Spanish translation of obituary to Brian Bamford by Carlos Figueroa.

 ADIOS, AMIGO.BRIAN BAMFORD,nació el 14 de diciembre de 1940,murió el 18 de Febrero de 2022

Aunque lo esperaba,sigue siendo una triste noticia saber de la muerte de Brian Bamford,con 81 años.Murió en su casa a primera hora de la mañana del pasado 18 de febrero tras una larga enfermedad.Era un buen compañero y camarada y le echaré mucho de menos .Se me hace extraño no escuchar su voz por teléfono ya que hablamos varias veces por semana durante años.Aunque a menudo discutíamos sobre algún que otro tema ,yo le quería mucho y le respetaba.Sin embargo,teníamos muchas cosas en común y pienso que llegamos a conseguir algunas cosas a través de nuestra amistad y colaboración. 

Brian tenía un carácter único.Era de naturaleza generosa y vivía y respiraba  la política.Estoy  seguro de  que no carecía de agallas y siempre iba de frente.Era un hombre que iría a la cárcel antes que pagar una multa y sería arrestado con frecuencia por sus actividades políticas.A veces de manera chistosa le decía que se metía en todos los fregados.Pero como anarquista,Brian no estaba interesado en puestos políticos o la vía parlamentaria hacia el socialismo.Era más un militante  de la industria que un periodista. 

En 2003 ,un grupo de nosotros,incluyendo anarquistas como Brian,habíamos fundado la revista Northern Voices tras reunirnos en el bar Buffet de Stalybridge.Brian fue elegido como editor.Nuestra pretensión era realizar una publicación regional dedicada a las noticias locales y a temas culturales del norte de Inglaterra .La revista se vendía por el Gran Manchester también como en partes de Yorkshire y Lancashire.Se vendía incluso en la librería Houseman de Londres y en la librería Freedom de Whitechapel,en el East End de Londres. También vendimos la revista en la librería Hydra de Bristol.El último número de la revista Northern Voices salió en 2015.Nos habíamos pasado al formato digital y tanto yo mismo como Brian conjuntamente nos convertimos en editores del blog Northern Voices.

Como editores  de Northern Voices ,peleamos al menos contra cuatro acusaciones de difamación  con las que nos amenazaron o a las que nos llevaron.La más seria fue una acusación contra nosotros ,el periódico "The Guardian",el "Morning Star",el sindicato GMB y una página web llamada Union Solidarity Internacional ,de un antiguo policía camuflado llamado Gordon Mills ,que había trabajado para una unidad de policía secreta llamada NETCU.También escribimos sobre Mills en un panfleto llamado,"Chicos en la lista negra".Con la ayuda de Dave Smith y el grupo de apoyo contra la lista negra (BSG) y Unite the Union,nosotros resistimos con éxito ante esta amenaza y ni pedimos perdón ni pagamos un penique a Gordon Mills.

Brian fue miembro de Unite y secretario de la sección en Bury del sindicato.Tambien fue secretario del consejo sindical de Tameside.A lo largo de su vida ,Brian habia estado implicado en muchos conflictos industriales. En los primeros 60 ,se implicó en la huelga general de aprendices de ingeniería. También tuvo alguna implicación el la huelga de Robers Arundel de Stockport y fue detenido en una huelga en Arrow Mill,Rochdale ,donde trabajó y fue delegado sindical .Muchos de los huelguistas eran trabajadores asiáticos.Los dos estuvimos también implicados en la huelga de cuidadores de Tameside.Hizo campaña  con fuerza contra la lista negra de la industria de la construcción  y apoyó a Seteve Acheson y los demás electricistas que habían sido despedidos bajo falsa premisa de despido por el contratista ,DAF Eléctrica. Brian lo supo gracias a Ricky Tomlinson,que formaba parte de la  Lista Negra de la Liga Económica. 

Tanto Brian como yo éramos miembros de la Federación de trabajadores sindicalistas(SWF) y habíamos sido muy influenciados por la CNT.En sus días jóvenes ,Brian habia sido de las juventudes liberales.Creo que una vez me dijo que lo que había llevado a la política anarquista  fue un libro de un anarquista ruso.el Príncipe Piotr Kropotkin,titulado "A los jóvenes "que había estado circulando entre las juventudes liberales.Admiraba mucho a George Orwell y al escritor italiano Ignazio Silone,que había escrito la novela antifascista "Fontamara" y "La escuela de los  dictadores"...Una novela que le gustaba especialmente era "Nostromo" de Joseph Conrad.

Durante los 60 ,Brian y su primera esposa Joan habían trabajado y vivido en España  bajo la Dictadura del General Franco.Hablaba español y podía discutir e insultar en español.Una vez fue arrestado en la estación Victoria  de Manchester porque no sacar del tren a su cabra a la que estaba llevando al veterinario en Bolton.Cuando los polis le sacaron a rastras del tren ,se podía escuchar a Brian gritando CABRON,CABRON,un insulto español que significa...mamon,hijo de puta,bastardo y cabra macho.Se pasó el resto del día encerrado en la comisaría de Boodle Street.Escribí un reportaje para Freedom Press sobre  los juicios en el tribunal de primera instancia y el tribunal superior que  llevó su apelación. Puedo aseguraros que el proceso fue graciosisimo.Todos nosotros estuvimos  absolutamente entretenidos.

Brian tuvo una gran influencia sobre mí y aprendí mucho de él.Le había  conocido desde el comienzo de mis 20 años  y  colaboramos juntos durante más de 40 años.Siempre le recordaré con el afecto más profundo. ADIOS, AMIGO.RIP

Dereck Pattison

Northern Voices 

Adios, Amigo. Brian Bamford - born 14/12/1940 - died 18/2/2022

      Brian Bamford -Editor of Northern Voices

Although I was expecting it, it is still very sad news to hear of the death of Brian Bamford, at 81. He died at home in the early hours of last Friday morning (18th February) after a long illness. He was a good mate and comrade and I will miss him greatly. It's strange not to hear his voice on the phone as he rang me many times a week for years. Although we often argued with one another over some issue or other, I liked him very much and respected him. Nevertheless, we had a great deal in common and I think we achieved something through our friendship and collaboration. 

Brian was a unique character. He had a generous nature and he lived and breathed politics. He certainly wasn't lacking when it came to having guts and he always led from the front. He was a man who would go to jail rather than pay a fine and he'd been frequently arrested for his political activities. I would sometimes jokingly say to him that he'd had more porridge than the three bears. But as an anarchist, Brian wasn't interested in political office or the parliamentary road to socialism. He was more of an industrial militant and journalist. 

In 2003, a group of us, including anarchists like Brian, had founded Northern Voices magazine after meeting in the Buffet bar in Stalybridge. Brian was elected the editor. Our aim was to produce a regional publication dedicated to local news and cultural issues in the north of England. The magazine was sold throughout Greater Manchester as well as parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. It was even sold in Houseman's Bookshop in London and at the Freedom Bookshop, in Whitechapel, in London's East End. We also sold the magazine at the Hydra Bookshop in Bristol. The last issue of Northern Voices magazine was in 2015. We'd already gone online and both myself and Brian, became joint editors of the Northern Voices blog.

As joints editors of Northern Voices blog, we fought at least four defamation actions threatened or brought against against us. The most serious, was an action brought against us, the Guardian newspaper, the Morning Star, the GMB union, and a website called Union Solidarity International, by a former undercover police officer called Gordon Mills, who had worked for a secret police unit called NETCU. We'd also written about Mills in a booklet we wrote called 'Boys on the Blacklist'. With the help of Dave Smith and the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), and Unite the Union, we successfully resisted this action and neither apologised or paid a penny to Gordon Mills. 

Brian was a member of Unite and was the secretary of the Bury Branch of Unite. He was also the secretary of Tameside Trades Union Council. Throughout his life, Brian had been involved in many industrial disputes. In the early 1960s, he was involved in the national strike of engineering apprentices. He'd also had some involvement in the strike at Roberts Arundel in Stockport and was arrested during a strike at Arrow Mill, in Rochdale, where he worked and was the union representative. Many of the strikers were Asian workers. Both of us were also involved in the Tameside Careworkers' strike. He campaigned vigorously against the blacklist in the construction industry, and supported Steve Acheson and the other electricians, who'd been sacked on the spurious grounds of redundancy by the contractor, DAF electrical. Brian found out from Ricky Tomlinson, that he was also on the Economic League Blacklist. 

