Britain's welfare state.

 

I don't think any of us alive today in Britain, have any real sense of how insecure life was for many people in Britain before the introduction of the welfare state. People could literally starve to death. 

In Mrs Gaskell's book Mary Barton, which is set in Manchester, there are references to people taking opium to alleviate stomach pains brought on by a lack of food. In the novel 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' by Charles Dickens, an old woman who smokes opium, says it "takes away the hunger as well as wittles." I believe that the English opium eater Thomas de Quincy first started taking opium to quell hunger pains. 

In his book 'The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' published in 1776, Adam Smith describes how three women died from starvation in 1763, in an empty house in Stonecutter Street, London. 

Although we associate the welfare state with William Beveridge, it was the Liberal governments of Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George that laid the foundations of the modern British welfare state. One early measure was the introduction of free school meals for school children in 1906 which many local councils objected to because they believed that it was the responsibility of parents to feed their own children and not the state. Pensions were introduced in 1908 and you qualified for pension at the age of 70. Average adult life expectancy in Britain in 1908, was 48. 

The workhouse ended with the introduction of Beveridge's welfare reforms which launched the NHS and promised to slay five giants - WANT, DISEASE, IGNORANCE, SQUALOR and IDLENESS.

Why are young university graduates in Britain finishing up on state benefits?

 

Theo dal Pozzo

A 23-year-old British man with a first-class postgraduate degree in computer science, who speaks four languages - English, Portuguese, French and Spanish, has been rejected by 500 British employers and is now on Universal Credit. 

Theo dal Pozzo, 23, completed a first-class postgraduate degree in computer science, specialising in machine learning from the University of Exeter in 2024. Since graduating, Theo, has found himself unemployed and on state benefits. He thinks that AI screening of job applications and his lack of work experience might be acting as a barrier to him getting a job. 

The Labour government of Keir Starmer, say that they're concerned about the number of young British people who are not in employment, education or training (NEETs), and are living on state benefits. 

In many countries in the west, including America, having an education and being highly qualified, has usually led to better jobs and better remuneration, but that seems to be in reverse in Britain. I know of very highly qualified people who have found it almost impossible to get a decent job in Britain and one man once told me, that he had been advised by his DWP Jobcentre adviser, not to disclose, that he had a university degree, because it might scare off potential employers. 

The problem that young people like Theo dal Pozzo face, is that the longer they're unemployed, the less attractive and marketable they become to potential employers. As the economist Richard Layard said, they become like "withering flowers." 

Scapegoating and scaremongering the malady of politicians & newspaper men.

 

The Scapegoat - William Holman Hunt

In Britain some people seem to excel at two things; scaremongering and scapegoating. It's a malady that is particularly acute among politicians and newspaper men. I'm expecting that very shortly, Keir Starmer, will impose a lockdown over meningitis, probably just before the May local elections. 

Although there have been about 35 reported cases of meningitis B, it's already being described as an "outbreak horror. " Some people have even tried to blame the outbreak on illegal migrants. The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has said that on average there are about 350 cases of meningitis in Britain each year. The disease does not spread like measles or covid but is passed on by close contact like kissing, sharing vapes or drinks, or living in a household with an infected person.

I watched GB News the other night, the so-called 'People's Channel'. The presenter was Patrick Christys. GB News isn't really a news channel it's a platform for Reform UK and conspiracy theorists. One of the people on the panel actually said that the reason why many people in Britain can't get to see a dentist, is because all the dental appointments are being taken by illegal migrants. 

Not long ago, I tried to register as an NHS patient with a local dentist. They told me that they would only take me on as a private patient even though the dental practice displayed an NHS sign outside. When I asked why they weren't taking on NHS dental patients, they didn't say it was because migrants and refugees had taken all the NHS appointments. they said we can't guarantee that we will get paid if we administer dental treatment to NHS patients because only so much money, is allocated for the treatment of NHS dental patients.  

The problem isn't migrants it's government policy. Dental services are no longer a part of the NHS. You can get a sex change on the NHS, but if you've got toothache, God help you.

The anarchist bus conductor, Arthur Moyse.

 

Arthur Moyse

I remember the anarchist, Arthur Moyse very well. He was a great bloke. He wrote a regular column in the anarchist publication Freedom and often drew cartoons that always had a little dog in them, stuck somewhere, in the corner of the cartoon. A London bus conductor, Arthur, was definitely a character and an eccentric. 

