Sauce For The Goose

by Les May

WHEN my wife got to sixty she got her State Retirement Pension (SRP). When I got to sixty I had to wait another five years until I was sixty five.   Some months before she reached retirement age my wife was contacted by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) telling her what to do. Her pension was paid immediately after her sixtieth birthday.  Some months before I reached sixty five I contacted the DWP to set things in motion.  My pension wasn’t paid immediately after my birthday.  In fact it was not paid until I had written to the DWP twice to ask why I had not received it.

You will perhaps understand that I am less than sympathetic to all the whingeing from some women that they were not properly made aware that the age at which they would receive their SRP was increasing.

Incidentally these changes affected men too.   As the age at which SRP was paid was raised the age for receiving concessionary fares, a.k.a The Bus Pass, tracked this.   Previous to this the age had been set at sixty in 2003, though men were still expected to continue working up to the age of sixty five.

Finally one woman has set the record straight.  Writing in the ‘i’ a lady by the name of Kate Roberts writes;

‘I can’t remember exactly when I found out that I would not be getting my state pension at the age of 60 in 2011, but it was well before the change was made.

I doubt that I was unique in that – if something on the news or in the papers may affect me, I take notice.  I rang the helpline number for a pension forecast, and was informed the changes were to be incremental.

The information was easily and freely available unless you lived in darkest Peru.  I do have sympathy for anyone who is struggling to carry on working, but I really don’t see how it can still be coming as a surprise.’

Kate Roberts is quite right.  The Pensions Act 1995 contained the following provisions:

Equalisation of pensionable age and of entitlement to certain benefits

Schedule 4 to this Act, of which —

(a) Part I has effect to equalise pensionable age for men and women progressively over a period of ten years beginning with 6th April 2010,

(b) Part II makes provision for bringing equality for men and women to certain pension and other benefits, and

(c) Part III makes consequential amendments of enactments,

shall have effect.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1995/26/part/II/enacted

Under the Pensions Act 2011, women's State Pension age will increase more quickly to 65 between April 2016 and November 2018.  From December 2018 the State Pension age for both men and women will start to increase to reach 66 by October 2020.

Whilst the 2011 act accelerates the rise in pensionable age for women so that the rise to sixty five is completed two years earlier it is difficult to see how anyone can complain that the rise has come as a surprise to them. 

******* 

Say No To Hate Crime Revisited

by Les May

A couple of days ago it was mooted that misandry, defined as ‘hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men’, should be regarded as a ‘hate crime’.  A letter in the ‘i’ newspaper (18/10/18) shows why this is not a good idea. The author wrote:

‘If misogyny becomes a hate crime then misandry should too.   If you have one you should have the other.   Misandry is widespread and commonplace in society and men’s issues – which are serious and pressing, even life threatening – are generally overlooked.  They are certainly not given the sort of attention that women’s issues typically receive.  If the law is changed to make misandry a hate crime then perhaps men’s issues will move towards the centre ground, enter public discourse, and be given the attention they deserve.’

Contempt for men is a staple fare for many female columnists, particularly in the print media, along with bias and downright lies.  Criminalising it will not suddenly bring issues affecting men to the fore.

The reason for men being treated in this way is simply that too few of the men in the media, who could use their position to challenge it, have the balls to take on the women who write this stuff.  They’re afraid that if they do the ‘sisterhood’ will turn its ire on them.  Much better to buy into the idea that women are an oppressed group, by calling yourself a feminist.

When men organise to draw attention to things that affect them deeply the likelihood that they will get any positive publicity is slender. Have you even heard of the group ‘Families Need Fathers’?  Take a look at the recent press release from the group at https://fnf.org.uk/ .  Did you read about it in the press or see it on BBC TV? I think not.

There are plenty of men in the media who could change this, but who don’t.  The same goes for MPs.   The number of men who have lost contact with one or more of their children as a result of intransigence by an ex-partner is in the hundreds of thousands.  No one speaks for them.

If you are inclined to be sceptical about my comments about bias by female columnists how about this?