Both Brian and myself had been members of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF), and had been greatly influenced by the Spanish anarcho-syndicalism of the CNT. In his younger days, Brian had been a Young Liberal. I think he once told me that what had drawn him into anarchist politics, was a book by the Russian anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin, called 'An Appeal to the Young', which had been circulated by the Young Liberals. He greatly admired both George Orwell and the Italian writer, Ignazio Silone, who had written the anti fascist novel 'Fontamara' and 'The School for Dictators'. A novel he particularly liked, was Nostromo, by Joseph Conrad. 

During the 1960s, Brian and his first wife Joan, had worked and lived in Spain under the Dictatorship of General Franco. He spoke Spanish and could argue and curse in Spanish. He was once arrested by the police at Victoria Train Station in Manchester because he wouldn't remove his goat from the train which he was taking to the vets near Bolton. As the copper dragged him off the train, Brian could be heard shouting - 'Cabron', 'Cabron', a Spanish insult that means arsehole, son of a bitch, bastard, and male goat'. He spent the rest of the day, locked up in Boodle Street police station. I wrote a report for Freedom Press on both of his trials at the City Magistrates Court and the Crown Court which heard his appeal. I can assure you that the proceedings were hilarious. We were all thoroughly entertained. 

Brian was a great influence on me and I learned a lot from him. I had known him since my early twenties and we collaborated closely for over forty years. I will remember him always with the deepest affection. Adios, Amigo. RIP.

Derek Pattison,

Northern Voices.

Farewell, Brian

I first met Brian over fifty years ago, when we were launching Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP); our friendship was cemented then and thrived until his sad demise last Friday.

Our first encounter was over a story I wrote, in which he displayed a number of characteristics that were, for me, to help define his life. Always a staunch trade unionist, for him the rights of his fellow beings trumped any formal structures. So, the story - in brief - was of a number of Asian workers who were being abused, discriminated against and under-paid on the night shift of Arrow Mill, one of Rochdale’s last functioning textile mills. Neither management nor textile trade union cared a hoot - the latter was happy to turn a blind eye. Brian’s instinctive decency and concern for his fellow worker came to the fore, and he was able to organise the shift, from the outside and provide support that saw many of their grievances addressed.

Brian’s pro-worker, anti-union bureaucrat stance was often to get him into trouble. Others will know more of his more recent struggles on behalf of the anti-black-listing campaigns.

The gratitude of many of those he supported at Arrow Mill remained until Brian’s dying days, as some, who had long departed Rochdale remained in touch. The fact “the lads” were recent Pakistani immigrants was of no concern to Brian. His support was driven by his discomfort at the injustice they experienced. That “colour blindness” later got him denounced as a racist, when he was vocal in condemning textile sweatshop labour in the town, because it was perceived, by the hyper-sensitive, to be anti immigrant, rather than pro workers rights and working conditions that had been fought for over the previous century and a half.

Brian played a significant role in helping uncover RAP’s biggest story, and later national scandal - the exposure of Cyril Smith as a child abuser. Brian knew some of the victims and helped RAP trace them, in the 1970s, and later assisted distinguished national journalist and son of Rochdale, Paul Waugh, with his revelations thirty five years later. He had no truck with the trashy “drama-documentary” on the subject published by local disgraced MP, Simon Danczuk and his side kick eight years or so, ago.

Brian assisted RAP in much of the unglamorous stuff too - the collation, folding and the distribution. It was early mornings and late nights, with zero recognition or reward, except for feeling that you were attempting to get messages of injustice publicised and showing solidarity with the under-dog. Brian was no glory hunter, although his struggles often gained attention, he never sought it.

Often intense and serious, Brian was not without a mischievous sense of humour, as many who recall his hearty cackle will testify. On one occasion in the 70s we persuaded him to stand as a candidate in the Rochdale municipal elections, to represent Rochdale’s Alternative Party (RAP). He stood in the town’s most affluent ward, which just so happened to be called Bamford (“Bamford for Bamford” had a certain campaigning appeal!). Among his pledges was to have a Travellers’ Site erected on Norford Way (the poshest road in town, which at the time housed a member of pop group 10cc and a Lancashire and England cricketer, as well as the area’s wealthier professionals and business owners. To nobody’s surprise and Brian’s great relief, he was spectacularly unsuccessful!

On a more serious note was Brian’s great love of Spain, brought about initially by periods working as an electrician in Gibraltar. At some considerable personal risk, he was involved in supplying anti-fascist resisters in Franco’s Spain with literature and materials he was able to smuggle over the border. He had little truck with other more celebrated anarchists who publicised their actions and put others at risk, as a consequence.

His periods in Spain engendered in him a love of the country, its literature and cuisine, and he was a dab hand at putting together a tasty Spanish culinary delight or two.

Brian has always been a polemicist and publisher - not only through RAP, but with any number of leftist/anarchist publications. The original, paper copy of Northern Voices and this blog being the latest manifestation. It is hard work, particularly trailing round newsagents and bookshops, often by public transport to deliver copies and pick up returns and payments. It’s the nature of small publications that they rarely get pride of place in shop displays, and sales can be hit and miss and often disappointing. Brian would not be put off - he always soldiered on, without complaint.

I left Rochdale 40 years ago, but we maintained our friendship. He was a frequent visitor, and always stayed when he was down for conferences and the annual Anarchist Bookfair. There was always a campaign to be fought, and important discussion to be had, by his ever inquisitive mind.

He was a frequent phone caller, to discuss current affairs, or just plain gossip. For a while the calls always lasted 59 minutes and 30 seconds- the maximum free call time allowed by his service provider. His timing was immaculate!

In recent years we came to share a delight of holidays in Norfolk (although never together); Brian with Pat, his partner over 30 years and wife for the last two months of his life, and me, my wife and two dogs (I am writing from there now). We took great delight in our respective times in this glorious county: we in our rented cottage. And Brian, until his 80s, never one for ceremony or appearance, with Pat in youth hostels. 

And how fitting, because Brian was Forever Young (yes the works and songs of Bob Dylan were frequent topics of discussion.

Farewell, Brian.

I’ll miss you, comrade.

My Friend Brian Bamford. By Les May

My oldest friend died today. Readers of NV will know him as ‘Bammy’; I knew him as Brian. We first came to know each other sixty years ago through CND, which perhaps tells you something about where on the political spectrum we were and are to be found. But our politics were not the same. Brian was a lifelong anarcho-syndicalist, I’m a democratic socialist. So this isn’t a political obituary, it’s a memoir of my friend, with a few political comments thrown in. I tend to think of most anarchists as incurable romantics; Brian was not like that. He certainly had a romantic view of what anarchists achieved during the Spanish Civil war, but he had an essentially practical view about anarchism too and was strongly drawn to the ideas of Colin Ward. If he was a bit of a romantic about the anarchism in Spain, he was also very knowledgable about its history and went to Spain in 1963 to find out for himself. He went on to visit Spain for extended periods several more times in later years and learned to speak and read Spanish sufficiently well to be able to translate pieces from Spanish newspapers which found their way onto the NV blog. Brian’s other political preoccupation was trades unionism which I imagine derived from the syndicalism bit of his political philosophy. A year or so ago a piece on the NV blog drew the comment from someone who thinks that indulging in such name calling will change the world, that it was ‘racist’, an easy comment to make sitting in an armchair, rather than heading to jail. What I, and no doubt many others know, is that in the early 1970s Brian had been arrested whilst supporting ‘asian’ workers at the Arrow mill. Brian continued his involvement in the trades unions until he became ill. This included co-authoring a booklet on ‘Blacklisting’ and acting as Secretary of Bury Unite Commercial Branch. Brian started Northern Voices as a print publication and worked extremely hard not only at the writing and editing, but also at the distribution. Only later did it develop into a ‘blog’ which was available on the World Wide Web. Initially NV was intended as a cultural and political publication. Brian tried to keep the ‘cultural’ side alive with book, film and theatre reviews many of which he wrote himself. I started contributing regularly only after the publication of Simon Danzcuk’s book about Cyril Smith. Before Smith died in 2010 Brian had used NV to remind people of the 1979 story about Cyril’s antics at Cambridge House in Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP). Brian knew a lot more about this story than Danzcuk and Baker because he had been involved in the distribution of RAP when national newspapers were sending taxis to buy multiple copies of the paper and because of his continued friendship with one of the editors, John Walker. As a co-editor of NV Brian took a robust attitude to freedom of expression. He was happy to give space to people whose views he strongly disagreed with. He had no time for the people who used words like racist, islamophobic, antisemtic, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic etc as weapons to prevent others expressing views they did not like. He took as his motto the words on the wall of Broadcasting House behind a statue of his hero George Orwell, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear", from an unused preface to Animal Farm. That is how I shall always remember him.

