Reminiscences of Ruskin College Oxford.

 

Ruskin College Oxford

I picketed Didcot Power Station with the South Wales miners when I was a student at Ruskin College during 1984-86. It must have been in 1984/85 when I was living in Old Headington. I used to have a drink with the miners in the Labour Club in Headington. I remember a miner called Sid, a big bloke that looked a bit like Desperate Dan. A young miner called Sammy took all the apples in the orchard at the Headington campus, so it must have been around Autumn.

I have very fond memories of some of my tutors: Dr Victor Treadwell who taught me his version of labour history and Jack Eames who taught me economics. I remember one day talking to Victor about British syndicalism before WWI. Vick, who had studied at Cambridge, abruptly dismissed it as "a fart in a bottle." Yet, many British trade union leaders like Tom Mann, had been syndicalists. Jack Eames, was a great bloke and character; an ex-bricklayer from Hackney, who had studied at Oxford University in the 1950s. I think he was friendly with the Cambridge economist, Joan Robinson. I also remember my academic adviser, David Selbourne, who told me that he was brought up in the same town as myself. David, was a former student of Manchester Grammar School and Balliol College Oxford. I remember the history tutor Raphael Samuels, who was one of the founders of the New Left Review, and David Kitson, who was at Ruskin at the time.

A member of the ANC, David had served 20-years in jail after being convicted of terrorist offences. When I asked him what he done to get jailed, he told me that he'd blown up overhead electricity pylons because he wanted to overthrow the racist South African state. He once told me jokingly, that I should spend less time in the 'Stag' and more time on the books. He also told me that in all the years that he'd been involved in anti-apartheid activities, he'd always found that those who talked the most, invariably did the least. I also have fond memories of Violet Hughes, Bill Conboy, and Dennis Gregory, who supervised my dissertation.

I was very disappointed that Ruskin College sold the building on Walton Street, which had been the home of the Plebs League. I liked the little community of Jericho and the Victorian pubs on every street corner. In those days, it was still possible to meet working-class people who had been brought up in the area, but it was becoming trendy and gentrified.

When I was interviewed for a place a Ruskin in 1984, I was shown around the place by a very friendly American called Eric, who told me that he lived on a canal boat on the Oxford Canal with his wife and kids. I think it was Eric that persuaded me to accept an offer at Ruskin rather than accept an offer of a place at Manchester Polytechnic, because he seemed such a humane nice bloke. I was also friendly with a bloke called David Weston, from Vancouver Island.

I used to go in the Oxford Union with my friend Mick Kelly, a joiner and an ex-para from Liverpool. Mick, had been a member of the Young Communist League (YCL) and detested Trots like Derek Hatton. The Oxford Union was the cheapest pint in Oxford and was run by a great woman called Brenda. She told me that she'd been evacuated to Oxford as a child during WWII. Sadly, my good friend Mick Kelly, died some years ago; he was great lad and a character. I am still in contact with another friend from Weymouth, who I speak to on a regular basis.

U.S. health secretary says AI nurses are as good as any doctor.

 

Ana the AI nurse

Meet Ana, the Artificial Intelligence (Al) nurse. Ana isn't human but an artificial intelligence program created by 'Hippocratic AI', a U.S. company that is offering to automate time consuming tasks usually performed by nurses and medical assistants.

Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, the U.S. health secretary, who opposed the COVID vaccine and linked vaccination to autism, has suggested that AI nurses (Chabot’s and Avatars) are "as good as any doctor."

Hippocratic AI offers its AI nurses for $9 an hour compared to about $40 an hour for a registered nurse. Hospitals in the U.S., say that AI is helping their nurses work more efficiently and dealing with burnout and understaffing. The nursing unions say that this technology is overriding nurses' expertise and degrading the quality of care that patients receive. Michele Mahon, of National Nurses United, said: "Hospitals have been waiting for the moment when they have something that appears to have enough legitimacy to replace nurses.”

Wes Streeting, Labour's health secretary, is known to be in favour of bringing AI technology into the NHS. It has been suggested that AI technology could be used to read medical scans and undertake diagnosis.

General Medical Practice in Britain is already being de-skilled with the introduction of less skilled medical people and dilutees like the 'Physician Associate', or the 'Anaesthetist Associate'. The Trump administration also want to make the NHS accessible to American health care companies and part of any trade deal with Britain.

Albert Pierrepoint hanged his singing partner.

 

James Henry Corbitt

I had a copy of Albert Pierrepoint's memoirs which I read many years ago. Pierrepoint had been one of Britain's official executioners for nearly 25-years (1932-1956) and is said to have executed between 435 and 600 people. He executed many Nazi war criminals as well as Ruth Ellis, Derek Bentley,  Timothy Evans and John Reginald Christie, for the same murder. John Christie had murdered both the wife and daughter of Timothy Evans and Evans, had been sentenced to death for the crime. 

I do know that when Pierrepoint turned up at Strangeways Gaol to hang a man in November 1950, he wasn't aware that he knew a man called James Henry Corbitt, because the name meant nothing to him. It was the governor of the jail who told him that the man he was about to hang had said that he knew him. It was only when he looked through the spy hole in the cell door that he recognised who it was. Corbitt and his girlfriend had been regulars in Pierrepoint’s pub in Failsworth which was called ‘Help the Poor Struggler’. Corbitt was known for being a good pub tenor and had often sang duets with Albert Pierrepoint.

