Tag: Labour Party

All That’s Political Come To Pass

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

With this day comes the final seven day countdown to my last piece on here. In the last day or two I’ll write something self-indulgent about the whole experience but in the mean time I want to use today to mark the end of what feels like a series of pieces on the US election and Trump. Naturally with these words he will do something ridiculous tomorrow and I’ll be left no choice but to comment on it but it would be nice not to allow him to take up the last week of something that is not supposed to be predominantly taken up with politics and especially not Trump.

I would like to draw your attention to a video I discovered by independent media organisation Double Down News. I’ve mentioned them before because I find their videos to be highly agreeable and I want others to agree with them too. It’s called spreading the word or something like that. I’m not someone who spends hours watching videos online, I come across them more then anything, and will always call out people who call watching videos on YouTube ‘research’ or try to use them as evidence of anything. They are an easily accessible medium though and it is no surprise YouTube has become a battleground of sorts.

This short video discusses the issues facing the Democrats and how they’re incapable of dealing with them when their core donors expect a continuation of neoliberal economic and political choices. It discusses the similarities between the Democrats / Labour and Sanders / Corbyn and the self-destructive response from establishment figures within the parties. This feels like a video which successfully encapsulates my beliefs but it’s important for me too to understand whether my beliefs simply encapsulate the ideas put forth in this video and many things I read. Narratives do exist and while we’re capable of conscious thought as well as forming opinions objectively by ourselves, we’re easily convinced of things and it’s not always clear what comes first.

The video is only ten minutes but it is interesting and gives insight into the rumblings inside my head if my previous words over this year haven’t. There won’t be another year to clarify. In fact, there won’t even be anything this time next week. Everything has a time, all things come to pass. That includes political ideologies and that in a way feels like a reassuring thought at the very least.

Interplanetary Establishment Stooges

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This was going to be a piece on the EHRC report into anti-semitism within the Labour party. If I was attempting to be a super duper up to the minute journalist then it probably should be but instead I’m just some guy who likes to spout his limited opinion on various things on a daily basis. Tomorrow I have a long journey to Athens and as there is so much stuff coming out on this purge I would like to digest it first. Also, and more importantly, far more important than any of this power politics nonsense which I’ll get myself worked up about tomorrow and a day late, is an article in The Independent that says scientists “have found a “rogue” planet floating through our galaxy, untethered to any sun”.

What the fuck?! What the actual fuck?!! And how the actual fuck is something like this not a bigger story. Apparently it is the smallest rogue world ever found and has a mass somewhere between Earth and Mars. There are rogue worlds?! What the…you get the point. The universe is incredible and not just because I’m about to watch the last two episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I always thought planets revolved around a sun but there appears to be loads just floating around freely. It does beg the question though, what if it’s a Death Star? It probably isn’t but saying it definitely isn’t is surely a rational or logical impossibility. We exert so much energy arguing and worrying over the most stupid little things and there’s planets, which haven’t been proven not to be Death Stars, just floating around out there. In all seriousness though, why do we limit the possibilities of existence when we’re constantly proving how little we actually know. Socrates got it, he understood.

It doesn’t take away from the fact Keir Starmer isn’t just another establishment stooge doing other people’s dirty work. He’s a total prick let’s be honest. This whole attack on Jeremy Corbyn is incredible to observe. Just step back from it, detach yourself and observe it objectively. He challenged real power and they’re destroying him. You can see the mechanisms grinding away, the people and institutions involved. This is the type of thing you see on some television series. Yet this is real life and it’s absolutely blatant. It’s fascinating, it’s horrifying. It does show how exposed they are in this modern day world with the internet. Won’t mean a lot though when this new planet settles in our orbit and we discover we’ve got neighbours. I wonder how quickly Starmer will decide to worship his new masters.

Boris Johnson’s Dystopian New Jerusalem

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As Boris Johnson talks about building a ‘New Jerusalem’ I remind myself of any dystopian story I have ever read. I’m not sure I want to be part of his New Jerusalem. Anyone professing to be the architect of a new society makes me instinctively cautious. Someone with his track record for incompetence and general indifference to the wellbeing of the populace is someone whose Jerusalem reeks of inevitable failure. These are the type of people who will hoard the lifejackets as the ship sinks, or who in actuality are already hoarding the lifejackets as the system sinks.

I haven’t been getting caught up in cries of fascism and autocracy by the state but this lot in power at the moment are not playing by the rules of old. If they were anarchists decentralising and creating community I would be fine with it but when they’re right wing wannabe despots in the making it is more concerning. Teachers can’t teach about anti-capitalism anymore. The police have been given draconian powers to enforce their will on the people. Powers are rarely given up once they’ve been received. The opposition exists in name only. There are real and concerning things going on in the UK at present. Once we leave the EU this power grab will only be intensified.

