Labour was told about ‘vile’ WhatsApp group more than a year ago, says Tameside councillor.

 

Oliver Ryan MP

Former Tameside councillor, Oliver Ryan MP, has now been suspended by Labour for leaving obnoxious messages on WhatsApp. Ryan, is believed to have left around 2,500 messages on the WhatsApp 'Trigger Me Timbers' group which the Labour Party say they're now investigating. Many messages refer to left wing Labour supporters as 'Marxists (sic) Loonies' and more than 100 messages refer to Labour colleagues as "Trots".

Andrew Gwynne reposted a tweet about Angela Rayner buying Apple Airpods, which read: "

I don't see what the problem is. It's literally impossible to give (a) blow job while wearing wired headphones. Anyone with a similar background to Angela would understand this."

Andrew Gwynne comes from a well-off middle-class family. Apart from politics, Gwynne has never had a proper job in his entire adult life. Before becoming an MP, he was a Tameside councillor. His father John Gwynne who died aged 77 in 2022, worked as a sports commentator for Sky TV for over twenty years. He was former school teacher. 

Andrew Gwynne sacked as health minister and suspended by Labour.

 

Andrew Gwynne MP

Apart from a life spent in politics living off the British taxpayer, I don't think that Andrew Gwynne MP has ever undertaken a real job in his entire adult life. As a young man he was a Tameside Labour councillor who was groomed to take over the Labour constituency of Denton & Reddish from Andrew Bennett. He's now been sacked as a Labour health minister and suspended by the Labour Party for making sexist, racist and anti-Semitic comments, on WhatsApp.

According to the Guardian newspaper, in one message he joked that he hoped a 72- year-old woman would soon die after contacting her Labour councillor about her dust bins. This lady wrote to Gwynne saying "As you have been re-elected, I thought it would be an appropriate time to contact you about the bin collections." Gwynne shared this letter from the elderly resident on WhatsApp and contemptuously wrote:

"Dear resident, fuck your bins. I'm re-elected and without your vote. Screw you. PS: Hopefully you'll have croacked it by the all-outs."

As a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Gwynne is alleged to have written in another message, "Sounds too Jewish" and "too militaristic" from their name. "Is he in Mossad?"

In a 2019 message posted on a WhatsApp group called 'Trigger Me Timbers', Gwynne is alleged to have said that support for Dianne Abbott's historic appearance as a black woman at prime minister's questions was a "joke" adding that her appearance was "because it's Black History Month apparently."

In March 2021, Angela Rayner was criticised for claiming Parliamentary expenses for wireless headphones. Gwynne is alleged to have reposted a tweet that referred to the incident and related it to a sex act.

Gwynne, who is now the MP for Gorton and Reddish, issued a statement saying: "I deeply regret my badly misjudged comments and apologise for any offence I've caused.”

Last year, Gwynne was one of three Tameside MPs who voted in favour of removing the winter fuel allowance from state pensioners who did not receive pension credit.

Trump imposes sanctions on war crime court officials at the ICC.

 

Convicted felon, President Donald Trump, has only been in office since January 20, and already he's made the U.S. legal system look bleeding ridiculous by pardoning rioters and drug dealers and trying to get the courts to quash his own convictions for falsifying business records.

He's now signed an executive order imposing sanctions on International Criminal Court (ICC) officials. The sanctions, which could lead to visa restrictions on travel and financial assets being frozen, are Trump's response to the warrants that were issued by the court last November, for the arrest of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant. They were charged by the ICC with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, said that the two Israeli leaders "each bear criminal responsibility" for war crimes and acts including the "war crime of starvation."

The ICC also issued a warrant for the arrest of the Hamas leader, Mohammed Deif, who the Israelis say was killed in the Gaza conflict. Trump has dismissed the ICC charges against Netanyahu and Gallant and said the ICC had "engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel." He also accused the ICC of threatening U.S. national security and U.S. foreign policy.

Some 125 countries are parties to the Rome Statute, which established the jurisdiction of the ICC. Yet neither the U.S. or Israel recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC and under The Hague Invasion Act, introduced by the Americans over twenty years ago, America can invade the Netherlands to rescue American personnel who are being held in detention by the ICC for alleged war crimes. If this did occur, it would be considered the invasion of a NATO country that would oblige other NATO countries to take retaliatory action against America.

Trump said recently that he wants to annex Gaza by bringing it under American control and ethnically cleanse and disperse the Palestinian population. Trump who has made millions from property speculation, believes that Gaza without Palestinians could be transformed into an idyllic American-owned "Riviera of the Middle East" populated by the world's wealthy. 

Is Labour's pledge to build 1.5m homes in England just more Labour bullshit?

 

Since Starmer-oids squalid Labour government came into office last July, all they've done is pick people's pockets and driven up the cost of living. They've now got their eye on cutting welfare spending and people's state benefits. Labour did say that they were not the party for people on state benefits but the party of people in work.