In August 1950, Corbitt had strangled his girlfriend Eliza Wood in a bedroom at the Prince of Wales pub in Ashton-under-Lyne. I wrote about this murder in Northern Voices magazine some years ago. Pierrepoint hung Corbitt in November 1950. The pub that was located on Stamford Street, is no longer there but it acquired the nickname, ‘The Stranglers Arms’.

This is the first time that I have ever seen a photograph of James Henry Corbitt (see above). I did see a photograph that had been taken of Eliza Wood in a library book. It had obviously been taken at the scene of the crime because it showed her lying in a bed with a word ‘Whore’ written on her forehead.

Albert Pierrepoint seems to have had no qualms about hanging people and doesn't seem to have suffered any lasting psychological damage. I think he may have seen his job as a 'calling' or 'craft' because both his father and uncle had been hangmen. I think that he said that from being a schoolboy he’d wanted to be a hangman. He also took pride in being able to kill somebody quickly and efficiently.

Some British hangmen have suffered psychological damage. John Ellis, from Rochdale, committed suicide and the Yorkshire hangman, James Berry, also seems to have suffered some kind of PTSD. In his memoirs, James Berry, wrote about hanging Mary Ann Britland at Strangeways Gaol in August 1886. She was the first woman to be hanged at Strangeways. Mrs Britland was also from Ashton and was found guilty of murder by poisoning her husband, daughter, and best friend. I believe that Mrs Britland was dragged to the scaffold kicking and screaming. Berry said that many years after executing her Mrs Britland he could still hear her screams in his head.

Paul Lafargue - The Right to Be Lazy

 

Paul Lafargue

I never really liked the slogan that was used by the International Socialist (I.S.), demanding the right to work. It always sounded to me like a defence of wage slavery and the right to be exploited. In the 1970s the I.S. used to organise right to work marches.

Nor do I think there's any dignity in labouring for others in order to enrich them. Keir Starmer's Labour government are obsessed with the cult of work and glorifying labour. What underpins Labour's obsession with work, is the Puritan work ethic.

The Cuban-born socialist, Paul Lafargue, who was the son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote a book called 'The Right to Be Lazy'. Lafargue argued in his book that if you insist on the right to work, you would be still be under the yoke of having to earn a wage. He wrote that the proletariat "must proclaim the Rights of Laziness, a hundred thousand times nobler and holier than the Rights of Man cooked up by the philosophizing lawyers of the bourgeois revolution.” 

Bankers say that democracy must 'fade' if neoliberalism is to survive.

 

In Britain we have one of the lowest state retirement pensions in Europe. Although the state retirement pension is well below the national minimum wage, we're told that the 'triple-lock' which uprates the state pension, is unaffordable and unsustainable. Starmer's Labour government seem to be able to find money for just about everybody else in the world but cannot find it for Britain's elderly population or for  people with disabilities. Labour says they're not the party for people on state benefits but the party for people in work.

Not very long ago, the Labour government pledged £11 billion in aid to help developing countries cope with climate change. Starmer also pledged to give £3 billion a year to the Ukraine until 2030. And yet, the Chancellor Rachel 'Freeze' Reeves, says Britain has got no money. If Britain increases its defence spending as Keir Starmer has promised to do, then the money is likely to come from cutting people's welfare benefits and pensions rather than taxing the rich. The richest 1000 people in the UK own as much wealth as the bottom 40 percent.

Since the 1980s, beginning with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan, the UK and USA have led the world in pursuing pro-rich policies and have been the countries that have seen the most marked increase in income inequality. Economics is really a political argument rather than a science because it involves making value judgements about who gets what. Whenever one talks about the distribution of wealth, politics is never very far behind and it is difficult for anyone escape contemporary class prejudices and interests.

When the corn laws were in introduce in Britain in 1815, which protected the interests of wealthy English landowners while often driving up the price of bread for the labouring classes, the aristocracy and gentry were espousing the doctrine of laissez-faire, which held that the state should not interfere in the workings of the free market. The British government adhered to the principle of laissez-faire while millions of people were starving to death in Ireland in the mid-1840s. Ireland had been part of the Union since 1801. It was free competition for the English working-class, starvation for the Irish, and protectionism for wealthy landowners who basically governed the country.

It might strike some people as rather odd, but in what is called 'Supply-side Economics', there's a belief that if you want to incentivise the rich and make them work harder, you make them richer by cutting their taxes, whereas, if you want to make the poor work harder, you make them poorer by cutting subsidies to the poor like housing and the minimum wage. Poverty is seen as a spur that leads to self-improvement and industry.

In 2012, Tidjane Thiam, the CEO of Prudential, told the Davos Forum that trade unions were the "enemy of young people" and that the minimum wage was "a machine to destroy jobs." The multi-millionaire financier said that workers' rights and decent wages, stood in the way of capitalism's revival and had to go. In 2013, economists at J.P. Morgan, declared that for neoliberalism (a doctrine of uncontrolled markets), to survive, democracy must fade. The pioneers of neoliberalism came to a conclusion that has shaped our age: that a modern economy cannot exist with an organised working-class. Atomisation and the destruction of Labour's bargaining power, has been the essence of the entire project.