‘The concept of misandry is dangerously vague in comparison to the reality of misogyny.  I predict that if misandry is taken forward as a hate crime, it will be used to curb discussions of male violence and female oppression’, and ‘It’s already too easy for men to cry foul every time a woman says or does anything they don’t like.’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/misandry-hate-crime-abusive-men-law

Whilst labelling misogyny as a hate crime was the only game in town our brave women columnists were all for it.   Now that there’s a possibility that they might find themselves on the receiving end of an accusation of hate crime on the grounds of misandry there’s what is called in the feminist lexicon ‘a backlash’.

If they succeed in killing off the whole idea they will be doing everyone a favour. The police have enough to do without being given the job of investigating what Orwell in his book 1984 called ‘thought crime’. 

********* 

It’s the way ya tell ‘um

by Les May

THE former finance director of Carillion Richard Adam, he of the ‘funding the pension scheme is a waste of money’, dumped three quarters of a million pounds in shares in March and May last year.   He had stepped down from the company in December 2016 and got rid of them at the earliest opportunity.

If you wonder how these people get away with it look no further than the news coverage that this revelation generated in the ‘i’.  It got just 34 lines compared with the 46 lines devoted to a story about a dog owned by a university professor being relocated to the UK and about the same to a story about Cadbury’s chocolates and the NHS.

******

It's a woman's world!

by Les May

THERE was an interesting juxtaposition of articles in the ‘i’ newspaper this morning.   On the left hand side of page 19 was a piece headed ‘Women to direct every show of RSC summer season’.  On the right was a piece headed ‘Fatberg found in London sewers a total monster’.

Gushingly we were told ‘The Royal Shakespeare Company’s entire summer 2018 season will be directed by women, with strong parts cast for women of a variety of ages’.  And ‘… artistic director Gregory Doran said he would not follow the example of Michelle Terry the new boss of Shakespeare’s Globe, who has committed to to gender blind casting between men and women’.
Ooh goody!  Women of the world rejoice!  It will lift the hearts of the women who clean the toilets at the RSC to see how well their more fortunate ‘sistas’ are doing for themselves.

The ‘fatberg’ found in an east London sewer is twice the length of the pitch at Wembley, is rock hard, weighs 130 tons and will be shifted by eight workers using high-pressure hoses in nine hour shifts. For some reason the article did not mention whether Thames Water operate a ‘gender blind’ policy in recruiting sewer workers.

******

Lies, damn lies and newspapers!

by Les May

TODAY, Saturday 21 January, 'The "i"’ newspaper deliberately printed a lie about Jeremy Corbyn.  How do I know it is a lie?  Because the day before they printed the truth.

On Friday the paper reported that with reference to triggering Article 50 Corbyn had said;

'It’s very clear, the referendum made a decision that Britain is to leave the EU. It wasn’t to destroy jobs or living standards or communities, but it was to leave the EU and have a different relationship in the future.  I’ve made it very clear, the Labour party accepts and respects the decision of the British people.' and ‘Asked if that meant a three-line whip to force Labour MPs into line, Mr Corbyn replied; It means Labour MPs will be asked to vote in that direction.’

Today, in the same newspaper, that had become ‘Jeremy Corbyn orders Labour MPs to vote in favour of exiting the EU.’

And it didn’t stop there.  On Friday Rob Merrick wrote in the his article ‘About five have said they will vote against Article 50 and four Shadow Cabinet members are rumoured to be considering a revolt.’  So by my reckoning that makes between five and nine who are unhappy with the policy.

By Saturday political editor Nigel Morris had discovered a ‘rebellion’ amongst Labour MPs with ‘Dozens of MPs could rebel…’ and ‘According to one report, as many as 80 could defy the leader’.  Or it could all be Morris flying a kite.

I doubt that anyone in Corbyn’s team will bother to complain.  

When a complaint about a Corbyn interview with Laura Kuenssberg shown in BBC 1’s News at Six in November 2015 was made it took 14 months to get an adjudication.  Even though the BBC Trust upheld complaints about lack of truth and lack of impartiality in the report the director of news James Harding declined to accept the censure.

