Will 'free gear' Keir do a U-turn on Burnham to thwart a Labour civil war?

 

Will free gear Keir, have to make another U-turn and allow Andy Burnham to stand for selection for the parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton? I'm pretty certain that Labour are going to lose the Gorton and Denton by-election and Starmer will be blamed for that. Labour is trying to shoe-in the trendy-left, LGBTQ+ Bev Craig, the current Labour leader of Manchester City Council, to stand in Gorton and Denton. She comes across like a bit of a kid. 

Keir Starmer was one of the ten 'officer panel' NEC members that voted to stop Burnham standing. Starmer is a wet lettuce and is running scared of the electorate and is trying to postpone local elections because he's clinging onto power by the skin of his teeth. He's a lame duck Labour leader who can't connect with the general public and his personal popularity ratings, are abysmal. I think he will be gone sometime this year and possibly after the May local elections. 

The longer Starmer remains the PM, the more likely it is that the spiv Nigel Farage, will be in Downing Street at the next general election. If Farage becomes the next UK Prime Minister, Britain will become the 51st de facto state of America. Farage thinks that Greenland should be owned by the Americans and he endorsed Donald Trump's comments that British troops only provided a supporting role to U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and didn't serve on the frontline in Afghanistan.

Where exactly was the frontline in Afghanistan? When you're fighting a guerrilla war, the front line is everywhere, but you can't expect a draft dodger like Donald Trump, to understand that. More than 450 British men and women lost their lives in Afghanistan and over 2,000 were wounded in action. 

If Nigel Farage becomes the next UK PM, will he turn Britain into the 51st state of the USA?

 

Nigel Farage - Leader of Reform UK

I don't think Reform UK will take the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton. Labour has more chance of retaining the seat, if Andy Burnham does stand and more chance of losing it, if he doesn't stand.

Nigel Farage is far too closely identified with Donald Trump and the Trump administration and this will ultimately damage Reform UK politically, in the long run. I'm pretty sure that if Farage becomes the next UK Prime Minister, Britain will become the de facto 51st state of the U.S.A. because Farage is so far up Trump's arse. We can expect to see in Britain, U.S. imported chlorinated chicken and U.S. imported beef, from cattle fed on growth accelerating hormones. We can also expect to see more involvement of U.S. private healthcare firms working within the NHS.

Farage has already said that the draft-dodger Donald Trump, should take control of Greenland from the Danes and he's upset many British people, by endorsing Trump's opinion that British soldiers only played a supporting role in Afghanistan and never fought on the front lines. Some 457 British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and over 2000 wounded in action. Neither Iraq or Afghanistan was a direct threat to Britain and British soldiers were sent there because of the 9/11 attack in New York, carried out by an assortment of Saudi citizens and Egyptians linked to al-Qaeda. 

Lenin & the Russian Revolution.

 

If Lenin was such an orthodox Marxist as the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, believed, then Lenin would have held to the view that Russia had to go through a period of capitalist industrial development and bourgeois democracy before there could be a revolution. Marxist revolutions are supposed to take place not in agrarian societies like Russia, but in highly industrialised economies like Britain, France or Germany. 

In February 1917, when the Russian Revolution broke out in Petrograd, Lenin was in Zurich and Trotsky was touring America. When he was in Zurich in 1917, Lenin had told students that he didn't think the revolution would happen in his or his generations lifetime. The Bolsheviks who were in Petrograd were taken completely by surprise. They were preparing for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. 

In 1917, around 80% of the Russian population would've been peasants. Lenin was taken to Petrograd by the Germans in the so-called "sealed train." When he arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station on April 3, 1917, he addressed a crowd of workers and Bolsheviks, and denounced the Provisional Government and demanded an immediate socialist revolution. He outlined his radical 'April Theses' calling for the Soviets to take power. 

The Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, because nobody really wanted it. The Petrograd Soviet had the power but didn't want the responsibility and the Provisional Government had the responsibility but not the power. Had Lenin not arrived in Petrograd in April 1917; events may have taken a completely different course in Russia. Such is the power of agency. Lenin basically responded to events that had been initiated spontaneously. 

Between 1918 and 1921, the country was plunged into civil war with the Bolsheviks fighting the counter revolutionary ‘White Army' and a war with the Russian peasantry.

Reform UK launches legal challenge against government plans to delay May local elections.

 

It looks like Labour are running scared of the electorate and are giving local councils the opportunity to delay elections until 2027. They say this is because the government are planning an overhaul of local government and this will take time and many councils lack the capacity for reorganisation. Labour also knows from the opinion polls that they're likely to get slaughtered in the forthcoming May local elections, which will seen as a vote of no confidence in the leadership of Spineless Starmer and his Labour government.

Reform UK have now launched a legal challenge against these attempts to delay local elections. It seems to me that the longer Starmer remains PM and leader of the Labour Party, the more likely it is that we will see Farage in Downing Street at the next general election.

Most British mainstream political leaders are supine and prostrate themselves before Donald Trump and American global interests, but a British government, led by a charlatan like Nigel Farage, would turn Britain into the 51 state of America. It's already bad enough Britain being an aircraft carrier for the Yanks. Under Farage, we can look forward to eating U.S. chlorinated chicken and beef from U.S. cattle, fed on growth promoting hormones. We can also expect a Greater role for U.S. private health care companies within the NHS and charges for NHS health care services. Farage also thinks that  the Americans should take over Greenland from Denmark. 

Your Party wants to nationalize the British economy. Would this be in the interest of the state or the workers?

 

We had nationalization in the past in Britain before Maggie Thatcher and I once worked for a utility, but I wouldn't call it worker's control, it was more like the TV series 'Upstairs and Downstairs'. 

