Assisted Dying Bill

 

Some years ago, a friend of mine died because he had an inoperable brain tumour. He went into a local hospice and died shortly after. As an end-of-life patient receiving hospice care, he would almost certainly have been put on morphine and other pain killing medications.

I don't have a problem with this if it alleviates pain and suffering. However, we have seen cases where patients have been given opiates inappropriately by doctors. In May 2023, an independent panel found that 456 patients had died prematurely after being given opiates at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, when it wasn't medically necessary. The police are currently investigating this scandal.

Before he died my friend told me about his father who had been admitted to a hospital in Manchester. He said that he'd been told that his father was coming to the end of his life and was asked if he would agree to his father being out on end-of-life palliative care. He told me that he hadn't agreed to this and had insisted that the hospital do everything to keep his father alive. I asked him what was the outcome? He said his father left the hospital and had returned home with him and that he'd lived another three years.

Knowing when someone is about to die, isn't always an exact science. It's understandable that people have concerns about the implications of the Assisted Dying Bill that is currently being debated in Parliament.

Tolstoy & the Russian Peasantry.

 

Leo Tolstoy

In 1910, around 80% of Russia's population were peasants. In 1900 the Russian population was said to be around 132.9 million people. There were around 200 different nationalities in the Russian empire and Russian society, was still largely feudalistic.

Russian serfdom was abolished by Tsar Alexander II in 1861. As the land was owned privately, the Russian peasant had to 'redeem' their land allotments from the landlords using government loans. They then had to make "redemption payments" to the government for 49 years until they were terminated by the government in 1905. Though some well-to-do peasants did emerge, most Russian peasants remained poor, land hungry and crushed by huge redemption payments. Most of the land was held communally by the village and the peasant remained tied to the village.

The life of a Russian peasant wasn't that great under the old Russian Tsarist regime, but it became far worse under Bolshevism. Not all Russian landowners were like Count Lev Tolstoy who tried to educate the peasant children on his estate at Yasnaya Polyana.  He fathered a child with a peasant woman from the estate and by the 1860s, he often worked in the fields with his peasants and dressed as a peasant.

I am currently reading the diaries of countess Sophia Tolstaya. His wife Sophia, resented her husband's love of the common people and thought it beneath a Russian aristocrat to associate with the peasantry. She also disliked the disciples of Tolstoy who she thought were riff-raff. They often turned up at the house and estate to meet with Tolstoy and expected free food and accommodation. Tolstoy dreamt of social equality while enjoying the privileges of a Russian aristocratic landowner. He wrote that "Serfdom is an evil, but a very pleasant one."

They say that in later life Tolstoy was always courteous to the peasants and enjoyed their company and that he never lost his temper with the servants. The peasants, in turn, seemed to have respected him. In his novel War and Peace, Pierre meets the Russian peasant Platon Karataev, in a prison-of-war camp. For Tolstoy, Platon Karataev idealised the archetypal good Russian peasant.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche is an elitist and anti-democratic philosopher. They say that Nietzsche is one of the easiest philosophers to read but one of the most difficult to understand.

 It has frequently been claimed that Nietzsche despised modern feminism, along with democracy and socialism. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that Nietzsche never tired of inveighing against women and said that Nietzsche wrote: "Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip." This actual quote is uttered by an old woman to Zarathustra. Russell wrote that Nietzsche's writings displayed the power fantasies of an invalid and that nine times out of ten, a woman would've taken that whip off Nietzsche, and given him a good beating with it. Yet, Nietzsche had numerous close friendships with early feminists and highly educated women, including Meta von Salis, the first woman in Switzerland to gain a PhD. He was also a friend of Lou Salome, a psychoanalyst, author and essayist. 

 Nietzsche called socialism "the tyranny of the meanest and the dumbest" and claimed that it attracts inferior people who are motivated by resentment. Nietzsche saw ordinary human beings as the "bungled and botched" and he saw no objection to their suffering if it was necessary for the production of a great man. He claimed that exemplary human beings must craft their own identity through self-realization and become the masters of their own fate. Nietzsche's "Ubermensch' or 'Overman' represents a human ideal and a goal for humanity. He saw civilization and its values has being born from barbarism a process where the strong eliminated the weak and the educated eliminated the uneducated. He wrote:

 "Life is the will to power; our natural desire to dominate and reshape the world to fit our own preference and assert our personal strength to the fullest degree."

 He also believed that morality was the herd instinct of the individual and that there were no facts but only interpretations. He wrote: “Morality is just fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior individuals.”

 Bertrand Russell wrote: "What Caesar Borgia was to Machiavelli, Napoleon was to Nietzsche: a great man defeated by petty opponents."

 I know that Nietzsche greatly admired the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky and in Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment', there is much talk of the Napoleon complex and ordinary and extraordinary people. Raskolnikov's theory of the ordinary and extraordinary individual, mirrors Nietzsche's thoughts very closely. I think Nietzsche was probably very much influenced by this book and Dostoevsky in general who he saw as great psychological writer.

