Our three neo-con major political parties have come up with a jolly cunning plan to lift money direct from the taxpayer, in addtion to being paid by big business to promote the interests of big business against the people.
A government inquiry is recommending that £20 million a year in public funding be given to the three neo-con parties. Is there no end to their greed? I suppose the logic is perfect – it will finally cement into our political system the monopoly of power by parties that are arrogantly unrepresentative of the will of the people, knowing that their system, above all by control of the media, locks out any alternative from competing for political power.
I write with certainty that all our three political parties are now neo-conservative, but with great sadness. The Tories became fully neo-con around 1979, New Labour around 1996 and the Lib Dems around 2010. All the parties contain still a minority of resisters, the fewer the longer they have been neo-con. So Ken Clarke is an almost entirely isolated resister in the Tory party, Jeremy Corbyn one of very few left in New Labour, while the Lib Dems still have a few Norman Bakers who have not yet been entirely corrupted by power and money, but you can see the process working on the Lib Dems like acid and their integrity will have been completely eaten through in another 18 months.
Meanwhile, there are some who don’t get it, like poor deluded old bat Polly Toynbee, who still has not worked out that New Labour went neo-con. Yesterday’s Toynbee article has the headline: “Executive pay soars while the young poor face freefall. Where is Labour?” You are a fool, Toynbee. The ex-ministers of the last New Labour government are in the boardroom picking up those massive remunerations and perks you are rightly complaining about. Did you really not know that, or do you just refuse to see?
New Labour is now neo-con, Toynbee. It is fifteen years since Peter Mandelson said that “New Labour is intensely relaxed about the filty rich.” Mandelson and Blair and Hewitt and Jowell and Milburn and Burnham and Reid and Blunkett and the whole lot of them are now filthy rich. Somebody explain this to Toynbee.
But it is an extremely important point that I did not see a single mainstream politician yesterday questioning the obscenity of directors’ earnings rising over 49% last year – from a huge base – when average real incomes were falling. The media was packed with apologists explaining trickledown theory to us. I also noted that the Occupy movement needs to beware of the media appearing to give them coverage, when in fact the media are deliberately picking on people whose hearts, instincts and minds are all in the right place, but who lack media experience and formal education in the ground on which the media places them. The media can then give the impression of debate with the cards severely stacked, to make the view that in fact the large majority of those at home will hold, that executive salaries are obscene and untenable, appear amateur and ill-informed.
The parties do not represent us and their collective membership is falling, as they are now a vehicle for career rather than belief. No wonder they want to pick our pockets to keep up the pretence of democracy.
Komo, happy to give you the two quid, but I wouldn’t be happy to follow any of Cheney’s measures. Email me: [email protected] and I will pay you te 2 quid by Paypal (wonder what monopoly owns that?)
See also
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/57185/david-willetts-leads-britain-israel-digital-collaboration
and
http://www.thejc.com/matthew-gould/44714/matthew-gould-enormous-potential-uk-israel-cooperation
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No doubt we will be profiting by the expertise gained in Cast Lead, too.
Leave it in the fighting fund, John. You’ll need it for expenses come the revolution.
🙂
Komo, don’t blame you if you don’t collect. I trust Hotmail as much as I trust Facebook. But the more we (who is we?) offer alternatives (still looking I’m afraid) the better chance we have of resolving problems, if indeed they can be resolved.
“Wendy, there is some commonsense in your witty comment, but as a professing pacifist, having seen what has just happened in Libya, I couldn’t support any NTC (which probably means I would be shot as a supporter of Cameron) if there was a NTC. Great joke! Except it’s not funny because something similar almost certainly happened in these Unholy Wars in the Middle East and North Africa. Looking for practical solutions that are not going to make things worse is something we need to address. And I don’t even know who we is!”
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i suspect that NTC or no NTC they dont care, the actions by our neo con & affiliated friends will be the same .
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however announcing an NTC would place the govt & affiliates on the back foot politically sound bite wise especially as these are the instruments that they have used to liberate libya and soon to be syria. its the kind of thing the neo cons would do.
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this present environment has been contrived, blair knew it was coming (after all he was the architect along with brown) and had all the necessary laws in place by 2008 .. the resolving of the issue is obvious but instead it has been extended as the exponential rate of wealth transfer takes place.
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the issue is that the public still believe that the police and the govt are benign, in the sense they are not going to hurt us only those extremists in the mid east .. for those who were on the physical end of the police, media and govt during the miners strike – they know better.
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what to do .. its obvious.
jimmy’s last fix – tara 4 now mate
Publicity is good. At any rate it can do no harm. Accurate, sourced information, widely distributed: it is important, I think, not to be conflated with conspiracy theorists and existing political organisations. “We” are anyone that cares enough to say so to someone else. And I think, strangely, that “we” are patriots, who resent every detail of our lives being given into the control of kleptocrats who mock everything this country ought to honestly stand for. This is intended as a talking point, not dogma.
