Hotting up…!

So, the election campaign is in full force, and, naturally, the Tories have wheeled out everyone and anyone who stands to profit from another Tory government – including, apparently, the SNP, who’ve tried to smear Labour as being pro-Tory (do me a fucking favour, Alex).

Anything and everything will be chucked at Labour between now and May 7th, as those spineless chancers in the coalition seek to discredit Miliband. They’ve tried whipping up hatred of his father – apparently a Jew who was so cowardly and resentful of the UK that he joined the Royal Navy to fight for it.

Think about that for a moment.

A Jew from eastern Europe who crossed the continent to seek safety in Britain for him and his family, but then volunteered to go to war on its behalf.

Now think about his likely fate had the D-Day landings (in which he was involved) failed and he’d been taken captive. One of the Jews the Nazis were seeking to annihilate. Think about that. And he hated Britain?

Wind forward to 2014 and the scum that own and run the Mail try to call Ed Miliband as the son of a man who ‘hated Britain’. Enough said. Enough from the paper that was pro Oswald Moseley and pro-Hitler whilst it was expedient for Lord Rothermere:

It’s time the Daily Mail gave a front-page apology for its support of anti-semitism and Hitler

Now fast forward again to 2015.

What does the “Ed miliband looks weird” meme in the meeja actually mean?

My contention is this: it is fairly naked anti-semitism. Bacon butty? Can’t manage it? Ha ha, double hit on the Jew boy. He’s not like you, he doesn’t look just like you, he’s part of the ‘other’ that also seems to contain anyone disabled, anyone unemployed, anyone sick, foreign, asylum seeking, screwed over by Duncan-Smith (a man whose CV is a work of almost pure fiction, incidentally).

So, in the Mail’s book – and increasingly echoed throughout the meeja – he’s the enemy.

How can he represent you when he’s one of ‘the other’?

That’s the line, and it stinks to high heaven.

I’ll be returning to this subject in due course – my borough has a sizeable Jewish population that has been subject to increasing vilification and attacks in the last few years – but take this away with you for now:

There is a sizeable body of power and influence in this country that will do anything – and I mean anything – to stop Miliband and Labour attaining power, because they know that if he gets in (particularly with a workable majority) then all bets are off, Leveson is in and life will become worse for those vested interests that support the Tories.

Have a think about all of this, and if you agree with me, follow me and tell your mates. I’ve got a lot to get off my chest, and whilst I’ve got my own friends and comrades, I think we need to band together rather more.

One last point: I wrote ages back that I had become part of a site that represented what I saw as the best of the Graun’s CiF boards and passed on its URL, they’ve moved again to a permanent site (no popups or any of that crap), so here’s the new URL:

http://flythenest.org/index.php

You come on in, have a read and join up, then start posting, y’hear?

Life trundles on…

Hello all,

I posted last in April just prior to the local elections up here in Bury. Sadly, the local Labour candidate didn’t get it – the incumbent Tory numpty who doesn’t even live locally, let alone in the ward did, but it cost the Tories at least one other local seat, and, perhaps, another elsewhere in the borough.

So a result of sorts, and with 2015 another election year (with the GE of course), it may be a different matter next time. For a start, the incumbent Tory next time round is a woman who isn’t the Tory group leader, and therefore won’t attract the sort of massive campaigning that they were forced to do this time round, which was the reason they lost the adjoining seat. Also, whilst she has some fans, I know from talking to people locally that she’s massively pissed off more than a few of them, and they’ll have nothing to do with her.

All to play for there.

Bury Council’s getting caned again this next year by the Tory government (I would call it the coalition government, but, let’s face it, the FibDems are Tories; by their actions shall ye know them) and I know that the Council (Labour run) is having to entirely rethink how to deliver services. Knowing some sources very well, I can say that there’s a lot of innovative thinking going on and if anyone can get Bury out of the shit that the Tories have dropped on them it’s those people. They are literally thinking over Council services from the ground up, from stem to stern and most profoundly, they are questioning each and every structure that they come across, with a view to making it more versatile and ‘future proofed’.

There’s much crap talked by people about ‘Why don’t they share services with other councils?’. The simple and very stark answer is this: Bury’s unit costs are the lowest in the region pretty much. Why would you want to pitch in with shared services with another council? Their unit costs nose dive; ours go up. No thank you. Not even a choice.

Right, the overactive spider that lives in here has just zipped down the back wall by the recycling calendar, which is, I suppose, a fairly elliptical reminder to me that time marches on and tomorrow is another school day – quite literally, given our recent familial addition. Bless (etc).

