Labour ditches social care reforms to save money. Pensioners to pay more for care!

 

Labour's honey moon period with the British electorate is now over. It looks like the elderly in Britain and those in receipt of state benefits, are going to get shafted under Labour and Sir Keir Starmer-oid.

Most of my mother's life savings were spent on her residential care costs in just under three years. She was a 'self-funder' and paid for her own care costs and the care of others. It's generally acknowledged that self-funders pay higher care fees to subsidise those residents funded by the local authority. After a life time of working, saving and paying her taxes, she was penalised for being prudent and thrifty because of 'means-testing' and received no help with her care costs from the local authority or the NHS. She would only have been entitled to financial help with her care costs if she had qualified for NHS continuous health care funding or had savings of less than £23,250.

Under social care reforms introduced by the previous Conservative government, next October 2025, the £23,250 threshold for getting council support to pay for care cost, was going to be raised to £100,000 and after spending £86,000 on their care, people would've had their care costs paid by the local authority. Both these measures have now been scrapped by Labour's austerity Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who says that scrapping the reform will save £1bn by the end of next year. Reeves has already announced that many old age pensioners are going to lose their winter fuel allowance. Only older people on Pension Credit and means tested benefits will now get help with paying for their fuel bills.

I wouldn't be surprised if the email Inbox of Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, isn't already full with complaints from irate pensioners who have had their pockets pinched. Like Fagin, in the musical ‘Oliver’, Reeves believes that ‘You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.”

All three Tameside MPs, are now on the front bench. Many older people were hoping for some relief from sky high care bills but ditching the cap, could now lead to people paying extremely high social care costs, running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Some will lose their homes and life savings. In opposition, Labour's manifesto did not commit to a date for introducing the cap, but Labour's shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, said his party would introduce the spending cap if it won the general election. Labour has now reneged on that promise but as we know, there's no pledge or promise that Starmer-oid won't ditch as and when it suits him.

In previous interviews, Reeves has said that Labour is not the party of people on state benefits. When she was shadow work and pensions secretary, Reeves vowed to be tougher than the Tories when it came to slashing the benefits bill and she said the unemployed would not be able to "linger on benefits."

If Labour is serious about filling a financial black hole left by the Tories, they could start by taking measures to close tax loopholes that allow corporations like Amazon and Starbucks to pay very little tax on massive European profits. Amazon had sales income of €44bn in 2020, but paid no corporation tax. And what about increasing taxes on the wealthy? Similarly, some people do wonder why the British taxpayer is subsiding the food and drink bill in the House of Commons and the rent, food and energy bills of MPs, who receive an annual salary of £91,346 plus expenses. 

Millions of pensioners to lose winter fuel allowance under Labour!

 

Labour Chancellor - Rachel Reeves

Britain's state pensioners are likely to become far worse off under Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party. In opposition, Labour said that it would protect pensioners from the cost-of-living crisis and ensure that older people had security in retirement.

Earlier this month, Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, responsible for levelling up, said that Labour would "extend protections against damp, mould and cold." However, Labour's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has just announced that from this year onwards, state pensioners will no longer automatically get the winter fuel allowance to help with paying their fuel bills. She said that only people on Pension Credit and other means tested benefits will now qualify. More than one in three pensioners who are entitled to pension credit, don't receive it.

In the long-run, is the 'triple-lock' safe under Labour? I doubt it. Winter Fuel Payments were introduced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 1997, to help older people meet the costs of heating their homes in winter and to end fuel poverty.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition (EFPC), have claimed that over 1,000 people died in England in December 2022, as a result of living in cold damp homes. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), an estimated 43,500 excess winter deaths (EWDs) (defined as the number of deaths that occurred in the winter period minus the expected number of deaths for that period based on non-winter months), occurred in England and Wales 2014/15 and these deaths were concentrated among older people.

In removing winter fuel payments for most UK state pensioners, we're going to see more elderly people dying of hypothermia in their homes because they will struggle to pay their fuel bills. Labour's Rachel Reeves may well be engaging in 'gerineglicide'. 

 

Blues legend John Mayall dies at 90.

 John Mayall

It has just been announced that the English blues legend, John Mayall, died at his home in California on 22 July 2024, at the age of 90.  Mayall has often been described as the 'Godfather' or 'Father' of British blues.