Talking of the ‘opposition’, only twenty of them, one of whom was Jeremy Corbyn, voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill. Officially this “authorise(s) conduct by officials and agents of the security and intelligence services, law enforcement, and certain other public authorities, which would otherwise constitute criminality”. In layman’s terms the state and it’s enforcers are now above the law. Effectively this allows the government a license to kill whoever it deems a danger to it’s existence. The US and Canada have similar laws but they specifically exclude certain crimes like murder and torture. This one rushed through Parliament omits such exclusions. Remarkably the bill extends these powers to various government bodies such as The Competition and Markets Authority, The Environment Agency, The Financial Conduct Authority, The Food Standards Agency and The Gambling Commission.

The bill allows for state actors to break the law in three scenarios – in the interests of national security, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime or of preventing disorder and in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom. What is clear from this though is the ambiguity involved. ‘Preventing disorder’ seems as all encompassing as ‘breach of the peace’, what exactly is classed as disorder? And someone can be killed to protect the economic interests of the UK. Does this mean I can sign up for the police and kill the leaders of Brexit? But seriously if we think of the new teaching rules on sugar coating capitalism and then this, it’s clear who and what this mob represent.

Former Tory leader and Brexit Minister David Davis and former Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell have even called the government out on there being a “whole series of weaknesses in (the bill), which at the end of the day will impinge on innocent people” and on the dangers of “granting such powers in a free society” respectively. Human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Unions such as Unite have also heavily cautioned about the dangers involved with passing such legislation. As ever the media have been silent. Not even a mention of Keir Starmer whipping his MPs into abstaining against the vote. Love or loath Corbyn, at least he was a man of integrity and one who actually acted as a real opposition. Like I said, I don’t usually get caught up in genuine despotic outcries but this is concerning and this is a system looking increasingly less capable of maintaining and standing up for itself by the day.

A Heroes Welcome

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As I drove through the small village near my home at about five minutes past eight this evening I noticed people had lined the street and started clapping as I approached. It’s good to have my existence celebrated finally. The strange thing is that having stopped their 8pm clap for carers session, some actually clapped in my direction as I drove by. I was in a delivery van so I wonder if they saw me as some kind of hero putting my life on the line to deliver them their bread. Still, I just drove on. I did contemplate hooting the horn as I drove through but I didn’t want to play along with whatever it is they’re doing. To be completely honest, I think the whole things a charade and it’s stupid. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure there are some exhausted and not to mention ill nurses out there and I appreciate and respect them for doing what their doing, there’s just something empty about this whole clapping show. Each Thursday at 8pm people line the streets, clap and bang pots. It’s a lovely gesture but I suspect for many it’s hollow.

It’s worth pointing out that were I live in both Northumberland and the Scottish Borders, Tory MPs were voted in to power recently. Perhaps these people banging pots could instead just not vote for them next time. Who gives a shit about what you think if you clap your hands and then vote for the very people who actively weaken those you’re clapping for. The mind numbing hypocrisy just seems lost and maybe that’s the worst part. I want to hang a banner from my window highlighting this but I’m concerned the attention it might draw to the bakery below me may not be ideal. I just want to slap everyone and point out that they’re idiots. There’s too many idiots.

People talk about ten years of Tory government and their ideological attacks on the NHS as being the reason for it’s current struggles but that’s not accurate. Either people have short memories or they’re just playing party politics. While I would trust Jeremy Corbyn with the NHS, I would be curious to know people’s opinions on Tony Blair’s version of a Labour Government. But really we can go back as far as Thatcher and the first real inroads of a neoliberal movement to destroy something that has helped so many. In truth actually we could go all the way back to Nye Bevan and the Tory government he had to fight against to establish the NHS we all love and cherish now. You see, it’s not just ten years of Tory austerity. Or forty years of neoliberalism. These bastards have had it in for free health care since the very beginning. Don’t believe their lies. And if you vote for them, save your breath, and save your effort each Thursday night. If you truly cared for the carers you wouldn’t be voting for that self-serving mob. It’s not bloody hard to understand.

An Opportunity Lost?