Extreme inequality has to be sustained politically through an "apparatus of justification." People either believe that some people have reached their exalted position in life through talent or merit or they believe that inequality is good for everyone, sane, reasonable, and even necessary. If this cannot be maintained, then states have to act, or revolutions happen. This is what brought about the French Revolution and united England's aristocratic landowners and manufacturers in common panic that made the upper classes tremble. The Napoleonic wars were a war against Jacobinism.

 I've often wondered if the working people of Britain wouldn't have been better off if Napoleon and the French had taken over in Britain and destroyed the old class regime in the country. Oligarchs like Pitt and Sidmouth, made the inequalities of life the basis of the British state and regarded working people as a subject inferior social class.

Noam Chomsky

 

Noam Chomsky

It's sad to hear that Noam Chomsky, 96, has now lost the ability to write and speak. He's best known for his political writings and political opinions. I think he described himself as an anarchist or to be more precise, an adherent of revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism, which advocated workers control and self-managed industry in a non-governmental society run by the working-class.

 Professionally, his academic background is in linguistics and not politics. Chomsky has written a great deal about manufacturing consent and how those that govern us, and the media, set the agenda and the parameters for political discourse. Yet they never managed to shut him up and he was considered one of the most influential people on the planet. He also managed to retain his job at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in spite of his controversial views that many saw as anti- American. Sadly, it's old age that has managed to silence Noam Chomsky and not the U.S. government.

 As the Marxist historian, E.P. Thompson, wrote in his book 'The Making of the English Working Class', "No ideology is wholly absorbed by its adherents: it breaks down in practice in a thousand ways under criticism of impulse and of experience." Not all of us are gullible and inclined to believe what we're told. The big shots in their ivory towers may say one thing but our everyday experiences and lives tell us something very different.

 

Rochdale, Globalisation and Uneven Development - Part 2

 

Rochdale, Globalisation and uneven development (Part 2)

By: Andrew Wallace

Globalisation in Rochdale has proved controversial given difficulties in respect of inter-racial strife, the disproportionate amount of asylum seekers, the widespread levels of deprivation, the grooming scandals, a notorious failure of public housing with a youngster's death as a direct result of a toxic flat, the ongoing problem of organised crime gangs and a legion of controversial local politicians. It seems Rochdale has been pressed into taking a much higher proportion of asylum seekers than the national average and this remains provocative for certain sections of the population, particularly given the huge cuts in public services that were rolled out in the 2010s. Demographics and large migration flows have arguably presented a challenge to the idea of a social contract (Goodhart, 2004) and a welfare state which was originally predicated on contributory national insurance. Goodhart talks about the ‘progressive dilemma’ which speaks to the tensional relationship between solidarity and diversity, or nativist particularities of place versus liberal universalism. With Rochdale already in sharp socio-economic declinism, race and ethnicity arguably became increasingly salient as different sections of the community wrestled over diminishing community funds. As the curiosity of the February 2024 Rochdale by-election illustrated, Middle East politics have proved a significant ingredient for the Muslim community, much to the chagrin of a large section of non-Muslims and others who stressed the priority of local issues or indeed boycotted engagement altogether (Chakelian, 2024). The community hub is but one amongst many former retail outlets that have been repurposed for a number of charities within this comparatively neglected area of the town. The picture perhaps evokes the uneasy relationship within the community as surly low-level resentment of asylum seekers is frequently evidenced by various vox pops across the town (Lyons, 2017).

It was significant that the town’s short lived MP George Galloway claimed inspiration by way of Rochdale’s historic innovative contribution to progressivism in birthing the Co-operative movement. This represents Rochdale’s distinctive contribution to the world at large with Co-ops “found in more than 100 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania” (Co-operatives UK, 2024). Co-operatives represent an alternative model to standard capitalist enterprises whereby ownership resides with workers, customers or the local community, thereby providing a collectivist social dimension which otherwise is absent in capitalist transactions. Co-operative philosophy evinces adaptability to an ideological climate which also proved accommodating to free market anti-statism and the invocation of ‘self-help’ (Da Costa Vieira and Foster, 2022, pp. 295-296). It seems Co-operatives illustrate the ongoing contested forms of globalisation, whereby challenges to a hegemonic neoliberalism have to contend with a disenfranchising counsel of despair that holds any alternative politics are illusory. Co-operatives do however bring a credible historical record of their distinctive agency of doing things differently. The consciousness-raising of fair trade and the brokering of equitable contracts that pay heed to the environment and its peoples are a salutary reminder of viable alternative forms of globalisation and these may prove foundational for broader movements of protest and change to the present problematic realities (Massey, 2004). The picture is also another visually arresting testament to a striking fusion of styles, the modernist museum bolted on to the original warehouse and can be taken as a signifier of playful retrofitting, invoking the dialectic between past and the looming future.