Finally, and interestingly to my mind, her arrival in the neighborhood has been the catalyst for kids coming out playing after school and at the weekend. Until she fetched up – poor little mite, coal dust on face, possessions in single bundle over the shoulder – the local kids tended to play in or get ferried to their mates. Water fights, bike rides and the inevitable handstand contests  were quite noticeable by their absence. Since herself turned up – dynamo of blazing activity that she is (makes a good leafleter) – she’s rousted them out and made them play, in some cases kids 2-6 years older than her. They’ll probably all get bored with it and her and reform into new cliques in time, but it’s nice to see her bring the road to life.

And on that ridiculously and very much apolitical note, I’ll sign off for tonight.

 

I’m back

Hello out there in reader land.

Clearly, I’ve not been active on the blog for rather too long – it’s remarkably easy to become sidetracked by, er, life, and end up attending to stuff that suddenly become more pressing. In my case, it’s been local political activity and adopting a 7 year old.

For various reasons, I’ve had a bit of a rethink about various things that take up the bulk of my life and have decided to reactivate the blog (hoorah! I hear no-one say…) and ensure that it’s updated more regularly than in the past.

Whilst I’m here, and because I like to pass on recommendations for worthwhile sites, I can very strongly recommend: http://flythenest.freeforums.org/ to all and sundry.

The Grauniad’s appalling nesting system for comments singlehandedly wrecked Comment is Free, and drove away an awful lot of excellent posters, who, inevitably, were replaced by the sort of mindless right wing numpties whose time is apparently spent trolling sites and extolling the virtues of Ian Duncan Cough and Pob, or Michael Gove, as some still know him.

Those posters fleeing from the high handed and peremptory stupidity of the Graun’s editorial staff and designers needed to relocate somewhere, and FlyTheNest was where they escaped to, a discussion site set up by TheSky’sGoneOut, and rapidly joined by dozens of others. There are, as of April 2014, a few hundred subscribers, and the discussions there are of the fine quality that used to be found on the Graun, way back when (but no more, alas).

Give it a try, and tell them that I sent you!

 

 

 

Why?

I’ve sat back and thought over the last few days about the benefit cut – for that’s what it is – that the Tories and FibDems voted through the other evening.

Let’s be frank. a 1% rise in JSA is 71 pence a week – less than the price of a cup of tea or a sarnie locally (in fact, considerably less so). So why do it?

In my humble, it comes down to vilification. People on JSA and other benefits didn’t crash the banks in 2008. There weren’t even near the scene of the crime. It simply suits the Tories and their supine chums to point the finger at benefit claimants and pretend that they are the genesis of our ills – which, frankly, is bollocks. The benefits bill may well £180 billion a year, but what’s ignored by the Tory press is that 3/4 of that is taken up paying pensions to UK citizens, and much of the rest it paying for allowances for the disabled, those on working tax credit (ie their employers don’t pay them a living wage), family tax credit, child benefit and so forth. Not really items you can cavil at.

The jobless? It’s a mere 3% of the bill. Fraud? 0.7%

Worth repeating next time you see some brainless Tory (tautology there) dribbling on about how the feckless unemployed are bleeding us dry.

The irony is, of course, that without high levels of unemployment people would be emboldened to demand better wages and assert their rights. So it’s a situation that suits both business and the Tories (another tautology) absolutely. Wages kept down, unions cowed, oiks in their place.

This is what you vote for when you vote Tory. Every single time.

 

 

 

 

A long overdue column at the Graun

If, like me, you’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of travel at the Graun, and its pronounced tendency to rah rah the Tories and FibDems at every step, without regard to reality, then the below column by Zoe Williams is something of an eye opener. And just read the comments below the line! I’m sure the Graun mods will be busy banning a lot of left wing posters tonight…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/02/iain-duncan-smith-polemic-politics-cynical

The Red Scourge stirs….

Welcome aboard! I can assure you that this blog isn’t about the Tottington 469 service (although it might get the odd mention occasionally), but is rather about local, national and sometimes international politics, depending on my mood.

I live in Tottington, a village north of Bury in the north west of England, cradle of the Industrial Revolution and still an area that produces movers and shakers (the latter is an in joke for other Bury dwellers) as well as being home to political thinking large and small. And that’s why this blog exists.

I’ll be posting my thoughts on various matters – probably mostly political in nature – in order to (a) vent my spleen and (b) enlighten others, where possible. Having read other blogs on t’interwebs, it’s clear that left wing voices are frequently drowned out by the chorus of right wing posters and bloggers, and the start of a new year seemed like the perfect time to start readjusting the balance and ensuring that some inconvenient truths are more widely disseminated to the great unwashed.

I’ll be clear from the start: I’m happy to have comments and contributions from anyone, but I reserve the right to not entertain the more barking right wing contributions, unless I find them particularly funny. Otherwise feel free to start your conversation with me, and I’ll do my best to ensure that this blog is interesting, well informed and relevant.

So, with that in mind, let’s get started!