 Nietzsche has been identified with German Nazis but this is mainly due to the influence of his pro-Nazi sister Elisabeth, who had married a notorious anti-Semite agitator called Bernhard Forster in 1885. Nietzsche refused to attend the wedding and the couple went off to Paraguay to found a New Germany of "pure blooded" Aryan colonists.

 If there were three things that Nietzsche hated, it was the big state, nationalism and anti-Semitism. He once proposed marriage to the Russian-born, Lou Salome, who was Jewish and she refused his offer. She certainly made the right decision because Nietzsche finished up going mad which they think was due to syphilis. His philosophy influenced many writers including Jack London, D.H. Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw.

 Today, this German philosopher, has been adopted by the alt-right. Richard Spencer, a leading light of America's alt-right claimed in an interview that he'd been "red-pilled" by reading Nietzsche. In the film 'The Matrix', popping the red pill, allows you to perceive reality. Spencer is an advocate of white nationalism, anti-feminism, racial and cultural purity. Nietzsche would've been opposed to all these things. He insisted that he'd rather be a good European than a good German, calling ("Germany, Germany, above all") the death of German philosophy. One of his last letters proposed that all anti-Semites should be shot. 

Starmer's Labour government bans Mandela's grandson from entering the UK.

 

Zwelivelile Mandela

Nelson Mandela's grandson, Zwelivelile Mandela, has been denied a visa to enter the UK by Starmer's Labour Government. He was due to fly to Britain to speak at a number of pro-Palestinian events during Black History Month. British officials had initially told him that his South African government passport did not require a visa to enter the UK.

Recently, Mr Mandela, joined an event organised by 'Sheffield Palestine Coalition against Israeli Apartheid' by video link.  Although he couldn't physically attend the event in person, he said: "It seems that there are those who are intent on preventing me from being physically with you (in Britain). I have been criticised for statements that I have made in support of Palestinian Resistance and its various formations." As a former South African member of parliament, Mr Mandela has spoken previously of his support for the 7 October attacks on Israel.

Despite high-level political intervention by figures within the African National Congress (ANC), the British embassy has refused to issue a visa. Britain considers both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations.

During his lifetime, Nelson Mandela often expressed support for Palestine and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was considered a terrorist organisation by both the U.S. and Israel. Both Nelson Mandela and the former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, have also been denounced as terrorists. As the head of the terrorist group Irgun, Begin targeted the British in Palestine and was banned from entering the UK.

A Home Office spokesman said: " The UK has robust safeguards to ensure visas are only issued to those who we want to welcome to our country." Despite being banned from entering the UK, Mr Mandela will be visiting Dublin in Ireland, where visa requirements to enter the country have been waived.

South Africa has accused Israel of committing acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention and brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ have already declared that Israel's occupation and annexation of the Palestine territories are unlawful and its discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinians, violated the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.

Unlike the British Labour government which continues to supply arms to the Israeli apartheid state, the government of Ireland recognises Palestine as a sovereign and independent state. Britain's Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer-oid has publicly declared, "I support Zionism without qualification."

Starmer rebukes Labour's Transport Secretary for branding P&O a "rogue employer."

 

Although Karl Marx believed that the interests of capital and labour were diametrically opposed, Labour's obsequious Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has said that the Labour government is 'proudly pro-business and proudly pro-worker." Is it really possible to reconcile the economic interests of both capitalists and workers? Isn't this really like trying to square the circle?

Labour's transport secretary, Louise Haigh, has been rebuked by Sir Keir Starmer-oid for branding P&O Ferries a "rogue operator" and for calling on customers to boycott the company. When P&O Ferries sacked 800 workers without notice or prior consultation in 2022, and replaced them with foreign workers on lower wages, Angela Rayner described the companies' actions as "outrageous." When P&O Ferry boss Peter Hebblethwaite subsequently appeared before a Commons business select committee, and was asked why he'd broken British law, he was asked, "Are you just a shameless criminal." 

Following the comments made by Louise Haigh, P&O's parent company DP World, threatened to pull out of an investment summit in London and to shelve a £1bn infrastructure project at the London Gateway. When Starmer-oid was asked if his transport secretary had been wrong to brand the company a "cowboy operator" and to encourage a boycott, he said this was not the view of the government.

Although Starmer-oid is well known for being able to turn on a dime and for breaking pledges and promises, official sources said that they were astonished that Haigh had been "hung out to dry" and "thrown under a bus" because she had only been echoing a government press release about new protection for seafarers, which had mentioned "rogue employers" and specifically said that the measures were necessary to prevent another P&O scandal. The press release had been signed off by the Downing Street communications team. Both Haigh and Rayner were said to be "hopping mad" that No 10 had not protected them despite having sanctioned the same highly critical language towards P&O. 

Tameside Council leader resigns! Labour NEC step in to take control of council.