Dissent finds sxpression here:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2011/oct/30/observer-letters-economists-george-osborne
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Treasure it. You may never see 100 academics agreeing again…
I agree with you Komodo, spread the knowledge; Mary’s powerful knowledge grab and Wendy’s memory of the miners strike brings it all home to me. I really hope people listen. One man focused my thoughts, before that I was boxing with shadows, now, I know who the enemy is.
It’s an asymmetric war for public opinion, Mark. “We” don’t have the heavy arms: “we” have to use the country and decline the set-piece battles. A word at work or in the pub (if you use one) to someone prepared to listen has more effect, I sincerely believe, than a word in your MP’s ear. For one thing, it costs nothing. For another, it will reach more people. And the minute “we” organise formally, “we” invite subversion and infiltration. Just thoughts. Peace.
I clicked your link Komodo thanks and also picked up on this comment:
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Your account of my arrest is un-grounded and based on inaccurate speculation (Profile). Its entire analysis is based on an assumption that I had a choice about my arrest. The reason my partner’s and my arrest is significant is that it shows that people are being taken off the street in America by the state for lawful activity that would not lead to their arrests.
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The NYPD arrested us for standing peaceably on the sidewalk. I would never choose the fairly disturbing experience of being taken in handcuffs to a location that was intentionally concealed from our fellow protesters and our attorneys.
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Naomi Wolf
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New York
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Much as I like ‘Ruth’s’ idea, it is ‘Naomi’s’ experience, ‘writerman’s’ conclusions and ‘John Goss’s’ poem that tell me it is a only coordinated, peaceful, legally secured ‘occupyxx’ in every English city effectively halting an already stalled economy that will bite hardest for real change. If we want a Craig ‘belief’ in power then only our will to make that happen will succeed.
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The ‘about face’ stalwarts have set up camps – we should join them.
“I think we should set up a some kind of parliament with as many people as possible online that deals with the same current issues as Parliament does, with full debate and then a vote.”
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Ruth, I think you are on the right lines, we need to start a new political party and then gain power, its not the parliament we need to change, its the people we elect to it that needs changing. If only all us malcontents on the blogosphere could set aside our petty differences and get down to some serious constructive dialogue on how to archive it the better. I am sure it could be done with some willpower and determination.
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“From small acorns do mighty oaks grow”
Craig,
It was my Children who convinced me.
It was the first time they were both eligible to vote.
I have believed in the democratic process all my life, and have signed the nomination papers of a neighbour who put himself up for election.
I spent nearly two hours trying to convince my Children to vote, using every argument I could come up with, even the fact that it was in their primary school and they could experience the process..
They convinced me, that the system was completely corrupt and that there was no way they were going to take part in such a corrupt system.
I haven’t voted since.
Its good to listen to what your Children say.
Listen to their arguments
Listen to how the World actually is From Their Point of View.
Tony
tony_opmoc
October 29, 2011 – 12:19 pm
Don’t you get it?
“It’s time Britain’s armed forces worked out what is happening in the world. We should be fighting against the CIA, Mossad and the penetration of these organisations into our own country, not assisting them to destroy peoples’ lives in other places around the globe. Britain’s armed forces are needed to defend our own people from the predations of our own security services who carry out false acts of terror against us. These are committed to feed the media’s war narratives on behalf of the corporations that would become the world’s single government. Our finest are fighting to accelerate our own enslavement.”
Obviously I didn’t write the above. I ain’t that intelligent. Apparently she said it live in a video that lasts over an hour.
I like smart girls
Tony
Stephen
1.John Major resigned twice as party leader. Remember?
2.Your line that (excuse the paraphrase) those who criticise NATO aggression are fellow travellers of the governments of the countries NATO attacks is so preposterous it doesn’t deserve a reply. I suppose you’ll tell us Obama is a fellow traveller of Gadaffi because he said he didn’t like to see him murdered like that.
Sorry to be off post Craig, this link relates to your solar panels. One should log onto http://www.ted.com/talks/justin_hall_tipping_freeing_energy
The technology should make future wars for oil less likely.
If the above link does not work type it in the search line on Google or go to youtube and search for justin hall-tipping: freeing energy from the grid
“The ‘cold war’ did not cost many British lives and I don’t remember thousands of kids being slaughtered either…”
It costs thousands of British lives and tens of millions of non British lives, including millions of children, in places like Guatemala, Iran, Guyana, Yemen…the list of places in which, in the “battle against Communism,” nationalists, peasant farmers, stroppy democrats and, by far the largest category, bystanders were tortured, detained, massacred, beaten, banished or just blacklisted, is as long as the list of members of the UN.