In a Guardian obituary to Arthur Moyse, written by David Peers in 2003, Peers writes that "a day out with Arthur was an event." I can certainly agree with that. I can remember a group of us being with Arthur in the Manchester pub, Tommy Ducks, when Arthur had us all in stitches. He told us that he'd once been a member of the Flat Earth Society and had been interviewed by BBC television about his belief in a flat earth. He said shortly before the programme went live; there had been a bit of rehearsal. He said about five minutes before the programme was broadcast, the interviewer suddenly turned to Arthur and said that he'd got one last question. He asked Arthur if he genuinely did believe that the earth was flat and Arthur replied rather abruptly, "of course I fucking do, do you think I'm some kind of nutter." 

Arthur described his time serving in the British army as "registered vandalism" because you could get way with almost anything. You don't seem to get eccentric characters like Arthur Moyse these days. 

Truth is the first casualty of war.

 

Tulsi Gabbard

They say that truth is the first casualty of war. Tulsi Gabbard is the United States Director of National Intelligence. She's in overall charge of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, so she should have an idea about Iran's nuclear weapons capability.

The U.S. intelligence chief, has just told a committee that Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment facilities prior to the Israeli/U.S. bombing of Iran, but she declined to say, if Iran posed an "imminent nuclear threat."

The U.S. bombed Iran last year (2025), and President Trump said the strikes had "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities. A Pentagon assessment found that Iran's nuclear program was likely set back around two years. Trump then said that Iran was within two weeks of having the nuclear bomb so he launched the operation called 'Epic Fury' alongside Israel's campaign called 'Roaring Lion', to eliminate the threat.

Trump says he might continue to bomb Iran just for the fun of it.

 

Donald Trump

What is Keir Starmer's position on the Iran war? Watching Starmer is like watching a stoat jump about or watching a squirrel chase its tail. I think he's said the Israeli/American bombing of Iran is illegal and that America doesn't have any clear war aims in respect of Iran. Yet, American B 52 bombers are flying from RAF Fairford because Starmer has said they can do so for defensive purposes. 

Let's be honest about it. Britain isn't a country; it's a U.S. aircraft carrier. Are B 52 bombers really used for defence purposes? Trump has just told us that he might continue bomb Iran just for the fun of it and B52 bombers, are continuing to arrive at RAF Fairford, to be loaded with bombs. 

We now know that around 170 children were killed at a girls' school in Iran when they were hit by two U S. Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. According to the Financial Times (FT), fragments of the American missiles were found in the debris. The FT report claimed that Iranians don't possess Tomahawk Cruise Missiles. The FT report concluded that the school was probably bombed because of faulty intelligence.

Could Farage's close relationship with Donald Trump, spell disaster for Reform UK?

 

Donald Trump & Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage doesn't seem to be able to cope with the pressure of politics. He stopped attending PM's Question Time in the House of Commons because MPs were taking pot shots at him.

Most people don't really know what Reform UK's policies are but they see Reform UK as tough on immigration and proudly patriotic, because they dress themselves up in the Union Jack flag. Farage is that far up Donald Trump's arse that if he did become the UK Prime Minister, he would turn Britain into the 51st state of America. He seems to spend more time in the U.S. than he does in his constituency of Clacton-on-Sea.

Only recently he was calling for Britain to join in the Israeli/American illegal bombing of Iran and then did a U-turn. He now says that if Britain can't defend a British military base on Cyprus, then it ought to keep out of wars.

Farage has said that Reform UK are prepared to considered any alternative to the NHS and a compulsory American-style insurance scheme in Britain that funds health care. That sounds like an invitation for far more involvement of U.S. private health companies in the delivery of healthcare in Britain.

Why did Muslims in Gorton & Denton vote for a progressive party led by a gay Jew?

 

Green MP - Hannah Spencer

White people in the constituency of Gorton & Denton are not an "ethnic minority" as claimed by the Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin. White people still make up a majority of the population. 

There's a big Muslim/Asian population in the west of the constituency and they do speak and understand English, perfectly well; it's in their interests to do so. In four of the wards in the west of the constituency, those closest to Manchester city centre, around 40 per cent of the constituents are university graduates or university students. 

The Green Party did target the British Asian vote but if support for the Green's was orchestrated by 'family voting' or the 'Biradari' (brotherhood/caste), why did Muslims vote for a progressive party led by a gay Jewish person? I don't think it was down to the influence of George Galloway as Keir Starmer claimed, but probably down to the influence of the university educated young Asian people in the constituency. 

Reform UK are the Alf Garnett’s of British politics. They are an atavistic personality cult centred around their spiv leader, Nigel Farage. Some Reform UK MPs, like Sarah Pochin, talk like white supremacists. Pochin recently complained that there were too many black faces in British advertising and that this made her blood boil.

Parts of Gorton & Denton, are areas of high social deprivation and many people are on state benefits. Many young people feel they've been stuffed and abandoned by the mainstream political system. 