 

Councillor Ged Cooney

Within the last week, both the Chief Executive of Tameside Council and the leader of the council, have resigned their positions as the council descends into havoc and chaos. According to press reports, Labour’s NEC have now stepped in to take control of the Labour group and will now appoint a new council leader, to run Tameside Council.

As with most things within Zanu-Labour controlled Tameside Council, there may be far more to the resignation of the Chief Executive, Sandra Stewart, and the council leader Ged Cooney, than the public is being told about.  The Chief Executives salary of nearly 187K, was far higher than both the UK Prime Minister and Sue Gray.

It doesn't seem entirely fair that Sandra Stewart should carry the can for the failures in the local authority's children services department. As the Chief Executive of TMBC, and the council's chief legal officer, Sandra Stewart didn't run children's care services in Tameside that have been repeatedly found to be inadequate by Ofsted. This has led some Tameside councillors to suggest that she’s been used as a scapegoat because of a failure of leadership within Tameside Council and a reluctance to accept personal responsibility. Sandra Stewart is one of several Chief Executives of Tameside Council to have suddenly resigned within the last fourteen years.

In July 2022, the former Chief Executive of TMBC, Steven Pleasant, was forced to resign when he was found to have broken "impartiality rules". His resignation came at a time when there was a change in the Labour leadership of Tameside Council following a coup and plot hatched against Brenda 'the bulldozer" Warrington, which was led by the current Labour leader, councillor Ged Cooney. In April 2010, Janet Callender, the former Chief Executive of TMBC, resigned after being in her "dream job" for just five years. Her surprise resignation sparked a flurry of speculation about the motives for her departure and it was rumoured that she'd been forced out by Roy Oldham, the former Labour leader of Tameside Council.

Although Sandra Stewart has resigned as the Chief Executive of Tameside Council, she seems to have been pushed sideways into the job of the Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund which is administered by Tameside Council and chaired by the council Labour leader Ged Cooney. If Sandra Stewart has resigned following criticism about inadequate children services in Tameside, then some people may well wonder why she's been offered the job of Chief Executive of the £32 billion Greater Manchester Pension Fund?

Since her resignation, four Tameside councillors have resigned their official positions on the council. There have also been complaints about fear, bullying and intimidation of staff working for Tameside Council and criticism that the Labour leadership on Tameside Council "lack empathy" and are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for the state of children services in Tameside.

All three Tameside MPs, Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds and Andrew Gwynne, have welcomed the departure of Sandra Stewart and have called on the council to "move on." They said the Ofsted commissioners report had revealed "unacceptable working practices and conditions for staff at the council."

It has been reported that Oldham council's chief executive Harry Catherall, is expected to take on the role of Chief Executive of Tameside Council on an interim basis.

Following a cabinet reshuffle, councillors John Taylor and Eleanor Wills - who were the cabinet members responsible for adult social care and inclusivity and population health and wellbeing - have been replaced by Longdendale councillor Gary Ferguson and Mossley councillor, Tafheen Sharif.  Councillor Sharif recently stated that she had refused to accept the cabinet post that had been offered to her.

Funeral plea by grieving relatives and Ricky Tomlinson for Kier Starmer to release the Shrewsbury pickets papers.

 

Arthur Murray

The grieving family of the jailed Shrewsbury Picket Arthur Murray have made an emotional plea for Kier Starmer to release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets.

 The funeral service for Arthur Murray was held at Flint Crematorium [Monday 30th September] only five miles from Mold Crown Court, where over 50 years earlier one of the most notorious working class miscarriages of justice in British legal history took place. The case of the Shrewsbury Pickets saw construction workers from North Wales jailed for taking part in peaceful picketing during the 1972 national building workers strike. Arthur Murray was one of the jailed pickets, alongside Dessie Warren, Ricky Tomlinson (who later became an actor and national treasure) and others. After decades of campaigning, the convictions of the Shrewsbury 24 were finally quashed in the Court of Appeal in March 2021. Arthur Murray was the first person to submit an appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission that eventually led to the historic legal victory, which saw the pickets leave the Royal Courts of Justice as innocent men - which they always were. 

 Jillian Murray-Keddie and Cheryl Clark, the daughters of Arthur Murray, described how the families of the jailed pickets had suffered but were supported by the solidarity of other workers, but how when their father was first released from prison: "he was blacklisted and found it almost impossible to get work. But he never backed down because he knew he had done nothing wrong". 

 Ricky Tomlinson, who served two years’ imprisonment for his role in Shrewsbury, and who last met Arthur just a few weeks ago, spoke at the funeral, telling mourners:

 “Arthur fought like hell to clear his name, and all the other pickets who were fitted up by the state by a conspiracy between the Heath government and the construction employers when they wanted to wipe out trade union organization after winning a £6 a week settlement of the strike. This was a vicious, spiteful and malicious conspiracy against ordinary workers who dared to challenge the construction industry bosses. The quashing of our convictions is not the same as justice. The real conspiracy was between the building employers, the police, MI5 and the government. When will they be held to account?"   

