The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.

 

It was an engineer who was a member of the CPGB, who advised me to read the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressell, many years ago. Over the years, I have the read the book several times.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist was a book that was read by many British soldiers in the trenches in WWI. It probably as the same standing as Tom Paine's 'Rights of Man' or Robert Blatchford's book 'Merrie England', which have all been influential. The book is set in the fictional town of Mugsborough (Hastings), and is centred around a group of men, who work for a firm called Rushton & Co. The discussions that those Edwardian working men have amongst one another, are still being played out today in pubs and clubs across the country, and it is said that you can identify some of the characters in the book, with people that you know. Those working men also blame foreigners for most of their misfortunes in life, rather than the political system, but they vent their spleen on French onion sellers.

There's no doubt that the books ideological hero, the socialist Frank Owen, is Robert Tressell. It's also clear that Owen is largely contemptuous about many of his work mates and this is reflected in the title of the book and the name of the town. He basically thinks they're mugs and he's right.

A cloth cap Tory like Lee Anderson, of Reform UK, could have fallen straight out of the pages of the Ragged Trousered Philanthropist and so could many of the constituents of Clacton-on-Sea - one of the most socially deprived parts of England - who voted for the grifter Nigel Farage and Reform UK, who want to slash state benefits that many of his constituents rely on.

People often say that the book should be compulsory reading in British schools, but it's unlikely that the book will ever be put on the school curriculum because of its socialist content. I think two other books that should be on the curriculum for British schools is "News from Nowhere' by William Morris and 'Candide' by Voltaire. 

Reynolds refuses to rule out UK state pensioners paying income tax in October budget.

 

Jonathan Reynolds

The Labour MP, Jonathan Reynolds, voted to remove the winter fuel allowance for 14,270 local pensioners in his constituency of Stalybridge & Hyde. A staunch ally of the disgraced former Labour minister, Peter Mandelson, Reynolds defended Labour MPs taking 'freebies' from wealthy individuals like Lord Waheed Alli, arguing that freebies weren't a perk of the job but were an essential part of the job of being an MP in Parliament.

It was reported in the press that Lord Waheed Alli had been buying clothing for the Prime Ministers' wife, Lady Victoria Sponger. It was also reported that Angela Rayner and her 'soul mate' and lover, Sam Tarry, had stayed buckshee in a Manhattan penthouse owned by Lord Alli. Rayner also voted to means-test the winter fuel allowance. Rayner said that Lord Alli asked for nothing in return and got nothing in return. Reynolds served as a business minister in the government of Sir Keir Starmeroid, who when in opposition, had pledged to clean up British politics.

The former Chancellor, Rachel freeze Reeves, who took the winter fuel allowance off 10 million UK pensioners to save £5bn, did say publicly that people who had only the UK state pension, would not be expected to pay income tax even if their state pension exceeded the lower income tax threshold.

British pensioners do turn out and vote, but they don't generally vote for political parties that stuff them. Labour had to do a partial U-turn on the winter fuel allowance and reinstated it, after Labour lost councils and council seats to Reform UK. From the moment that Labour removed the winter fuel allowance, it was all downhill for Sir Keir Starmeroid. He never really recovered from this serious blunder. 

Is Lucy Letby a victim of a miscarriage of justice?

 

Most of us weren't at the trial of Lucy Letby so we haven't heard all the evidence that was presented at the trial. The trial lasted 10 months and she had legal representation. At the end of the trial the jury found her guilty of killing babies. If she did kill the babies, I don't think any motive has been established for why she did so.

I spent a number of years in an hospital action group and I learned a great deal about how hospital management connives, manipulate, intimidate, to cover things up to protect the hospital and their own jobs.

The Kennedy Breast Care Review that was carried out by Professor Sir Ian Kennedy, was set up to investigate the breast and vascular surgeon Ian Paterson, who worked at Solihull Hospital. Paterson was given a 20-year jail sentence in 2017, after being convicted of 17 counts of wounding with intent and 3 counts of unlawful wounding. In his report, Professor Kennedy wrote:

 "In reading this Review, you will see and recognise themes which have figured in a number of reports on the NHS over the years. Indeed, it has been said more than once, that, as regards reviews of the NHS, the place may be different, the date may be different, the details may be different, but the underlying issues are all too familiar. They include challenges in managing difficult and powerful staff, difficulties in raising concerns, inter-professional animosities, dysfunctional organisation, failures of communication, lack of openness, a particular style of leadership, lack of engagement by the Board in the quality and safety of care."