The truth matters.  Printing speculation and quoting unknown sources influences what we believe, reinforces prejudices and leaves us open to manipulation.  The truth, however unpalatable to our personal prejudices, leaves us free to make our own choices.

Labour MPs saw the News at Six report, believed it to be a true account of what Corbyn had said and used it to attack him in a later meeting.  That’s why the truth matters.  The BBC trust rejected claims from the BBC that this was evidence that the report was an accurate reflection of what Corbyn had said, pointing out that this was a circular argument.  It beggars belief that anyone claiming to have integrity would try such a ploy.

In recent months every newspaper has tried to solicit the support of its readers in attacking Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. To judge from the stories they have been putting out triggering the implementation of Section 40 means an end to a ‘free press’.

Now I readily accept that a ‘free press’, that is a press free from government control, is a necessary condition for living in a liberal democracy.  That is ‘necessary’ but not ‘sufficient’.  A liberal democracy also needs a press which is ‘honest’; that is does not lie outright or by implication, ‘fair’; that is reports the activities of all the agents involved in social and political debate and ‘diverse’; that is it is not in the hands of a few proprietors and represents a wide spectrum of political views.

To put it bluntly; in spite its pretensions to be guardians of our freedoms, and holders to account of the mighty and the powerful, the British press is ‘piss poor’.  And the BBC is increasingly going that way.

In spite of what is being claimed Section 40 does not seem to be about government control of the press.  It’s about redressing the huge imbalance which exists between the people who have lies told about them in the press and the people who do the lying.

We already have draconian libel laws in this country.  But for ordinary people who have lies told about them they are just too costly to invoke.  The press has, and will always have, much deeper pockets than the rest of us.  Suing for libel, even if you have a very strong case and eventually win, is not for the faint hearted.  But look at the anti-Section 40 propaganda in the press and you will see that the little people do not figure.  

If Section 40 is implemented the judiciary is not going to allow frivolous and unreasonable cases to clog the courts.  All the press has to do to avoid falling foul of Section 40 is, a) get the facts right in the first place, and b) if a mistake is made, as it inevitably will be, print a proper correction with at least equal prominence.

Getting the facts right might mean nothing more than having more bodies in the office who have the task of checking pieces for factual accuracy and preventing speculation and opinion being passed off as fact.  Perhaps we should call them sub-editors.

For my part I mostly get my international news from Aljazeera on Freeview channel 108 and rely on the Irish press for European news.  No doubt these have there own prejudices which I have to filter out.  But Aljazeera’s news and documentary output, a bit like Heinken, reaches the parts the Beeb does not reach.   

Everyday Life from The Archers to Danczuks!

by Les May

I GAVE up listening to ‘The Archers’ in 2002, so I have absolutely no knowledge of the ‘Trial’.  I don’t much like fictional series which take it upon themselves to tackle ‘issues’ not least because it is difficult to present any complex and controversial issue in a sufficiently nuanced way which will not leave some listener or viewer from feeling that their ‘side’ has been misrepresented.  Far from changing minds it seems more likely that it will reinforce prejudice. 

So last Tuesday I found myself wondering was it prejudice or oversight which led the ‘i’ newspaper to devote half the space of its letters column to the fictional ‘Helen’  but could not find space for a story about a real life Helen who had been involved in a ‘domestic’ which resulted in her death.  The Metro managed just over half a page on the story and the Daily Mail almost a whole page. 

Helen Nicholl hanged herself on the June 4 last year.  Not unreasonably the police arrested her husband Stephen Nicoll on suspicion of her murder. But after two interviews the Detective Chief Inspector who led the investigation released him without charge and went on to say 'I believe that Stephen Nicoll was probably of a victim of domestic violence.' 

But the picture which emerged at the coroner’s inquest was not simply one of a wife assaulting her husband, but of a woman who also tried to control her grown up daughters, assaulting one of them leading to a police investigation and becoming estranged from the other, and of a family in which during rows with their mother, her daughters referred to her as ‘council estate scum' and 'Liverpool scum'.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article for Northern Voices, ‘Danczuk, Feminism & Family Violence’, in which I referred to the work of Erin Pizzey.  Pizzey distinguished between 'genuine battered women' and 'violence-prone women'. The former she defined as 'the unwilling and innocent victim of his or her partner's violence' and the latter she defined as 'the unwilling victim of his or her own violence.'  Helen Nicholl was such a woman and in hanging herself was the victim of her own violence. But whilst she may have been the one who used physical violence towards her daughters and her husband, what for want of a better word I will call verbal violence, does not seem to have been far below the surface. 