 One of the outstanding issues for the Shrewsbury Pickets, their families and supporters is that even after fifty years, the official government papers on the dispute and the trial have still not been released. The vast majority of government papers are released under the 30-year rule (and now the 20-year rule); but successive Home Secretaries (both Conservative and Labour) have refused to allow the papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets to be placed into the national archive. At the wake, when members of Arthur's family and trade unionists who had travelled from around the UK shared their memories of Arthur, a unanimous vote was taken calling on the new Labour government to immediately release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets. A hastily written note of the vote reads: "This gathering of friends and comrades call upon Sir Kier Starmer to release all the Shrewsbury secret files". 

 Phil Simpson, a long standing Shrewsbury campaigner and close friend of Arthur commented:

"We are calling on the Prime Minister to draw a line under this outrageous episode in industrial relations, where consecutive governments have used the same lame excuse that publishing the records would be a 'threat to national security'. I just don't buy it. When we see the world around us heading to monumental disasters, it’s more to do with consecutive governments covering one another’s backs regardless of the political party. The PM told us he was going to change society for the better: so let's start here."

 

The Devils - Fyodor Dostoevsky.

 

They say that what inspired Dostoevsky's novel 'The Devils', was the trial of the Russian anarcho-communist Sergey Nechayev. He and others comrades in 'People's Vengeance', had murdered fellow comrade Ivan Ivanov in 1869. Ivanov had questioned Nechayev's political ideas. Nechayev was tried for the murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died.

A character called Shatov, gets murdered by his comrades in Dostoevsky's novel. The character of Pyotr Verkhovensky is based on Nechayev. The character of Stavrogin is said to be based on the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, but I can't see the similarity. Nechayev and Bakinin had written 'The Catechism of a Revolutionary', that also inspired Dostoevsky's novel. Nechayev knew both Bakunin and the Russian socialist Alexander Herzen.

I read the novel many years ago and enjoyed it. But Dostoevsky's Russian characters are very bizarre and fanatical and you find that in most of his novels. How typical these characters are of Russians in general, is a moot point. You could say the same thing about the characters in a novel by Charles Dickens. There's a suicide maniac called Kirillov, who commits suicide and leaves a note confessing to the murder of Shatov. Stavrogin also commits suicide. I think in part of the book, there's a section where a young man had been sent by his mother to town to buy something for his sister's imminent wedding. He books into a hotel and blows his mother's money on food and drink. Rather than go home and confess to what he's done, he commits suicide. when the town gets to hear of it, people start to turn up at the hotel to gawp at the body.

I think there's little doubt that Dostoevsky's novels contributed to Tsarist repression in Russia and a crackdown on civil and political rights. They would've put the fear of death in the Romanovs. Yet Dostoevsky's novels seem to predict the murders of Tsar Alexander II and Tsar Nicholas II.

Are people led more by their emotions or reason?

 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau's belief in the noble savage and that man is corrupted by society and is intrinsically good, underpins the thinking of many on the left - socialist, communist and anarchist. This is what leads them to believe that they can build heaven on earth. Change the system and you change the man.

I think there's some truth in it, but I've always thought that man is more inclined to be led by his emotions than be guided by reason. This is what makes him susceptible to group think and the oratory of demagogues. A highly cultured society like Germany that gave us Ludwig van Beethoven, Heinrich Heine and Johann Goethe, also gave us Hitler, the Nazis and the death camps.

The former U.S. President, Ronald Regan, once said that if you're explaining, you're losing. He thought that a politician should keep his arguments simple. The cognitive psychologist, Herbert Simon, coined the term 'bounded rationality'. Simon believed that our ability to be rational is limited given the complexity of the world and our limited capability to process the information we have. Given our bounded rationality, Simon argued, we develop shortcuts to allow us to economize in our mental capabilities. These are known as 'heuristics' or intuitive thinking.

In short, most people are guided by their gut instincts and politicians and advertising men are well aware of it. Like stockbrokers and salesmen, they regard most people as suckers who are easily manipulated.

Economic myths and fallacies.

 

"The first method of estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him." (Niccolo Machiavelli). David Lammy (Foreign Secretary); Jonathan Reynolds (Business and Trade); Andrew Gwynne (Health & Social Care); Ed Miliband (Energy Security & Net Zero); Wes Streeting (Health).

Labour's Chancellor, Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves says the Labour government doesn't have the money to pay the winter fuel allowance to10m pensioners. Lucy Powell said the winter fuel allowance had to be slashed to stop a run on the pound. Keir Starmer said that he had to cut the pensioners winter fuel allowance to help save the NHS. It's likely that more British pensioners will finish up in hospital because they can't afford to keep their homes warm.

Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, gave the Ukraine £600m to support the country's "humanitarian, energy and stabilisation needs." Ed Miliband, then gave overseas developing countries £11.6bn in foreign aid to help them cope with climate change and they've got the audacity, to claim that they've got no money. Reeves said "If we cannot afford it, we cannot do it." So, where did the money come from for all this foreign aid? Where did the £22bn come from for the government’s “carbon capture” project?

What did the economist John Maynard Keynes say: "Anything we can actually do, we can afford." The American economist Milton Friedman, talked of the "Fixed Pie Fallacy", a belief that income and wealth are like a fixed pie and that one party can only gain at the expense of another. Margaret Thatcher subscribed to the "Household Fallacy", that led to austerity and cuts to welfare and public services. She compared the government to a household saying: “The Government should do what any good housewife would do if money were short...Look at the accounts and see what was wrong "

While a family or household can run out of money the British government can't ever run out of money because it creates all the money that it spends with the Bank of England being required to make all payments approved by Parliament. The pound is no longer linked to precious metals like the Gold Standard and neither is it part of a currency regime like the Euro. The British government has sovereign control over the issuing of money.

When British politicians tell you that the country has run out of money, as Labour's former chief secretary to the Treasury, Lyam Byrne, did in May 2010, economists fall about laughing. Byrne had scribbled on a piece of paper, "there's no money left." The incoming Clegg-Cameron coalition government, weaponized this letter and used it to justify imposing austerity measures much later. Byrne later claimed that the note had been left as a private joke.

Claims that the British government could ever run out of money are completely false but people still believe it, and politicians, still peddle this economically illiterate nonsense to pursue their own agendas. 

 

Capitalism's myths and fallacies.

 

There isn't one form of capitalism. Tory politicians often talked about turning Britain into a Singapore upon Thames. Singapore is often portrayed as a bastion of free market capitalism but most of the land and housing is under the control of the government and there are a lot of state-owned enterprises.

Germany and Sweden are capitalist societies but they have worker representatives on many company boards. Many countries have mixed economies of both state and private. If you live in a country like Britain, you will rarely hear the term capitalism ever used. Politicians hardly ever talk about capitalism or the capitalist system and you won't find it mentioned in the press or media. It's a bit like Oscar Wilde's the love that dare not speak its name.

 I don't think that capitalism and freedom necessarily go hand in hand. There's no clear relationship between a country's economic freedom and its political freedom. Nazi Germany was a dictatorship but it still had private enterprise, firms like Krupp's and I.G. Farben and some German businesses used slave labour. The Nazis called I.G. Farben the citadel of Jewish capitalism because there were that many Jews on the company board. Among the products that the firm supplied to the Nazis, was Zyklon-B gas which was used in the extermination camps.

Chile under the military dictatorship of General Pinochet was a capitalist society but it wasn't a free country. There's private enterprise and billionaires in Communist China but it's not a free country. The philosopher and economist Friedrich Hayek, called himself a 'liberal' and he was a staunch advocate of capitalism, but he said, "Personally I prefer a liberal dictatorship to democratic government devoid of liberalism." Hayek spoke in support of Pinochet's Chile which pursued Hayek's economic liberal ideas. Hayek believed in freedom, but it was freedom for the pike and not for the minnows. Some so-called free marketeers think that there needs to be constraints placed on democracy because politicians often do the wrong things in order to win votes.

I think John Steinbeck sums up my feelings about capitalism in his book 'Cannery Row'. The marine biologist Doc, says to Mac and the Boys:

 "It has always seemed strange to me. The things we admire in men, kindest, generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success."

The economist Leon Walras, once said: "You can't defend capitalism on the grounds that it is natural. The only justification should be that it's efficient and increases wealth."

Some people have a tendency to think that there always has been a capitalist system, which is not the case. An inclination to "truck and barter" may be the basis of an economy but it doesn't make it a capitalist economy. In a country like Britain, capitalism as we understand it, is a comparatively recent innovation dating back to what we now call the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th century. If you know anything about English history, you would wonder how we ever became a capitalist society. In a country like England, religion and traditional virtue, taught people that avarice was a vice, usury a misdemeanour and the love of money was considered detestable. Working for wages was frowned upon as was buying cheap to sell dear. William Shakespeare's father was prosecuted for lending money. The Christian Bible told people, " And having food and raiment let us be therewith content...For the love of money is the root of all evil."

Free gear Keir to pay back £6,000 worth of gifts - including free Taylor Swift tickets and tickets for the races.

 

I always thought that Sir Keir Starmer-oid could turn on a dime. Before he was elected Prime Minister in July, this former Trotskyist was known for U-turns and broken promises and pledges.

Since he came to power, he's been like a pissed-up car driver out of control. He's even had to reassure the public that he's in control. When it was disclosed that Starmer-oid had received more than £100,000 in freebies from wealthy donors since 2019, which includes free clothing for himself and his wife, he defended his gift taking saying that it was transparency that really mattered.