Death of Brian Bamford - Joint Editor Northernvoice.

It is with great sadness that we have to announce the death of Brian Bamford who died today aged 81. Brian was the joint editor of Northernvoices blog and for over a decade edited Northervoices Magazine. We send our sincere condolensces to his wife and family.

Boy Racers - Nietzsche's Restless Children - By Andrew Wallace

If the generation gap is a permanent ingrained feature of human relationships as suggested by ancient apocryphal quotes, the idea of youth cultures does indeed suggest something stridently modern, manufactured and set apart from previous history. Sociologists have delineated the rise of distinctive and often challenging youth cultures over the course of the 20th century, particularly during the affluence of the post war boom. Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972)1 being the seminal work demonstrating how media outlets typically framed understandings of high visibility skirmishes and public disorder. Tabloid reportage was critical in providing the terms of reference and conceptual baggage in which readers would come to understand the travails of the respective groupings of ‘mods’ and ‘rockers’. However the sociologists who provided the seminal criminological theory on the back of 1960s radicalism and counter culture often betrayed a rather quirky and romantic attachment to the idea of miscreant youth as a pedigree of non-conformist banditry, pregnant with possibilities for anti-capitalist challenges to the Establishment. Today’s 21st century Boy Racers have been apprehended by analysists deploying much of Cohen’s work and the engagement with labelling theory and symbolic interactionism, a nuanced and dynamic appraisal of the different social actors and the contested meanings at the heart of ongoing struggles. Although there is a long lineage of car culture from America (hot rodding and drag racing), the conspicuous boy racer phenomena we are accustomed to today seems to have surfaced in the 1990s with the new permissive capitalism of easy credit, financial deregulation and the great turbo charged car economy. Campbell’s2 work on social unrest at the time of the 1991 riots remains prescient also for the riots of 2011 and to the malaise of today. With sleek high performance vehicles available on lease to those of moderate income the environment was conducive to the carnivalesque of performative exhibitionism. The confluence of new technologies such as the camcorder, the potency and repurposing of the car and the lure and accessibility of large urban spaces and an audience receptive to the spectacle were all well-established ingredients back then. The transgressive inclinations of the ‘tarmac cowboys’, drawn to the urban retail parks like moths to a flame, speaks to the voracious appetite for adrenal stimulation. The lure of wild abandon and Dionysian frenzy has typically been ceded to psychologists and been difficult to understand within the limited horizons of traditionalist criminology. This deficit has now been challenged by the pioneering ideas of Edgework3 whereby criminal acts are conceptualised anew as sensation seeking activity on the edge or periphery of acceptable behaviours. The high octane activities are engaged precisely because of the existential thrills provided against the mundane, stultifying and banal confinements of the regular habitat. Since the post-modern society is constantly in flux and negotiating its fragile domestic settlement, the rules of living are daily contested and feeding into the sense of sociological anomie and general urban malaise. Whereas traditional bourgeois capitalism had aligned itself within a conservative moral universe, the new right individualism of the 1970s onwards introduced a radical antinomy into the mix. Thatcherism’s Calvinist restraints were soon consigned to the margins as the more uncompromising buccaneers of the unfettered free market came to the fore. Deferred gratification gave way to the orgy of instant gratification courtesy of deregulated credit and wild financialisation. The new capitalism increasingly vanquished cultural conservativism in favour of an open celebration of the permissive, even seeking to appropriate much of the bohemian and counter-cultural ‘hippy’ ethos of ‘do your own thing’. Social attitudes to sexuality had been liberalised, homosexuality decriminalised, censorship of arts and cinema relaxed and non-marital relationships and children born out of wedlock now no longer subject to moral sanction. It seems there is ample evidence that commercialism and market forces will inevitably find an outlet for the decadent and even subversive in the absence of restraint. Markets cater to our needs and cravings so long as the material basis for their realisation exists. If there are moral prescriptions that trump the economics, then canny market forces prove more than capable in providing the necessary furtive adjustments. Niche markets establish themselves alongside the mainstream. If there are serious fortunes to be made by catering for an increasingly unconservative appetite for mayhem and debauchery, then capitalism naturally pushes at an open door (or Overton Window4) with regards to what is morally and culturally permissible. If the bad boy antics of a few anti-heroes had been tacitly indulged in 1960s television and cinema, then the next few decades would push the envelope ever further from the chaste guidelines of the Hays Code.5 If the staple Hollywood action film had celebrated masculinity and high octane car chases for many years, then this had evolved apace to celebrate criminality and gangsters for gaming platforms. Carmaggedon and Grand Theft Auto remain controversial because of their open celebration of violence and cruelty whilst the Fast and the Furious film franchise have exulted in the world of boy racers and illegal street racing. And if capitalism is doing its best to shuffle off the inconvenient ballast of social conservativism, the Conservative Party’s relationship to one of their traditionally favourite planks of law and order has been chafing away of late, given the extensive cuts to police numbers.6 Hence the increasing conspicuous presence of antisocial driving and occasional conveys of Mad Max style off road vehicles taking to our main roads in a narcissistic exhibition of dangerous pyrotechnics. Indeed I defy anyone in the vicinity to take an hour’s walk across the inner township wards of Rochdale or an equivalent town and not experience for themselves various spectacles of antisocial driving or other troublesome manifestations of what we might quaintly term urban malaise. 7,8,9,10 If Rochdale is a template for such dysfunctionality it is not an exceptional one. Indeed on a recent holiday that took us as far as Southampton and Jersey I was witness to the same kinds of antisocial crudities that blight us back here. Perhaps Rochdale and other Northern towns have the dubious distinction of being in the vanguard of this post-industrial malaise, since they were amongst the first regions of the country to feel the impact of Thatcherite deindustrialisation and then a horrific descent of a segment of its populace into maladaptive substance abuse. The malaise has now spread much further afield as former affluent regions of the country have grimly discovered. Indeed the problems of Nietzsche’s restless children decked out in their transgressive apparel is something of an international quandary, with Sweden, New Zealand, Australia and North America highlighting the same maladies. 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_devil 2 Beatrix Campbell – Goliath – Britain’s Dangerous Places (1993) 3 https://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2012/05/30/edgework-taking-risks-for-the-fun-of-it/ 4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window#:~:text=The%20Overton%20window%20is%20the,as%20the%20window%20of%20discourse. 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Production_Code 6 https://www.gmb.org.uk/news/shock-figures-reveal-23500-police-staff-cut-under-tories 7 http://rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/8828/police-target-boy-racers 8 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1189167/Judge-blasts-hopelessly-inadequate-sentence-Fast-And-The-Furious-boy-racers-left-woman-brain-damaged.html 9 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3101081/Pictured-Driver-18-boasting-hits-142mph-night-killed-innocent-motorist-drove-high-powered-Audi-red-light.html 10 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/06/boy-racers-blamed-as-manchester-road-deaths-rise-during-lockdown