In remembrance of Dave Hallsworth.

 

Dave Hallsworth

I think I first met David Phipps Hallsworth, when I supported a strike at Intex Yarns, in Ashton-under-Lyne, in the early 1970s. In all my years spent in the British trade union movement, I have rarely met a person whose was more dogmatic and less tolerant of other people's opinions, than David Hallsworth. He literally smashed people into the ground.

For Dave, there was only one point of view, and that was his point of view. Yet, he was one of best militants that I have ever known and he wasn't lacking when it came to having guts. That's why I attended a memorial event to Dave Hallsworth at the Palace Hotel on Oxford Road, Manchester, in September 2007. Both Mick Hulme and Frank Furedi of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), spoke at that memorial event which was well attended.

I remember the strike at Laurence Scott Electromotors in 1981. The firm had been acquired by an asset stripper called Arthur Snipe of 'Mining Supplies'. An ex-miner, Snipe, closed the factory and sacked all the workers. This led to the men taking industrial action. Dave told me how he admired the tenacity of Arthur Snipe. One-day Snipe turned up in his Rolls Royce at his firm in Doncaster and run all the picket chairs over. He then stood at the factory gates giving the pickets the V sign.

Dave Hallsworth played a leading role in that strike but he wasn't the shop steward. He told me that shop steward was called by the men the "shop stupid" and every time he stood against him for the job of shop steward, to Dave's dismay, the men always voted for the shop stupid. Dave was a member of the RCP but I wonder what he would make of his former comrades today? Clair Fox became a Baroness. Munira Mirza who used to write for Spiked Online and 'Living Marxism', co-authored the 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto and Brendan O'Neill has just come out in defence of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. I bet Dave Hallsworth is turning in his grave. 

Imperial blowback and WWI.

 

Gertrude Bell - The Queen of the Desert

Britain and France redesigned and redrew the boundaries of the Middle East after the end of WWI in 1918 with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. They basically carved up between themselves what was left of the Ottoman Empire. 

The English half spy and half archaeologist, Gertrude Bell, in her letters described walking through the desert after WWI, tracing the new boundary of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, with her walking stick. Sir Percy Cox fatefully determined that a portion of Iraq, would henceforth, be known as Kuwait. Much later, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, fixed the frontiers of India and Pakistan, to carve out a Pakistani state. All these regions have experienced what George Monbiot calls "imperial blowback." 

At the time of WWI, most British people had no clear idea what they were fighting for on the Western Front in France. Millions were dying to grab a few hundred yards of land. They knew that Britain was fighting the 'Hun' but it was never a war aim of Imperial Germany, to invade Britain. There were calls for the British government to declare what their war aims were in continuing to propagate a war against Imperial Germany. The German Kaiser, wanted to build a railway line from Berlin to Baghdad and paid for the restoration of the tomb of Saladin. He also told the Muslim Arabs that Germany wanted to join a jihad against the infidel. 

After WWI the British invaded Mesopotamia/Iraq, to grab the oil fields and bombed and fought the Arabs. Imperial conquest and grabbing colonies were really what WWI was about.

Is Labour in danger of becoming irrelevant under Keir Starmer?

 

Sir Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer is typically evasive. He can’t shoot straight. What a wimp! Who are "those people" that he constantly refers to who want 'change'. It's such a nebulous term. These are the people that Starmer says he came into politics to help and will always fight for. Starmer is so amorphous that he's the ultimate plasticine man. He can be bent into any shape and bears the imprint of the last man who sat on him. 

The Labour Party was set up by the trade unions to represent the interest of the "working class" but he's afraid to use the term. All this Puritanical Labour Party nonsense about "working hard" and "hard working families" is depressingly Victorian. Most people undertake paid work to live; they don't live to work. People should be leading more fulfilled and diverse lives and not grinding away like some donkey on a treadmill, until they drop dead. Many people are going to lose their jobs to AI and automation and so we ought to be thinking about a post-work society and redistribution. 

When I was a kid in an English primary school in the 1950s and 1960s, the teachers used to talk to us about the "leisure society." We were told that when we grew up a lot of work would be done by machines giving people a lot more time for leisure. Those people who lose their jobs to AI and automation, what is to be done with them? 

The Green Party wants to introduce a citizens Universal Basic Income. This could be paid to people both in and out of work. Labour managerialism has nothing to offer. The Labour Party is well past its sell-by date and is in danger of becoming an irrelevance under Keir Starmer.

Blake & Jerusalem

 

William Blake

If there are three pieces of music that symbolise 'Englishness' for me, they're Elgar's Enigma Variations; Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Jerusalem, the unofficial national anthem of England. The music was composed by Sir Hubert Parry and the words are by William Blake.