Angie Rayner, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, said in a BBC interview that all MPs were on the take as they all took freebies. Jonathan Reynolds, Labour's holy roller Anglican Business Secretary, said that freebies were not a perk of the job but an important part of the job of being a politician.

Starmer, Rayner and Reynolds, seem to have quickly forgotten that when Labour was in opposition, it slated Boris Johnson and the Tories for sleaze and cronyism. Starmer wanted to know who had paid for Boris Johnson's wallpaper in Downing Street. Labour was incensed that Lord Bamford of JCB had paid towards Boris Johnson's wedding reception.  He forgets that he repeatedly told the public that if Labour came to power, they would clean up British politics. Starmer's squalid Labour government have been in power for just three months and it's already mired in sleaze and cronyism. Starmer-oid looks like a hypocrite and the best British Prime Minister that money can buy.

It's now being reported that Starmer-oid is going to pay back £6,000 worth of gifts including Taylor Swift tickets and free tickets to the races. We're also being told that he's ending a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Sponger.

I always thought that a Labour government led by two politically correct dipsticks like Keir Starmer-oid and Angie Rayner, would turn into a shambles. They're clueless! The opinion polls show that Starmer-oid is now less popular as a leader than the disgraced Liz Truss, who was ignominiously kicked out of Downing Street after fifty days in office. Starmer-oid and his wife recently attended Doncaster races when the Prime Minister was booed by a crowd and called a 'wanker' in the VIP enclosure. 

Eco warrior Dale Vince refuses union recognition to his workers.

 

The vegan multimillionaire, Dale Vince, wants to foist vegan meals on primary school children in Britain and to stop them eating meat, poultry, and dairy, products. He believes that a plant-based diet is better for them and the environment. It is also better for his pocket. His firm "Devils Kitchen', already supplies over a quarter of vegan meals to primary schools. Vince also wants to stop farmer's rearing livestock because he believes that cows are harmful to the environment.

Although Vince wants to save the planet, members of the trade union Unite, have been recently protesting outside the headquarters of Ecotricity, an eco-friendly energy company that is also owned by Dale Vince. They are protesting because Dale Vince is refusing to agree to union recognition for his employees so they can have a say in negotiating their pay and conditions.

Vince is one of the Labour Party's biggest financial donors and has given the party over £5m. He recently addressed a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference where he spoke about the benefits of vegan meals. He told the meeting that he wants Starmer's Labour government to change the law so primary schools don't have to provide meat and dairy products to their school children.

According to Unite, Vince has an estimated wealth of £107,000,000. Some of his vast wealth has been acquired from selling vegan meals to primary schools. No wonder he thinks vegan meals are better for all of us. He's got a vested interest in selling these meals. 

My thoughts and reflections on COVID.

 

I remember the health minister, Matt Hancock, telling the House of Commons in January 2020, that Professor Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England, had downgraded the risk of people getting COVID in Britain from low to very low. Hancock also said that as usual Britain was always well prepared and well equipped to deal with an epidemic. As we now know, it was all complete bullshit.

By May 2020 we had a higher death rate from COVID than Italy and the staff working in the NHS, were complaining of a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE). One minute we were told that wearing a face mask was pointless and the next minute, face masks became compulsory.

At a time when the police were setting up road blocks to ask people where they were going and were flying drones to spy on fell and dog walkers, people were flying into Britain from all over the world without being put into quarantine or even being screened for COVID. Some of these people were arriving from COVID hotspots and walking straight onto the streets of Britain.

In March 2020, I remember being stopped by two police officers as I was walking home late at night. They wanted to know where I had been and where I was going. They made it clear to me that I wasn't under suspicion of anything but that I shouldn't be out walking, because Boris Johnson the prime minister, had ordered everybody to stop at home. They told me that I faced arrest for being outside walking and told me to go home. I told them that I wasn't aware of what Boris Johnson had said because I had been out all day.

We now know that Boris Johnson and his flunkies were deliberately flouting every law and regulation that they had introduced to control every aspect of our lives and the spread of COVID. There were regular piss ups in Downing Street along with birthday parties and Christmas quizzes. They even had a "bring your own bottle" piss up in the garden at Downing Street. Despite the widespread flouting of their own laws, Johnson told the House of Commons that he had been assured that COVID rules and regulations had been adhered to at all times. He was later found to have deliberately misled the House of Commons. Johnson then resigned as an MP to avoid being suspended for 90 days and having to fight a by-election.

Boris Johnson got COVID and was hospitalised. I got COVID in July 2021 and spent six days in an intensive care unit at my local hospital. At the time, I had not been vaccinated to prevent COVID and the hospital staff weren't happy about that. Before going to hospital, I had managed to get a GP to make a home visit. I told the GP that I was fatigued and felt tired and that on one occasion, I nearly fainted at a bus stop. I also told her that I was finding it hard to eat even though I felt hungry and that I hadn't the energy, to even to wash myself. She carried out tests and told me that she couldn't find anything wrong with me and that I didn't have the symptoms of COVID. I now know that I did have the symptoms of COVID even though she couldn't recognise it. I didn't feel particularly unwell and didn't have a raised temperature, persistent dry cough, or a sudden loss of taste and smell, but I knew that there was something wrong with me. Before she left, she told me to take a couple of paracetamols and to phone 111 if I felt worse.