Unite announces more independent inquiry into union collusion in blacklisting

UNITE the union has announced a more independent investigation into union official's collusion in blacklisting. https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2021/december/unite-announces-beefed-up-qc-inquiry-into-blacklisting-collusion/ The following statement appears on the Blacklist Support Group Facebook page: "Blacklisted workers have campaigned for an independent investigation into union collusion for a long time: too long. We have known for over a decade that some blacklist files record the names of senior union officials as the source of information that led to us being denied employment. Previous General Secretaries even met with Norman Tebbit to discuss the activities of union members. We know for a fact that some union officials emailed information about union activists to industrial relations consultants and managers working for major contractors up to their necks in blacklisting. This is totally unacceptable in a trade union movement that claims to be democratic and member led. Every union activist in construction already knows who these people are. In many cases, Blacklist Support Group has already published their names. We are not accusing every union official of being corrupt, there are many honest value driven officials. But neither is this about 'one or two bad apples'. Over many decades, the senior leadership of construction unions actively encouraged a business friendly model of trade unionism, where cultivating partnership arrangements with employers was often given priority over fighting for workers’ rights. Overly friendly relationships developed between union officials and managers, this is the context in which information detrimental to union members was being discussed. Any investigation into potential collusion by union officials in blacklisting needs to fully investigate the entire UNITE electronic database and that of predecessor unions to get to the truth. For this to happen, those carrying out the search of the union databases need to be completely independent of the union itself. Blacklist Support Group therefore applaud the announcement that UNITE have created an oversight committee made of up blacklisted workers who will approve the appointment of an external legal team and a forensic evidence gathering consultant to oversee and carry out the searches of the union's electronic databases. With this beefed up and more independent investigation, any lingering doubts about the independence of this investigation have now been removed. If evidence exists of collusion or inappropriate practices that led to the passing on of information about union members, any possible barriers should now have been removed. BSG encourage anyone who has any evidence relevant to the investigation to come forward ASAP and provide it to the independent legal experts". Blacklist Support Group book: http://newint.org/books/politics/blacklisted-secret-war/ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNcgrNs6pB8 facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/blacklistSG/ blog: www.hazards.org/blacklistblog

The BBC.Put up or shutup. By Les May

In the recent past Northern Voices has carried articles critical of official attitudes which give the impression that particular decisions have been taken which reflect a fear of how some sections of our society might react, rather than giving support people to who have appeared to be under threat. One of these was the refusal to give asylum to Asia Bibi, a Pakistani Christian whose life was threatened after she was released from prison where she had languished on trumped up charges of disrespecting Muhammad. The second was the failure to make clear to the followers of Islam who thought they had the right to dictate what was taught at Batley Grammar school and by whom, that Britain does not have laws against blasphemy and they were not going to be allowed to introduce one ‘by the back door’. But it appears that at least one organisation in Britain is headed by people reluctant to do their job properly and uphold the law for fear of the adverse publicity that would be generated. The organisation goes by the name of ‘TV Licensing’. To understand what is going on we need to look back a few years. TV licences for the over-75s were free from November 2000 until the end of July 2020. About 4.5 million households benefited from this. The decision to end this concession was made by the BBC which had agreed in 2015 to take over the funding of these licences. I benefited from this from July 2017 until last year. As a law abiding citizen I paid my licence fee in full on 1 August 2020 and had every intention of doing so again on 1 August 2021. I chose not to. What follows is not about whether it is ‘fair’ that people of 75 and over should have or not have to pay the licence. Nor is it about the quality of the programmes, the number of ‘repeats’, whether I watch BBC television or not, whether a licence fee is the right way to fund the BBC or whether it is all the Tory government’s fault anyhow. It’s about whether the people who head the licence fee collection organisation are willing to do their job, and thereby earn their not inconsiderable salaries, or whether they can shy away from doing it because they do not want to face the adverse publicity which would result from their having a procession of over 75s face court proceedings or have the bailiffs raid their homes. The law is clear on this matter. Not having a licence to watch television programmes, whether received over the air or via the Internet, is a civil offence. Yet after more than a year when some 700,000 (15%) previously eligible households have not purchased a licence, there has not been a single prosecution. A report in The Times in March this year was headed ‘BBC unlikely to prosecute over-75s who don’t pay licence fee’. Media correspondent Matthew Moore wrote, ‘The prospect of over-75s being dragged through the courts for TV licence evasion receded last night as the BBC gave the strongest signal yet that it has no plans to prosecute them’ and that the BBC had reassured those who previously held a free licence that they were still ‘legally covered’. The present situation is a farce. It’s time for the BBC Licensing department to either put up, i.e. launch a few prosecutions, ‘pour encourager les autres’, or shut up and accept that those who were previously eligible for a free licence will continue to do so until their demise. When I received my third or fourth reminder a few days ago I responded as follows; Dear Sirs, Thank you for your letter reminding me that my TV licence has expired. It was in fact unnecessary as I am already aware of this. I understand that you may wish to open an investigation. To save you the trouble I indicate below what such an investigation would find: 1. I am aware that I am breaking the law by not having an appropriate licence. 2. I am in a position to pay for such a licence. 3. My decision not to obtain a further licence is a deliberate one. 4. As soon as the head of the organisation known as ‘TV Licensing’ shows a willingness to uphold the law by facing the adverse publicity that would result if persons aged 75 or over are taken to court charged with failure to hold an appropriate licence, I will immediately purchase a licence. If you find it necessary to write to me in the future would you please include the full address of the organisation at the head of the letter? Yours sincerely Les May In other words I will pay up when they start doing the job they are being paid to do. In the meantime I have sent a cheque to UNICEF for £159 which is the present cost of the licence fee. P.S. Pippa Doubtfire who heads the BBC’s TV Licensing Management Team receives a salary in the range £155,000-£159,999. We don’t know what the guy who signs the letters, Chief Operating Officer Ross McTaggart, earns or even who he works for because the BBC contracts out the process of actually collecting the money.

Tory sleaze allegations give Labour a six-point lead.

Tory sleaze allegations are turning Boris Johnson into a political liability. An Opinium poll on behalf of 'The Observer', now gives the Labour Party a six point lead over the Conservatives and suggests that Johnson's personal ratings are plummeting. 

An analysis of the MP's register of interest, has revealed that more than a quarter of Tory MP's have second jobs worth more than £4m a year. Chris Grayling, the former Conservative Transport Secretary, is one of the best paid MP's with a £100,000 a year advisory role with Hutcheson Ports Europe. Another big earner, is the Conservative MP, Andrew Mitchell, who draws an income of £180,000 from multi-jobbing while being an MP. Indeed, it's claimed that half of all Boris Johnson's ex-ministers have taken up jobs linked to their government roles.

Although an MP's salary (£82,000) plus expenses, is nearly triple the national average wage, some MP's like the Conservative MP Peter Bottomley, consider it a poverty wage. While some critics argue that a parliamentarian should have one full-time job, being an MP,  and one constituency, others in the House of Commons have defended multi-jobbing - which is not illegal- on the grounds that the House is much richer for having members do other things - like lining their pockets. Another argument says that banning MP's from taking other jobs, will deter "high caliber" people from standing for Parliament which enables MP's to stay in touch with the world outside of Westminster. 

Yet, as 'The Observer' columnist, Andrew Rawnsley, recently pointed out, there are other ways for MP's to stay in touch with the hoi polloi and the world of work. Rawnsley says that no MP's list 'street cleaning' as an outside interest or serving the community as care workers, supply teachers, or bus drivers. However, some MP's like Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, continue to work as doctors. 

When he sought the safe Conservative seat of Henley which he won in 2001, Boris Johnson told Andrew Mitchell, that he couldn't live on an MP's salary. Johnson told the recent Cop26 summit in Glasgow, that the UK is not "remotely a corrupt country"." Yet, the Conservatives, and Boris Johnson, are facing a number of investigations and the fiasco over the former minister, Owen Paterson, has made Johnson and his government a laughing stock. Johnson has been investigated over alleged free holidays in Mustique and Marbella and the awarding of public contracts to Tory insiders, which have been dubbed the 'Chumocracy'. While we're told that there's nothing bent about this, many people might wonder why anyone would want to give you a free holiday or pay to have your house done up, if there was nothing in it, like being given a peerage. As Lord Northcliffe said, "When I want a peerage I shall buy it like an honest man."

In 2020, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), said it would not be launching a criminal inquiry into whether Boris Johnson had abused his position as Mayor of London to "Benefit and reward" his ex-lover Jennifer Arcuri, who received £126,000 of public money in the form of grants for her technology business. However, the IOPC did declare that Johnson's conflict of interest may have breached the Greater London Assembly (GLA) code of conduct. According to extracts taken from Acuri's diary which have been published in the press, Johnson complimented her on her "amazing body" and was obsessed with having sex with her, while appearing to offer help with her business as an inducement. In October 2012, the diary records that Johnson told her - "How can I be the thrust - the throttle - your mere footstep as to make your career? Tell me? how can I help you? Seemingly, Arcuri was so impressed with the Mayor that she dubbed him "Alex the Great."