I probably first heard of John Mayall in the late 1960s, when a friend let me listen to a Mayall album called 'Bare Wires'. I also saw him at the MEN Arena in Manchester, when his band were the supporting act for the BB King band. A cousin once told me, that he remembered John Mayall playing a gig at Audenshaw Grammar School.

In a moving and very emotional tribute posted on YouTube, Eric Clapton, referred to Mayall as a friend, 'mentor' and 'surrogate father' who had "rescued him from oblivion" when he'd invited him to join his band the Bluesbreakers in 1965. He had just quit the Yardbirds because he was unhappy with their commercial direction and he says he was on the verge of giving up on a musical career.  Clapton was one of many guitarists who became more famous after joining Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

As a band leader, Mayall was a good talent spotter and his band was a school of excellence. He sang, composed songs and played guitar, harmonica and keyboards. Among those guitarists who played with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, were Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Buddy Whittington, Mick Taylor, Walter Trout, Henry 'Coco' Montoya and the British bassist, John McVie. Walter Trout once said in an interview that John Mayall and Carlos Santana had rescued him from descending into drug and alcohol abuse. Mayall, sacked John McVie and replaced him with Jack Bruce, because of his drink problem.

Mayall was born in Macclesfield on 29 November 1933 but grew up in Cheadle Hulme, a prosperous suburb of Stockport. His father, Murray Mayall, had played the guitar in local pubs. When his parents divorced, Mayall went to live with his mother at his grandfather's house on Acre Lane, Cheadle Hulme. He claimed that he lived in a tree house which was in his grandfather's garden, until he got married. After serving three years of national service, much of it in Korea, Mayall enrolled at Manchester College of Art. After graduation, he worked as an art designer.

It was another blues legend called Alexis Korner, who persuaded Mayall to become a full-time musician and to move to London. He also introduced him to other musicians and helped him to get gigs. In the 1960s, Mayall started to live part-time in the U.S. and in the early 1970s, he bought a house in the Hollywood Hills of Laurel Canyon. The house was destroyed in a bush fire in 1979 and he lost a lot of personal property. He married twice and had six children from both marriages. 

Charles Dickens

 Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens not only walked out on his wife, but he also took the children, which was the law of the day. Charles Dickens junior, was the only one who stayed with his mother Catherine Dickens, who gave birth to ten children.

While Dickens didn't encourage his children to see their mother, he didn't prohibit contact. He purchased a house for Catherine Dickens and sought a legal separation. He blamed his wife for her numerous pregnancies and thought she'd given him far too many children.

There were friends and acquaintances who thought Dickens had treated his wife badly. He accused her of being an unfit mother and we know that he tried to have her committed to a mental asylum, but a doctor found no evidence that she suffered from a mental disorder.

Dickens had become infatuated with a young 18-year-old actress called Ellen Ternan and they later entered into a secret relationship. It seems strange that considering the way in which he treated Catherine Dickens, her sister Georgina Hogarth, continued to live with the family as the housekeeper and remained devoted to Dickens.

Another sister, called Mary Hogarth, who died aged 17-years-old, is probably the sister that Dickens was far more interested in. She'd also lived with the Dickens family and he was badly affected by her death as was Catherine Dickens.

The Deutschland-Ticket - nationwide mobility for just 49 euros a month.

 

D-Ticket

As a bus passenger, I often get on GM buses only to discover that the bus driver, doesn't know his bus route. It's a bit like the way this country is run; by incompetent fools who don't know what they're doing. At times waiting for a Stagecoach bus can be like waiting for Godot. 

The UK rail system is notorious for high ticket prices and its unreliability. A train from Manchester Piccadilly to London Euston can cost up to £185 depending on when you travel and what time you travel. It also depends on whether the train turns up as well as the train driver. Avanti West Coast, is known to offer a woeful and shambolic service and yet it continues to operate. Several newly elected MPs, recently complained that they had been unable to take their seats in Parliament due to train delays and cancellations.

In Germany, the Deutschland Ticket or D-Ticket, cost €49 Euros a month (£41 per month) or €1.63 euros per day. The D-Ticket allows the ticket holder to travel anywhere in Germany on buses, trams and trains.