It was a relative who later phoned the GP surgery to tell them I was still unwell. I had asked her if she could do some shopping for me. My cousin probably saved my life. My sister-in-law also came to my rescue and offered me help and assistance which was greatly appreciated. The GP said that he would call an ambulance. When the paramedics did arrive, it was 5.00 a.m. in the morning, and they told me that it had taken them twelve hours to get to me. They seemed to think that this was a subject of some amusement. I remember thinking to myself, I bet it didn't take twelve hours to get to that stupid bastard Boris Johnson. When they put the pulse oximeter on my finger, they told me that I was going to hospital straight away because my blood oxygen levels were down.

In the ambulance I was put on oxygen and taken to A&E. I didn't have to wait and was wheeled straight into the unit. They did tests and told me that I was being admitted to a ward because I had COVID. I finished up spending six days in a hospital ward with about twenty other people who all had COVID. I discovered that most of these had already been vaccinated for COVID but had still got it. Some of these patients were far younger than me and had been in a far worse condition. I discovered that one of the complications that can arise from COVID is blood clots, so I was given anticoagulant injections and put on steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs. When I was on that ward, a man appeared at the foot of my bed one day. He never introduced himself to me, but just said: "I can't guarantee that you're not going to get far worse." He then walked away and I never saw him again. Even though I was feeling much better, I thought that I had just encountered Grim Reaper. One member of staff, who worked on that COVID ward, told me that she'd had COVID three times. When I asked her what she thought about the way the government had dealt with the COVID pandemic, she told me that she thought that they didn't know what they were doing, and I think she was absolutely right.

I take my hat off to that lady and to the other members of staff who looked after us at Tameside Hospital. They put their own lives at risk by working on that ward. After being discharged from the hospital, I was given medication and told to isolate at home for ten days. During those ten days my sister-in-law brought food to my front door. I was later given a chest X-ray and given the all clear.

I've now been vaccinated five times against COVID and I am due for a sixth injection next month. I was fortunate to survive getting that laboratory-made Chinese disease, but some people weren't as lucky. One man told me recently that his brother had died of COVID simply because he contracted it from being in the company of people who had just returned from a holiday in Italy.

Since getting COVID, my GP surgery have never contacted me once to ask how I am doing. At the outset of the COVID pandemic in March 2020, they stopped having walk-in doctors' appointments and have never reinstated them. Today, it's almost impossible to get to see a doctor at that surgery because they're still reluctant to have face-to-face contact with patients. Hospital doctors and nurses have no choice in the matter. General Practice has almost become a sinecure. GPs are getting well paid for doing next to nothing.

Compulsory Meat In Schools Should Be Scrapped, Says Dale Vince.

 

Dale Vince

The multimillionaire green entrepreneur and vegan, Dale Vince, says he wants to speak to the government about banning schools from supplying meat and dairy products to children in their school meals. He also wants to ban the farming of animals which he believes is one of the biggest threats to the environment. He says that a plant-based diet is much healthier for children and much better for the environment.

Vince shouldn't find it much of a problem talking to the Labour government about this issue or gaining access to government ministers, because he's one of Labour's biggest financial donors, having given the Labour Party £5m out of the profits he's made from selling vegan meals to primary schools. His business interests include 'Devil's Kitchen', which already provides a quarter of vegan meals to English primary schools. He also owns the green energy firm Ecotricity and a green football club, Forest Green Rovers.

Although the law currently requires schools in England to serve a "portion of meat and poultry on three or more days each week", guidance on a healthy diet for children, also recommends plenty of fruit and vegetables and dairy products. Most doctors would recommend that their patients eat a balanced diet which includes meat, poultry, and dairy products, in order to remain healthy. Some medical professionals do argue that a vegan or vegetarian diet can lead to vitamin and nutritional deficiency. Nevertheless, Dale Vance wants the Labour government to change the law so schools are not required to provide meat, poultry and dairy products, to primary school children.

Personally, I wouldn't want this kind of vegan plant-based diet foisted on myself or my children, nor do I believe that a vegan diet, is healthier for young children or adults. A vegan or vegetarian diet is not much use to an Eskimo or anybody who lives in a cold climate. Dale Vince has a vested interest in promoting the take up of vegan meals and green technologies because he's made himself a very rich man by doing so.

I suspect that Dale Vince is another one of those vegetarian cranks, who would tell us that man didn't evolve to eat meat but crawled about on all fours eating acorns and berries in a state of nature. If this was true, which I don't accept for a moment, then he should explain why most human beings eat meat and are equipped with 32 teeth and a bite force of 162 pounds per square inch, which is very useful when it comes to eating meat.