What Professor Kennedy found was that medical staff at Solihull Hospital were very wary of raising concerns about other medical colleagues which one described as "raising his head above the parapet." The Hospital Trust was trying to become a Foundation Trust and they didn't want any concerns about Ian Paterson to negatively impact. The Review found that senior managers at Solihull were in thrall to confidentiality and found refuge in it as a way of managing an increasingly difficult problem, keeping control of it and containing it. Professor Kennedy wrote that one of the major indictments of management in the NHS, was that it is inward looking, over defensive, and prone to destroy by a variety of means, those who suggest that the emperor has no clothes. "This is not unique to this Review. It is a blight on the NHS and one of the principal areas where lessons must be learned."

There are similarities with the way in which the Lucy Letby case was handled by the Countess of Chester Hospital and the deaths of babies at Bristol Royal Infirmary, who died after botched open heart surgery by incompetent surgeons. There's a pattern of trying to cover hospital failings up, intimidating whistle-blowers, and kicking things into the long grass. It's possible that there may have been other reasons why these babies in the Lucy Letby case died, and I understand that her defence team are trying to establish that and prove that Letby is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. 

Marshal Ney.

 

It was said of Napoleon's Grande Armee, that every soldier carried a Field Marshals baton in is knapsack.

Marshal Michel Ney was the son of a cooper from the Saar, who had married one of Marie Antoinette's chambermaids. Many of Napoleon's marshals were of working-class origin and had risen through the ranks. Ney was to gain a reputation for being insanely brave. Napoleon said of Ney that he "was good for a command of ten thousand men, but beyond that he was out of his depth."

Napoleon felt that Ney had betrayed him at Fontainebleau in April 1814. He told Gourgaud that "Ney got no more than he deserved. I regret him because he was inestimable on a field of battle, but was too hot-headed and too stupid to succeed in anything but a fight."

The Prussians and Bourbons wanted to execute Napoleon but he always seems to have been treated leniently, having been exiled first to Elba and then to St. Helena by the British and the Duke of Wellington. The Duke seems to have regarded Napoleon as a military genius but also thought him a Corsican upstart. Napoleon called Wellington a Sepoy General because he'd served in India. In his will, Napoleon left a bequest of 100,000 francs to Cantillon, Wellington's would-be assassin, who he said, "had as much right to kill that oligarch as the latter had to send me to die on the rock of St. Helena."

John Wroe's virgins.

 

I have walked through the Moravian Settlement in Droylsden many a time. The Moravians also had a community in Dukinfield.

Religious dissenters came to this area of East Manchester, because it was known for religious toleration. Another dissenting faction, were the Christian Israelites or 'Joanna's' who were led by Joanna Southcott, a prophetess from Devon and locally, by the charlatan, John Wroe, from Bradford, who travelled about on the back of a donkey. Wroe, a hunchback, is said to have circumcised himself in public and had retained a menagerie of young virgins. He publicly claimed that he was commanded by heaven to take seven young virgins to "comfort and cherish" him. He faced trials, beatings, and rejection in various towns due to a public backlash against his behaviour.

Wroe's leadership was marked by severe financial and sexual scandals. He died in Australia in 1863.

UK state benefits are too high says former newspaper editor.

 

Kelvin MacKenzie

The tabloid newspaper hack, Kelvin Mackenzie, talks a lot of horseshit when it comes to Britain's benefit system. He's another one of those social pundits, who thinks that people are living a cushy life in Britain on state benefits and that they need to be cut. He says that in the U. S., nobody talks about state benefits because they're that low, so people are incentivized to work. 

If you're receiving Universal Credit (UC), and are over 25, you will currently receive about £98 a week. Try living on £98 a week in Britain today. Nearly 40%, of people who claim UC, are in work. They claim UC because their wages are so low that they need to be topped by UC payments. Others who claim UC may have caring responsibilities. If you claim UC because your unemployed, you have to be available for work and demonstrate that you are actively seeking work. If you fail to do so, you will be sanctioned, and your benefits can be suspended. 

The point about the unemployment benefit system in Britain, was always about insuring you against loss of employment, through no fault of your own. It wasn't designed for people to live a life of dignified otiosity at the public's expense. That only applies to the British Royal Family. If you gave up your job without just cause or lost it through gross misconduct, you didn't get unemployment benefit. There is also a benefit cap. 