Compared to countries like France, Germany, Portugal and Italy, the UK public transport system is a joke. The newly elected Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer-oid, have pledged to bring all train services on Britain's railways back into public ownership as and when their contracts run out. 

Remembering Christopher Hitchens.

 Christopher Hitchens

However much I liked reading and listening to Christopher Hitchens, I didn't agree with his zealous support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was a good debater and polemicist but he wasn't always accurate. Nevertheless, I always felt as though I had learned something from reading Hitchens or listening to him.

His close friend, Martin Amiss, described Hitchens as a rhetorician of such distinction that "in debate, no matter what the motion, I would back him against Cicero, against Demosthenes." The journalist Lynn Barber, described Hitchens as "one of the greatest conversationalists of our age."   

He was widely read, had a terrific memory, and could also be very witty.  He said of American pastor Jerry Falwell, that if you gave him an enema, you could bury what was left of him in a matchbox. Referring to Mother Teresa's virginity, Hitch said: "The whole problem with missionaries is that one never quite knows their position." Hitchens said that he'd become a dedicated heterosexual because his looks deteriorated to the point where no man would have him.

Probably his two great love affairs were with cigarettes and alcohol. A highly functioning alcoholic, he said he drank enough alcohol on a daily basis to "kill or stun the average mule" but he never missed deadlines or appointments.

In 2007, after living in the U S. for over 25 years, he became an American citizen. Despite leaving Oxford University with a third-class degree, Hitchens became a liberal studies professor at the New School in New York and a visiting professor at Berkeley in California. Christopher Hitchens's last book is called 'Mortality'. In her afterword to the book, his wife Carol Blue, wrote that her husband was an impossible act to follow. I think she's probably right.

Jim Sillars calls on the SNP to 'Repent' and not 'Reflect'!

 

Jim Sillars

The former SNP deputy leader, Jim Sillars, has called Nicola Sturgeon 'Stalin's wee sister' and accused her of running the SNP as a "leadership cult." In a brutal open letter to party members, he called on the SNP to 'repent' and not 'reflect' upon the SNPs drubbing at the 4 July general election.

The SNP returned just nine MPs down from 48 in 2009. In the letter, Sillars accused Sturgeon and Swinney of 'staggering levels of incompetence' and of misleading the movement and having lost its common sense in government. He accused them for promoting marginal issues as national priorities while the real priorities of the people, were education, housing, NHS, and infrastructure.

There's no doubt in my mind that the issue of 'transgenderism' and identity politics in general, led to the demise of SNP and collapse in support for the party. The Scots are noted for being a canny and shrewd lot and I'm sure they weren't impressed when the 31-year-old Scottish serial rapist Isla Bryson, a transgender woman, also known as Adam Graham, was remanded to a women's prison.

As Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon had difficulty in saying whether Isla Bryson, who had raped two women, was a man or a woman. Bryson had been charged in 2019 and started transitioning in 2020. 

Is Tony Blair the hidden hand that wanks the skipper?

 

Labour's hidden hand' - Tony Blair

In the British navy, the sailors were often heard to say that the hand that wanks the skipper, is the hand that runs the ship.

It has been reported in the press that Sir Keir Starmer-oid regularly receives texts from Sir Tony Blair giving him advice on what to do in government. Blair, recently had to remind Starmer that men have a penis and females a vagina. It seems that Blair wants Starmer-oid to introduce a digital ID scheme to cut migration. In 2020, Blair said it was "common sense to move in the direction of digital IDs" as part of an effort to fight Covid-19. Sir Jake Berry, a former Conservative Party chairman, branded digital IDs as a "creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave." The 'Tony Blair Institute for Global Change' (TBI), has a track record for trying to push government's into introducing digital identification and digital health records. They also want countries to spend heavily on artificial intelligence.

Critics have accused Blair of using his Institute to advance his own ideological views and its corporate backers. One of the biggest financial backers of the TBI, is Larry Ellison, the co-founder of the technology company called Oracle. Ellison gave the TBI $33.8m in 2021 through his philanthropic foundation and promised another $49.4m in 2022. That was also the year that Oracle bought the healthcare IT company Cerner for $28bn.