Although Johnson's great political hero is Winston Churchill, he is in my view, more comparable to the populist Edwardian shyster politician, Horatio Bottomley, who was also priapic and had numerous mistresses. A former MP, Bottomley was the editor of a weekly magazine called 'John Bull', and he had the ability to charm the public even while swindling them. A self-deprecating man, Bottomley described himself as "more or less honourable." In 1922, Bottomley was sentenced to seven years penal servitude for fraud and finished up sewing mailbags in Wormwood Scrubs.

It might be tempting to think that that it's only the Tories who are sleazy bastards, but we all know differently. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, in an essay on Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679) pointed out that all government's are inclined to tyranny and will try to make themselves personally irremovable. More pertinently, he wrote that they will all try to enrich themselves and their friends at the public expense. And according to Russell, what keeps them in check, is the fear of rebellion. I might also add, and a free press that isn't in their pockets. 

If This Isn't A Spoof It Should Be! By Les May

The following piece appeared in today’s Guardian (6 Nov) on the ‘Family’ page. ‘I am 16 and identify as an ace lesbian (NMLNM, or non-men loving non-men). I have questioned my sexuality since the age of 12 or 13, thinking I was bisexual. I downloaded TikTok, which allowed me to explore my identity more and interact with other queer young people. Until this summer, I questioned my identity multiple times a day (exhausting and not affirming), but I slowly began to feel confident in labelling myself as a demi-romantic, asexual lesbian (I like to use labels). However this feeling didn’t last long. I felt dysphoric a lot of the time, and I hated my breasts. Fortunately after a month, I rediscovered the term ‘demi-girl’ and it just fitted. I am also trying out she/they pronouns, but haven’t told anyone. My gender is quite fluid – some days I feel neutral, other days I feel ultra-feminine. I am open about my sexuality at school and online, and would happily tell most people that I am gay, but don’t want to come out to my parents. I think its a combination of fear, not of rejection (they are supportive of the LBGTQ+ community), and the fact that I hate the idea of having to ‘come out’ if you are queer; I don’t want to contribute to our heteronormative society. Should I tell my parents so they have time to process it, or should I wait until I have a partner to introduce to them? Also, I feel obliged to tell them of my pronoun change, but I don’t wish to be the one to use them how to use she/they pronouns, I wish they would educate themselves. If I tell them my gender and/or sexuality, I know how they would react is not in my control, but ideally our relationship will stay the same or improve.’ When my wife showed it to me she suggested it was a ‘spoof’ intended to poke fun at the ‘Alphabet Soup’ brigade. But Annalisa Barbieri, who seems to be filling the role of agony aunt, evidently took it seriously enough to pen a response including the seemingly obligatory ‘four penny worth’ from a psychotherapist. You can find the response at; https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/05/i-am-16-and-identify-as-an-ace-lesbian-but-i-dont-want-to-come-out-to-my-parents At the last count it had drawn 102 responses on MumsNet. Quite a lot seemed to take the same view as my wife. https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4393772-Batshittery-from-the-Guardi

All Is Fair In Love And Activism - by Les May

 I’m member of the Community Branch of a Trades Union. A couple of week ago the regular newsletter dropped through my door. I found that I was being urged to attend a ‘demo’ on the subject of ‘Climate Change’ in Manchester. Inside was a summary of some comments made about the forthcoming COP26 meeting in Glasgow. One speaker had dismissed it as likely to be a ‘talking shop’. Just how fair are dismissive assessments like this?

In 1992 climate researcher William James Burroughs wrote; ‘… without a better understanding of natural variability of the climate, it will be much more difficult to reach early conclusions on whether man-made pollution is having a significant impact. Tackling the Greenhouse Effect involves massive adjustments in the nature of modern society. There is a natural inclination to avoid making what will be expensive and unpopular changes until the evidence of global warming is beyond doubt. But by then it may be too late.’

In his 2004 book Global Warming: the complete briefing, John Houghten, who co-chaired the Scientific Assessment Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote;

‘’Predictions of the future climate are surrounded with considerable un-certainty that arises from our imperfect knowledge both of the science of climate change and of the future scale of the human activities that are its cause. Politicians and others making decisions are therefore faced with the need to weigh all aspects of uncertainty against the desirability and the cost of the various actions that can be taken in response to the threat of climate change. Some mitigating action can be taken easily at relatively little cost (or even at a net saving of cost), for in-stance the development of programmes to conserve and save energy, and many schemes for reducing deforestation and encouraging the planting of trees.’

It is against the background of cautious words like these, coming from people I think we can assume know rather more about climate change and global warming than the speaker referred to in the first paragraph, that the actions or inactions of successive governments should be judged. Activists may make whatever claims take their fancy; climate scientists do no have that luxury.

John Houghten went on to say: Other actions such as a large shift to energy sources that are free from significant carbon dioxide emissions (for example, renewable sources – biomass, hydro, wind, or solar energy) both in the developed and the developing countries of the world will take some time.’

So how does the UK rate with regard to promoting renewable resources?

Between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2021 the installed capacity rose from 8,690MW to 48,140 MW. That’s 560% more in 2021 than we had in 2010.

Covid 19 And Climate Change - by Les May

 In his 2001 book Climate Change, William James Burroughs heads the first chapter with a quotation from the American writer H. L. Menken ‘There is always and easy solution to every human problem – neat, plausible and wrong.’ Two contemporary human problems are the Covid 19 pandemic and changes in the behaviour of the atmosphere due to our burning of carbon rich fossil fuels. In the UK Menken’s quotation is apposite to both.

According to Boris Johnson the way out of the pandemic is just to keep on vaccinating a greater and greater proportion of the population whilst ignoring the number of daily infections. According to the blurb which accompanied a fund raising ploy by one ‘green’ organisation that dropped through my door a couple of weeks ago, in the future we are all going to be driving electric cars and eating a plant based diet.

Vaccination has been very effective in reducing mortality or to put it another way reducing your chances of dying if you are unfortunate to become infected, by at least four and a half times, but if it were the only answer to beating Covid we would not have had 5,811 new cases in the first week of August 2020 and 188,695 in the first week of August 2021. If the problems of possible climate change resulting from global warming and what to do about it were simple, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports would not weigh 5½ lbs, or the book for non-specialists ‘Global Warming: The complete briefing’ by the then UK co-chair of the IPCC run to 380 pages. Difficult problems rarely have simple solutions.

We have had a noisy response in the form of street demonstrations from sections of the public who objected to governments taking action to reduce the spread of Covid and during the COP26 meeting we can expect an even noisier response from people objecting to what they see as a lack of action from governments. Those who think like the second group might like to ponder on how well the needed action will be received by those who think like the first group and feel their individual freedom of action trumps any call for collective solidarity.

They might also consider how well it will be received by the people committed to the cause and who think that being ‘Green’ means not eating beef because cows belch out methane, a potent greenhouse gas, or avoiding dairy by substituting oat milk for the real stuff. Leaks in natural gas pipelines and methane containing gases escaping from landfill sites are probably more to worry about. Substituting chicken or pig meat may make you feel ‘Green’, but if the food they were fed on is based on soya grown on land which was originally forest you are kidding yourself, because that forest had been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering the carbon in the form of wood.

It is sometimes difficult not to conclude that for some ‘activists’ having the UK government declare a ‘climate emergency’ is an end in itself. The problem all

governments which take seriously the need to substantially reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being dumped into the atmosphere is how to do it and ‘keep the lights on’.

Greta Thunberg asserts that humanity is facing an existential crisis because of global warming and holds the current generation of adults responsible for creating the problem. As one of the present generation of adults I cannot help observing that Thunberg is from a rather more privileged background than I and most of my contemporaries. For example, how many of her 18 years were spent waking up on a winter morning to find feathers of ice on the inside of the bedroom window? Or living in a house in which only one room had a source of heating and that a coal fire? All mine were; I did not live in a house with central heating until I was 33. Keeping the lights on matters even if they will have to be a lot dimmer in the future.