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The more I think about it the British General Election back in December was an even bigger loss than I thought at the time. Don’t get me wrong I was pretty desponded, as the annuls of this blog can attest, but this is a deeper realisation. At the time it was clearly a missed opportunity. The Labour manifesto was in places a sensation, an attempt to strip back years of neoliberal skullduggery and corruption. It was relatively radical by an measure of what depths British politics has sunk to, we were going to have drastic and crazy levels of social welfare in line with Germany and France. Perish the thought. Apparently that was going to be Communism in the heart of Europe, well the departing heart of Europe. This realisation that we were instead about to be dragged out of Europe and forced onto our proverbial knees by an aggressively self-serving United States. To sit by as those supposedly negotiating and supposedly on our behalf pretended they were going to act tough even though they had already admitted they had put all our eggs in the Yankee basket. The neoliberal con was about to have it’s one last job before going into retirement. Of course I was despondent.

And now as the world has descended into whatever we can call this shit show, it is beyond doubt that there will be lasting effects and change coming out of all of this. Nobody who says they know really has any idea because it genuinely is all open. All open in the way that power still holds all the cards even though they’re blank. Depending how long this goes on for will depend on how your average persons view of the world changes in an open compassionate way, and that means a lot of suffering I suspect. Right now after a month of this it’s far from long enough to have any lasting change and I must point out I’m not a believer in ends justifying means or innocent people suffering. I don’t want the world necessarily to change for the better if it means innocents dying. Anyone who believes this misses the point. But had power not been this corrupt bunch of self-serving scumbags then at least this rebuild may have been done with someone other than their own and the tax dodgers interests at the top of the pile.

What an opportunity. We thought it was going to be bad having five years of a majority government of some of the worst Tories in my lifetime calling the shots. Now these people will rebuild what comes out of this and I am not looking forward. Boris is no hero despite what the media are attempting to convince you, and I doubt he had an intensive care bed epiphany about the value of the NHS and freedom of movement despite his foreign NHS nurse holding his precious little hand throughout. Imagine the vitriol had Jeremy Corbyn been in charge, there is simply no way his government would be getting let off as easily as this current mob. They would most likely blame him for the state of the NHS despite only being in power for a few months after ten years of Tory austerity and ideological cuts. We could be about to move into a period of rebuilding society and the economy with people being put first, the whole populace, not the depending on bank account version. So it is a missed opportunity, but is it a lost opportunity? This is only something time can tell. We’ve certainly not made it easy on ourselves though.

Wild Eyed Crazy Bernie

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It’s good to see Bernie is doing well in the Democratic primaries. He came second to Buttigeig in Iowa by less than a thousand votes but has won the next two in New Hampshire and Nevada. Today sees South Carolina before Super Tuesday on well Tuesday of next week. I don’t care what people people say, for anyone familiar with Sky Sports’ sensationalising of football, Super Tuesday sounds ridiculous and merely highlights through which prism we view the world now. I think I understand how their voting system works although I will admit there is probably bits I miss out on. They get votes in each state which leads to getting delegates and super delegates based on their share of the vote to represent them at the Democratic national convention or whatever it’s called, the one with the most wins will get the pleasure of going up against the big bad wolf Trump. I wonder how may Supers they can fit in that contest especially if it ends up being crazy Bernie the wild eyed Socialist running.

Having recent experience of elections and what turned out to be the inevitable disappointment of losing, Bernie going up against Trump makes me nervous. It is impossible to deny the parallels with British politics of recent times. The populist Socialist Corbyn against the populist right winger Johnson. Despite the fact anyone with any sense could see the folly of voting for Johnson and only three months down the line it’s already seemingly falling to pieces, although the same was said about Trump, the establishment and their media did anything and everything they could to keep Corbyn from coming to power. Better the devil you know who does your bidding than the devil you don’t who wants you to pay some tax. For this reason I am nervous then. Even publications like the Economist who I am finding myself starting to trust are focusing a little too much on unelectable Bernie. I have seen the power of the media in the UK and don’t doubt for a second that despite the partisan nature of American politics they would do anything in their power to prevent Bernie from coming to power, even if that means another four years of Trump and four years of him knowing he doesn’t need to worry about being re-elected. You can even see the parallels within the American Democratic and British Labour parties as those who hold the power try frantically to repeat their success of last time when they got Hillary Clinton in with the self-defeating behaviour of many within Labour who would rather their own party were not elected than one led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Politics and power is dirty. I am not American but their politics affects so much of the world and is covered so much in our own media that it is impossible not to take an interest. I hope I am proved wrong because I would love to see Bernie in The White House and Trump back in the penthouse of one of his failing towers, but we’ve already had a trial run for this exact situation and it didn’t end well. If you repeat enough times how unelectable someone is he may just end up being so. We had turkeys voting for Christmas, will they be voting for Thanksgiving this time around?