America is one of the most inegalitarian countries in the world. In a speech that he made to a liberal funding event, Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island, yelled: "I don't need Bush's tax cut! I have never worked a fucking day in my life." The average income for a black American is 61% less per year than the average white income. That is the same percentage difference as it was in 1880. Black women are four times more likely than white women to die while giving birth. Black levels of unemployment have been roughly twice those of whites since 1954. African Americans have been on the lowest rung of the economic ladder since the day they were beaten and dragged to the country in chains. 

In his book 'Capital in the 21st Century', the economist Thomas Picketty, says the average income of the parents of Harvard students is $450,000 dollars which corresponds to the average income of the top 2% of the U.S. income hierarchy. He adds, "Such findings do not seem compatible with the idea of selection by merit." In the U.S. parents in the top 1% income level are overrepresented in elite colleges.

Ideology and Nazism.

 

Hitler and the Nazis may well have appropriated both the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Bible to justify their horrors, but I don't think that you can blame either Nietzsche or Christianity for what Hitler did. 

Many German Jehovah's Witnesses were executed for refusing to serve in the German army or finished up in concentration camps, and they were Christians. Not all Roman Catholics colluded with the Nazis. 

Nietzsche was well aware of the connection between demagoguery and stupidity. He viewed political parties with deep skepticism, arguing that they rely on manipulation, destroy independent thinking, and reduce complex ideas into simplistic dogma. To appeal to the crowd, he said that political parties are forced to "transform their principles into great frescoes of stupidity." No ideology is wholly absorbed by its adherents. It breaks down in practice in a thousand different ways under the criticism of impulse and of experience. 

The Russia writer Fyodor Dostoevsky seems to have believed that any plan that was aimed at changing or perfecting human nature, was likely to end in failure because man's main defect was his chronic perversity. He thought that man's desires were not reasonable and that he often acted contrary to his own interest and common sense, but that is what made him human.

Britain's gun laws.

 

How do gun deaths in Britain compare with deaths arising from industrial accidents or deaths on the road or knife crime, or street violence? They pale into insignificance, even though there are many people who own legal firearms in Britain.

You have more chance of being killed crossing the road in Britain than you have being shot by a gun. So why are the police being so alarmist? Basically, because the police and the government don't like the hoi polloi having access to firearms. The constant tightening up of gun laws in Britain has more to do with social class than it has to do with preventing gun deaths or any war against people living in the countryside.

There's a presumption in Britain that hunting and shooting should be the preserve of aristocrats, wealthy landowners and the green welly brigade. Britain already has the strictest and most complicated gun laws in the world. It's not easy to own a legal firearm in Britain and it shouldn't be easy.

Unless you are a member of a gun club, you will have no chance of getting a Section 1 Firearms Certificate. You have to show good reason for wanting a gun and all gun clubs run section 21 police checks if you apply to be a member. If you have served a 3 year or more term of imprisonment, you are prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm for life. This also applies to suspended sentences. If you have served less than 3 years in prison, you are prohibited from owning or possessing a gun for five years after leaving prison. If you lie when 

Blue Labour - left wing economics missing in action?

 

Blue Labour – left wing economics missing in action?

(Andrew Wallace, 30/08/2026)

In so far as the Blair and Brown governments (1997-2010) attempted to define their political ideas, they attempted a syncretic embrace of market liberal economics and social progressivism. This rightist turn on economics would arguably be compensated in the non-economic realm of cultural liberalism and the meritocratic elevation of equality of opportunity and the proscription of discriminations in regard to race, sex, gender, sexuality and disability. Anthony Giddens (Blair’s in-house sociologist) heralded the new syncretic era in his books Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way (1998). Arguably it was Blair’s ‘modernising’ rightism that provided the accelerant for the ‘new left’ recourse to identity politics, if only as a sop to placate left wing critics and maintain the performative vacuity of faux progressive radicalism. Thatcherism with enhanced LGTB rights and diversity quotas would inevitably irritate an older cadre of paleo-leftists who preferred the material certitudes of class politics over the distractions of intersectionality.