The words come from 'Milton: A Poem' by Blake. Blake's lyrics are not meant to convey some kind of sentimental patriotism for England. For Blake, Jerusalem represents an ideal utopian society of Universal love, liberty and spiritual freedom; the antithesis of the 'dark satanic mills' and the restoration of a 'green and pleasant land'.

William Blake viewed the industrial revolution as destroying the English landscape and the human spirit. The 18^th century capitalist, Josiah Wedgewood, spoke of "making such machines of men, that cannot err." That would have appalled William Blake. As Blake wrote: "He who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy. He who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity's sunrise."

Why does Britain have such a big problem solving homelessness?

 

As a country Britain has gone to the dogs. What we see emerging is a kind of Victorian underclass. 

Last December, two men, Michael Heaton, 26, and Anthony Horn, 46, froze to death on the streets of Manchester in a city where the Labour Mayor, Andy Burnham, pledged to eradicate rough sleeping from the streets of Greater Manchester, when he was first elected. 

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I don't remember seeing rough sleepers or people begging in the street. I realise that it takes time to build housing, so why haven't the authorities resorted to building prefabs, to house people or provided some other kind of temporary accommodation? Private rents in Britain are completely out of sync with most people's incomes and there ought to be rent controls. Housing Benefit is also capped. 

The problem of homelessness isn't insoluble if there's the political will to do something about it. But some politicians like the former Conservative Home Secretary, Suella (Cruella) Braverman, would have us believe that homelessness is a lifestyle choice. I never met either Mr Heaton or Mr Horn, but I can't believe that they chose to freeze to death on the streets of Manchester, because it was lifestyle choice. Nor do I believe that if people can't get a job, a GP appointment, or an affordable rented home, it is somehow the fault of migrants. It has more to do with government policy. Some British politicians don't believe that it's the job of the government to provide people with affordable social housing. They think that's the responsibility of the individual to find their own accommodation. 

I am reliably informed that a country like Finland doesn't have a homelessness problem because homeless people are offered shelter and if they have problems with substance misuse, they get help and treatment. 

I remember all the brouhaha about the Bibby Stockholm that was moored at Weymouth naval dockyard to house asylum seekers. We had the ridiculous and farcical situation of homeless English people sleeping rough in doorways in Weymouth, while migrants were being housed. I gather that a number of the asylum seekers were undertaking voluntary work with the local homeless. Why weren't the rough sleepers in Weymouth offered a warm berth on the Bibby Stockholm or hotel accommodation? I was told that many of the rough sleepers in Weymouth, were former ex-servicemen in the British armed forces. 

Some British slum landlords have made millions out of housing asylum seekers and refugees after receiving taxpayers' money from the British government. 

Reform UK are the Alf Garnett's of British politics.

 

Reform UK are the Alf Garnett's of British politics. They're a kind of atavistic personality cult centred around their spiv leader, Nigel Farage. Most British people haven't much of clue what they stand for. They just know that they talk tough on immigration and wrap themselves up in the Union Jack flag. 

Matt Goodwin of Reform UK needs to make his mind up. He says that many people from ethnic minority backgrounds haven't integrated into the British way of life, but even if they do so, people with coloured faces can't be British. That sounds like there ain't no black in the Union Jack. Suella (Cruella) Braverman who is married to a Jew, says the same thing. 

The Reform UK MP, Sarah Pochin, is obsessed with the colour of people's skin. She sounds like a white supremacist. She recently complained that some schools in her constituency won't give her access because they don't want a racist on the school premises. She's also complained that there are far too many black faces being used in British advertising. 

Noam Chomsky & Jeffrey Epstein.

 

Noam Chomsky

Noscitur ex socius. A man is known by the company he keeps and therefore Noam Chomsky, is guilty by association because he knew Jeffrey Epstein. 

Noam Chomsky' wife, Valeria Chomsky, recently issued a public statement (February 2026), expressing deep regret for their association with Jeffrey Epstein. She admitted that she and her husband had attended dinners and had stayed at the properties of Jeffrey Epstein and had used Epstein for advice on financial transfers. She also stated that the couple were completely unaware of Epstein's prior convictions for soliciting sex from a minor in 2008, until his arrest in 2019. The former Prince Andrew, is far from smart, but he knew about Epstein's convictions.

Noam Chomsky, 97, suffered a stroke in 2023 and is no longer capable of defending himself. There are emails that have been disclosed between Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein, that suggest that Chomsky appeared to believe Epstein's version of events, dismissed the accusations as "hysteria" and advised Epstein to ignore the press. If these emails are genuine, it doesn't seem to support the statement that Chomsky was unaware of Epstein's reputation and the allegations that had been made against him. 