Some landlords are now giving priority for social rented housing to essential key workers and professional couples. Most housing developments only offer a small percentage of homes for rent and most of the homes are intended for sale. The cost of buying a home has risen astronomically and is beyond the reach of many British people even if they're in work. According to the Halifax, one of Britain's biggest mortgage lenders, house prices have hit a record high. Twenty years ago, a family might have expected to buy a house worth roughly four times their annual income - now it might be eight times what they earn. The proportion of the population that now rents has nearly doubled in two decades and more than 159,000 children in England, remain homeless and without a permanent address.

I have seen homes offered for rent that cost more than twice the British state pension or are more than half the price of the weekly state pension. A one-bedroom flat can be over £160 a week. As there are no rent controls, some landlords have been known to double the rent and then evict the tenant when they said they couldn't afford to pay it. This is the reality of life for many people in Britain. We're seeing people living on the streets or in cars and vans.

Labour has vowed to build 1.5 million homes within five years or 370,000 new homes in England each year. Many people think this is just more Labour bullshit and I think they're probably right. How many homes have Labour started build in the last seven months?

Trump's former professor says he was the "dumbest goddam student I ever had."

 

Donald Trump

Elon Musk is right in one sense to say that we need electricians, plumbers and carpenters, but he also knows, that manual workers don't generally finish up in government or running the country. Musk studied economics and physics and bought himself a place in Trump's administration.

The type of people who do finish up in the American government or working for one of its agencies, are people with college degrees. According to the Congressional Research Service, some 95 percent of today's House members and 100 percent of the Senate, have a bachelor's degree or higher. In most cases they will have law degrees and will be graduates of Ivy League colleges.

In the British Parliament, most Members of Parliament, have never done a manual workers job in their life. Many of Britain's Prime Ministers were old Etonians and many British politicians will have attended Oxford or Cambridge university where they will have studied History Tripos, PPE, and Classics, all B.A. subjects.

Donald Trump is believed to have obtained a Bachelor's degree in economics without honours from Wharton. Trump has repeatedly claimed to have "the highest IQ", to "test much higher than Obama" and to be a "genius." One of his former professors at Wharton Business School could see no evidence of this.  Professor Kelley, described Trump as the "dumbest goddam student I ever had." Trump's attorney has threatened to sue any institution that makes his academic grades public.

 

Banksy the graffiti artist.

 

Banksy - Girl with Balloon

It's a mystery to me how Banksy has managed to conceal his true identity for so long. Somebody must see the graffiti artists doing his work which is so recognisable and done in public. How did he manage to organise the art project 'Dismaland' in Weston-Super-Mare and remain anonymous?

In 2018, Sotheby's auction house sold Banksy's 'Girl with Balloon' for £1.1 million. It was bought by an unknown European buyer. As the auctioneer's hammer fell, the painting started to self-shred. It was later auctioned again by Sotheby's as a piece of performance art called 'Love is in the Bin' and was sold for £18.5 million to an unknown Asian buyer.

I like Banksy's subversive art and the message it often conveys. But what was the intention or message behind shredding the picture 'Girl with a balloon' at the Sotheby's auction in 2018? Was the intention to increase the value of this picture or show up the absurdity of the art market by destroying this art work?  This act of creative vandalism, by whoever did it, actually achieved both of these objectives.

Great Expectations (1946) - Directed by David Lean.

 

Great Expectations - Magwitch & Pip

A great film with a great cast of actors. Great Expectations (1946), directed by David Lean. I don't think there will ever be a film version of Great Expectations that could better David Lean's version.

There's a character in the novel called Dolge Orlick who works at the forge with Joe Gargery but he doesn't feature in the film. The novel is primarily about revenge. Orlick bludgeoned Mrs Gargery because she stopped him getting a half day off work. He leaves her brain damaged. At the end of the novel, he tries to kill Pip at the lime kilns. He thought Joe showed Pip favouritism, resented Pip's inheritance and believed that Pip stood in the way of him courting Biddy, who later marries Joe.

Young Estella, is Miss Havisham's means to exact revenge on the male sex after she was jilted on her wedding day by the fraudster Compeyson. Abel Magwitch detests Compeyson because he betrayed him over crimes they had committed together in order to get a lesser sentence. Years later, Compeyson Informs the authorities that Magwitch who had been transported for life, has returned to England.

Abel Magwitch, who is the father of Estella, becomes Pip's benefactor not just because he helped him as an escaped convict on the marshes, but because he becomes obsessed with turning the blacksmiths boy into a gentleman. This is Magwitch's way of getting his revenge on how society has treated him. He turns a "common labouring boy" into a gentleman using the money that he's made as a successful sheep farmer in Australia.