While the TBI say that their policy interests are not shaped by its donors' corporate interests, it's known that TBI does put public officials in contact with companies that it believes can deliver changes which it advocates. The TBI employs around 800 staff and its accounts show that it made over £65m in revenue in 2021, a 78% increase on the previous year. Although some have argued that the TBI is bankrolled by billionaires, the Institute says it's not run for profit and that Blair doesn't receive a salary. Blair did tell the Financial Times that he wanted his Institute to be "entrepreneurial, agile and give governments good solid advice..." Staff working for the TBI give advice to countries like Rwanda and Saudi Arabia, two countries that have a track record for violating human rights.

Since becoming the leader of the Labour Party and now Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer-oid has promoted a number of key figures from the Blairite wing of the party. Marianna McFadden, the wife of Pat McFadden, was recruited from the TBI to help plan Labour's election campaign. Last September a Labour source told the Guardian, "If you think the TBI is influential right now, just wait until we get into power and have to recruit half our staff from there."

Many expect that it won't be long before that other New Labour string puller, Mandy Mandelson, is offered a government job by Starmer-oid. 

General George S Patton.

 

General Patton

General George Smith Patton was one of the richest military men in the U.S. army. The Patton family owned what is now downtown Los Angeles. He grew up a spoiled pampered child in privileged circumstances in St Gabriel, California, and enjoyed a life of luxury.

When he became a cadet at West Point, his aunt and mother moved with him for the five years that he was a cadet at the military academy in case he needed their help. Patton also married a wealthy woman, Beatrice Banning Ayer, the daughter of a Boston industrialist. It's thought that Patton may have had learning difficulties in his childhood and struggled to read and write. It's now called dyslexia. When he learned to read, he became an avid reader and poured over books on military history.

Patton proposed invading the Soviet Union at the end of World War II, to drive the Russians out of eastern Europe. He was also highly critical of the Allies denazification program after V.E. Day believing that Europe was going to go Communist. Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery famously said that the first rule of war is "don't march on Moscow." He knew that history showed that those who have tried to invade Russia like Hitler and Napoleon, along with others, generally come to grief.

George S Patton didn't get to lead an army into invading Russia because he was seriously injured in an automobile accident in December 1945 which left him with a broken neck that rendered him paralyzed from the neck down. He died in hospital twelve days later. No one in Patton's vehicle was hurt accept Patton.

Since Patton's death , the conspiracy mongers have tried to deny that this was simply an unfortunate accident and maintain that General Patton, died in suspicious circumstances. They cannot accept that an illustrious American general who survived two world wars, died after sustaining injuries in a car wreck.

 

'Skittles' the Victorian courtesan.

 

Catherine Walters - Skittles

Life for most Victorian prostitutes was pretty dismal and often dangerous, but the courtesans weren't cheap tarts. They were not only known for their good looks and style and sexual abilities, but also their erudition, charm, social skills and artistic abilities.

Esther Lachmann (La Paiva), was known as 'The Queen of the kept women'. Another Parisian courtesan, Marguerite Marie Albert (1890-1971), also known as Maggie Meller, had an affair with the Prince of Wales from 1917 to 1918. He later became Edward VIII. The French President, Felix Faure, was said to have died of a heart attack when he was being given oral sex by the Parisian courtesan Meg Steinheil (later Baroness Abinger). The French nicknamed her 'Deadly Lips', but this could also be because she may have been a police informer. She died in a nursing home in Hove, Sussex, in July 1954.

The English courtesan, Catherine Walters, also known as 'Skittles', had been born in Toxteth in Liverpool and was considered a trendsetter for fashion and style and a fine equestrian who rode with the Leicestershire hunt. She became the mistress of Spencer Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington and lived in Mayfair. Catherine Walters had also lived in Paris under the patronage of Achille Fould, Finance Minister to Napoleon III.

Another celebrity Parisian courtesan, was the English woman known as Cora Pearl, born Eliza Emma Crouch in Plymouth in December 1836.

Why the French state pension is about to bring down Macron.

 

French Protests Against Pension Reform

The French are up in arms because the French government wants to increase the state retirement age from 62 to 64 years of age. The pension reform could result in Emmanuel Macron being slung out of office.