As for global warming being an ‘existential crisis’, the Covid 19 pandemic and future pandemics caused by as yet undetected viruses coming from a similar source, are probably better nominees for that particular accolade; they really can terminate your existence. I rather think what she really means is that future weather patterns in Europe may be less benign than those we enjoy at the moment.

Extreme perhaps, but only the same as much of the world experiences every year. Early warning of hurricanes and tornadoes in the US, and the availability of cyclone shelters in Bangladesh testify to the effectiveness of mitigation measures in reducing fatalities during such events. It matters not whether the cause of the weather event is part of natural climatic variation or induced by global warning.

There are only two forms of energy which are ‘clean’ and do not emit carbon dioxide at the point of use; electricity and hydrogen. But note the caveat, ‘at the point of use’. So the question is how do we produce enough electricity both to power our cars, heat pumps, manufacturing, agriculture, bulk transport, and to produce the hydrogen by splitting water into its two component elements, without using carbon containing fossil fuels? Will we be able to build enough biomass, wind, water and solar powered generating systems to meet all our needs in the next thirty years or will we end up falling back on nuclear power stations which don’t emit carbon dioxide, but hardly qualify as ‘clean’.

Even if we can how will we store the electricity for the times the wind is not blowing or the sun not shining? And how will continue to make steel from iron ore without using coke derived from coal to mop up the oxygen and liberate metallic iron? Eight percent of the carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere each year comes from this source. The first so called ‘green’ steel is just becoming available. The processes use electricity directly or to produce hydrogen which then mops up the oxygen in the ore, so we need to factor that into our thinking. Long distance air travel without burning fossil fuels? What a great sense of humour you must have!

In a recent Guardian article George Monbiot wrote that when people have money they like to spend it. He might have added that they also dislike the government taking any of it away from them in the form of taxes; especially to fund replacing carbon dioxide belching boilers with heat pumps, insulating other people’s houses or funding the infrastructure which will be needed to shift electricity to all those electric cars.

That’s why I’m not keen on the idea of a ‘climate crisis’. It gives the impression that we have to do just one thing and somehow it’s all over. The same applies to thinking of Covid 19 as something that will be over when we have vaccinated everyone in Britain or Europe or the world. We need to start thinking of a the future being a ‘Covid Era’ because the virus is now endemic in the human population, in other words it’s going to be with us long into the future and we need to adjust our thinking and our behaviour to take that into account.

Given the amount of carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere already we are going to have to live with the consequences as well as taking steps to stop adding to it, we need to think in terms of a ‘Climate Era’. Are we going to meet our target of ‘net zero’ by looking for a ‘technological fix’ whilst still pursuing ever greater economic growth or are we going to do it by learning to live from our income and not from our capital? The resources of the Earth, which includes the land, the oceans and the atmosphere are our deposit in the bank. Is it time to stop squandering our inheritance?

Family doctor's threaten industrial action.

 

Family doctors are threatening industrial action against government plans that would, inter alia, compel them to see patients face-to-face and force them to disclose their NHS earnings of at least, £150,000 per annum. They also oppose league tables that would show the number of face-to-face appointments carried out by GP practices. The Government's £250m "support package", has been denounced by the British Medical Association (BMA), as a "Bully's Charter."

According to NHS England, around 90% of GP's work part-time. The average age at which doctors now retire is 59-years and a GP's average salary in England is £100,700, roughly twice what a French GP earns. Professor Martin Marshall, Chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioner's, says: "Good, safe, and personalised care, can be delivered remotely and is not confined to general practice."  He also thinks that criticism of GP's is "demoralising and indefensible."

Just 61% of GP appointments were carried out face-to-face in September, compared with pre-pandemic levels of 80% of consultations. Statistics also show that half of all appointments are now carried out by other practice staff such as a nurse, or physio, rather than a doctor. Difficulties in getting to see a GP, have led to more people using A&E, the NHS Helpline, emergency services, and the increasing use, of the private healthcare sector - access for cash, which has put the NHS under increasing pressure. Many doctors and nurses who work in NHS hospitals, have questioned why it's okay for them to deal personally with patients, but not mollycoddled GP's. In response, the GP's say their NHS contracts don't require them to do face-to-face appointments, unless its absolutely necessary.

Some critics, such as Alison Much, the senior coroner for Greater Manchester, have said that remote GP appointments may be a contributory factor in the deaths of people because important information can be missed during telephone appointment's, that may have been picked up if a patient had been seen in person. 

David Nash, a 26-year old law student from Leeds, had four remote consultations with doctors and nurses at a Leeds GP practice over a 19-day period before he died on 4 November 2020. None of the clinicians spotted that he had developed mastoiditis in his ear, which caused a brain abscess that led to meningitis. He had presented four times in short succession with a range of escalating symptoms. He'd had a fever for nine days and despite a negative Covid-19 test, there was no clear diagnosis. His father told the press that mastoiditis is readily treatable with antibiotics. 

The case of David Nash is not an isolated case; there have been many other such cases. Like all professions, the medical profession, has vested interest to protect that may not be in the long-term interests of their patients. Although GP's have contracts with the NHS, many GP practices are run as private businesses. We should not forget that when the NHS was first proposed, many doctors objected to the principal of a state run health care system that was free at the point of use. Apart from other things, they thought it would effect them financially. When, Aneurin Bevan, was asked how he'd got the doctor's to co-operate, he said: "I stuffed their mouths with gold." The National Health Service in Britain, is almost synonymous with the name of Aneurin Bevan, who was a Welsh Labour MP and socialist.

Did Labour have an antisemitism crisis? Book review by Tony Greenstein

 

Book Review by Tony Greenstein

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the Editors of Northern Voices.

It is an iron rule which allows few exceptions, that those who leave the SWP drift to the right. Dave Renton is no exception.

Renton joined the SWP in 1991, leaving in 2003 only to rejoin in 2008. In 2013 he left the SWP because of the rape scandal.[i]

The details of this scandal are well known. A woman who alleged that she had been raped appeared before the SWP’s Disputes Committee, which consisted of friends of the alleged rapist, National Secretary Martin Smith. Smith was cleared of all the allegations. Instead, it was the victim who was pilloried and questioned about her sexual history and drinking habits. A second woman who supported her was harassed and suspended. The victim herself wasn’t even allowed to attend the conference called to discuss the matter.

Dave Renton has written movingly of his experiences in the SWP and about what happened in 2012/13.[ii] Together with others, he formed RS21.

Renton’s book makes it clear, though, that he has abandoned any form of Marxist or class politics in favour of a subjective identity politics which divorces the politics of race from class.

Renton, as his Wiki[iii] biography makes clear, was a prolific author of books on anti-fascism, racism and Marxism. He wasn’t a run of the mill member of the SWP whose political consciousness is low and confined to sloganeering activism. Possibly his weak point was an understanding of imperialism but the question I ask myself is how can he have been so comprehensively fooled by the false and confected ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign into believing that anti-Semitism was a genuine problem in the Labour Party?

How can Renton have got into bed with Stephen Pollard, the foul neo-liberal editor of the Jewish Chronicle who was a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society? This society’s membership includes Douglas Murray and others who support White Replacement Theory. It is genuinely and overtly racist, representing the far Right of the British Establishment – people like Islamaphobe Baroness Cox.

Does Renton really believe that someone like Pollard is genuinely interested in fighting anti-Semitism as opposed to tarring anti-racists with that brush? Renton’s Damascene conversion to the Right (because that is what it is) is a mystery. In the absence of a cogent explanation I can only explain it as being a return to his class origins.

Read more:

Doctors advised to defy Governments stance on face-to-face appointments.

 

Medical practices that serve millions of patients across southern England have been advised to defy the Health Secretary's orders for them to see more patients face-to-face. 

Recently, the Health Secretary, Sajid Javid, announced plans for patients to have the right to demand face-to-face appointments with their family doctor. But GP practices in Surrey, Sussex and south west London, have been told in a letter from Dr. Julius Parker, the head of the Local Medical Committee (LMC), that represents 3,300 GPs, "not to participate" in plans to improve access to GPs in the area. The letter from Dr. Parker, "advises all practices not to participate in any aspect of these proposals" and claims that the Government's £250m support package aimed at helping patients, is "politically motivated" and "panders to popular campaigns in the press."