Labour hammers the boozers with increased duty on wine and spirits.

 

Although the increases in the NMW and N.I. for businesses, doesn’t come into effect until April, the price of food and drink in many pubs is already spiralling as pubs pass on higher future business costs to consumers imposed on them by Labour's Chancellor, Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves. As from today (Saturday 1 February), excise duty on wine and whisky will also increase by 3.6% under Starmer's Labour government.

Alcohol duty in Britain, is already among the highest in Europe. Over 70% of the cost of every bottle of gin and whisky goes to the Exchequer while a bottle of beer makes just 2 pence profit due to costs and taxes.

In the Wetherspoon's pub which I go in, the cost of a pint of cask beer went up by 15 pence two days ago. This is likely to drive many more of Tim Martin's Wetherspoon's customers into the supermarkets, to buy cheaper bottled beer.

Rachel Reeves might well be smiling but many British voters aren't. The increased costs on businesses, are going to be paid for by the consumer who will now be paying more for goods and services including food. Labour, say they want to grow the British economy but they don't seem to have a clue how to do it. Nor does Labour like taxing the wealthy or stopping tax avoidance measures for the rich. Reeves recently announced a U-turn on tax changes for 'non-doms' amid a backlash from angry multi-millionaires.

It's highly likely that these measures introduced in Rachel Reeves last budget, we see more pubs close, higher inflation, and will lead to more automation and job losses as businesses seek to cut their labour costs. The cost of living in Britain is going through the roof and wages aren't keeping up.

Prices rocket at Wetherspoon's.

 

As a pensioner I've already been clobbered by Starmer's Labour government when they ended the winter fuel allowance.

The increase in the National Minimum Wage and National Insurance doesn't come into effect until April. But last night, I was in Wetherspoon's and the price of a pint of Abbot Ale had gone up by 11pence from £2.88 to £2.99 and a pint of cask beer by 15 pence from £2.63 to £2.78.

I had already been told by a Wetherspoon's manager that Rachel Reeves budget was likely to put 15 pence on a pint of beer. Reeves's budget is going to lead to massive price hikes in the shops, supermarkets, job losses, and more automation.

Integrated health care in Tameside is like the Potemkin village of Tsarist Russia - fantasy and illusion.

 

I support the NHS but I am also aware of its shortcomings. NHS hospitals and the emergency services have been put under increasing strain because many GP practices have been reluctant to have face-to-face appointments with their patients since the COVID lockdown in March 2020. This has led to greater use of A&E and the emergency services.

Prior to the lockdown, most GP practices had walk-in surgeries and appointments. In many GP practices, walk-in surgeries have been replaced by triage and telephone consultations. Nowadays, it is very difficult to get to see a GP. My GP practice have told me that they have no intention of reinstating walk-in surgeries. They have never said that this is because of a shortage of GP's or because they are under resourced.

There are currently 13 GPs at my GP practice and I received far better medical care and attention when that practice had only two GPs. The rot set in when the old GP practice merged with another GP practice. We were told that nothing would change, but it did, and for the worse.

In the area where I live, Tameside, we are supposed to have integrated care which aims to provide a unified approach to healthcare with GP practices, hospitals, social care services and community organisations, all ensuring that patients receive co-ordinated care across different health needs. The idea is to treat people in the community and keep them in their homes and out of hospital. But integrated care in Tameside, is like the Potemkin village of Tsarist Russia, pure fantasy and illusion. Many of us can't even get to see a doctor and because of this many people who require urgent medical treatment, are paying to go private.

Stump up some cash and grease a few palms and it's amazing how you can jump the queue and circumvent the problems of hospital waiting lists. And the doctors and surgeons who will be treating you in the private hospitals will be employed and trained by the NHS.

 

A Man for All Seasons

 

A Man for All Seasons portrays the saintly Thomas More. I think that Hilary Mantel did a hatchet job on More. I read Wolf Hall and it's difficult to distinguish what is fact from what is fiction and that also applies to this film.

Mantel clearly set out to improve the image of Thomas Cromwell and destroy the reputation of More who was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church in 1935. It can't have been easy working for King Henry VIII. I think the Chinese say that the closer you are to the emperor, the closer you are to the gallows. The Bible warns us, "Put not your trust in princes."

King Henry had More and Cromwell executed. Cromwell was King Henry's fixer. I think the French Jacobin, Louis de Saint Just, said: "Nobody can rule guiltlessly" and he was absolutely right.

Does politics attract psychopaths?

 

Hannibal Lectre

In October 2024, over 200 mental health professionals signed and placed an open letter in the New York Times declaring that Donald Trump was "an existential threat to democracy" in the U.S. They claimed that Trump was dangerous because of "his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder - malignant narcissism", which makes him "grossly unfit for leadership."