Some people would suggest that Chomsky was too smart to be taken in by Epstein and should have known better. What we have to ask ourselves is this. Given Chomsky's reputation, would he have knowingly maintained a relationship with a child sex abuser and for a few nights spent in a Manhattan apartment and a $20,000-dollar linguistic prize, risk a legacy that he had spent 70 years building? Chomsky later told the Wall Street Journal that having served his 2008 sentence, he believed that Epstein "re-enters society under prevailing norms."

Tim Martin's fixation with Brexit.

 

Tim Martin - CEO of J.D. Wetherspoon

Although many British people are now beginning to realise that they were sold a pup with 'Brexit', Tim Martin, the C.E.O. of J D. Wetherspoon, was utterly convinced that the country would be better off if we left the E.U. He seemed to see Brexit as kind of panacea that would cure Britain’s many economic problems.

Before the 2016 referendum, if you were a customer of J.D. Wetherspoon, you got Brexit rammed down your throat, it was even on the beer mats, and Wetherspoon customers were paying for all that. I doubt that the beer baron, who was brought up in New Zealand, writes his own copy, but his name was on it. Understandably, as a wealthy businessman, Tim Martin is more concerned with what is in the interests of his company and its shareholders, than what is in the interest of the country. He's not running a benevolent society or a charity. He's in business to make money. I stopped reading the pub magazine a long time ago, because I got tired of hearing about Brexit. 

Tim Martin says that he wants tax parity with supermarkets when it comes to alcohol pricing, but if prices continue to spiral in Weatherspoon’s as they are doing, the company is going to drive many more of its customers into the supermarkets. It would be a pity if this did happen, because Weatherspoon’s is one of the biggest sellers of hand pumped cask beers in the country and I have never had a bad pint. The cask beers and the discounts early in the week, along with the beer festivals, are what draw many customers into Weatherspoon’s. The pubs are generally warm and there are free refills of tea and coffee along with free Wi-Fi. Another attraction is that there's no music but there is TV. 

A lot of Wetherspoon customers are still far from happy that meals like mixed grills, 8-ounce sirloin steaks and gammon steaks were taken off the menu. They were told this was done to save money. Anything that you can get your teeth into, has now been removed from the menu and replaced with overpriced beef burgers. 

Meritocracy – the meta-narrative of liberalism.

 

By: Andrew Wallace

‘Man’ does not live by bread alone; it seems human nature must draw sustenance from existential motivation that rises above the merely contingent. If pre-modern societies were characterised by metaphysical belief systems and religion, our secular age invokes the virtuous in the overarching meta-narrative of liberalism and the ideas of individual self-realisation. Individualism is held up as the repository of rationalism and the cradle of goodness.

In so far as collectivity is acknowledged as a dimension of human experience in terms of language and culture, these are tacitly conceded for the paradoxical cultivation of individualism. Liberal modernity was pronounced in the shift from ‘ascribed’ to ‘achieved’ status, whereby virtue is held to reside in individual performance rather than conferred by ancestral passage. Of course it has never proved to be the case that we can unproblematically distil merit from inherited advantage, although the allure of ‘meritocracy’ is officially observed in legislation that seeks to proscribe the most egregious prejudices when it comes to employment, access to basic amenities and civil rights. Meritocracy is encoded in the formal observation of equality of opportunity.

But while leftists recognised the importance of advancing formal equality of access before the law, they also understood its limitations by way of how powerful inequalities would continue to reproduce themselves down the generations. If social advancement was now predicated on rational criteria of achievement, then a canny middle class accordingly mentored and distinguished by credentials would still wield considerable cultural capital that puts itself ahead of its working class peers. Attempts to remove or redistribute these advantages would conceivably involve communal child rearing and inheritance taxes, all of which invariably prove politically unappealing and unacceptable with the partial exception of a few fringe bohemian communities.

If Britain envisages itself as a meritocracy it must also account for its tenacious monarchism, a rather incongruous edifice of hereditary. In order to swallow this piece of cognitive dissonance we tell ourselves that walling off a not inconsiderable chunk of heritage from modernity does indeed make sense as a kind of marketable living museum imbued with the collective symbolism of nationhood. This serves as a soothing balm against the rougher edges of secular disenchantment that inevitably present with meritocratic atomism. Hence the more telegenic upcoming members of the royal cult are able to renew their appeal whilst also neatly dovetailing into the prevailing culture of celebrity.

The British ruling class have often put class interests before Britain's strategic interests.