Chakelian, A (2024) ‘Rochdale’s by-election brings the Gaza war to Britain’, The

New Statesman, 21 February. Available at:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2024/02/rochdales-by-election-

brings-the-gaza-war-to-britain (Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Co-operatives UK (2024) Understanding Co-ops. Available at:

https://www.uk.coop/understanding-co-ops/how-co-ops-began/co-ops-across-world

(Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Da Costa Vieira, T. and Foster, E. A. (2022) ‘The elimination of political demands:

Ordoliberalism, the big society and the depoliticization of co-operatives’, Competition

& Change, 26(2), pp. 289–308

Goodhart, D (2004) ‘Discomfort of strangers’, The Guardian, 24 February. Available

at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/feb/24/race.eu

(Accessed 06 March 2024)

Richdale, Globalisation and Uneven Development.

 

Unhappy Valley

Rochdale, Globalisation and uneven development (Part 1)

By: Andrew Wallace.

River Roch

Globalisation has become an indispensable concept for contemporary understandings and exploration of our habitat and its relationship to our ideological worldviews in respect of politics, economics and culture. It seems difficult to provide a satisfactory definition whilst the term remains highly contested. Arguably some generalities have been conceded regarding the ongoing process of interdependence and connectivity of the geographical world with its consequent blurring of national boundaries and the increasingly international flows of labour, goods and services beyond the discretionary management of the nation state. Its current prescriptive form is often labelled neoliberalism whereby private enterprise is empowered to traverse the globe in search of compliant and abundant cheap labour and light regulation (Harvey, 2005).

Rochdale Town Centre has had several cycles of redevelopment over the last few decades. Just like adjoining former mill towns in the North West of England, Rochdale suffered a precipitous economic decline in its core industries, this was apparent from the 1950s onwards (Toms, 1998, pp. 35-55). A new retail centre was built in the early 1990s (The Wheatsheaf) and flourished for a time. A number of notable flagship stores went into liquidation throughout the 2010s. A new phase of globalisation was being driven courtesy of the internet and the online retail revolution. Just as a previous era of industrial globalisation allowed for the strategic offshoring of plant infrastructure, the internet provided for a dramatic restructuring of retail and services, much of this directed by the corporate behemoths and leading to a culling of traditional high street outlets. These trends were also drastically exacerbated by the Covid-19 global pandemic which made flesh the remorseless biological realities of globalisation (Blakeley, 2020). Picture 1 provides a useful map provided courtesy of the town planners and it provides a neat distillation of the current wave of ‘reinvention’ for the Town Centre by way of its new flagship Riverside retail and leisure complex. This is marked by a curious bifurcation of the town centre through a fusion of post-modern architectures and the traditional whilst attempting to circumnavigate dilapidated areas of post-industrial neglect. As all that is solid melts into PR (Fisher), Rochdale promotes itself as a historically vibrant locality with attractively revamped public spaces, historic monuments and culturally aspirational education quarters.

Arguably something of a cliché but the trolley in the River Roch (Picture 2) is a defining symbol of the omnipresent challenge of anti-social behaviour and the struggle to protect public spaces. It will likely suggest a backstory of juvenile hijinks. If Rochdale has to contend with the gales of creative destruction thrown up by the unpredictable currents of globalisation, then it also struggles to forge its sense of place within the newer complexities of liquid modernity. Public space management (Carmona and De Magalhaes, 2006) remains key for local authorities and wannabe gentrifiers who are anxious to provide an attractive profile for their domains in order to compete for funding. Public space management must face against anomic behaviours from urban malcontents whose primary motivations seem to be a nihilistic recourse to spoilage and explicit attacks on the idea of civic pride. The ironic backstory to such vandalism likely involves a performative act of some physical effort, appropriating supermarket trolley and scaling the railing barrier of the Roch bridge to deliver the coup de grace. Not so much an acte gratuit, more of a poundland anarchism statement minus the sophistry of Debord’s (1967, cited in Self, 2013) situationism. The trolley is an apposite signifier of consumerism, a proxy of the corporate behemoths, now inverted and weaponised in the war against the idea of civic harmony that offer “visitors a stunning historical attraction and an attractive place to sit and watch the world go by” (original text from picture 1 – map of Rochdale: Historic Bridge). Arguably a symbolic and psychic desecration, an explicit rebuke to ideas of communal repose, a strategically visible ‘hate’ crime of environmental spoilage although arguably rendered itself as rank amateurism as measured against the massive environmental harms of the powerful multinationals (Tombs, 2024). The latter largely remain concealed from the public domain, obfuscated by impenetrable firewalls of corporate public relations and their impressive armoury of experts, legal and otherwise who are able to wrong-foot their critics at every turn. Meanwhile the Rochdale vandals likely employ their low-tech sorties via hoodies and the cover of dark to avoid CCTV.