The advertisement in the New York Times was funded by 'Anti-Psychopath Pac' which is led by the Republican attorney George Conway, the former husband of Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump adviser from 2016 to 2020. The open letter said:

"Even a non-clinician can see that Trump shows a lifetime pattern of 'failure to conform to social norms and laws', repeated lying', reckless disregard for the safety of others', 'irritability', 'impulsivity', 'irresponsibility', and 'lack of remorse'. Trump's rival for the White House, the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, called the former president "increasingly unstable and unhinged" and a fascist.

I think some of Trump's personality traits are shared by many politicians who can also be manipulative, deceitful, and mendacious which are some of the traits of psychopathy.  Politicians often have to defend positions without necessarily believing in them.

I do remember the psychiatrist Paul Brok, describing Tony Blair as a "plausible psychopath" because he had "charm, insincerity, and a talent for drama." The philosopher John Gray, described Blair as being "too morally stunted to be capable of mendacity" because Blair "thinks and acts on the premise that whatever furthers the triumph of what he believes to be good must be true."

Blair believes that he can rid the world of evil and has even named a faith foundation and global institute after himself. In 2024, Time Magazine, named Donald Trump as their Man of the Year. In 1938, Adolf Hitler was named Time's Man of the Year. Time Magazine named Joseph Stalin Man of the Year in 1939 and 1942. Both of those dictators were responsible for the deaths of millions. People have always worshipped power and it's the way in which history is taught.

Remembering Maggie Thatcher.

 

Margaret Thatcher

Maggie Thatcher was a bloody awful woman.  Her colleagues got rid of her in a coup because they were sick to the back teeth of her. She hit one colleague with her handbag and constantly belittled others in public. 

Jim Prior thought she was 'potty' and Lord Carrington told the cabinet secretary to get this petit bourgeois bitch off my back. Her Conservative government pursued pro-rich policies - privatisations; deregulation of finance; breaking the power of the trade unions with anti-union laws. Bashing the unions paved the way for the gig economy and zero-hour contracts.

If there is a Dickens character that Thatcher reminds me of, it would have to be Mrs Sparsit in the novel Hard Times. Both Maggie and Mrs Sparsit thought trade unionists were wretched creatures and believed that the working-class must be conquered. Maggie detested organised labour. Her two favourite English trade unionists were two squalid scabs called Roy Link of the UDM and Frank Chapple of the EETPU.

When I think of Maggie's legacy, I think of deindustrialization, taking free milk off school children, the Falklands War, the Chilean military dictator General Pinochet who she befriended, the Poll Tax, the Miners' Strike, and Tony Blair and New Labour. Maggie said Blair and New Labour were her greatest legacy to the country.

Levellers and 'Digger Communism' in the English Civil War.

 

In his book entitled 'An inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' (1776), Adam Smith openly admitted that government "is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those that have none at all." 

John Locke, the architect of English Liberalism, wrote in his 'Two Treaties of Government', "Whereas Government has no other end but the preservation of property", he added, "civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature.' Thomas Hobbes taught that the function of civil government was to restrain the depravity natural to all men.

At the time of Putney Debates in October 1647, Cromwell's son-in-law, Henry Ireton, dismissed the Leveller proposal for almost universal male suffrage as anarchy and suggested that suffrage (the vote), should be limited to landowners. He told the Leveller spokesman, Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, "no man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom...that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom." Ireton was basically saying that liberty and property ownership were incompatible and that private property is the only protection against the encroachment of state power. The Grandees, who he represented, had a real fear that if common people were given the vote, they would use political power to expropriate the property and wealth of the rich. Theoretically, this has always been possible but it has never happened in in a country like England where the working class are essentially conservative in their political outlook and acquiesce in their own exploitation. People are so brainwashed that they vote for political parties that are the defenders of established privilege.

Before the English Civil War started, King Charles I, had warned the supporters of Parliament of the danger that "at last the common people" may "set up for themselves, call parity and independence liberty...destroy all rights and properties, all distinctions of families and merit." The Levellers had denied that this was their aim and the 'True Leveller' or 'Digger Communist', Gerrard Winstanley, never advocated for the expropriation of private property even though he believed the land was a common treasury for the use of all.

Oliver Cromwell lumped all levellers together describing them as "a despicable and contemptible generation of men...”persons differing little from beasts." He added: "Did not the levelling principle tend to reducing all to an equality...to make the tenant as liberal a fortune as the landlord?... a pleasing voice to all poor men, and truly not unwelcome to all bad men."

Major General Skipton told Parliament in December 1656, "The more liberty, the greater mischief." He added, "I would not have a people know their own strength." I suppose that is where government power really lies. In the ability to alienate people and make them feel powerless and unable to change anything.

Police crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests.