It appears in this case that physical abuse by the mother was reciprocated by the daughters in the form of verbal abuse;  a kind of mutuality of domestic violence such as Erin Pizzey had identified. 

Feminist campaigners seek to persuade us that because men are more likely than women to resort to violence outside the home that this is also the case within the home.  But the empirical evidence suggests that this assumption is untrue. 

About one in eight of adults, i.e. both men and women, in an intimate relationship admit to low level physical violence towards their partner.  As about 50% of inter-partner violence is reciprocal it is possible these people somehow attract each other or learn and later reciprocate the behaviour.  At higher levels of physical violence where significant injury is caused, men are about six times more likely to be the perpetrator, i.e. about one in seven cases of significant injury during a violent domestic dispute are caused by women. 

Conflict is a part of life.  We all have some desire to pursue our own self interest even in intimate relationships.  What matters Is how we resolve that conflict of interests.  Conflict becomes pathological when one or both of the parties resort to coercion, whether that coercion is applied emotionally, verbally or physically.  All too often coercion continues to be applied even after the relationship breaks down and the parties separate, though in such cases it is usually given a gloss of respectability through the courts in the form of so called ‘contact’ orders. 

As the Helen Nicholl case shows simply equating ‘domestic’ violence with ‘male’ violence is misleading and in the long run counterproductive because it offers no opportunity to think how the existing level of abuse in intimate relationships can be reduced or how conflict situations can be prevented from escalating to the point where one of the people involved suffers significant injury.  As noted above this is more likely to be the woman than the man.  Nor does it take into account that abuse can and does take place in intimate same sex relationships. 

It is perhaps understandable that feminists who see domestic violence being synonymous with male violence will ignore the empirical evidence that women are just as likely as men to resort to low level assault in conflict situations but focus entirely on escalated conflicts where the woman is injured, and ignore the work of Erin Pizzey and tragic women like Helen Nicholl who was the victim of her own violence.  To do otherwise would undermine their world view. 

But I find it inconceivable that the women who usually have so much to say about ‘male violence’ have failed to comment upon what some four weeks ago happened to Karen Danczuk as a result of the actions of her ex-husband Simon.  Are we perhaps seeing middle class snobbery at work here? 

We are already beginning to see this incident the subject of ‘spin’ seemingly intended to minimise the severity of the incident.  Whilst a month ago Karen was happy to tell the world, ‘I feared he was going to kill me’ and ‘Violent row left me paralysed with fear’ and have Simon’s behaviour described as ‘Wild MP yelled and kicked in glass door’, a recent Daily Mail article included the line that ‘Karen was taken by ambulance to a local hospital where she was treated for the cut which officers said she sustained in a fall’.  Perhaps she ‘walked into a floor’ because it must have been some fall if it required 40 stitches. 

A month ago the story was that she was standing behind a thick glass door when an enraged Simon kicked at it until it came crashing down on her knocking her to the floor. 

According to the Daily Mirror her story now is:

'What happened is, he kicked a door in and it hit me - it wasn't anything Simon physically did to me' and "I have some scars now on my hand but I didn't press charges because it wasn't an intentional act.

'Unfortunately, yes, the foot hit me but it wasn't intentional and so it doesn't seem right to press charges."  No mention here of it being a glass door or the 40 stitches for the wound in her chest and upper right breast.

And what was Danczuk’s response to all this?  He told the Sunday Times that there had been absolutely no physical violence, adding: 'Karen didn't report any violence. The police made assumptions.' 

It seems some Rochdale MPs lead charmed lives.  In 1979 Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP)revealed details of then MP Cyril Smith’s antics at Cambridge House.  The lack of interest by the mainstream media meant that ‘he got away with it’.  This subtly different retelling of the story of what recently happened in Spain between the Danczuk’s and the silence of the usually very vocal feminists will lead some people once again to think ‘he got away with it’.   