Spatial divisions are held to be fundamental in characterising the UK's internal geography. These divides speak to class, regional identities and ethnicities. Geographical uneven development is observed at different scales, from the macro regional (within continents, between distinctive regions, intra-regional) to the micro level e.g. city, town, district, ward (Massey, 2004). Rochdale's recent Riverside development can be seen on this micro level as an attempt to cultivate a respectable, attractive and affluent zone that will flatter the middle-class proclivities of consumers conspicuous by their absence in recent years. For all the analysis of Rochdale as a down at heel bastion of working class declinism, there remains a substantial middle-class population, albeit located on the outer periphery of the town. It seems many of these affluent residents preferred to shop out of town. Manchester, Bury and the Trafford Centre seem to have proved superior attractions, whereas Rochdale's ageing Exchange and Yorkshire Street retail concentrated on a 'no frills' plethora of pound and charity shops. The Riverside redevelopment attempted to provide a leisure complex, replete with cinema, restaurants, cafe bars as well as middle brow clothing outlets. The push for a more discerning middle-class presence is also marked by a more visible and active private security team who check potential anti-social intruders and prohibit panhandling. This picture speaks to the intermeshing of post-modernist copper plated geometries within the visage of old boarded up warehouse Rochdale, the juxtaposition of the aspirational and bourgeois alongside the conspicuous symbols of declinism. The spoilage in this instance speaks to the relative failures of urban development. 

References:

Blakeley, G (2020) The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism. London. Verso

Carmona, M. and De Magalhaes, C. (2006) ‘Public Space Management: Present and Potential’, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 49(1), pp. 75–99. Available at: https://www-tandf onlinecom.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1080/09640560500373162?needAccess=true& (Accessed: 06 March 2024)

Fisher, M (2009) Capitalist Realism. Zero Books

Harvey, D (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford, Oxford University Press

Massey, D (2004) ‘The Responsibilities of Place’ Local Economy, 19(2), pp. 97–101

Self, W (2013) ‘Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle’, The Guardian, 14 November. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/14/guy-debord-society-spectacle-will-self (Accessed 06 March 2024)

Tombs, S. (2024) ‘1 The emergence of crimes of the powerful’. DD804-23J, Crimes of the powerful: corporate crime and harm. Available at: https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2147113&section=3

(Accessed 06 March 2024)

Toms, J. S. (1998) ‘Growth, Profits and Technological Choice: The Case of the Lancashire Cotton Textile Industry’, Journal of Industrial History, 1(1) (1998) pp. 35-5

The tragic death of Laura Jane Booth.

 

Laura Jane Booth

I remember the huge public controversy around the Liverpool End of Life Care Pathway. There are now similar concerns about the Assisted Dying Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The inquiry that was conducted into the Liverpool Care Pathway, by Baroness Neuberger in 2013, found that NHS hospital trusts were being given financial inducements to put some patients on palliative end of life care.

This article refers to the case of a 21-year-old woman called Laura Jane Booth, who was put on the end-of-life care pathway, after being admitted to hospital in 2016 for a routine eye operation. She died three weeks later. Laura who had the genetic disorder called Patau's syndrome, had death by natural causes, written on her death certificate. However, a coroner's inquest in 2021, found there had been a "gross failure of her care" and that "malnutrition contributed to her death."

Her parents said that Laura had been denied food for weeks while in hospital and that they had no idea that she'd been put on the end-of-life pathway. A report into Laura's death, found the hospital had failed to take her mental capacity into account in clear breach of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

An inquest into Laura’s death was only opened when a journalist contacted the coroner.

Starmer's Britain - Where Soylent Green meets Logan's run.

 

Welcome to Starmer's Britain where Soylent Green meets Logan's run. Under its Assisted Dying Bill, the Labour government are now proposing to contract out to private companies the role of death "assisters" in an assisted dying euthanasia programme that will operate for profit.

Labour now claims that welfare spending in Britain is 'unsustainable' and that welfare spending needs to be cut. Labour also says that they're not the party for people on state benefits but the party for people in work. Labour believes that cutting people's welfare payments or ending them, will act as a goad to getting people back into work. Around 38 per cent of people in receipt of Universal Credit (UC), are already in work. They claim UC to top up their low wages or have caring responsibilities.

Could Labour's Assisted Dying Bill be a way of eliminating the unproductive in society and cut welfare spending? Could it become a form of 'geri-neglicide'? Under the latest version of the Bill, any corporate killings would be exempt from investigation by a coroner; exempt from licensing requirements opening the door to a 'corporate cottage' death industry with no mandatory qualifications; exempt from regulation and any statutory duties and exempt from scrutiny by the UK's Chief Medical Officer. Death assisters will also be indemnified from being sued by the families of those killed.

We already know from the inquiry into the Liverpool End of Life Care Pathway that was carried out by Baroness Neuberger in 2013, that NHS hospital trusts were given financial inducements by the government to put some patients on end-of-life palliative care. Many were denied food and water and put under sedation to hasten death. Some believe that this is still continuing in many hospitals throughout the country. 

Labour MP released from jail after three days.

 

Mike Amesbury

Mike Amesbury, the Runcorn and Helsby MP, has had his 10-week prison sentence for assault suspended on appeal after spending just three days in prison. Judge Steven Everett, sitting with two magistrates at Chester Crown Court said that while the length of sentence had been "spot on", it should be suspended for two years. Amesbury was ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work and to undertake an anger management course as well as an alcohol monitoring programme. The 55-year-old MP, had pleaded guilty at an earlier court hearing to assaulting a constituent in Frodsham last October.