Blue Labour

The Blue Labour campaign group emerged during the fag end of Brown’s government as a riposte to Giddens’s twin social and economic liberalisms. Founded by academic Maurice Glasman, Blue Labour attempted to promote what it took as the hitherto unrealised sweet spot of British politics, with a settlement that was both economically left wing and aligned to cultural conservatism. As critics of globalisation and market fundamentalism Blue Labour came with intimations of protectionism and sympathy for Brexit. This played out in public as a conspicuous rupture with New Labour (Wintour, 2011). Yet for all disavowals between the respective camps, Glasman aligned with the right-wing factionalists of Labour Together under the direction of Mandelson protégé Morgan McSweeney and future Chief of Staff to Starmer.

Glasman presents a thin-gruelled communitarian critique of the post-war Keynesian welfare state. The top-down statism of old is castigated for its bureaucratic inefficiencies and remoteness from the communities it was ostensibly designed to serve. Whilst there is undoubtedly more than a kernel of truth here there is also a danger such views can also be easily co-opted into a Hayekian narrative of old-fashioned resilience and personal responsibilities (Cooke, 2025). Glasman compounds his belligerence with a generous helping of invective (‘bed wetters’ and ‘lanyard classes’) directed at those Labour rebel MPs with the temerity to contest controversial welfare cuts targeted at disabled claimants (Newman, 2025, Channel 4 news).

Matt Goodwin, the former academic and analysist of national populism also provided an ongoing commentary in the last decade which provided ballast to the Blue Labour narrative. As a persistent critic of Thatcherism he championed the realisation of “what he has long prophesised as the “great realignment” — the potent combination of social conservatism with economic interventionism.” (Rubenstein, 2026). Goodwin repeatedly stressed his anti-Thatcherite worldview:

“He also once described his party’s (Reform) economic plans as an “utterly toxic combination”, explaining that he “cannot stress enough how UNPOPULAR slashing taxes and cutting spending on public services is” in a post on LinkedIn three years ago.” (Devlin, 2026)

Now that Goodwin has formally boarded the Reform UK flotilla his previous support for economic intervention has been replaced by free market boilerplate axioms of low taxation and deregulation and a corresponding populist anti-welfarism (Goodwin, 2025). This is in keeping with the idea that much of the supposed post-Brexit postliberal realignment is fictitious. It is merely the latest re-iteration of neoliberal normalcy with a pivot into cultural protectionism and amelioration of concerns with the sustainability of mass migration.

Cooke, R (2025) ‘Maurice Glasman: Labour’s trump card’

Available at: https://observer.co.uk/news/politics/article/labours-trump-card

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Devlin, K (2026) ‘Reform by-election candidate said it was ‘insane’ to jail man who said ‘burn asylum hotels’ ’

Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reform-matt-goodwin-nigel-farage-election-b2920781.html

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Giddens, A (1994) Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics. Cambridge. Polity Press

Giddens, A (1998) The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Polity

Goodwin, M (2025) ‘The hard working majority are seen by Labour as second class citizens’

Available at: https://www.gbnews.com/opinion/matthew-goodwin-hard-working-labour-second-class-citizens

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Newman, C (2025) ‘ “Bed wetting MPs” protecting benefits for “lanyard class” ’

Available at: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19SoeTLm7F/

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Rubenstein, S (2026) ‘Matt Goodwin’s road to Reform Politics is just as sordid as academia’

Available at: https://unherd.com/2026/02/matt-goodwins-road-to-reform/

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Wikipedia (2026) Blue Labour

Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Labour

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Wintour, P (2011) ‘Peter Mandelson lambasts 'anti–immigrant, Europhobic' Blue Labour’

Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jul/26/lord-mandelson-blue-labour-edl

(Accessed 31 August 2026)

Jury acquits Tony Greenstein in terrorism trial.

 

The trial of the pro-Palestine activist, Tony Greenstein, for expressing his opinions on social media, is not unique. There are in excess of over 10,000 people a year being arrested or questioned by the British police for comments that they have made on social media. Some of these have received lengthy prison sentences.

 Sir Keir Starmer, the former UK Labour Prime Minister, told the Trump administration when he was in America, that Britain was proud of its record on free speech. Tony Greenstein was charged under the Terrorism Act and faced up to 14 years’ imprisonment for posting three Tweets and we're led to believe that we have freedom of speech in the UK.