 

The police carried out 77 arrests on Saturday, at a national Gaza and Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest in London in a further crackdown against pro-Palestinian protestors. According to reports, some 65 people were arrested for breaching conditions imposed by the police on the protest and five were arrested for public order offences. The BBC reported on Sunday that of those arrested, 24 people had been bailed and 48 remained in custody.

The police said that it was necessary to impose conditions on the protest to prevent disruption to Londoners. On January 10, the Met banned the protest from assembling at the BBC's Broadcasting House headquarters in Portland Place. The banning of the protest at the BBC, was demanded by many MPs and sections of the media who have denounced the pro-Palestinian protests as "hate marches." They claimed that previous marches have "left the Jewish community feeling intimidated."

The BBC have been condemned and heavily criticised for their failure to report the truth about the genocide in Gaza. Both the Labour and previous Conservative government have been complicit in the slaughter that is taking place against the Palestinian people in Gaza by supplying arms to the Israelis, which are used against the Palestinians.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), have issued arrest warrants for both the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite the ICC arrest warrants against the Israeli leaders, the Met have confirmed that they are seeking to impose a blanket ban on protests in support of Palestinian rights at the BBC on any Saturday. They police also confirmed that this ban would not apply to those protesting for other causes including pro-Israel demonstrations.

There's nothing new about the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories by hoaxers.

 

The Great Hoaxer - Leo Taxil

There's nothing new about the manipulation of the credulous masses by the spread of fake news by hoaxers. One of the greatest hoaxers of all time, was a disgruntled cub journalist called Gabriel Jogand-Pages. He spread fake stories about devil worship in the Freemasons, killer sharks off the coast of Marseilles, and a Roman city submerged under Lake Geneva. On Easter Monday 1897, Jogand-Pages, who used the name Leo Taxil, revealed all his hoaxes at a meeting of the Paris Geographical Society. He told the meeting: "They accepted my tales as gospel truth."

Not long-ago, Donald Trump was claiming that Haitian refugees in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people's pet cats and dogs. The authorities in Springfield said there was no real evidence for this. It seems that the rumour was spread by one single woman. The U.S. Republican Georgia Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Green, a Trump supporter, has claimed that wildfires in California have been started by Jewish space lasers in outer space.

The allegation about Asian grooming gangs operating in Oldham, which has received a great deal of media attention since comments were made by Trump supporter, Elon Musk, seems to have been spread by an Asian man. In 2019, Raja Miah, began telling his followers in weekly broadcasts on Facebook that he had a dossier of evidence about widespread sexual abuse of white working-class girls in Oldham by Asian grooming gangs. He claimed this was being covered up by Oldham Council because they were anxious to protect the Asian bloc vote. He even suggested that some of the paedophiles were politicians, writing: "I now genuinely fear at the thought of an organised paedophile ring operating out of the Civic Centre."

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, appointed two experts; childcare specialist Malcolm Newsam and former detective superintendent Gary Ridgeway, to examine how the authorities had failed victims of child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Greater Manchester including Oldham. After two and a half years their report came out in June 2022. Their investigation did find that some victims of CSE had been let down by the authorities and that there had been "historic failings" in the protection offered to "specific vulnerable children at the time." It did not find any evidence of widespread grooming in Oldham or that Oldham council had sought to cover things up. As for the "dossier of evidence" that Raja Miah claims to have about grooming and CSE in Oldham, he was invited to speak to the investigators but that didn't happen and I believe the police have never seen his dossier of evidence.

If there are Asian grooming gangs operating in Oldham, the police have not yet found them. We do know that there have been Asian grooming gangs that have operated in various parts of Britain but we also know that there have been white grooming gangs that have sexually exploited children. Many of these people have been put on trial and convicted and jailed for their horrific crimes. The evidence suggests that most children who are the victims of CSE in Britain are not sexually abused by grooming gangs but by people they often know. Very often the perpetrator is a family member or someone known to the family and the victim. 

English opium eaters.

 

The use of narcotics was very common in Victorian England, especially opium. There was no such thing as a drug policy. George Orwell's father, had been in charge of quality control in the Opium Department. Children were often doped to put them to sleep. 

They took opium for a variety of reasons. It was sometimes taken to suppress hunger pains or some other ailment like toothache. Some people like the writer Thomas De Quincey, ate opium and he wrote a book called 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, also took opium. 

It was often taken as laudanum, a mixture of opium and alcohol, which was taken to treat diarrhoea and other symptoms. With the invention of the hypodermic needle in the 1840s, some people started to take morphine and heroin. They also took cannabis, coca and mescal. Of all the drugs, alcohol was probably the most popular.

Does British social policy favour the feckless and irresponsible?

 

I would've thought that it was pretty obvious that British government welfare policy penalises those people who have been frugal and industrious and have saved money and own their own home. This is because of something called means-testing.