Last August, Judge Everett, sent a 53-year-old female carer to prison for a post that she had written on Facebook. Julie Sweeney, from Church Lawton, Cheshire, who the Judge described as a "keyboard warrior", was jailed for 15-months after she pleaded guilty to sending a communication to convey a threat of death or serious harm. Following the riots that had erupted in Southport, after the stabbings of young children, she had called for a Mosque to be burnt down with all the adults in it. Sweeney, who had "never troubled the courts before", had been a carer for her husband since 2015.

Is Keir Starmer deluded? Is he leading a flying saucer cult?

 

Keir Starmer-oid is a first-class burk. Donald Trump has just thrown Vladimir Putin a lifeline and sold the Ukrainians down the river. Trump has thrown a bucket of shit over most European leaders who supported the Ukraine and has humiliated them.

Although Trump has pulled the plug on the Ukraine and aligned himself closer to Putin and Russia and accused the Ukraine of provoking the war with Russia, Starmer doesn't accuse him of betrayal or being a Kremlin asset or propagandist, but says that he's changed the global conversation on the war in the Ukraine and presented an opportunity to end the war with Russia. Starmer has brushed aside tensions between Europe and the U.S. claiming that he trusts Donald Trump and wants Britain's "special relationship" with the U.S. to go from "Strength to Strength."

Keir Starmer's position is a classic case of what the psychologist Leo Festinger, called 'Cognitive Dissonance'. Festinger studied a flying saucer cult called the "Seekers" who believed that they would be rescued from earth- which according to a prophecy was facing a world ending flood- by a flying saucer, on an appointed date. When the flying saucer didn't arrive and the prophecy failed, they strengthened their beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence. They adjusted their beliefs to alleviate discomfort caused by conflicting information.

The British prime minister would now have us believe that Trump's capitulation to Vladimir Putin has presented an opportunity to end the war in the Ukraine when it's likely to have emboldened the Russians by making NATO and Europe look weak and vacillating. Britain's perception of itself as a world leader, exceeds its pocket book and power.

Since leaving the E.U., Britain has become isolated in Europe and its global influence has become greatly diminished and the Americans know this. This is why Starmer has to suck up to the Americans and the unhinged Donald Trump. NATO looks as effective as a chocolate fireguard and Trump has left Europe's leaders in total disarray. Starmer's "special relationship" with the U.S. is laughable.

Stockport granny gets Stasi-like police visit after criticising local councillor on social media.

 

Helen Jones

What happened to free speech in this country? It seems to be seriously under threat in Britain. Is Britain becoming an authoritarian Stasi-like East German police state under Starmer's Labour government? Increasingly we are seeing members of the public being investigated by the police for comments they have left on social media. 

Helen Jones, a 54-year-old grandmother from Stockport says she was left feeling scared and intimidated to post on social media after she was visited at home by two plain clothes police officers after making a comment about a councillor involved with the 'Trigger Me Timbers' group. Helen, a school administrator, called on a councillor to resign after she had read some of the vile and disgusting messages that had been posted by the group. The police told her that they were acting on a complaint of harassment but wouldn't say who had made the complaint.

Although Helen was told by the officers from Greater Manchester Police (GMP) that she had committed no crime, she told a national newspaper:  "It was actually quite scary. It made me think I best just keep quiet for the rest of my life, because you just can't say anything these days."

Being a journalist today in Britain is also becoming increasingly perilous. This is the latest in a string of incidents where the police have investigated people for their social media posts. The newspaper columnist Allison Pearson, of the Daily Telegraph and the feminist writer Julie Bindel, have both been investigated by the police for expressing comments and opinions on social media.

I know of some pro-Palestinian activists who have been arrested and charged with terrorist offences for tweets posted on Twitter, now called X. Others have been arrested and locked up for merely sharing a post on Facebook.

Duncan Smith, the former Conservative Prime Minister, described the police action as 'pathetic' and called them the "thoughtless thought police", adding: "It's a waste of police time. It's absurd that they went to speak to her. They should have dismissed it on the spot."

Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, said: "This is typical of the weird authoritarian atmosphere that has grown up in Britain since Sir Keir Starmer took control. Good luck persuading GMP to send two police officers to your house if you're burgled or your car is stolen." 

We already have laws on defamation and now we seem to have the Orwellian thought police investigating thought crime and thought criminals. 

 

Trump sells out Ukrainians but Starmer praises him for creating an opportunity to end war with Russia.

 

Sir Keir Starmeroid

Who voted for this clown Starmer-oid? Keir Starmer's Labour government are a complete embarrassment - a joke. They couldn't run a whelk stall.

Donald Trump has just poured a big bucket of shit over the Ukraine and other European leaders in NATO and Starmer is now sucking up to the oaf. Trump has made them look ridiculous, weak and ineffectual. In a sickening and hypocritical speech to an international summit on supporting Ukraine in Kyiv, Starmer claimed that Trump has "changed the global conversation" on the Ukraine and "created an opportunity" to end the war.

