than the destruction of the rain forests? What's that all about then? He needs to get off his throne, take the jiffy bag off his head, and read what it says in the Bible about loving each other.
I cannot believe, in a world where people are dying because they don't have enough food and clean water, or being slaughtered in arbitrary wars in Africa and the Middle East, that this is all the Catholic church has to concern itself with.
Richard Branson - the NHS can be freed of MRSA by simply isolating the staff who are MRSA sufferers and keeping them in the back room? And presumably feeding them through a grille in the door? Why not go the whole hog and paint a red cross on the entrance with "Lord Have Mercy On Our Souls"? Has anyone worked out how the front line staff are to avoid coming into contact with the back room staff? Or how we're going to manage with surgeons doing the filing?
Idiot. Shut up, you beardy fool.
All we need now is for Cameron to suggest putting rubber wheels on the Underground again, and we'll have a set!
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
White Poppies, white feathers
There's some bloke at the Daily Telegraph who has got the bag on about White poppies.
He says
People who wear white poppies - who include the sanctimonious prats of the "Christian" think tank Ekklesia - not only dishonour our war dead: they also assert their supposed moral superiority over the 40 million Britons who wear British Legion red poppies.
What should you do if you see a white poppy wearer today? At the very least - if I may borrow a phrase from my colleague Alan Cochrane - you should give them a cheery wave not involving the use of all your fingers.
Really, when I read bilge like this, I am torn between praying for this dickhead and going round there with a baseball bat. The white poppy was invented by the Peace Pledge Union, which was started by Dick Sheppard, who has been a chaplain to military hospitals on the Western Front in the First World War, and had decided "never again".
I can't imagine ANYONE wearing a poppy, white or red, to glorify war. It doesn't matter what colour your poppy is, any more than it matters what colour your skin is. or is this fucknugget saying war is a good thing?
He's called Damien something, I can't be bothered, to be honest, all I know is that is family must be experts in audio electronic surveillance in a small archipelago of holiday islands off the coast of Cornwall.
Yes, it's obviously Scilly Buggers' outing today.
He says
People who wear white poppies - who include the sanctimonious prats of the "Christian" think tank Ekklesia - not only dishonour our war dead: they also assert their supposed moral superiority over the 40 million Britons who wear British Legion red poppies.
What should you do if you see a white poppy wearer today? At the very least - if I may borrow a phrase from my colleague Alan Cochrane - you should give them a cheery wave not involving the use of all your fingers.
Really, when I read bilge like this, I am torn between praying for this dickhead and going round there with a baseball bat. The white poppy was invented by the Peace Pledge Union, which was started by Dick Sheppard, who has been a chaplain to military hospitals on the Western Front in the First World War, and had decided "never again".
I can't imagine ANYONE wearing a poppy, white or red, to glorify war. It doesn't matter what colour your poppy is, any more than it matters what colour your skin is. or is this fucknugget saying war is a good thing?
He's called Damien something, I can't be bothered, to be honest, all I know is that is family must be experts in audio electronic surveillance in a small archipelago of holiday islands off the coast of Cornwall.
Yes, it's obviously Scilly Buggers' outing today.
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