Patient campaigners have condemned the advice as 'arrogant' and have called on the Government to step in and stop the  revolt spreading to other GP surgeries across the country. The British Medical Association (BMA), have said they are 'deeply unhappy' with the government's proposals and are deciding what steps to take.

Before the pandemic, 80% of consultations were in person, but this has now plummeted to just 57%. GPs have been told they can only deny in-person consultations if there are good clinical reasons and the Government have warned that surgeries that fail to improve access for patients, will be "named and shamed" and will face direct intervention. 

The letter from Dr. Parker advises GP practices not to engage with NHS England's 'disastrous plan' because it has no contractual standing and there is is no requirement to participate. Patient groups have warned that patients seeking a GP appointment are often referred to a pharmacist, physio, or nurse instead. NHS England figures show that nearly half of GP appointments are no longer with an actual doctor. 

Although Covid-19  restrictions have been lifted, it's still not possible for many people to get to see a GP. Throughout the lock-down, you could still see dentists, opticians and other specialists. Since May of this year, you have been able  to dine or drink inside and attend huge events, yet we still need someone to access our health over the phone. Many doctors and nurses who work in the hospitals, have questioned why it is okay for them to see patients but not GPs. Difficulty in seeing a GP has led to more referrals to A&E, the NHS Helpline 111, and increasing use of the emergency services. 

Many GP practices say they are maintaining Covid-19 protocols ostensibly to prevent the spread of the virus. The number of permanent GPs has been declining steadily over the last five years. There has been talk of GPs "hanging up their stethoscopes" or of GPs being 'burnt out' or "scarred for life". Despite the hyperbole, from GPs, the Department of Social Health and Social Care, say a record number of people are training to become GPs with up to 4,000 new starters this year. 

Some might see medicine as a calling and a vocation, but no doubt, many are attracted by the average GP salaries of £100,700 per annum, compared to UK average earnings of £31,431. According to NHS England, as many as 90% of GPs work part-time. The very high salaries paid to GPs in this country (roughly twice what a French GP earns) enable them to live very comfortably while working two or even three days a week. Some 40% of GPs now operate full or part-time as locums, where they can earn up to £200,000 a year.

Alison Mutch OBE, the senior coroner for Greater Manchester, has warned that remote GP appointments such as by telephone, are putting lives at risk because of the possibility that medical conditions do not get properly diagnosed. In the case of 16-year-old Hannah Royle, who died following complications arising from a twisted bowel, the West Sussex assistant coroner, said that Hannah's condition 'gastric volvulus' could not have been diagnosed over the phone by the NHS Helpline.

DC Comics announce that Superboy is now bisexual.

 

Superman's Son Turns Bi-Sexual

In this topsy turvy world in which we live, of gender fluidity and gender bender's, I'm often reminded of the lyrics from that popular song 'Lola' by the 1960s English pop group, the Kinks. The lyrics to part of this song are: "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls it's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for lola La-la-la-la- Lola." 

Given the obsession with identity politics and social engineering and the way in which some folk, pander to minority interests, I suppose it was inevitable that some of our popular heterosexual superhero comic strip characters, would one day, eventually turn queer. 

DC Comics have announced that Jonathan Kent, hitherto known as 'Superboy', the son of Clark Kent (Superman) and Lois Lane, is to enter a same-sex relationship as he combats the climate crisis and fights against the deportation of refugees. According to DC Comics, his object of affection is a news reporter called Jay Nakamura who cares for him after he "mentally and physically burns out trying to save everyone that he can." In an interview with the New York Times, Tom Taylor, the series writer, said that "the idea of replacing Clark Kent with another white savior felt like a missed opportunity."

Today, turning queer, has almost become de rigueur, but let's hope that it doesn't become compulsory. The announcement by DC Comics follows other "recent attempts to add queerness to the world of comics." In August, it was announced that the latest version of Robin would have a boyfriend and that Marvel Comics had made the decision to pass the mantle of Captain America, to a gay character.

Tameside school could be demolished after botched job by Carillion.

 

Russell Scott Primary School

It's just over six years now, since Russell Scott primary school in Denton, had a £2.7 million refurbishment. But the school could now be bulldozed and completely rebuilt because the refurbishment was completely botched by the construction company Carillion who went bust in January 2018. 

The Tameside primary school was forced to keep closing and the children were sent home on numerous occasions, because it was hit by flooding and other structural problems when the work was carried out by Carillion from 2013 to 2015. The school had been flooded by sewage and the playing field was left completely unusable after it was found to be filled with rubble, including glass, and ceramic material, which left it filled with craters. It failed fire safety checks and the school didn't comply with fire regulations. Despite never having issues with flooding, the school has been flooded on six occasions since the refurbishment. The new 'hyper-efficient' energy system also ended up costing the school an extra £30,000. 

Steve Marsland, headteacher of the school, said it had been a nightmare. He told a local newspaper that the school had been forced to temporarily move into a disused secondary school while the work took place and added: 

"The contractor was saying that everything was fine, while we were being flooded and even tested for explosive levels of sewer gas. We had sewage coming into the classrooms, we had to evacuate the building because we were paddling around in filth...We were continually monitoring the building. As soon as it rains the sandbags come out. In early summer we were flooded again - every time it rains heavily the school is under water. It costs tens of thousands of pounds to replace resources. 

Both the school and Tameside Council, have had the school examined by experts and it seems that it would now be cheaper to knock it down and start again. Mr Marsland believes that the past six years have been spent 'throwing good money after bad', but accepts another rebuild won't come cheap.

Although Carillion had been criticised for carrying out sub-standard work across a range of national contracts, they were Tameside council's preferred developer. They had the contract to build the new council offices through 'Vision Tameside' and provided school meals for thousands of Tameside Children. They built schools in the borough and maintained council owned buildings and schools in Tameside.

In August 2017, the journalist Nigel Pivaro, wrote an article entitled: 'Carillion's survival critical for Tameside'. In the article, which displayed a degree of prescience and foresight, singularly lacking within Tameside Council, Pivaro posed the question as to what would happen if Carillion ceased to operate? How would it effect the still to be delivered new council offices, and the provision of school meals in Tameside? He wrote: "We asked Tameside Council if in the event of such circumstances they had a contingency plan in place? Tameside  Council have declined to respond to our request."

In his article, Pivaro pointed out, that without a contingency plan the borough could be  beset by chaos and increased expense at filling the gaps left by Carillion's demise. He seemed to think that if Carillion went down, it could take the council with it. He asked whether it had been wise for the council to put all its eggs in one basket with one firm on whom it depends on too much and if it was time, for Tameside Council, to divest itself from its exclusive relationship with Carillion.

When the Labour council in Tameside transferred jobs and services in 'Estates' and 'Facilities Management' to Carillion in 2011, they said the transfer would "safeguard jobs and services and cut costs." But Carillion didn't provide value for money for Tameside in several areas of its operations. The cost of school meals came in at 26 pence per unit more than the central government gives to councils to provide them. This left schools in Tameside, having to to meet the difference from their own budgets at a cost of a million pounds over the financial  year. Moreover, the council officer who brokered the deal on school meals between the council and Carillion, went on to take up a management position with Carillion. It is also claimed by the governors of Russell Scott school that Carillion still owe the school £100,000 for energy costs incurred during the building of the new school. After Carillion went bust in January 2018, Tameside Council had to cough-up another £9 million from its useable reserves to get the 'Vision Tameside' development completed by another contractor.

While Tameside Council seem to have been taken by surprise by the demise of Carillion, the warnings signs were there to see long before its collapse. The smart money - the investors and hedge-funds, had been shorting Carillion stock as long ago as 2013. In April 2016, the trustees of the Carillion pension scheme, had highlighted how speculators were short-selling Carillion shares i.e. betting that Carillion's share price would fall. Six months before its collapse, one quarter of Carillion's shares were being used in 'short trades'. Carillion had debts of £850m and a pension fund shortfall for staff of £800m. 