If you have capital and assets worth more than £23,250, and you have to go into social care, you will have to fund all your own care costs which can be up to a £1000 per week. You will not get any help with your care cost from the local authorities and you will be paying higher care fees to subsidise those residents who are being supported by the council. People have lost their homes to pay for the exorbitant cost of their personal care. Their life savings are now going into the pockets of venture capitalists and private equity firms that now own and run care homes.

Pensioners no longer get the free TV license when over 75 or the winter fuel allowance, unless they're on Pension Credit. Rent and council tax support are all means-tested. Means-testing creates perverse incentives. What's the point of saving money if it's just going to be taken all off you in your old age? Means-testing favours the feckless and the irresponsible. You might be better off in the long-run If you pissed all your money up against the wall or went on world cruises.

If you're looking for an affordable home to rent you may be refused rented housing by registered social landlord if you have too much money. They can tell you to rent privately which is more expensive and less secure.

There are those who want to means-test the UK state retirement pension, so there’s even less incentive to save money.

 

Labour says it wants to grow the British economy but it doesn't have a clue how to do it.

 

Cut & Paste Man - Jonathan Reynolds

Labour have said they want to grow the economy but they don't seem to have much of a clue about how you go about doing that. Many Labour politicians like Labour's Business & Trade Minister, Jonathan Reynolds, have no business or work experience at all. That's why they're asking regulators for ideas on how you do that.

From an economics point of view, I wouldn't have thought that hitting firms with a Triple Monty of higher insurance, an increase in the NMW and the lowering the threshold for paying national insurance, would be likely to achieve that. Most school students who studied economics at GCSE level, would probably concur. Many firms were employing part-timers and people on zero-hours contracts.

The increase in the NMW is welcomed but it will to lead to higher price rises for all of us and higher inflation as firms pass on the costs to consumers. That will also lead to union demands for higher wages. There will be more displacement of labour because of increased automation and less recruitment as firms try to cut their costs. Some firms will go out of business. Labour is more interested in shafting pensioners and WASPI women and recoils from taxing the wealthy and closing tax loopholes for massive corporations like Amazon or Meta.  

If the predictions of the French Marxist economist Thomas Piketty are right, inequality is set to gather pace in the 21st century taking us back to Victorian levels by 2050. His prediction is based on simple maths. If growth is low and the bargaining power of labour is low and the returns on capital are high, then it's more logical to sit on assets and speculate rather than accumulate wealth by work, invention, and entrepreneurial risk. The capitalist becomes a rentier rather than an entrepreneur. Piketty believes in a global wealth tax.

 

Passenger's complain of bus delays and non arrivals following launch of Bee Network in Tameside.

 

It hasn't been a good start for the Bee Network since it came to Tameside on Sunday January 5. A friend told me that on two occasions he was waiting for the 389 bus to Stalybridge on Darnton Road. On one occasion it didn't turn up and, on another occasion, the driver drove past him. In both instances he had to walk.

Another friend told me that his last bus from Stalybridge to Ashton (237) didn't turn up and he had to book a taxi. On Friday, a man told me that he'd been waiting 40 minutes for the 330 bus from Stockport to Ashton at the bus stop near to the Village Motel in Dukinfield. I eventually got the bus and that must have been the first bus on that route to Ashton for almost an hour. Other bus passengers waiting for that bus had decided to walk. That bus service is supposed to be running every twelve minutes.

There have been numerous problems with the Bee Network since its launch in September 2023 and there are still continuing problems. When it was first launched, Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, said the bus delays were due to a hectic 24-hours. They were paying their transport commissioner Vernon Everitt, over £600 a day to get things up and running and it is still a shambles to this day. Andy Burnham needs to pull his finger out. We were promised a London-style bus service and we're still waiting for one.

What explains the rise of rightwing populism in the U.K. and America?

 

Nigel Farage - Leader Reform UK

Nigel Farage might be a charlatan and black-market spiv, but he's a very good salesman. People's increasing disenchantment with Labour and Tory is likely to work to the advantage of Reform UK which is led by Nigel Farage. He once described Vladimir Putin as the one world leader that he most admired because Putin is an ultra-Russian nationalist and a hardline former KGB officer. The Russians have also donated money to far-right political parties like Front National in France now called National Rally.

Politically, Farage used to describe himself as a "Thatcherite Tory", which is what he really is. When he led UKIP, he was advised to stop describing himself as a Thatcherite because the name of Maggie Thatcher was toxic in the north of England where UKIP were hoping to pick up votes from disenchanted Labour voters.

The British were sold a pup with Brexit. Since leaving the E.U. they can hardly say that they've regained control of their borders or have got a grip on immigration. The UK does need migrant workers to fill skills gaps or to do the jobs that many people are not prepared to do. In America, around 8 million workers are illegal and are undocumented workers who work in areas like construction, food processing and agriculture. Trump has threatened to deport all of them but he's been told that this would be logistically difficult and could have serious consequences for the U.S. economy.