The French state retirement pension pays around £292 a week or 74% of final salary. Looking at the data (see link ) the British state retirement pension is among one of the lowest in Europe. Those in receipt of the UK old state pension now receive the princely sum of £169.50 a week. The new state UK pension is currently £221.20 a week and a bit more generous.

Unlike the French, the British public and their moderate trade union leaders, have acquiesced and accepted lower state pensions and an increase in the state retirement age. Women no longer retire at 60 but must now work till they are 66, in line with the male retirement age. The government is also going to increase the state retirement age to 67. In contrast, my middle-class overpaid Oxford educated GP, called Tim, who I have never been able to see as a patient, recently retired at the age of 60.

A higher state retirement age means that many manual workers are unlikely to live long enough to receive a UK state pension. They often suffer ill health, disability and industrial disease, because of their occupations. Although industrial ill health is a major killer in Tameside and throughout Greater Manchester, work doesn't carry a government health warning like cigarettes. Indeed, many doctors tell us that work is good for us, even though they know little or nothing about the industrial world of work.

Despite lower state pensions in the UK and a higher retirement age, many British politicians have said that the 'triple-lock' on state retirement pensions is unsustainable because Britain can't afford it. Yet, British politicians enjoy one of the most generous and lavish pension schemes in the world. After being slung out of office after only 50 days, the incompetent and inept, Liz Truss, received a life time annual pension of £125,000 paid to all ex-prime ministers. 

How accurate are death certificates?

 

At the time of the public inquiry into Harold Shipman, the South Manchester coroner, John Pollard, was highly critical about the way in which Dr Shipman had been able to register the cause of death on a patient's death certificate as "natural causes." The coroner said that the term "natural causes" was meaningless and was not a cause of death. He added, "It doesn't reveal the medical cause of death any more than putting murder." Yet, Harold Shipman, had been able to get the cremation certificate countersigned by another doctor and thus avoided a post mortem being carried out on the deceased. Harold Shipman was jailed for life for murdering 15 women patients and is believed to have killed more than 300 in his 30-year career.

The head of the public inquiry, Dame Janet Smith, had criticised the coroner for readily accepting a detective's account of a flawed investigation he'd carried out into the suspicious deaths of some Harold Shipman's patients. It was said that Mr. Pollard had "relied entirely on the probity of the police to look at matters properly." It was revealed during the inquiry that the detective who had carried out the flawed investigation, Detective Inspector, David Smith, had kept scant notes and had failed to check if Shipman had a criminal record. The investigation lasted only four weeks with Mr. Smith concluding that Shipman had done nothing improper and the case was dropped. Smith had told the public inquiry that he'd never been involved in such a case and had struggled to find information to support the allegations.

Death by "natural causes" continues to be recorded on deaths certificates and it's known that critical errors on death certificates are quite common. Questions have been raised about the accuracy of people having died of COVID during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people who died of COVID already had underlying health problems like cancer. Only recently, it was reported that the BBC TV presenter, Dr. Michael Mosley, had died of "natural causes" when he was found dead on the Aegean Island of Symi. The actual causes of death is likely to have been heat exhaustion. Dr. Mosely had collapsed while out walking in very hot temperatures. When Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, the cause of death was given as “Old Age.”

Some years ago, I attended a meeting that was addressed by John Pollard. The coroner made it perfectly clear that there's always a reason why a person dies but that it's not always possible to ascertain the reason for a person's death. He pointed out that perfectly healthy young people who engage in sporting activities can suddenly drop dead and it isn't always easy to establish their cause of their death.

BMA to take legal action against GMC for approving use of non-qualified doctors in surgeries.

 

The doctor's union, the British Medical Association (BMA), say they're taking the General Medical Council (GMC) to court because less medically qualified staff are being drafted into GP surgeries to replace qualified doctor's. The BMA say they need to take action before this "uncontrolled experiment" in the use of physician and anaesthetist associates, known as PA's and AA's "leads to more unintended patient harm."

Despite there having been a number of well publicised cases where patients have died following a misdiagnosis by PA's, the government and the NHS want to increase the number of PA's from 3,500 to 10,000. From December 2024, the GMC will become the regulator for both PA's and AA's. The GMC have already told doctor's that they will not be accountable for the medical errors of less qualified staff such as PA's and AA's providing doctor's follow GMC rules and guidance.