And, of course, anyone pointing out that what South Africa was doing or was being done in the Congo or in Indo China, was wrong, disgraceful and barbaric was denounced as a “fellow traveller” or a “useful idiot.”
The theory being that, bad though Pinochet might be, or terrible as the junta in Argentina’s “disappearances” might seem, it was the duty of any real opponent of Stalinism to look the other way. Because to denounce the crime would be “objectively” to link arms with Beria, Stalin and the Devil.
And now the same logic is being used to apologise for the Wahhabi financed thugs who, under the protection of the RAF, are merrily bayonetting their way through hospital wards, filling graves with black labourers’ bodies and defenestrating old men; not to recognise these rough diamonds as fellow toilers for democracy, brave fighters against despotism and generous supporters of multi-nationals, is to reveal oneself as a bigoted anti American.
The neo-cons have been apologists for death squads, torture and massacres on an industrial scale throughout the Cold War, they have a taste for the blood of poor, badly, or preferably un, armed Third World people. And not even the disappearance of the Soviet Union is enough to ween them from an addiction which has become naked race hatred. No wonder Stephen disapproves of those who understand what it is all about. And that it has nothing to do with “humanitarian” or “democratic” principles.
Komodo, thanks for the link. 100 professors of economics advise the government to adopt Plan B (which in essence is a variant of Keynesian economics) because Plan A is not working. From my chair I support their efforts but do not expect this government, or any of the other parties, to listen.
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Ruth, Guest, Mark G, setting up a political party that has enough clout to oppose the 3 neocon parties is hardly likely to work. Before the Iraq war I was active in Small Heath Stop the War campaign an organisation from which sprang the Respect Party. It is not easy to start a political party. It needs a lot of commitment from a lot of people and a lot of money (there we go again). The easy way is to take over one of the 3 established parties, like Blair did with Labour, like Owen, Williams and co did with the Liberal Party, and Cameron and Clegg did with the Lib Dems. The solution is not as easy to put one’s finger on as the problem.
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Only when people like Fox and Hague are brought to justice over their support for a bogus charity, Atlantic Bridge, which has been laundering money to perpetuate its greed and warmongering, and only when these characters are made to pay for their crimes, will the country I love gain any credibility in my eyes again. It is not pleasant to be ashamed of my country. But I am. Perhaps Wendy is right. Perhaps there does need to be a National Transitional Council. I just worry about the consequences, and who would take control of the grass roots movement when the revolution is over. For me the opposition has got to be passive.
The agenda of Cameron at the CHOGM was obvious. He’s attempting to revive the I’m Backing Britain campaign of the ;ate 60s. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Backing_Britain)
Yesterday it was the revival of the British Empire Medal (what empire we ask?) and today it’s armed guards on ships to resist attacks from pirates and the like. That would be in the manner of armed guards on El Al flights.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15510467
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Q Will the provision of armed guards for HMS Pinafore extend to the aid ships to Gaza to resist the activities of the Israeli pirates?
FYI
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In 1984 Hilda Murrell, a 78-year-old distinguished rose-grower turned anti-nuclear campaigner, was found brutally murdered outside her home town of Shrewsbury, England. The case became one of the biggest, most bizarre and baffling British murders of the 20th century involving political conspiracies surrounding the nuclear industry and the Falklands War.
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After a cold case review, in 2005 Andrew George, who was a 16-year-old petty thief from a foster home, was convicted. However, Hilda’s nephew, former British Navy Commander Robert Green, has now published a book ‘A Thorn In Their Side: The Hilda Murrell Murder‘, about his pursuit of the truth, in which he reveals fresh evidence which almost certainly would acquit George.
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REVIEWS OF ‘A THORN IN THEIR SIDE’
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“The former Royal Naval commander in charge of nuclear weapons , and his prominent Kiwi peace campaigner wife, blow the lid off this and many other British security scandals in an explosive tell-all book printed up in complete secrecy at the dead of night by their Masterton publisher…it is a gripping read. Something to rival le Carre or Fleming.” – THE PRESS – Saturday 8th October 2011
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“This is a tale of mystery and intrigue which touches all our lives. Carefully researched and lovingly told, you cannot remain unmoved. The questions come thick and fast. There is always another stone to be overturned. Far more than a ‘who dunnit’, it is also a ‘why’ and ‘what dunnit’. Echoes of the death of David Kelly. It is a story which uncovers the life-threatening risks that have to be endured by a few for the many who ‘dare not speak’. – Michael Mansfield QC
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http://hildamurrell.org/
“Hilda Murrell”
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Mary, Some think there is a link to the very strange death of William McRae.
Time for these wonderful words again.