 I'm not surprised the jury took the decision to acquit him. Tony Greenstein denied being a supporter of Hamas and denied inviting support for Hamas, but he was charged and tried for inviting support for a prescribed organisation. He also says that many of the posts on his blog substantiate this, but the Judge wouldn't allow this to be used in evidence, for the defence. The defence asked the judge if she intended to "micro-manage" the whole trial when she wanted to know what questions the defence were going to ask police witnesses. They also accused Sussex police of redacting much of what Tony Greenstein had said in an interview. The country is fast becoming a police state. 

Is immigration causing an housing crisis?

 

In parts of Greater Manchester like Tameside, Serco are offering landlords in the private sector up to three times the going rental market rate, to offer housing to asylum seekers, on five-year contracts. Serco recently acquired seven properties on Fairfield Road, Droylsden, which they turned into Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs), to house asylum seekers. For many private landlords and Serco, it is more financially lucrative these days to house asylum seekers than local indigenous people.

The housing crisis in Britain has more to do with government policy than with illegal immigrants. It comes down to the mismatch between supply and demand. Immigrants are a handy card to play when politicians are trying to deflect attention from their own failings. In the last 20 years the population of the UK has risen by 9 million, largely due to immigration and housing supply has not kept up. Margaret Thatcher virtually put an end to councils building new housing in the 1980s. She believed that the private sector would step in to fill the gap, but that didn't happen. The number of houses built by councils slumped from 100,000 a year to almost nothing. Her Right to Buy scheme took a lot of council housing out of the system.

The housing charity Shelter, say the number of new social rent homes built annually has fallen by 64% the past 15 years. In 20% of council areas in England, not one social home has been built in the last 20 years. More than 1.3 million households in Britain are waiting for social housing. British house builders operate like cartels by hoarding land (ransom plots/land banks) and by constricting the supply of housing, to drive up housing prices and profits. Housebuilding in Britain has become a lucrative cash cow for builders. Rents in the private sector are astronomical and house prices have rocketed. 

Weathfareism: socialism for the rich and the free market for the rest of us.

 

Sir Jim Ratcliffe

During the manmade financial crisis, during 2008 to 2012, the Bank of England simply created £445 billion in digital money to bail out the banks by buying assets from pension funds and banks. This was called Quantitative Easing (QE). It was supposed to stimulate the economy, but it was a scam for the wealthy. It inflated share prices and those with assets got richer, but the asset poor, did not.

This was paid for by imposing austerity. Budgets for public services were slashed; a public sector pay cap was imposed and welfare benefits were cut or axed. At the same time, capital gains tax and inheritance tax were cut and corporations were given tax breaks.

Based on reports, companies owned by the billionaire tax exile, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, primarily INEOS, have received over £190 million in direct UK government grants and subsidies between 2020 and late 2025, alongside hundreds of millions in financial guarantees. Ratcliffe is estimated to be worth £17bn and while he takes handouts from the British taxpayer, he also wants to slash welfare spending. It's socialism and handouts for the rich and austerity and the free market for the rest of us.

NHS Hospital Cover Ups.

 

Dr Stephen Bolsin

Historically, there have been a number of doctors and nurses who have been killers, but I wouldn't tar them all with same brush. Many of them do their best for their patients. It was a Hyde GP who had strong suspicions about Dr Harold Shipman and she made her views known to the authorities.

For a number of years, I was involved in an hospital action group and I learned a lot about how hospital management tries to cover things up, or spin their way out of things. My local hospital had a high mortality rate, and the hospital tried to dismiss this as something called the "Shipman Effect." What they meant by this, is that many care homes were reluctant to have elderly residents die in their care homes, because they didn't want to come under suspicion, like Harold Shipman. Therefore, they sent them to hospital to die.  Whether this was true or not is a moot point, but it was used as an excuse to explain the high death rate at the hospital and some people fell for it. It was whitewash by the bucketful and excuses on tap. Staff at the hospital were also afraid to speak out or identify hazards because they feared they would lose their jobs. NHS hospitals are well known for blacklisting and excluding people who rock the boat.

I remember the case of the anaesthetist Dr Stephen Bolsin, who turned whistle-blower. He was responsible for exposing the scandal of the babies who had died at the  Bristol Royal Infirmary  after open heart surgery by incompetent surgeons. It was said that the babies had been “slaughtered on the altar of surgical pride.” Dr Bolson said that he couldn't bear putting children to sleep knowing that they were likely to die in the operating theatre because of incompetent surgeons. He eventually left Bristol and tried to get other work within another NHS hospital.