Labour's 'Clause 4', was never about "workers control" it involved the acquisition of the means of production by the state for the benefit of the state. Mine owners were compensated when they nationalised coal and some were better off.  

If the workers are going to run the "entire economy", as Zara Sultana, of 'Your Party" wants, through co-operatives, does that mean the abolition of capitalism and the private ownership of the means of production, and if that is the case, why doesn't she say so? Given that many former nationalised industries are now privatised would the owners and their shareholders, be compensated, or would their businesses be expropriated? If they are to be compensated where would the money come from to compensate them? If it involves expropriation, does she think that it's likely that the capitalists would acquiesce in this? If history tells us anything, it is likely to lead to a counter revolution, a conservative reaction, and fascism. 

If everything is under the control of the workers, how is all this co-ordinated and organised in the general interest of society and what role does the state play in all this? Are we really all working for the state and if this is the case, doesn't the state become our sole employer?  That doesn't sound like much fun to me. What happens to us if we don't obey the state? Do we starve?

The French anarchist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, did say that "property is theft", but he drew a distinction between personal possession and the private ownership of the means of production. He thought that a certain amount of private property, small holdings, was necessary for independence. It is also argued that private property acts as a counterweight to state power. 

Rough sleeper found frozen death in Manchester City centre on Boxing Day.

 

On Boxing Day, a man was found dead under a bridge in Manchester City centre near to the Bridgewater Hall. The police said there were no suspicions circumstances. What they couldn't say, and this was reported in the Manchester Evening News (MEN), was that this man had frozen to death because he was a rough sleeper. The temperature that night was -4 degrees.

It was also reported in the MEN, that last Monday, the Holiday Inn, on Oxford Road, Manchester, refused two people accommodation because they were people off the streets. Apparently, a charity had taken pity on them and had paid their accommodation costs and the rooms had been pre-booked. The receptionist told them that he knew they were people off the streets and that it was the policy of the hotel, not to admit rough sleepers. The temperature that day was -6 degrees. I believe the two individuals were eventually accommodated in a Travel Lodge.

British politicians like to describe Britain as an "inclusive society". When people are freezing to death on the streets of Britain, one of the richest countries in the world, because they're homeless and people are being denied access to accommodation because they're off the streets, you can hardly call that an inclusive society. I'm afraid that we seem to be returning to Victorian times when these kinds of deaths among the homeless and destitute were commonplace.

Trump bombs Venezuela and kidnaps its President!

 

Nicolas Maduro

People will obviously question the legality of the kidnapping of the leftist Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, in terms of international law. The kidnapping of the Venezuelan President, and the bombing of the Venezuelan capital, is illegal under international law, but the Americans have never bothered too much about that. The Americans consider Maduro a 'Narco-Terrorist' and a New York court indicted Maduro in March 2020, and issued an arrest warrant for him. The American government wants to put him on trial. They don't consider Maduro to have diplomatic immunity.

They did the same thing in 1999 when they invaded Panama and captured the dictator, Manuel Noriega. The U.S. courts ruled in (United States v Noriega) that "jurisdiction is not defeated by abduction." If the U.S. military can physically drag you into a courtroom, even illegally, you can still be tried. This is backed up by the U.S. Supreme Court which relies on the doctrine based on the legal case (Ker v Illinois) which essentially states ("Bad capture, good detention").

Despite their abductions, both Maduro and Noriega, have fared better than Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist President of Chile, and Maurice Bishop, the leftist Prime Minister of Grenada, who all died following CIA inspired coups.

The Yanks will install a Transitional puppet Government in Venezuela, who will retroactively consent to the U.S. operation, and transform the kidnapping into a legal "cooperative extradition." This is what happened in Panama in 1990. It says something that the Americans were able to capture Maduro so easily and to take control of Venezuela and its oil supplies. Will Iran be next? Many Iranians are hoping so.

Are the free market and immigration control incompatible?

 

Eddie Dempsey - RMT General Secretary

The leader of the RMT union, Eddie Dempsey, is right to point out that very often those who do the hard graft in society are often the least recognised and the least rewarded -they keep the show on the road.

But the market doesn't always determine the wages for some people. The wages of many workers are regulated and are not determined by a Dutch auction. Remuneration committees often determine the salaries of banking officials. An MPs salary is set and so are the wages of Eddie Dempsey as a trade union official. What's the going rate for an MP? The wages of police officers will be regulated along with many legal officials like judges. The wages of civil servants and local government workers are also regulated.

If you believe in the so-called "free-market", then you can't really be in favour of immigration control and must be in favour of the free movement of Labour. What does Donald Trump's crackdown on "undocumented" workers have to do with free markets? Many migrant workers may better at doing your job and may be prepared to do it for less money, but very few free-market economists are bold enough to speak out against immigration control.

In America, many immigrants work in food processing, construction, agriculture and hospitality. Undocumented workers, who still pay state and federal taxes in the U.S., make up 25% of all farm workers. There are 7 million workers in the U.S. who are undocumented.

In his book entitled '23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism', the Cambridge economist, Ha-Joon Chang, wrote: "We are persuaded to accept what I call the L'Oréal principle - if some people are paid tens of millions of pounds per year, it must be because they are worth it." We know that many top bosses get well paid even when the companies they run, are losing money and even if they resign, they're given a huge pay off. They're a nepotistic class who have basically got their fingers in the till.

In a class ridden country like Britain, the options that people can choose from, are usually severely limited by a lack of resources or education. Our preferences are strongly formed by our social environment - family, neighbourhood, schooling and social class. The social bank of mum and dad, opens as many doors, as the financial bank of mum and dad.