 

The world's wealthy capitalist elite don't really recognise an allegiance to nations as such or national boundaries. What concerns them more is the opportunities for exploitation and to make money. If Labour and manufacturing costs are lower in other parts of the world and people have the right skills and education, they will export jobs overseas. There's also the issue of social-class which I think often overrides national interests.

Conservative decision makers have often let their class prejudices prevail over the strategic interests of Great Britain. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), Britain's official position was one of neutrality, but many conservatives made it clear that they supported General Franco. Britain had a great deal of money invested in Spain and it was believed that a Republican victory might put that investment at risk. But they must have known that if the Francoist nationalist rebels won the war, with the help of German and Italian dictatorships, it was likely to lead to a possible world war with Germany. The Spanish Civil War was really a dress rehearsal for WWII.

Sir Henry Chilton, the British Ambassador to Madrid, was anti-Republican and wanted the coup to succeed. The journalist Henry Buckley, was told by a British diplomat, "the essential thing to remember in the case of Spain is that it is a civil conflict and that it is very necessary that we stand by our class." 'Save Spain', meant defending the interests and privileges of a small Spanish elite. Franco said himself that he was prepared to kill up to half of the Spanish working-class to achieve his goal. He's said to have killed more Spaniards than all the King's of Spain combined.

General Mola, the director of the military coup, advocated terror and annihilation of the organised working class. He declared, "It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery, eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do." That included Freemasons, incorrigible liberals, feminists, freethinkers, trades unionists, socialists, communists and anarchists.

Mandelson steps down from House of Lords and faces police investigation.

 

Peter Mandelson

What does Peter Mandelson stand for or his creation New Labour? He's drawn to wealthy individuals like flies are drawn to shit. Maggie Thatcher said her greatest legacy to the country was Blair and New Labour.

Since leaving government Blair and Mandelson have done nothing but try to line their own pockets. They're in the pockets of big business and the wealthy. Mandelson has now left the Labour Party and says he stepping down from the House of Lords. His close relationship with the paedophile billionaire financier, Jeffrey Epstein, has been exposed in a series of emails released by the White House. He also faces a possible police investigation for public misuse of office while a government minister. It’s alleged that Mandelson received money from Epstein and disclosed confidential government information.

Labour is past its sell-by date and Starmer will lead it into the abyss. Mandelson was once a member of the Young Communist League (YCL) and Starmer was a Trotskyist. Mandelson and his father were connected to the Jewish Chronicle and his grandfather, Herbert Morrison, a Labour government minister, was an ardent Zionist.

The Green Party under Zack Polansky, is now more popular than Starmer's Labour government. They're likely to get the votes of a lot of young people if they can be bothered to vote. I like a lot what the Green Party say but I'm an agnostic when it comes to climate change and I won't be going on a plant-based diet. Polansky is also a bit too fluffy and woke for me but I will be pleased if the Green Party take Gorton & Denton.

Ayn Rand and her capitalist super heroes.

 

I've read Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged and her fictional heroic capitalists aren't real estate developers or edge fund managers. They're steel and oil barons, car manufacturers and railway tycoons.

Although Rand has acquired many devotees over the years, mainly on the right of politics, her gospel of selfishness didn't go down very well in late 1950s America. Rand was criticised for being immoral and her advocacy of unrestrained laissez-faire capitalism, wasn't popular either. The National Review described it as a "silly book", which I think is fair comment. 

The book, which some consider to be the Bible of the American Congress, is also very American. One government employee, called Cuffy Meigs, is straight out of the wild west. He carries a loaded revolver even in the office, and a rabbit's foot for good luck.  

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, the archpriest of neoliberal capitalism, wrote to Ayn Rand in 1958 praising the book. He basically told her that she had the courage to tell the masses what no politician was prepared to tell them. That they were inferior and that they owed their conditions in life and social improvements in life, to the efforts of "men who are better than you." Margaret Thatcher would have subscribed to this view. She believed that all of us are indebted to a small number of talented people (wealth creators), for our conditions in life. 

Yet, I think it's true to say, that the greatest of inventions, is never likely to see the light of day or leave the drawing board, if we haven't got the labour and skills to make it. As Adam Smith tells us, it's labour that creates wealth and some have argued that all wealth should go to labour. The relationship between labour and capital is a dialectical relationship. 

I don't think Ayn Rand can be considered a serious philosopher. She was once asked if she could sum up her philosophy when standing on one foot. She answered: Metaphysics, 'Objective Reality'; Epistemology, 'Reason'; Ethics, 'Self-Interest'; Politics, 'Capitalism'. 