Although the BMA have stressed that they're acting in the interests of patients, they're more concerned with protecting the interests of doctor's. As the doctor's union, the BMA knows that the use of PA's and AA's who receive less training than doctors and are less qualified, threatens to de-skill and dumb--down medical practice in Britain and threatens the financial interests of their members.

Since the COVID lockdown in 2020, it has become more difficult for patients to get to see a qualified GP because many practices have stopped doing walk-in surgeries. Many GP's have also become reluctant to see patients face-to-face and now want to do virtual consultations by phone or Skype. This has led to increased pressure on NHS emergency services as more people are turning up at A&E. It has also led to increasing numbers of people paying to go private to obtain adequate medical care in order to jump the queue and to get a medical examination. The government say that it needs to increase the number of dilutees in the medical profession to ease the pressure on the NHS.

Spycops Public Inquiry

 

Spycops Public Inquiry resumes live evidence in July amidst growing crisis

The Undercover Policing Inquiry, is about to resume hearing live evidence. The week starting 1^st July will see Opening Statements from Core Participants delivered online. Live witness evidence will begin on 8^th July (and victims of police spying will be holding a Press Conference – see below).

This second tranche of hearings will cover the 1980s and 1990s, which saw a massive escalation in the use of abusive police tactics, as police spying expanded to include civil society groups such as CND, London Greenpeace, Freedom Press and the Socialist Workers Party, who will all be giving evidence this summer.

This period also included some of the most controversial deployments, including (but not limited to) officers such as Bob Lambert, Andy Coles, John Dines, and ‘Matt Rayner’, who all deceived women into long-term intimate relationships. Lambert fathered a child whilst undercover, and is accused of planting an incendiary device in a department store to further his undercover legend, before withdrawing from the field to take over management of the entire Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Coles went on to write the training manual for the SDS and train officers in the later undercover unit, the NPOIU.

However, the Inquiry is facing a growing crisis. Hearings about the most controversial deployments in Tranche 2 have already been postponed due to the inquiry’s ongoing failure to provide full disclosure of the underlying police documents, and tens of thousands of pages of evidence are being published at the absolute last minute, making it impossible for the victims (or indeed for you, the journalists) to effectively respond, or properly analyse the material to expose the full extent of police wrongdoing, which was the original purpose of this Inquiry.

After spending nine years and over £82 million on lengthy processes behind closed doors (plus Metropolitan Police spending of £62 million to defend the indefensible¹), Britain’s most secretive ‘Public’ Inquiry appears to be running out of time and political will.

Having heard only the first decade’s worth of evidence in an investigation that ought to span fifty years, the Chair published an interim report² in June 2023. His findings were absolutely damning. The secret political policing operations were unjustifiable and should have been shut down in the 1970s. Instead they were covered up and sanctioned at the highest levels of government.

Following that report, the government is bringing intense pressure to bear on the Inquiry to bring its investigations to an end. The Inquiry is now required to hear all remaining evidence and deliver a final report by the end of 2026, leading to an apparent rush to judgment. Corners are being cut, and the victims of these police abuses are being held to impossible deadlines, or simply squeezed out altogether.

Core Participants are becoming increasingly restless. It is clear, as we move towards the investigation of more recent police practices in the 21^st Century, that the Inquiry barely intends to scratch the surface. Tranche 3 disclosure has already begun, but the inquiry has stated it intends to focus on individuals and will not be providing disclosure or seeking evidence about spying on some of the most influential political groups: environmental direct action groups such as Climate Camp, Earth First!, Greenpeace or the the Newbury Bypass and other Road Protest campaigns; Disarm DSEi and anti-war campaigners; social centres, such as the Sumac Centre or squatters social centres in London. All will be excluded from the investigations despite having been specific targets of multiple undercover operations over many years.

At the start of this Inquiry, Lord Justice Pitchford, the original Chair, said: “My overall duty in the conduct of the Inquiry is to act fairly.” That duty of fairness has now been sacrificed to a new Home Office imperative of closing the book on uncomfortable revelations as fast as possible.