I can hardly say that I am disappointed by the response of feminists to this incident between the Danczuks as I have never thought much of them anyhow. But the saddest thing about this episode is the complete lack of self-awareness on Simon Danczuk’s part. 

At the end of January this year, his website was crowing that he welcomed a £115,500 grant from Comic Relief to a local charity enabling it to run a ‘dedicated male perpetrator programme’ to tackle domestic violence in Rochdale (my emphasis). 

His exact words were:  'Domestic violence is a serious problem in every community and I have seen from my weekly surgeries what a devastating impact it can have on families’. and “I am delighted they have received this funding which will be used to tackle domestic violence by challenging the perpetrators on their behaviour giving them the support the need to reform.' 

Now contrary to Mr D.  I do consider kicking in a glass door is an act of violence and especially so if we are to believe Karen’s original story together with the need for hospital treatment.  A few inches higher and the glass which caused the injuries to Karen’s chest and upper right breast could have severed a major blood vessel.  A bit of contrition (and a quiet prayer of thanks for a narrow escape from potentially much more serious injury) would seem to be in order here. 

As a well known MP, Simon could have used this experience to draw attention to what can happen in a domestic situation when a row is allowed to escalate into violence, even when that violence is not deliberately directed at a partner, and the importance of making sure that disagreements do not reach this stage.  He failed to do so which in my view makes him doubly culpable. 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3785630/Dentist-hung-emotionally-abused-children-husband.html 

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/danczuk-feminism-family-violence.html 

http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/george94.htm

http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/martinfi.pdf

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-humbug-of-professional-feminism.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1646861/karen-danczuk-says-shes-scarred-for-life-after-mp-hubby-simon-kicked-in-glass-door-during-crazed-bust-up-on-family-holiday/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3790555/Karen-Danczuk-s-forgiven-ex-husband-Simon-sake-children.html 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/karen-danczuk-reveals-wants-ex-8848431

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/PHDCN/wave-1-instruments/13583-ctsp.pdf

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/files/PHDCN/wave-2-instruments/13642-pas.pdf

http://www.simondanczuk.com/simon_danczuk_welcomes_charity_cash_for_domestic_violence_scheme

The Humbug of Professional Feminism

by Les May

I AM not a feminist.  I dislike feminism as a philosophical stance, because I see no reason to privilege one section of society over another and as a political stance it seems to me self serving, inherently reactionary, intent upon perpetuating unfairness and hierarchies, and destructive of personal relationships.  

Now simply writing this is probably (certainly?) enough to get me lumped with the men that Julie Bindel was writing about in her 2006 opinion piece for the Guardian, 'Why I hate men'.  Seemingly writing that you 'hate' men is OK but writing 'I hate EMOs or Goths or..' well fill in you own list here, could get your remarks logged as 'hate crime'.

Perhaps the height of absurdity has now been reached when a recent piece in the 'i' newspaper turned out to be an interview with a 'professional' feminist, a job which I assume is more lucrative and less tiring than say working for Sports Direct or Amazon.

But whilst 'professional' feminists are still mercifully rare, building a career around feminism is not.  I've already mentioned Julie Bindel who certainly falls into this category, but she is almost unknown outside feminist circles.  Much better known is Labour's  Harriet Harman, she of the 'pink bus' and cousin to David Cameron.  The 'pink bus' campaign did not go down well with some women as you will see from Ella Whelan's comments at Spiked Online.

Harriet's silence on Simon Danczuk's past and recent activities in Spain is telling and suggests she is a bit of a humbug.  In 2002 the BBC reported:

'Crown prosecutors are to be urged to press on with prosecutions in cases of domestic violence, even if the victim wants the case dropped.

Solicitor General Harriet Harman is backing the move as part of a range of measures to crack down on domestic abuse.

'It is about where the public interest lies when the victim is insisting the case be dropped," she will tell a police conference on domestic violence on Tuesday.

'She might want to forgive him, but the next time he assaults her she could be killed.'