Like Charlie Kirk, Rand railed against altruism and despised government welfare systems that support the poor. Yet, in later life, when her health failed her, she finished up on social security and Medicare. She couldn't even live up to her own philosophy. Rand is one of very few authors to have written a pro-capitalist novel and her capitalist super heroes, who like Atlas, hold up the heavens aloft on their shoulders, are like Nietzsche's supermen. Rand denied that she had ever been influenced by Nietzsche. 

Joseph Stalin and the art of tyranny.

 

Joseph Stalin

I think it was either Solzhenitsyn or the Yugoslavian communist, Ante Ciliga, in his book 'The Russian Enigma', who described the communist as "good thinkers." What was meant by this, is that many didn't really believe or want to believe, that comrade Stalin was directing and orchestrating the terror and the mass arrests, from his little corner in the Kremlin. They always wanted to believe that others were responsible for what was taking place and that the boss was unaware of it.

Stalin had members of his wife's family arrested, interrogated and imprisoned and some were executed. Many of these thought Stalin was unaware of their predicament. Molotov's wife was denounced and arrested on trumped up charges and Molotov voted in favour of his wife arrest at a Politburo meeting. She was sent to a labour camp.

Just before Zinoviev was shot, he was pleading hysterically with his guards to contact comrade Stalin because he believed that Stalin would save him. He literally begged for his life and clung to the leg of an NKVD officer. Kamenev told him to die like a man. When Stalin was told about Zinoviev's pleas to his guards, he pissed himself laughing. Uncle Joe wasn't just a peasant slayer; he liquidated a lot of communists as well.

Glossop has been dubbed one of best places to live. It's also known as the place where pensioners go to die.

 

Glossop Town Centre

I don't think Glossop, in Derbyshire, is anything to shout about. The people are rather parochial and are very wary of strangers or what they call 'townies'. 

During the COVID lockdown in 2020, I saw pubs displaying signs that said "Tier Three People Not Welcome" and in some pubs, they would ask an unfamiliar face, if they were from a tier three area. 

In the local JD Wetherspoon pub, in Glossop, they had B.F. Skinner pigeon boxes for single people who were put into isolation by a female staff member, who was a complete control freak. She reminded me of nurse Ratched in the film 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'. She definitely displayed signs of deep-rooted psychological issues. The last time that I heard of her, she was working as 'greeter' in a Ben and Jerry's ice cream parlour.

Glossop was once known for being a centre for transcendental meditation but it's also known, for having elevated radon gas levels, that are consistent with the geographical composition of the Derbyshire Peak District.

In my view, a better place to live, would be Uppermill, in what was once the West Ridings of Yorkshire. It's a quaint little place, with a nice community feel about it, and the locals are very friendly and welcoming. They love brass bands and still Celebrate Yorkshire Day.

Comrade Vasily Blokhin; Stalin's trigger finger.

 

The Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin, was responsible for the deaths of millions of Russian citizens and many of these, were executed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, during Stalin's purges. Although Stalin's regime built a society on a mountain of corpses, he never personally pulled the trigger. You might say that he hadn't got the stomach for it, so he delegated this "black work" to NKVD officers like comrade Vasily Blokhin, the NKVD's official executioner.

Comrade Blokhin personally executed Zinoviev, Kamenev and Bukharin, as well as 7,000 Polish prisoners at Katyn. He also personally executed his NKVD bosses, Yagoda and Yezhov. Blokhin was very meticulous when it came to carrying out the executions. At Katyn, a sound proof building was constructed with a sloping floor to wash away the blood of his victims and he used a German Walther pistol, to shoot the prisoners, at the base of the skull. Blokhin liked to work throughout the night, preferably, when there was a full moon. He wore a leather apron, leather gloves and a leather hat. He's considered one of the most prolific official executioners in world recorded history. Unlike many of his victims, Blokhin survived the Stalinist era but succumbed to chronic alcoholism and committed suicide.

Will 'free gear' Keir do a U-turn on Burnham to thwart a Labour civil war?

 

Will free gear Keir, have to make another U-turn and allow Andy Burnham to stand for selection for the parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton? I'm pretty certain that Labour are going to lose the Gorton and Denton by-election and Starmer will be blamed for that. Labour is trying to shoe-in the trendy-left, LGBTQ+ Bev Craig, the current Labour leader of Manchester City Council, to stand in Gorton and Denton. She comes across like a bit of a kid. 

Keir Starmer was one of the ten 'officer panel' NEC members that voted to stop Burnham standing. Starmer is a wet lettuce and is running scared of the electorate and is trying to postpone local elections because he's clinging onto power by the skin of his teeth. He's a lame duck Labour leader who can't connect with the general public and his personal popularity ratings, are abysmal. I think he will be gone sometime this year and possibly after the May local elections. 