At one interview, a panel member actually told him that she thought that he'd never work again within the NHS. He finished up emigrating to Australia. When he was asked at one interview for an hospital job why he had left England and was seeking to work in an Australian hospital, he told them about his experiences at Bristol. After listening to him, the chair of the panel told him that she thought he was just the right kind of person that they were looking for.

Reform UK to rob disabled of their disability benefits.

 

Robert Jenrick & Richard Tice - Reform UK

There are around 20,488 people receiving Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in Tameside. Across Greater Manchester, there are roughly 235,000 active PIP claimants. Many of these now stand to lose their PIP if Reform UK form a government at the next general election.

Don't believe Reform UK's bullshit that they are just targeting welfare spending on illegal migrants. This is all a smokescreen. It stands to reason that if Reform UK wants to cut welfare spending by £50bm, then this is going to affect a lot more people than illegal migrants.

In Nigel Farage's constituency of Clacton, 10,440 of his constituents receive PIP. In Robert Jenrick's constituency of Newark, 6,010 of his constituents receive PIP. Research suggests that in Lee Anderson's constituency of Ashfield, 13.3% of the working age population in Ashfield, are receiving PIP payments or LWCRA benefits. In Kirklees, in West Yorkshire, which is led by Reform UK, 32,000 people are receiving PIP. In all these areas many of these people receiving PIP, will have voted for Reform UK, who have just repaid them, by kicking them in the arse.

Many of the people who receive PIP are in work. Almost 40% of people claiming Universal Credit, are also in work or have caring responsibilities. Those in work, claim UC to top up their low pay.

There's something positively disgusting about former Tory multimillionaires and spivs, like Nigel Farage and Richard Tice, wanting to rob the disabled of their disability benefits. 

NO COVER UP of union collusion in blacklisting - blacklisted workers.

 

Blacklisted workers have voiced their concerns about a potential 'cover up' of union involvement in blacklisting. The Blacklist Support Group issued a statement on its facebook page in which the justice campaign for blacklisted union members from the construction industry called for "union officials involved in blacklisting union members to be publicly named and shamed - irrespective of who wins the UNITE the union General Secretary election". 

The statement is a response to the current flood of inquiries about the ongoing Independent Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry. The KC led investigation was set up by Sharon Graham in 2021 to investigate allegations of union officials colluding with major employers to blacklist union members. The inquiry was set up after more than a decade of campaigning by union members who were blacklisted by the UK’s major construction employers - and who read the names of some union officials recorded as the source of the information on their blacklist files. 

The Inquiry lawyers - Nick Randall KC, John Townsend and Paul Heron - have taken oral evidence, statements and collated documentary evidence from over 100 witnesses. The inquiry has also carried out a forensic search of UNITE (and its predecessor unions) electronic databases. In 2025, Nick Randall spoke at UNITE Policy conference, telling delegates that:

"we have been chosen for our independence, and we have had absolutely no interference whatsoever from the union... based on the terms of reference set out by the union, we are looking at whether past or present officers or officials of the union UNITE, colluded in blacklisting in the construction industry... not limited only to obvious direct collusion but also to the suppression of information about the operation of such blacklists by union officials"

Randall ended by telling the conference that he was confident that the report would be finished within a few months. It is now a whole year since that statement. Full speech: https://youtu.be/tVoLNrCw7T8?si=oubrcShDtmOE7pZm. 

We have been told that the report should be finished soon, but further information has come to light which means that Randall’s hopeful deadline was not achievable. The inquiry assures us that they are making every effort to resolve the issues arising from that information as soon as possible, but have emphasized that, given its importance, they must investigate this line of inquiry prior to completing the report. 

As part of the inquiry, an 'Oversight Committee' was established compromising of Dave Smith, Frank Morris and Tony Seaman (all of whom have been blacklisted for their union activities).  The purpose of the oversight committee was to ensure that the inquiry remained independent from the union, and to assist the inquiry lawyers where necessary, such as identifying potential witnesses. The oversight committee added the following comments to the BSG statement:

 "For the past five years we have refrained from making public comments about the collusion inquiry. This was at the direct request of the lawyers who felt any remarks by us could hamper their ongoing investigations. Keeping quiet about the inquiry has not come easy to us. We have repeatedly voiced our frustrations to the lawyers in private - when our natural inclination has been to shout our concerns to the rooftops - but we have kept faith in the lawyers' honesty and professionalism. However, in the past few weeks’ rumours have been circulating on social media that demand a definitive statement from the Oversight Committee and the Blacklist Support Group."