So why did she not speak up when the Mail on Sunday reported at length in July 2015 on what Karen Danczuk's family claimed happened in Spain in 2008.  And why, after Mr Danczuk was arrested in Spain recently following an incident which has striking similarities with the 2008 incident, is she still silent?

And before anyone tells me that Mr Danczuk is suspended from the Labour party at present and does not hold the Labour whip, you should know that he is once again trying to sail his ship with a Labour flag, as you will see if you check out his job advert.

Labour MPs have other things to think about at present, like their holidays, but even if they are wise to keep their mouths shut about Simon's recent constituency office tryst, the story Karen Danczuk told in the Sun on Sunday only a few days ago merits a response.  At least from a woman who was once a Labour Solicitor General.  Ironically it is a group of men who were expelled from the Labour party who have made the link between the events in Spain in 2016 and 2008, and want the fallout from the latter re-opened.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/02/whyihatemen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Bindel  

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-british-feminist-party-no-thanks/15924

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/feb/10/pink-bus-labour-women-mps-kitchen-table-tour-female-voters

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/harmans-barbie-bus-the-new-face-of-feminism/16697

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2348319.stm  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3157459/Disturbing-questions-Simon-Danczuk-crusades-against-abuse.html

http://www.w4mpjobs.org/JobDetails.aspx?jobid=57245  

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/call-for-expusion-case-to-be-re-openned.html

Joanne Cox: Political Class gets priorities right,

as a miner dies in relative obscurity

by Les May

EARLY last Friday morning, a miner called John Anderson was killed in an East Cleveland potash mine.  His death was relegated to page 13 of the 'i' newspaper and merited just a quarter of a page of newsprint.  Last Thursday an MP called Joanne Cox was killed in the street.  So far the same newspaper has devoted eleven pages to her death which today included the fact that £800,000 has been donated to a charitable fund set up by her friends.

For the families of both of these people their deaths are an ongoing tragedy.   But that is all that they have in common.  Mr Anderson's death has been reported to HM Mines Inspectorate and no doubt there will be an inquest.  That may merit a few lines in the national press or it may not.  Local Labour MP, Tom Blenkinsop, has spoken of his concerns following the death and intends to meet the mine owners ICL Ltd and the mine unions.  There is no reason to suppose that Mr Anderson's death was anything other than a tragic accident.  But history suggests that if that presumption were to prove to be wrong no one would appear in the dock charged with causing his death.  A man has already been charged with the murder of Joanne Cox.

There's a bandwagon rolling and lazy journalists are determined to scramble aboard before its too late.  A particularly inept sub-editor at the 'i' managed to confuse Joseph Priestley who in 1733 was born in Birstall where the murder happened, with author J. B. Priestley who was born in Bradford in 1894.  A day before in the same paper Joan Smith in an otherwise sensible article decided there was a bit of mileage in referring to 'an apparent normalisation of the most grotesque misogyny' and Andrew Grice took yet another opportunity to have a go at Jeremy Corbyn just as he did the day after.  It seems no one can resist the temptation to use this tragedy to further their own agenda.

But it's not just the media which have tried to use the killing to their advantage.  The organisation 'Unite Against Fascism' which sees a climate of 'racist discussion' on immigration having been 'stirred up' during the EU referendum campaigning.  Whilst the Tories, Lib Dems and UKIP all announced they would not contest the seat at the forthcoming by-election the Liberty GB prospective candidate, a former BNP member, announced his intention to stand by saying 'We cannot let Jo Cox's death be in vain'.  The North-east branch of 'National Action' took the opportunity to post on Twitter, '#JoCox would have filled Yorkshire with more subhumans'.  I usually think that invoking the word Nazi means you know you are losing the argument, but for this comment it seems entirely appropriate.

Eager not to be labelled as 'Stirrer up in Chief' Nigel Farage turned psychiatrist saying the killing was the act of 'one man with serious mental health issues'. This line will no doubt play well with those papers which have done so much to use immigration to stoke up resentment against the EU,  'It wasn't me gov it was him'.

Even the usually excellent Al Jazeera news channel managed to use it as an excuse to ask why the killing had not been labelled 'terrorism' when this epithet is so frequently attached to incidents involving Muslims.