The longer Starmer remains the PM, the more likely it is that the spiv Nigel Farage, will be in Downing Street at the next general election. If Farage becomes the next UK Prime Minister, Britain will become the 51st de facto state of America. Farage thinks that Greenland should be owned by the Americans and he endorsed Donald Trump's comments that British troops only provided a supporting role to U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and didn't serve on the frontline in Afghanistan.

Where exactly was the frontline in Afghanistan? When you're fighting a guerrilla war, the front line is everywhere, but you can't expect a draft dodger like Donald Trump, to understand that. More than 450 British men and women lost their lives in Afghanistan and over 2,000 were wounded in action. 

If Nigel Farage becomes the next UK PM, will he turn Britain into the 51st state of the USA?

 

Nigel Farage - Leader of Reform UK

I don't think Reform UK will take the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton. Labour has more chance of retaining the seat, if Andy Burnham does stand and more chance of losing it, if he doesn't stand.

Nigel Farage is far too closely identified with Donald Trump and the Trump administration and this will ultimately damage Reform UK politically, in the long run. I'm pretty sure that if Farage becomes the next UK Prime Minister, Britain will become the de facto 51st state of the U.S.A. because Farage is so far up Trump's arse. We can expect to see in Britain, U.S. imported chlorinated chicken and U.S. imported beef, from cattle fed on growth accelerating hormones. We can also expect to see more involvement of U.S. private healthcare firms working within the NHS.

Farage has already said that the draft-dodger Donald Trump, should take control of Greenland from the Danes and he's upset many British people, by endorsing Trump's opinion that British soldiers only played a supporting role in Afghanistan and never fought on the front lines. Some 457 British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and over 2000 wounded in action. Neither Iraq or Afghanistan was a direct threat to Britain and British soldiers were sent there because of the 9/11 attack in New York, carried out by an assortment of Saudi citizens and Egyptians linked to al-Qaeda. 

Lenin & the Russian Revolution.

 

If Lenin was such an orthodox Marxist as the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, believed, then Lenin would have held to the view that Russia had to go through a period of capitalist industrial development and bourgeois democracy before there could be a revolution. Marxist revolutions are supposed to take place not in agrarian societies like Russia, but in highly industrialised economies like Britain, France or Germany. 

In February 1917, when the Russian Revolution broke out in Petrograd, Lenin was in Zurich and Trotsky was touring America. When he was in Zurich in 1917, Lenin had told students that he didn't think the revolution would happen in his or his generations lifetime. The Bolsheviks who were in Petrograd were taken completely by surprise. They were preparing for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. 

In 1917, around 80% of the Russian population would've been peasants. Lenin was taken to Petrograd by the Germans in the so-called "sealed train." When he arrived at Petrograd's Finland Station on April 3, 1917, he addressed a crowd of workers and Bolsheviks, and denounced the Provisional Government and demanded an immediate socialist revolution. He outlined his radical 'April Theses' calling for the Soviets to take power. 

The Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, because nobody really wanted it. The Petrograd Soviet had the power but didn't want the responsibility and the Provisional Government had the responsibility but not the power. Had Lenin not arrived in Petrograd in April 1917; events may have taken a completely different course in Russia. Such is the power of agency. Lenin basically responded to events that had been initiated spontaneously. 

Between 1918 and 1921, the country was plunged into civil war with the Bolsheviks fighting the counter revolutionary ‘White Army' and a war with the Russian peasantry.

Reform UK launches legal challenge against government plans to delay May local elections.

 

It looks like Labour are running scared of the electorate and are giving local councils the opportunity to delay elections until 2027. They say this is because the government are planning an overhaul of local government and this will take time and many councils lack the capacity for reorganisation. Labour also knows from the opinion polls that they're likely to get slaughtered in the forthcoming May local elections, which will seen as a vote of no confidence in the leadership of Spineless Starmer and his Labour government.

Reform UK have now launched a legal challenge against these attempts to delay local elections. It seems to me that the longer Starmer remains PM and leader of the Labour Party, the more likely it is that we will see Farage in Downing Street at the next general election.

Most British mainstream political leaders are supine and prostrate themselves before Donald Trump and American global interests, but a British government, led by a charlatan like Nigel Farage, would turn Britain into the 51 state of America. It's already bad enough Britain being an aircraft carrier for the Yanks. Under Farage, we can look forward to eating U.S. chlorinated chicken and beef from U.S. cattle, fed on growth promoting hormones. We can also expect a Greater role for U.S. private health care companies within the NHS and charges for NHS health care services. Farage also thinks that  the Americans should take over Greenland from Denmark.