UKIP never had a policy of opposing migrant workers even if many people thought that it did. It believed in controlled migration. Net migration to Britain has been on the increase for a number of years but those who come here in small boats, only make up a small number. Most illegal migrants come here legally on visas and overstay when their visas expire. This gets overlooked because all the focus is on refugees crossing the English Channel in boats. Many of these claim political asylum and are successful because they fit the definition of an asylum seeker.

I've always thought that right-wing populism both in the UK and America, is to a great extent a backlash against political correctness but it also appeals to those who feel left behind, ignored, or abandoned politically, and have a pull up your drawbridge mentality. There is a very real danger that in the coming years, we're are going to see right-wing nationalist governments throughout Europe.

UPDATE on Spycops inquiry from Blacklist Support Group.

 

After 8 years of demanding to see our police files, blacklisted union activists represented by the Blacklist Support Group and Imran Khan KC have finally started to receive some disclosure from the public inquiry. Restriction Orders mean we are not allowed to tell anybody what is in the documents until they are discussed at the evidence hearings. But we are allowed to say that 100s of pages of Special Branch reports and police witness statements have already been disclosed, relating to our trade union and political campaigning. Much more disclosure is expected to be drip fed out over the next few weeks.

The inquiry has also sent a list of questions for each core participant to answer. The current inquiry imposed deadline for the written responses is March. It is expected that each witness statement is likely to be a 10-20,000 word count. This is clearly going to take some time. The BSG has a stand-alone witness statement of its own. We thank all those who have contributed with suggestions of what should be in it.

Finally, the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance is the umbrella campaign set up & supported by BSG and our sister campaigns & the vast majority of non-police core participants. https://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.comCOPS has a financial appeal to assist with costs for reporting the inquiry. This is especially important given that most of the mainstream media has barely published or broadcast a word on the recent evidence hearings. If your union committee (or any individual) wants to support the work of the COPS campaign, please donate via this link:

https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/BWSTSWTMH2ZV8

 

 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

 

Did banning corporal punishment in English schools lead to a lack of discipline and respect?

 

Summerhill School

I doubt you can run a school without some form of discipline but there have been exceptions. Summerhill which was founded in 1921 by A.S. Neil, in Leiston, Suffolk, is a progressive school that believes that children should be taught without force. The school's basic principle was to replace authority with freedom. Children at the school are not forced to attend lessons and they have a say in the running of the school on democratic lines. The British government have tried to close it down on a number of occasions and there have been a number of investigations and scandals.

At my secondary modern school in the 1960s, there was plenty of discipline but not much teaching or education. My primary school was much better and the teachers were dedicated and very good and I had respect for many of them because they took an interest in you. The discipline at secondary school didn't teach me respect because I had no respect for many of those teachers at all because they didn't teach. Many were a waste of taxpayers' money. I've always believed that you earn respect and are not entitled to it. What was knocked into me at secondary school, was an intense dislike of teachers and intense dislike of authority.

Corporal punishment was banned in state schools in 1987 and in private schools in England and Wales in 1998. Many people thought that was a bad decision that would've serious consequences and I think they've been proven right. Nowadays, the English state schools seem to turn out foul-mouthed uneducated louts who know neither discipline or respect. Many of them act like wannabe gangsters who mimic the accents of the Gallagher brothers, Bez and Sean Ryder.

I remember talking to man from Afghanistan who was with his children in a public park during the COVID lockdown. We were talking about the way in which some addlepated malcontents want to nihilistically vandalize property in public parks. He said to me that he thought the problem arose because the English don't teach their children discipline and respect. Pointing to his little children, he told me, "These don't mess me about because they know who the boss is." When I was growing up, we knew who the boss was in our house and you didn't mess him about.

 

Over 20 years ago, the Labour MP Ann Cryer, was shunned when she spoke out about Asian grooming gangs.

 

Ann Cryer

One of the first people to draw attention to Asian grooming gangs, was Ann Cryer, the Labour MP for Keighley. In 2002, she became one of the first public figures in Britain to talk publicly about allegations of "young Asian lads" grooming underage white girls for sex in her constituency in West Yorkshire. As a result of what she said, Ann was shunned by many members of her own party - who considered what she said as racist - the police, imam's and social services. She received death threats and Nick Griffin of the BNP, stood against her in Keighley, claiming that she hadn't done enough as the local MP to protect young white girls from sexual exploitation.

Some politicians like the former Conservative Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who is of Indian origin, have claimed that Pakistani men were predominantly involved in grooming gangs. There have been a number of very high-profile cases involving Asian grooming gangs in places like Rotherham and Rochdale and there were allegations of Asian gangs, grooming young girls for sex in Oldham. In all these places it has also been alleged that there were cover ups involving the police and local politicians.