Whatever this killing was it was not terrorism.  The whole idea of 'terrorism' is to terrorise the population at large by causing panic and uncertainty about whether you are going to be the next casualty.  Like the killing of Lee Rigby in 2013 Joanne Cox's killing was a carefully targeted attack.  Terrorists see the whole population of a country as a legitimate target.  The IRA Manchester bomb of 1996, the Twin Towers attack of 2001, the London Bombings of 2005, can all be accurately described as 'terrorism'.  By the same token the targeted killing of secular bloggers and academics in Bangladesh isn't terrorism either.

I find it distasteful that after her untimely death Joanne Cox is being given the 'Sleb' treatment by some sections of the media.   It's an old trick.  Lavish praise on what someone has done.  Associate yourself with similar views, which are of course the views of all 'right thinking people', and hey presto, a nice bit of self praise emerges.

Whatever Joanne Cox's qualities personally I'd like to see fewer MPs with a background of university, working for a charitable organisation, then the House of Commons, and more from John Anderson's background.

Whatever I think of Simon Danczuk's antics as an author and MP, he is surely right to draw attention to the fact that so many of his colleagues really do form a 'metropolitan elite'.  He could have added that they inhabit the same 'Westminster Village' as the journalists who write about them.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/18/thomas-mair-charged-with-of-mp-jo-cox  

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Priestley 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Priestley

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lee_Rigby

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings

 

The Left & Brexit: Is Corbyn Trying?

by Les May

LAST Saturday's edition of the 'i' newspaper had a column by Andrew Grice, headed 'Corbyn could decide the EU vote – so why isn't he trying?' 
Now both the 'i' and Grice 'have form' in being negative about Corbyn and this piece was no exception.  So it was hinted that Corbyn is making a half-hearted attempt to persuade Labour voters to back 'Remain' and that he is an instinctive 'Outer' who voted to leave in 1975, and only 'went with the flow' of his party when he became leader.

On the letters page was this:
'On Thursday I was privileged to be in a packed audience in Bristol to hear him (ed. Corbyn) make an impassioned and forceful case for Remain.  Not the modified Tory leadership race but a positive case for the good that has been done for the environment, the right of workers to fair treatment, and care and concern for the disadvantaged.' 
The writer went on to point out that there was no mention on the TV news and local BBC news had something low down in the running order.

So obsessed has the press become with the Tory infighting over the EU that the notion that there might be a distinctive case to be made from a left-wing perspective both for remaining in the EU and for leaving it, is never aired.  This reflects the fact that since the 1970s the whole locus of political debate in Britain has shifted so far to the right to such an extent that anything else is inconceivable.  Grice and the 'i' are manifestations of this phenomenon.

The Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson the economics editor of the Mail on Sunday have been commissioned to write from a left of centre perspective a book on the Euro in the wake of last summer's crisis about the possibility that Greece would exit the single currency.  The book 'Europe isn't working' will be published by Yale University Press in the autumn, but Elliot gave us a flavour of the contents in last Friday's Guardian.

Elliot reports, seemingly with approval:
'Tony Benn's warning at the time of the 1975 referendum that Britain was signing up for something that was 'undemocratic, deflationary and run in the interests of big business' and 'I can think of no body of men outside of the Kremlin who have so much power without a shred of accountability for what they do'.

Is it surprising then that, like me, Corbyn and about one in three of the population voted against continued membership?

But having stated so well the left-of-centre case for leaving in 1975 Elliot weakens his case for leaving now by resorting to a 'catch all' argument when he goes on:
 'The left-of-centre case for divorces is that Europe doesn't work, is not remotely progressive and is heading for an existential crisis anyway.  Last year's crisis was Grexit.  This year's threat is Brexit.  Next years threat will be something else; Italy leaving the single currency, perhaps, or Marie Le Pen's tilt at the French presidency.'

If Elliott thinks this is a 'left-of-centre' case for Brexit he is fooling himself.  Anyone in the Brexit camp could have made it and probably has already.