However, we, the victims of these abusive policing operations will not allow the truth to be sidelined, so if you are finding it all a bit hard to follow, do not despair.

Campaigners and victims of spycops abuses will be picketing the inquiry venue and on the first day of in person hearings, and we will hold a Press briefing at 9am on 8^th July, outside the International Dispute Resolution Centre, 1 Paternoster Lane, St. Paul’s, London, EC4M 7BQ.

 

Comment from Blacklist Support Group (core participant group in the public inquiry):

 

The 1980s and 90s saw the Prime Minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, infamously describe trade unions as 'the enemy within'. The full repressive apparatus of the state, including spying by undercover police officers was deployed against the labour movement during the miners strike, the News International dispute at Wapping and mass movements such as the Poll Tax. Activists weren’t just kept under surveillance, the police shared intelligence and colluded in blacklisting workers from construction, docks, Post Office, education, NHS, civil service and even the BBC. This is an outrage in a supposedly democratic society. 

 

Blacklisted trade union activist and core participant in the undercover policing public inquiry, Steve Hedley commented:

"The spycops public inquiry increasingly looks like a classic British establishment cover up. But just like the Bloody Sunday campaign we will continue until justice is done and those responsible will be brought to account".

Notes to Editors:

To receive regular press updates from the campaign please contact: media@policespiesoutoflives.org.uk

 

1Response by the MPS on 11th June 2024 to Freedom of Information Act request number FOI-8602-24-0100-000

2 https://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2023/06/29/spycops-should-have-been-disbanded-50-years-ago-public-inquiry/

'Freud's Last Session' - UK cinema release.

 

Anthony Hopkins is a fine actor but I'm surprised that they've chosen to make a film about Sigmund Freud. 'Freud Last Session' will be released in UK cinemas on 14 June. The film is based on an imaginary conversation between Freud, played by Anthony Hopkins, and the author C.S. Lewis, played by Matthew Goode, about the existence of God and Freud's relationship with his lesbian daughter, Anna.

It seems likely that Lewis and Freud never met and that this fictional conversation stems from the imagination and pen of the playwright, Mark St. Germain, who staged a play of the same name in 2009 and also wrote the film script. 

Since the 1970s, Freud's scientific reputation has been in free fall. Today, many see Freud as a quack and a charlatan. Frederick Crews 600-page book, 'Freud: The Making of an Illusion' published in 2017, portrays a man who engaged in fraudulent science, falsified case histories and never cured anyone. Freud even promoted cocaine as a miracle drug that was capable of curing a range of diseases.

The American psychologist, Albert Ellis, famously said that "Freud was full of horseshit." Apparently, Freud had once told a patient called Horace Frink, who was an American psychiatrist, that his misery stemmed from his inability to recognise that he was a homosexual. Freud hinted that a solution to his problem lay in making a large financial contribution to Freud's work.

Aping the ways of the Pukka Sahib.

 

I read the book 'A Passage to India' by E.M. Forster, many years ago.

Dr Aziz, a Muslim doctor, tries to ingratiate himself with the English and wants to make friends with them. He really wants to join the white man's club but the English won't let him in, so he organises a trip to the Marabar Caves. He's very obsequious towards the English until the middle-class English woman, Adela Quested, alleges that Dr Aziz had sexually molested her in the caves and he's arrested. Dr Aziz eventually gets acquitted and Ms Quested is portrayed as a sexually repressed English woman who had been affected by too much sun which had made her hysterical. After his acquittal Dr Aziz turns towards Indian nationalism and becomes very anti-English. He becomes something of a hero in the eyes of many Indians and a symbol of English repression.

The English might have given the Indians cricket, trains and the telegraph, but by and large, the British Raj and colonial rule in India devastated the Indian economy and the Indian people. The British Empire was a racket aimed at exploiting countries like India. It's also true that many wealthy Indians like the Mughals were complicit in this exploitation of the Indian people.

What I've always found intriguing is the Hindu obsession with caste and hierarchy. I've even read of an Indian communist who disowned his daughter because she'd married a man beneath her caste. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan also seems to have retained a caste system which has nothing to do with being a Muslim.