Despite a number of public inquiries into grooming gangs and child sex abuse, some people continue to believe in cover ups and conspiracies. What these inquires have often found is not cover ups as such, but an unwillingness to take victims and their allegations seriously or an unwillingness to act because it was considered culturally and politically sensitive.

Home Office data that Braverman must have been aware of, does suggest that most of the people convicted of child sex abuse in Britain, have been white people. There have also been white people, including women, who have been jailed for being members of grooming gangs set up to sexually exploit children. It's also known that most children who are subjected to sexual abuse in Britain, are not abused by strangers or grooming gangs. Very often the child knows the perpetrator and the abuse often takes place in the family home.

 

Blacklist Support Group New Year message: 2025 – the year when justice finally arrives?

 

Happy New Year to all our supporters. It is more than 15 years since the Consulting Association blacklist was exposed. Yet despite a select committee investigation, a public apology in the High Court and new legislation, union members who were repeatedly denied employment are still fighting for truth and justice. No senior executives from the multinational construction companies who oversaw the secret conspiracy, nor the police and union officials who colluded with the employers have been held accountable for their actions. 2025 is set to be a year where at least some elements of the hidden underbelly of the blacklisting scandal are brought into the public domain. Here’s what to expect:

 Independent Collusion Investigation

The independent investigation into collusion by officials from UNITE and predecessor unions that was set up by Sharon Graham is set to publish its findings early in 2025. Nick Randall KC and John Townsend, assisted by solicitors from the Public Interest Law Centre have gathered oral and documentary evidence from around 90 individuals, searched the union’s electronic archive and sought permission from the High Court to use documents never before placed in the public domain. 

 The Blacklist Support Group and the Construction Rank & File publicly fought for an investigation that was independent from UNITE to be set up, and three blacklisted activists have acted as an oversight committee throughout the investigation. Neither BSG nor the oversight committee have any knowledge of what will appear in the final report, but we have faith in the independence of the lawyers, and in the robustness of their investigation. 

 Spycops Inquiry

Core participants in the union strand of the undercover policing public inquiry, the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), UNITE, FBU, NUM, and seven individual activists (Steve Acheson, Frank Smith, Dan Gilman, Steve Hedley, Lisa Teuscher, John Jones, Dave Smith) were scheduled to give evidence in April 2025. This has now been pushed back to a date later in the year. Spycops who infiltrated and gathered intelligence on trade unions, plus the managers and politicians who oversaw the political spying operation will also be giving evidence.   

 The BSG opening statement made specific allegations that the police and security services passed on intelligence to major employers and the blacklisting organisations; the Consulting Association and the Economic League, and about undercover officers acting as agent provocateurs, and state interference in the internal democratic processes of trade unions (in breach of ILO conventions).

 The public inquiry has already published an interim report that slated the human rights violations of the Special Demonstration Squad, concluding that the police unit should have been closed down in the 1960s. However, blacklisting was specifically omitted from the interim report. The evidence hearings in 2025 will be the first time the judge led inquiry properly considers the BSG and union concerns.  

 Retraining Fund

As part of the settlement of the High Court trial, the major blacklisting employers placed over £220,000 in a fund administered by UNITE, to be used to pay training costs for blacklisted workers who were claimants in the litigation. For the first few years, those overseeing the fund turned out multiple applications. But in late 2023, the fund was relaunched and in 2024 tens of thousands of pounds has been paid out to blacklisted workers. The money has been spent on updating certificates for work on the railways, offshore and in the High Voltage sector, but also in costs for career changes such as teaching. If any High Court claimant has paid out for any training since 2016, please claim the money back from this fund.

 Labour government pledges 

The government has announced proposals for new laws on blacklisting. You might think that as the primary victims of the UK’s biggest blacklisting scandal ever, that the BSG might be consulted on the proposals. Yet, despite having directly contacted Angela Rayner on this subject, and despite BSG secretary, Dave Smith having co-authored a pamphlet published by the Institute of Employment Rights about the need for new legislation on blacklisting. To this date, the BSG has not been contacted to be part of the consultation on the new blacklisting laws. Its hard to imagine politicians not talking to the victims of the Post Office scandal about possible new legislation. Perhaps it takes a TV drama before MPs take notice.

 Lee Fowler employment tribunal 

Blacklisted construction union activist, Lee finally gets his day in court in January for his discrimination claim against Cargill following a dispute at the Liverpool site in late 2023. 

Lee Fowler -v- Cargill PLC

15th -17th January 2025

Liverpool Employment Tribunal

35 Vernon Street

Liverpool 

L2 2BX

Unless there is a last minute offer, the Blacklist Support Group will be at the court.

SOLIDARITY PROTEST 

9am Wednesday 15th January 

Show your support - Bring your banners

 

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