But in fairness to Elliott he states the case for continued membership of the EU succinctly. 'One left-of-centre argument against Brexit is that it it would result in the break up of the Euro and set of a chain reaction that would lead to the next global crisis; a perfectly fair point.  Those who fear that another recession and even higher levels of joblessness would threaten a return to the totalitarian politics of the 1930s are right to highlight the risks.'

What Tony Benn said in 1975 still applies.  But in my judgement leaving now risks all the above and ignores the fact that we in Britain have our own pretty good record of governments letting the interests of big business override questions of accountability and avoiding democratic decision
making when it suits them.

Here are two recently reported examples.  Last Thursday speaking at a CBI bash Alastair Darling recounted how in May 2008 Fred, 'The Shred', Goodwin had phoned him to say:
'RBS is haemorrhaging money. We can only survive another two or three hours.  What are YOU going to do about it?'  I'll repeat that, 'What are YOU going to do about it?'

A month after Goodwin took early retirement RBS announced the largest corporate annual loss in UK history of £24.1 billion.  This didn't stop the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph saying, 'his grasp of finance is in the Alpha class' and that he was 'unlikely to be in the growing queue of jobless bankers' for long'.

Had Darling let RBS go bust Goodwin would have been entitled to a pension of £28,000 a year at starting at age 65.  Because the state, (a.k.a. you and me), stepped in Goodwin was able to retire early with a tax free £2.7 million lump sum and now gets a 'reduced' annual pension of £342,500.  

At a conference on 'fracking' last week with reference to planning delays Francis Egan, the Chief Executive of Cuadrilla told energy minister Andrea Leadsom, 'the words are good, the intent is good but the delivery is not. Investors have patience but it's not limitless.'  He was complaining that the government had not yet implemented its promise last August to intervene if councils failed to meet the deadline of 16 weeks to approve or reject fracking applications.  Leadson replied 'The new measures we've introduced will help to make this happen.  We are addressing a problem that causes unnecessary delays.'

That's right four months to decide on something that could affect very large areas of the country for years to come and may bring about irreversible changes to ground water.

Incidentally Cuadrilla is privately owned which means very little about its activities will find its way into the public domain.  How's that for accountability?

Voting for Brexit won't change things like this.  But I'm sure it will make some people feel better.  I'd rather they felt angry that things like this are happening in our country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuadrilla_Resources

Corbyn addresses Fabian Society

I welcomed Corbyn's election as Labour leader in September 2015, not because I'm 'an extreme left winger', but because I was tired of listening to a Labour party that was pre-occupied with fighting for the 'centre ground' which in reality was well to the Right of the Tory governments I had experience of in the 1950s and early 1970s.

But I grew increasingly impatient with the distractions of squabbles about Trident renewal, and the constant attacks from people like Simon Danczuk, which fed an anti Corbyn agenda in the media and allowed the debate about whether to sanction the bombing of Syria to be presented as a crisis of leadership.  What these critics of Corbyn failed to notice is that the Right wing press, in the shape of the Daily Mail, was very doubtful about some of Cameron's claims and made comparisons with Blair's 'dodgy dossier'.

Corbyn should never have let Trident renewal become the touchstone of his leadership.  Single issue politics holds no attractions for me whatever the cause.  In the long run practical politics will reassert itself as the leaders of the engineering trades unions point to the job losses which could follow from the 'wrong' decision.

But at last, in a speech to the Fabian Society, Corbyn has set out his vision of what Labour stands for, and what policies it should enact when it next forms a government.

Commenting on  this Nigel Morris of 'The i' wrote:

'Mr Corbyn's critics, both inside the party and outside, will seize on his plans as evidence that he is attempting to drive its policy platform to the left.'

And so will the people who voted for him.

No one can describe the policies he is proposing as 'extreme left-wing' without doing an injustice to the English language.  If these policies are criticised by the self styled 'moderates' I shall begin to wonder if there would be any point in voting Labour if they reassert their strangle hold on the party.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts97stMv-7M

http://labourlist.org/2016/01/fairness-isnt-just-an-abstract-morality-jeremy-corbyns-speech-to-the-fabian-society/

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/why-burnham-cooper-and-kendall-deserve.html