We understand that the evidence the inquiry has received is not limited to entries on the Economic League and Consulting Association blacklists, but also includes documentary evidence and witness testimony of unacceptable practices that existed within the construction industry over decades. When the inquiry completes its report, if substantial evidence exists that union officers and some union officials colluded in blacklisting their own members, practices that should have no place in any independent democratic trade union, we would expect that any union member with the best interests of trade unionism at heart will want to expose any such wrongdoing or corruption. 

We are therefore calling on all candidates in the UNITE general secretary election, and all those actively campaigning for them, to unconditionally pledge to publish the Independent Blacklisting Collusion Inquiry report in full, and where there is robust evidence of wrongdoing, those union officers or officials should be named and shamed. The findings and recommendations should be made public and acted on by the union: so that the stain of union collusion in blacklisting can be finally wiped clean. 

We are not calling for a witch hunt - where there is no evidence of wrongdoing, officials should be exonerated and be able to hold their heads high. We should all strive for natural justice - but blacklisted workers have been waiting too long for justice".

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 

"Wolves in White Coats: Can you trust the doctor?

 

Can you trust the doctor? I read the book 'Human Guinea Pigs', by Doctor Maurice Pappworth, many years ago. First published in 1967, the book revealed how unsuspecting patients of the "hospital class" in Britain, were being used as “guinea pigs" in medical experiments by hospital doctors, often at British teaching hospitals, during the 1960s. 

The book described how some hospital doctors were treating their patients with as much respect as laboratory rats, and we're sometimes, killing them in the process. The experiments were never carried out on private patients in Britain, and were often unnecessary, for the treatment of their disease. They were sacrificed to science by "wolves in white coats", said one reviewer. 

Pappworth was considered a "pestilential nuisance" by many of his colleagues within the medical profession. When it became known that he was going to publish his findings, he was subject to threats and intimidation from strangers, in an attempt to get him to abandon the project. He was accused of doing a great disservice to his profession and of undermining the faith and trust, that lay people have in their doctor. He was repeatedly blackballed from the routine award of a fellowship from the Royal College of Physicians and was told at one interview for a consultancy post, that "no Jew could ever be a gentleman." 

Maurice Pappworth was a whistleblower before the term was ever invented. The incidents that Maurice Pappworth described in his book ranged over more than 20 years, but in the main, what had occurred within the last 10 years, within Britain and America. He wrote:

 "It must be emphasized that, whilst the vast majority of patients in hospitals are not subjected to experimentation, the number who are, is considerable, although exact figures cannot be known." 

Medical experiments were not just carried out in hospitals, but we're also carried out in prisons, orphanages and psychiatric centres, too. Pappworth had been told by medical students how they were coerced into finding 'volunteers' for their bosses research projects and that such patients often believed the research was part of their treatment, and were rarely told what was involved. 

Delving into medical journals, Pappworth found that abuses were happening on a shocking scale, involving thousands of victims. He wrote letters of protest to medical journals, but few were published. Human Guinea Pigs, catalogued more than 200 examples of abusive research carried out in the U.K. and U.S. Pappworth named names and many publisher's backed off from publishing the book. Among those he named, no doctor or hospital ever sued him. 

Doctors injected unsuspecting people with malaria parasites, meningitis bacteria, live polio virus and live cancer cells. More than 40 people with diabetes, including children, had their insulin withheld so they became comatose, after which samples of their liver and kidney, were taken for analysis. 

Pappworth discovered that U.S. hospitals were carrying out experiments for the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory, to inject plutonium into people with cancer, to find out what was a "safe" dose of radiation for those working on nuclear bombs. 

Two four-month-old hydrocephalic infants were used to investigate the safety of giving ammonium chloride intravenously in large amounts of children. In 1962, a new antibiotic designed to treat acne vulgaris (pimples), was investigated. The antibiotics was given to 50 people with acne who were either juvenile delinquents or mental defectives. After oral administration of the drug, for two weeks, fifty percent of the children, were found to have sustained liver damage. 