Archaeologist have discovered flint arrowheads in the skulls of woolly mammoths and Clovis points have been found across Ice Age sites in America, lodged in mammoth skeletons. They've also found pig bones at Neolithic sites like Stonehenge. There's little doubt that early man was a hunter, carnivore, and scavenger, who would eat anything he could lay his hands on to sustain himself. We know that when humans are faced with starvation and hunger, they will eat almost anything including other human beings.

 

Rosie Duffield resigns Labour whip.

 

Rosie Duffield

I agree with Rosie Duffield's sentiments about Keir Starmer, but if she had been intending to resign the Labour whip, I wonder why she didn't vote against the cut in the winter fuel allowance on 10 September.

Duffield decided to abstain instead of voting against the means testing of the winter fuel allowance which will lead to nine out of ten pensioners losing it. Only one Labour MP voted against the measure and that was Jon Trickett, who represents the West Yorkshire constituency of Hemsworth.

All three Tameside MPs - Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds and Andrew Gwynne, voted to pick the pockets of British pensioners. Reynolds, recently defended the £100,000 'freebies' that Sir Keir Starmer-oid had received from wealthy donors like Lords Waheed Alli. Reynolds said that taking freebies were not the perks of being an MP but we're part of the job of being an MP.

The Gaelic Revival.

 

They used to say that the Gaelic language spoken in parts of Scotland was a dying language because so few people spoke it. It seems to have been spoken mainly in the west of Scotland and among people of the Western Isles.

Some years ago, I used to read copies of the West Highland Free Press, that were given to me by a lady who was from the Isle of Skye. That paper wasn't published in Gaelic but in English. I remember reading an article where a registrar in Scotland had refused to enter a child's name on a birth certificate because it was in Gaelic. It caused a bit of a fuss with some people suggesting that the registrar must've been a dastardly Sassenach, but it's very likely that the registrar was a Scot.

On another occasion, the newspaper posed a question that I found highly amusing. The newspaper asked how do you know when two people are speaking in Gaelic? Answer: They're the ones that are covered in spit. That sounded more like a Scottish joke to me because most English people have never heard the language spoken and are not familiar with the Gaelic language.

I also remember reading how iodine tablets had been given out to people on the Isle of Skye which sounded ominous to me, because this is usually done when there is a danger of exposure to radiation. There is a nuclear submarine base on Skye and it is thought that coolant discharged into the sea from these submarines may be radioactive. The lady from Skye showed me a Bible that was printed in the Gaelic language and reminded me of the similarities between the Irish native language and the Gaelic of the Scots.

Nowadays, there seems to have been a renewed interest in the Gaelic language and one of the fastest growing areas for the Gaelic language, is in Edinburgh. In parts of Wales, it is compulsory for children to be taught the Welsh language even though it's not likely to be of much use to you outside of Wales.

I think it is important to protect native languages and culture because it tells us a lot about the history of a people, even though much of this culture and tradition, might be of recent invention. There's little doubt that what many people think of as quintessentially Scottish, is derived from the imagination and writings of Sir Walter Scott in the 19th century and the romantic influence of Queen Victoria. Old Gaelic was the language of Macbeth even though he probably spoke Latin as well.

At the time of the Jacobite wars between England and the supporters of the young pretender, Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the 18th century, the redcoat English soldiers would often refer to the Scots as the people of the Irish tongue. Many Scottish clansmen and Scots fought on both sides. After the Battle of Culloden, the English tried to ban all aspects of Gaelic Scottish culture including the language and dress, but they never succeeded.

The politics of hypocrisy.

 

Labour's Anglican Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has said that taking gifts, tribute, and hospitality, from wealthy donors like Waheed Alli, are not the perks of the job of a British politician, but are part of the job of being a politician. In 2016, Reynolds said that his Christian faith had led him to resign as Shadow Transport Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn.

Curiously, when Labour was in opposition, it took a rather different point of view when it came to politicians taking freebies. Sir Keir Starmer-oid constantly criticised Boris Johnson for taking freebies off wealthy donors like Lord Bamford, the owner of JCB, and demanded to know who had paid for Boris Johnson's wallpaper in Downing Street. Labour was incensed that Lord Bamford had paid towards Boris Johnson's wedding reception.

Many honest and decent people would disagree with Reynolds. They think that there's something squalid, bent, or even corrupt, about politicians taking freebies off wealthy individuals. British people cannot stomach cant and hypocrisy even when it's peddled by spurious holy rollers like Jonathan Reynolds.

 If Sir Keir Starmer-oid is to be remembered for anything, it will be as the best UK prime minister that money could buy. When a wealthy individual like Waheed Alli is clothing you and your missus and giving freebies to many of your cabinet colleagues, you've got to ask yourself why he's doing it and who is really running this country? In politics, people's perceptions mean everything.