The English colonialists used caste and religion to play the Indians off against one another. It was a case of divide and conquer separate and rule. To some extent, I think many Indians admired or could identify with the English class system and English snobbery because they're often looking down their noses at one another. They might rail against the British Raj and English colonialism in India, but as soon as an Indian or Pakistani becomes wealthy, it seems they want to send their children to English public schools and Oxford and Cambridge University, to ape the ways of the English gentleman and the Pukka Sahib. 

Whatever happened to the 'Leisure Society'?

 

When I was kid at school in the early 1960s, the teachers would talk about something called the 'Leisure Society'. They seemed to think that technology and automation would remove the need for people to work, or at least, reduce the number of hours that they spent working, and we could devote most of our time to leisure.

This never really materialised even though there has been much talk of introducing an unconditional "Citizens Basic Income" which is not linked to work. I suppose it was a naive utilitarian view that saw production has being organized and run in the interests of its greatest number. But if the means of production is privately owned, then it's run in the interests of its owners and shareholders and not in the interest of its workers.

The workers are often wary of technology and automation because it can lead to displacement, loss of jobs and unemployment. This is because they don't control the technology nor do we have 'workers control' of society. If society was organised in a way that seeks to improve the lives of people, it would be possible to use technology for the betterment of mankind. Working hours could be reduced and there could be more autonomy and collaborative co-operation.

In his book 'Homage to Catolonia', George Orwell described how land and factories had been collectivised by the Spanish anarchists of the CNT in much of Catalonia during the Spanish civil war (1936-39). These collectives were run and controlled by Spanish workers. Orwell wrote that this anarchist experiment in worker’s self-management was the first time, "the working-class was in the saddle." He said of revolutionary Spain, "Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists...Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivised..." Orwell said that even the Ritz Hotel in Barcelona had been collectivised and turned into a workers' canteen.

During the Spanish civil war, many of these collectives were attacked by communists like Enrique Lister. The Spanish socialist used to jokingly say, "Vote Communist and Spare Spain from Marxism."

Societies whether they're Capitalist or State Communist, are run on the basis of profit, exploitation, and people pursuing their own personal greed, or they're run in the interest of a privileged political clique. You can't really separate the economic from the political. We might have political equality in the sense that most of us get a vote in a democratic society, but we don't have economic equality. There's not much democracy in the British workplace and there's a mutually beneficent symbiosis between politics and wealth. In a country like Britain or the U.S., whichever political party we vote for, the capitalist always gets in. Government is essentially about managing the capitalist system.

The American political scientist Harold D. Laswell, defined politics as "Who gets what, when and how." Economics is not a science and that's why it was once called political economy. How the wealth of any society is redistributed is very much down to the political decisions that governments take or as in the case of revolutionary Spain, it's run in the interests of those who produce that wealth. 

What is a "Semite'?

 

We hear a lot these days about something called 'Antisemitism' which literally means a hatred or prejudice towards Jewish people as Jews. Yet, I suspect that many people, wouldn't really know what the term 'Semite' means.

The term 'Semitic', or 'Semites', refers to people who speak Semitic languages, which includes - Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew. It doesn't include Yiddish, which is mainly Germanic in origin with some other influences. The Palestinian people are Semites.

I believe that early colonial Jewish settlers in Israel were resistant to speaking Hebrew and insisted on speaking their own language, Russian, Polish, German, or Yiddish. They didn't think Hebrew would have been of much use to them. Many of the Sephardi Jews who had lived in Palestine for centuries, spoke Judeo- Spanish or 'Ladino' as well as Arabic. They co-existed with the Palestinian Arabs.

Compared to Poland, pre-war Germany, didn't have a big Jewish population and I think most of them considered themselves German, firstly and foremost. Many Germans weren't even aware that they were Jewish until they were categorized as such under the Nuremberg laws. Some were even members of the Nazi Party.

Most Israeli Jews are not diligent observers of Judaism. In 2022, 45% of Israeli Jews self-identified as "secular." I believe that many Israeli Jewish citizens frequently complain about the constraints of Shabbat observance or ignore it altogether.

I remember watching a TV programme about the Canadian singer Leonard Cohen. He said that when he visited Israel, he'd been asked if he was a practicing Jew. He replied that he practiced all the time.