What Trump has done is capitulate to the Russians and thrown the Ukrainians under a bus. He entered into direct talks with the Russians and excluded the Ukrainians and other European leaders from those talks. Vladimir Putin must be rubbing his hands with glee to have such a valuable asset and useful idiot as Donald Trump, in the White House. It is yet another instance of Donald Trump throwing the Russian president a lifeline and humiliating Europe's leaders.

Although America is in NATO, Trump has accused the Ukrainian's of provoking the war with Russia and called Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator without elections." Ukrainian elections are suspended under martial law which has been in place since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country was launched in February 2022. Some officials in the Trump administration have even said that the best thing for Zelenskyy to do, is to flee to France.

Only a number of weeks ago, Starmer pledged to give the Ukraine £3 billion in annual aid until 2030 and yet Labour says the country can't afford the winter fuel allowance for its old age pensioners. He was also proposing to send British troops to the Ukraine. There has even been talk of reintroducing conscription in Britain. Yet Parliament was recently told that in the event of Britain going to war, munitions would be exhausted within ten days.

Last December, Starmer said in his Mansion House speech that he didn't believe that Trump would pull the plug on the Ukraine and now he's praising him for having done that by claiming that Trump has changed the global conversation on the Ukraine. Neither the Ukraine or Europe’s leaders, are part of this global conversation.

A former Trotskyist and Marxist, who supports "Zionism without qualification", Starmer is renowned for being able to turn on a dime and for his ability to break any pledge or promise that he makes. When Trump was running for the U.S. Presidency he made it perfectly clear that if he was elected President, he would seek to end the war in the Ukraine.

Britain seems to be run by a bunch of invertebrates and incompetents who are terrified of standing up to Donald Trump. The country is a vassal state of the U.S. It makes you wonder who is the biggest threat to Britain's interests - Trump, Putin, or Starmer's Labour government. It looks like we may be beginning to see the end of the Trans-Atlantic alliance with the U.S. and possibly NATO, as America becomes more protectionist, isolationist and nationalist.

Labour MP jailed for punching constituent.

 

Mike Amesbury MP

Labour thug, Mike Amesbury, who was Angela Rayner's former parliamentary advisor, has been jailed for ten weeks for assaulting a constituent in Frodsham last October. Amesbury pleaded guilty to assaulting 45-year-old Paul Fellows. Amesbury, 55, who represents Runcorn and Helsby as an independent MP, was taken to the cells immediately and an application for bail was refused.

Before working for Angela Rayner, Amesbury was the Executive Assistant to the Labour Group on Tameside Council. Amesbury's wife, Amanda Amesbury, is the Director of Children's Services at Warrington Borough Council. She was formerly Head of Service for Children's Services at Tameside Council.

When journalists contacted Amesbury at his home to speak to him about the video footage of him punching Paul Fellows, Amanda Amesbury, responded with "piss off." Press reports have claimed that before the attack on Mr. Fellows, Amesbury had spent the afternoon drinking with friends.

According to press reports, Amesbury will continue to receive his £91,000 MPs salary while he languishes in jug.

 

Wetherspoon's have just increased their prices but now say that prices are likely to rise again in April.

 

Tim Martin - CEO of J.D. Wetherspoon Ltd

A pint of hand pumped cask beer in the Wetherspoon's that I use has just gone up by 15 pence. A pint of Abbot Ale has increased by 11 pence. Prices in Wetherspoon's pubs vary in different locations and prices have been increasing steadily over a number of years.

 If you increase business costs like increasing the National Minimum Wage and N.I., this has to be paid by someone and it’s s ultimately the consumer who cops for it. However, Wetherspoon's increased its prices in late January 2025 and the increase in the NMW and N.I. doesn't take effect until April.

 I'm told that Tim likes to get in early. He's also been saying that Wetherspoon's prices might have to increase again in April. It looks like Tim wants another bite of the cherry and is putting hay in the hayloft. This is likely to drive more people into the supermarkets to buy much cheaper beer.

Moscow is quietly funding Europe's far-right parties to destabilize Europe.

 

It's surprising how popular the Russian nationalist Vladimir Putin is among far-right political parties in Europe. It must have something to do with the amount of Russian money that has been donated to far-right political parties to try and destabilize Europe.

Russian money helped to finance Marine Le Pen's presidential campaign in 2014. Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO), are known to have received money from a Russian spin doctor in exchange for introducing certain proposals in the national parliament. The Russian FSB have cultivated ties with the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party and gave instructions to an AfD member of parliament to try and derail or delay deliveries of German battle tanks to the Ukraine.

In 2014, Nigel Farage who leads the populist right-wing Reform UK party, declared that Vladimir Putin was the world leader that he most admired.

Tories say Labour's Business Secretary spent more than a decade pretending to be a solicitor.

 

Walter Mitty - Jonathan Reynolds MP

Labour seems to be full of Walter Mitty's like Jonathan Reynolds, who descend into flights of fancy by embellishing their Job histories and CV's.

Reynolds, who is Labour's Business Secretary, had repeatedly claimed that before becoming an MP, he had been a solicitor. But he never actually finished his training contract with the Manchester law firm Addleshaw Goddard and was therefore a trainee solicitor and not a qualified solicitor. 