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Written on the occasion of the massacre carried out by the British Government at St Peter’s Field, Manchester 1819, Shelley begins his poem with the powerful images of the unjust forms of authority of his time “God, and King, and Law” – and he then imagines the stirrings of a radically new form of social action: “Let a great assembly be, of the fearless, of the free”. The crowd at this gathering is met by armed soldiers, but the protestors do not raise an arm against their assailants:
“Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.
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And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew,
What they like, that let them do.
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With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away
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Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.
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Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you-
Ye are many — they are few”
Read all abaht it! Read all abaht it! Cover up at St Paul’s!
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A highly critical report into the moral standards of bankers has been suppressed by St Paul’s Cathedral amid fears that it would inflame tensions over the Occupy London tent protest.
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The report, based on a survey of 500 City workers who were asked whether they thought they were worth their lucrative salaries and bonuses, was due to be published last Thursday, the day that the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s, Giles Fraser, resigned in protest at the church’s tough stance.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-coverup-at-st-pauls-2377923.html
I get the failings of the labour 13 years, but what I also saw in those 13 years was a great deal of good that was done which is now being undone. I worked in the NHS for a great many years and I do not think that people realise, even now, how close we came to losing it during the Tory rein from 1979 – 1997. There are no words to describe to you how low morale was, how most of us were being forced to work in filthy germ ridden hospitals. If it were not for me and thousands of people like me we would have lost the NHS, where were you then? I got reprimanded, I was threatened to shut up or I would be sacked, I was threatened when I went on a picket line outside our hospital, I had very little in the way of support, the RCN at that time was next to useless. Labour came in and they changed all of that. I went on to work in other areas and I saw the changes being brought in by Labour from Sure Start centres to the Winter Fuel payments fopr the elderly and pensioner credits.
What I am trying to say in my way is please try not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Ed Miliband is not perfect, however, he is our only realistic hope of getting this hideous greedy corporate “Tory” government out. I believe he is a different breed of politician, already he is putting his head above the fray and sticking to what he believes is right. It would be so easy for him to come out “SHOUTING” and saying he would reverse all these cuts, howver, he knows that would be findamentally dishonest and he refuses to make promises he may not be able to keep (given the chance).
I like your blog Craig, I think you carry a lot of interest and ideas and you have scruples, my wonder is why don’t you contact Ed Miliband and offer to try to shape things from the inside instead of hurling insults from the outside?
Call me “Pangloss” if you like, I don’t mind, I know what I am and I know that we have to change the way things are done and the only person offering to do that and who is willing to take all the flak for even suggesting it is Ed Miliband.
Mark, glad you picked up on Naomi Wolf. Who highlights a good point. Celebrities can be force multipliers. An articulate sleb is much more widely audible than Joe Public: he/she has an agent to ensure his/her exposure in the media.
I am not sure crashing the economy with a mass protest would be the best procedure, though. I think we would get the blame for the pain, without the credit for any change we managed to accomplish. Better publicity IMO can be gained by small, quirky and entertaining occupations of relevant areas…and do not underestimate the reach of local newspapers. A clear and consistent message should be available for interviews, preferably with a local dimension.
Gracie, while I understand what you are saying, Miliband has only to make one clear statement to attract my support. He doesn’t have to make any promises beyond that. It is: “This party is no longer New Labour. It is Labour again and it supports the workers.”
Guest,
I disagree with you about forming a new party. The system is inherently corrupt and manipulated from above. It needs totally removing and in between time boycotting and setting up something else in its place which can give us some sort of say in our lives. Voting in the present system just provides the illusion of democracy.
Gracie, you would have found that in the long run New Labour would have done just what the tories are doing and are going to do. They have to employ a more deceitful way in order to keep members and trade union support, they would end up saying…we are forced into NHS privatisation due to the economic conditions, but when things change we are the party that will bring it back onboard, so keep voting for us…or some other such rubbish. They are truly all “Neo-Cons”, its all about the politics of illusion and for them it is all very lucrative.
Ruth, thanks for clarifying that point, Im’m with you on that. It is the centralisatioon of politics that make it easy to knobble politicians. Forming a party with all its structures and dogma’s, effectively copying a centrally led structure could not possible achieve what we are yearning for.
A groups of principled, losely organised Independents who agree to a strong ten/twenty point publicly arrived at, agenda for change, as well as promise to prioritise local mandates before that of any other interest group, should be enough to galvanise an effective opposition to these career scoundrels.
Here is point 1) Independent candidates promise to prioritise local mandates before that of bankers and TNC’s.
2) Independent candidates have a long term aim to localise and decentralise politics, elect accountable local leaders, preferably more than one from different political hues who agree to govern in rotation and act on the local mandate.
3) take a deep breath and start by ringfencing provisions for the elderly and disabled.