 An anonymous author, with a sense of wit, wrote to the British Medical Journal saying: 

"Juvenile delinquency in the USA, seems to carry with it hazards not previously suspected. The pimpled gangster of today may find himself the bilious guinea pig of tomorrow. It seems a little hard, perhaps, for a boy who has spent his formative years learning how to dodge flick knives, to fall victim to intercostal perforation by a liver puncture needle." 

In January 1963, 'Pertinax' wrote in the British Medical Journal: "One of the nicest American scientists I know, was heard to say, 'Criminals in our penitentiaries are fine experimental material - and much cheaper than chimpanzees! I hope the chimpanzees don't come to hear of this'."

In 1944, in a Chicago prison and a New Jersey reformatory, convict volunteers were infected with malaria to try a new cure. On 12 July 1963, 'Time' magazine wrote that volunteers at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus, had been injected with live cancer cells. None of them developed cancer. At Cook County Jail in Chicago, prison volunteers were injected with blood from patients who had leukaemia. None of those contracted the disease either. At the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, the medical director had made deals with pharmaceutical companies to test out new drugs on prisoners. 

In his book, Maurice Pappworth pulled no punches, comparing the situation to the foul work that had been carried out by doctors in the Nazi concentration camps. The book led to a rethinking about ethical standards in medicine. But this was an era, when British doctors could seemingly do no wrong. Pappworth noted that many doctors had near contempt for both their patients and the notion of consent. One researcher told him that it was "useless to explain to a charwoman what was going to be done, because she couldn't possibly understand." 

The world needs more whistleblowers like Maurice Pappworth, but they won't be thanked. It was only in 1993, 57 years after he qualified for it, and a year before he died, aged 83, that Pappworth was sufficiently forgiven to be made a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

Bev gets elected Greater Manchester mayor on a 25% turnout.

 

There were over 2 million people eligible to vote in the Greater Manchester (2026) Mayoral Elections and just over 500,000 bothered to do so. The turnout was just over 25%. This was the lowest turnout since 2017. 

Can Bev Craig really say that she got a ringing endorsement from the voters of Greater Manchester or that she's got any mandate? If she intends to be the mayor for everyone, then she needs to escape from the LGBT bubble that she's in. She must look further than canal street and widen her horizons. 

Last December, two homeless men, Michael Heaton and Anthony Horn, were found frozen to death on the streets of Manchester. One was found dead on a car park and the other under a bridge next to the canal. Despite these appalling deaths, Bev, has been talking about an exclusive housing project for the LGBT community and how Labour are turning Manchester into a gender-neutral world. This is all nonsense upon stilts - trendy left politics. Affordable rented housing should be allocated on the basis of need. Being a 'gay' person shouldn't give you a priority for housing in Greater Manchester. The vast majority of people who live in Greater Manchester are not homosexuals. Eradicating homelessness, low pay and child poverty, is what Bev Craig needs to focus on.

Piccadilly Gardens is now called Crackadilly, because of the drug users who hang around the place. There's a ghastly Victorian underclass that inhabits the place. Like Balzac's Second Empire Paris, wealth and poverty sit cheek by jowl in Labour controlled Manchester, now known as Dubai on Deansgate. Bev Craig needs to clean the place up so decent people can use it. I can remember a time when people sat in deckchairs in Piccadilly Gardens.

Rosa Luxembourg & the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

Louis Auguste Blanqui

It was the nominal President of the Paris Commune, Auguste Blanqui, who coined the term the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to mean rule on behalf of the common people. But most of the Communards were not socialists. 

The Paris Commune of 1871, was Marx's main model for popular self-government, but it only lasted three months until it was suppressed by the regular French army. Lenin used phrases like "all cooks shall govern" and "all power to the Soviets" but I don't think that he believed a word of it. He wasn't even in favour of workers' control. 

Rosa Luxembourg warned Lenin that revolution can move swiftly from the dictatorship of a class to the dictatorship of a party, to be followed by the dictatorship of a committee of the party and eventually by the rule of a single man who will soon enough dispense with that committee. Her Cassandra like prediction and warning, is exactly what occurred in Soviet Russia. Before Rosa Luxembourg, the Russian socialist Alexander Herzen, had said that communism was just Russian autocracy turned upside down. 

The Marxist German SDP preached international working-class solidarity but when war broke out in 1914, they supported the war and became jingoistic. The Marxist, Karl Liebknecht, was the only member of the Reichstag to vote against Germany's participation in the war and he campaigned against the war. As a punishment, he was sent to the front, despite his immunity as a member of parliament.