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), who protects the public against bogus solicitors and can strike solicitors off, wrote to Reynolds in January calling on him to 'stop claiming that he was a solicitor' in his LinkedIn profile. In 2014, Reynolds told the Commons that he had worked as a solicitor in Addleshaw Goddard's Manchester branch before running for Parliament.

It is a criminal offence for anyone to call themselves a solicitor if they are not on the official register. Under Section 21 of the Solicitors Act 1974, it is illegal for any unqualified person to take or use "any name, title, addition or description" implying they are qualified to acts as a solicitor.

Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary and Reform UK, are now calling for Reynolds to be sacked. In a statement to The Telegraph, Mr Jenrick accused the Business Secretary of spending more than a decade "pretending to be a solicitor" pointing out that his claims were not limited to his online CV. He has also urged the SRA to investigate Reynolds "with a view to prosecuting."   The Tories have also written to Sir Laurie Magnus, Sir Keir Starmer's ethics adviser, urging him to investigate "potential breaches of the ministerial code."

The revelations made about Reynolds and the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is also alleged to have embellished her own CV claiming that she worked as an economist at the Bank of Scotland between 2006 and 2009, have raised more questions about the probity and integrity of Sir Keir's Cabinet.

 A Labour source told The Telegraph that "The Business Secretary engaged fully and corrected this administrative error immediately." It has also been claimed that Jonathan Reynolds does not manage his LinkedIn profile and this was an 'inadvertent error." As Jonathan Swift famously said, "Where falsehood flies, truth comes limping after it."

 

Mandelson avoids commenting on whether President Zelenskyy is a 'dictator'.

 

Peter Mandelson

Labour's national security adviser Jonathan Powell has said that job of the UK ambassador to America, is to get as far up the arse of the White House as you possibly can. Is this why Peter Mandelson was chosen for the job?

The U.S. President Donald Trump, who some have accused of being a 'Russian Asset', has just pulled the plug on the Ukraine and in doing so, has made NATO and other European leaders look ridiculous. They've all been left with egg on their face. Trump has entered into direct negotiations with Vladimir Putin to end the war in the Ukraine.

Russia invaded the Ukraine in February 2022 and has occupied parts of the country since 2014. Neither the Ukraine or European leaders have been invited to the talks and have been side-lined. When the UK Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson was asked about Trump's accusation that President Zelenskyy of the Ukraine was a "dictator" he refused to respond but said that Trump had made an interesting speech and he was looking forward to Sir Keir Starmer's visit to the U.S. Some members of Trump's administration are less diplomatic and have described Mandelson as a 'moron'.

Since leaving the E.U., Britain has become a much more diminished nation in terms of global influence and the Americans know it. Britain is a country that prostrates itself before the Americans because it believes that it is in Britain's national interest to do so. Parliament was recently told that if Britain was to enter a full-scale war, munitions would run out within ten days. Nevertheless, Starmer wants to send British troops to the Ukraine and there is even talk of reintroducing military conscription in Britain. What could possibly go wrong?

Baroness Harman says the 'Trigger Me Timbers' group are not fit to hold public office.

 

Harriet Harman

The former Labour MP and government minister, Harriet (Baroness) Harman, believes that Andrew Gwynne and other followers of his WhatsApp group ' Trigger Me Timbers', are not fit to hold public office. The former Labour MP and minister said: "I think if you have racist thoughts and you've got anti-Semitic beliefs, and if you've got contempt for the people you're supposed to be representing, you shouldn't be an MP."

Eleven councillors in Tameside, Greater Manchester, have now been suspended by the Labour Party over the 'Trigger Me Timbers' scandal including the former Labour council leader Ged Cooney, who is alleged to have passed information to the press. Gwynne's wife Alison, who is a Tameside Councillor, was also suspended by the Labour Party.

Starmer ready and willing to send British troops to the Ukraine.

 

Keir Starmer

The UK Parliament have just been told that in the event of war, the British army would run out of munitions within ten days. Last spring, the number of British army troops dropped below 73,000 for the first time since the Napoleonic era. Yet the Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer-oid is saying that he's ready and willing to deploy British troops to the Ukraine if that becomes necessary.

The U.S. President, Donald Trump, has just pulled the plug on NATO and the Ukraine and entered into direct negotiations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, to bring the war to an end in the Ukraine. Trump has also signaled that U.S. security support for Europe is to be scaled back. Neither NATO member countries or the Ukraine were consulted about this.

Foreign ministers of both Russia and the U.S. will meet in Saudi Arabia on Monday to start talks about a peace agreement. The Ukraine has not been invited to the negotiating table nor have the leaders of European countries. An emergency meeting has also been called by the French president Emmanuel Macron. The French president wants a Europe-led peacekeeping force in Ukraine. Whether European countries would be prepared to commit troops as part of an international peacekeeping force in sufficient numbers is questionable. Some estimates have suggested that 100,000 troops would be needed.

Donald Trump seems to be carving out a new world order that side-lines Europe and NATO in favour of a closer alignment with Russia and America. Trump has been accused of brokering a Munich-style appeasement agreement with Russia. The former Conservative prime minister, John Major, accused Trump of "cuddling up" to Putin and warned that "tinpot" dictators would be emboldened if Russia was allowed to keep Ukrainian territory seized by force.