Despite the company issuing a profit warning in July 2017 that led to the resignation of the company's CEO, Richard Hanson, the then Labour leader of Tameside Council, Kieran Quinn - who was almost a cheerleader for Carillion and "proudly pro-business" -  told 'Construction News' in September 2017, that he was in favour of a more direct and involved relationship between councils and contractors, because "If they come into partnership with us, it derisks it for them." Sadly, councillor Quinn, who was hailed as "a  visionary," did not witness the collapse of Carillion or the debacle that ensued following its collapse, because he died a month before the company went into liquidation on 15 January 2018, at the age of 57. 

John Bell, the Conservative leader on Tameside Council, at the time of Carillion's collapse, said that because there had been a total lack of scrutiny within Tameside Council, there had been no way to ensure if the council were getting value for money or whether Carillion was delivering efficiently. He said that both the political opposition and Labour council back benchers, had been kept in the dark.

Something Must Be Done!

 BY LES MAY

I don’t use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, TikTok etc, but it’s difficult not to hear the complaints from parents about the ‘harm’ being done to their teenage offspring by ‘Social Media’. Raking over someone else’s misery following a tragedy is always a good story for the mainstream media which runs stories along the lines of ‘Something must be done’. Politicians set up their committees in Parliament and wag their finger at Twitter, Facebook etc, but nothing happens. And if these big companies have their way, nothing ever will.

My own attitude has always been, ‘If these platforms are so harmful to your darling children, why on earth do you buy them a smartphone or give them a computer to use in their bedroom?’ In other words I am not brimming with sympathy when something unpleasant happens.

But stupid parents and my lack of sympathy for them, does not mean there is no case for trying to protect children from harm. The key word here is ‘children’. There are already plenty of precedents for doing just that. We try to prevent children from having sex before the age of sixteen, we won’t allow them to go into a pub and drink alcohol until they are eighteen, the same age as it becomes legal to make or view an image of them naked. In each case the assumption is that before the specified age the action will be ‘harmful’. The evidence that all of these thing are actually harmful isn’t overwhelming, it’s just that ‘all right thinking people’ say they are.

The advantage of using this widely accepted precautionary approach to protecting children is that the big media companies cannot use the argument that there is no proof that whenever a tragedy occurs it was a direct consequence of the child using one or other of these platforms.

This is essentially the case presented by Ross Douthat in a long article headed ‘Instagram should just be for adults’ which appeared in Wednesday’s New York Times. ‘Don’t get involved in arguments with these companies about whether what they offer is doing harm to teenagers and younger children, just tell them it is illegal to allow a someone under the age of 16 or 18 to use them and put the onus on the companies to police it’.

Parents would like this because it would allow them to offload responsibility for their children’s well being onto someone else. The companies would whinge about the difficulty of doing it, but given that Facebook can have up to 4000 snippets of data on account holders, which enable the company to build a detailed profile of an individual user, it should not be too difficult to spot that someone is too young to have an account.

Crowdfunding now being used in UK to pay for medical treatment!

 Millions of people across the UK are currently on NHS waiting lists. In England, 5.6m are queuing for treatment. Data shared with BBC Panorama, shows that on average, waiting lists have grown by 50% in most of the deprived parts of England since the start of the pandemic, compared with nearly 35% in the most affluent areas. The research shows that people on waiting lists are nearly twice as likely as those in wealthier areas to wait more than a year for treatment. As it becomes more difficult to see a GP or to receive hospital treatment as an NHS patient, many people are now turning in desperation, to private medical treatment. 

The Kildea family from Strabane, Northern Ireland, had to raise £50,000 by crowdfunding to get treatment in Turkey for a 12-year-old son, with a dangerous and life-limiting spinal condition because he would have to wait two-years for an operation in the UK. This is not an isolated case. 

It is extremely worrying that the Covid-19 pandemic might be used as an excuse to introduce an American style health system into the UK by the backdoor and by stealth. I am a supporter of the NHS but the Tory Government would certainly like to see the NHS totally privatized and the actions of some so-called health care professionals are leading us down that path. Just ask yourself why it is that so many of us have difficulty at the moment getting to see a GP but we can circumvent the problem of access by going private as many people are doing. Profits in private health are soaring. How many people are dying because of delays in getting treatment or even a diagnosis? Think of Sarah Harding of the female pop group, Girls Allowed, who died of breast cancer aged 40. It was reported in the press that one woman had paid £95 for a private appointment because her son couldn't get to see his own GP because of some excuse about Covid-19. But when he turned up for his private consultation, it was his own GP that he saw. Apparently the venal wretch refunded him the £95. 

Automation is now giving us useless remote and virtual GP appointments - telephone, video, and Skype consultations, which the senior Coroner for Greater Manchester has said is leading to unnecessary deaths in some people as symptoms go undiagnosed. There have been instances of GP's asking patients to cough into the telephone. Don't believe that this is temporary or that the Covid-19 epidemic is the sole purpose for this. The doctors have been after this for years. NHS contracts with GP's do not compel them to do face-to-face patient interviews unless this clinically necessary. 

I was told about Skype consultations at a meeting of the Tameside Hospital AGM, years ago. I thought the idea ludicrous at the time and challenged it at the meeting. A GP at the meeting asked the hospital top brass how they would do a chest examination of a person in a care home by Skype. Their answer was that they would train somebody in the home to do it. Sheer lunacy! If you can't get to see a GP in person, then why have them?

Naomi Klein, the Canadian author, has written a book entitled 'The Shock Doctrine: The rise of Disaster Capitalism.' She argues that national crises (disasters and upheavals) are used to establish controversial and questionable policies while citizens are too distracted to engage and develop adequate responses and resist effectively. The Covid-19 might be just such an opportunity.

The Professor Who Refused To Be De-colonized

 

Professor Paul Harper-Scott

A professor of musical history and theory at the Royal Holloway, University of London, has resigned in protest against plans to de-colonize curriculums and the 'no platforming' of academics. Paul Harper-Scott, 43, had worked in the Music Department of Royal Holloway for sixteen years when he decided to leave in the summer of 2021 because he'd become 'profoundly disillusioned' at how increasingly dogmatic universities were becoming with 'cancel culture', seemingly endemic.

The first member of his family to go to university, and from a mining community, Harper-Scott says on his blog, "Why I Left Academia', that he'd entered the profession as an outsider naively believing that academics were committed to the pursuit of truth, "This did not turn out to be true...I wrongly supposed the universities would be critical places, but they're becoming increasingly dogmatic." The professor of musical history, believes that music departments could cease teaching the works of Wagner and Beethoven because their compositions were produced during a time of empire and "in the frankly insane belief that in doing so, will somehow materially improve current living conditions for the economically, socially, sexually, religiously, or racially underprivileged." 

Harper-Scott wrote on his blog that, "too many humanities scholars move in lock step with the general ideology of our time, dogmatically echoing the opinions of politicians, the media and business." He warns that if universities abandon a basic commitment to scepticism and a critical mode of thinking, then they will have ceased to serve a useful function.

Earlier this year, the Royal Holloway, announced that in an effort to combat 'structural racism' and to support the BME community (whatever that is), they would be removing certain book titles from their collection and 'de-colonizing' and 'diversifying' their collections to make their service more inclusive and to tackle racism. 

While the Royal Holloway hastily compile a woke index of forbidden books, so that some people may never have to confront an unpleasant thought or view, there is nothing new in libraries eliminating books and literature deemed inappropriate for political purposes. During the 1960s and 1970s, many so-called 'looney-left' London councils discretely destroyed thousand of books that were considered sexist, imperialist, colonialist, homophobic and racist. While book burning was a craze in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and led by student activists, the actions of the Royal Holloway, are more akin to book binning. 

Just what 'de-colonizing' and 'diversifying' literature actually means and who will be tasked with doing it, is an issue open to argument and debate. We should bear in mind that history is inevitably contaminated by views peculiar to the times and the personal biases of historians. 

While recent attention has focused on the nefarious activities of 17th century slavers like Edward Colston, and the Atlantic slave trade, many are less happy to talk about the estimated "20 million black slaves" who were exported to the Ottoman and Turkish Empire - the Islamic world - over a period of 500 years or the abduction in 1631, of 107 people from the little village of Baltimore, West Cork, Ireland, by Barbary pirates to be sold in the slave markets of Algiers. White people were still being bought and sold as slaves in the Ottoman Empire, decades after American blacks were freed.