Blacklist Support Group seeks judicial review over the inquiry into undercover policing.

 

Dave Smith - Blacklist Support Group

I gather that Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), will not be called to give evidence before the Mitting Inquiry into undercover policing. Dave says that the inquiry has told him that he has nothing to say.

Many blacklisted construction workers and trades unionists, were spied upon by undercover Special Branch police officers of the SDS. I understand that the BSG are seeking a judicial review over the inquiry's decision not to call Dave Smith to give evidence. It is known that these undercover police officers as well as MI5 officers, shared intelligence they had gathered on people with employers, that led to some construction workers being blacklisted.

The undercover police officer, John Dines, used the alias, John Barker, to spy on members of London Greenpeace. I believe that London Greenpeace had been infiltrated by that many private investigators, that Dines had to tell them to fuck off. When the beef burger chain, McDonald's, sued two London Greenpeace members, Dave Morris and Helen Steel, for libel, they were given pro-bono legal advice by the young socialist lawyer, Keir Starmer. Dines attended some of these meetings with Starmer and intelligence was shared by the police, with McDonald's.

Helen Steel and Dave Morris were sued because of a leaflet they had distributed called "What's Wrong With Macdonald's?" What they didn't know at the time, was that the leaflet, had been largely written by another undercover Special Branch officer called Bob Lambert, who used the alias, Bob Robinson. Both Lambert and Dines, entered into sexual relationships with female activists. One of those women, described Lambert as “very seductive.” Another activist described Lambert as an “expert on anarchism.” 

Does Lee Anderson lack a sense of proportion?

 

Lee Anderson

Wearing a flat cap on his way to Westminster, Lee Anderson, the saviour of Britain, looks and sounds like a thug out of "Peaky Blinders." I wonder if he's got any razor blades in that flat cap. Anderson, thinks that people who carry a knife should receive a mandatory jail sentence. 

Lee, if you're carrying a knife to cut up a piece of thick twist for your pipe, should you be jailed for this? Is it really fair to pipe smokers? And what about the hunting fraternity or green welly brigade, who carry a knife to skin a dead animal in the field? Should they be jailed as well?  Should people be jailed for carrying a Swiss army knife or an electrician, who carries a knife, to splice a piece of wire? Surely, it all depends on why you're carrying the knife and whether you have a reasonable excuse for carrying it. Lee, it's called having a sense of proportion. 

Stalybridge guitarist Steve Whalley dies suddenly aged 74.

 

Steve Whalley

I was told last night (Monday), in Wetherspoon's that the guitarist Steve Whalley, had died after suffering a heart attack aged 74.

Most people who knew of Steve Walley associate him with the bands Slade II and Sad Cafe. I never saw him play with either of those bands. The two bands that I did see him play with were the local Stalybridge band called 'The Puritans' and a Manchester band called Greasy Bear, who were a regular feature at the Magic Village in Manchester. I remember watching The Puritans do a gig at Ashton College of Further Education in the early 1970s. The band did mainly cover songs like "Sunshine Help Me" by Spooky Tooth. Whalley played a white Fender Telecaster through a 100-watt Triumph amplifier. As a local band, The Puritans, were very good. It was Steve's brother Pete Whalley, who told me that he'd joined Slade.

I can't imagine that Steve Whalley was ever a big fan of Slade. The one musician that he did admire, and who I think, he tried to emulate, was Steve Winwood of the band Traffic. A former pupil of West Hill School, Steve was brought up in the Carrbrook area of Stalybridge. The last time that I saw Steve Walley play was at the former Conservative club on Mottram Road, Stalybridge, which I think was then called the 71 Bar. I remember him saying that night that most of his old mates from West Hill School were in the audience. Steve Whalley left Stalybridge many years ago and I believe he moved down south, possibly to Surrey. 

Gordon Brown & the Rochdale widow.

 

Mrs Duffy & Gordon Brown

I favoured remaining in the E.U. because I grew up with it but I was never really impressed with either Strasbourg or Brussels. There's a lot of corruption. We had a referendum in June 1975, and two-thirds of Brits voted to remain in the Common Market. I also liked the idea of the free movement of people within the E.U. and so do many young people living in Britain. When I asked people what they understood Brexit to mean, they gave me different reasons. The Conservative Prime Minister, Theresa May, wasn't much clearer. All she could say was that Brexit means Brexit, whatever that meant.

Tony Blair and New Labour probably laid the foundations for Brexit. In May 2004, the E.U. welcomed ten new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. The UK under a Labour government opened up its labour market immediately to these new E.U. citizens. Other E.U. countries placed restrictions on the number of people entering their countries from Central and Eastern Europe. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 80% of new jobs created under thirteen years of Tony Blair's New Labour government, went to migrant workers coming from Europe. Nevertheless, the British economy benefitted from the skills and labour of these migrant workers even though many working-class traditional Labour voters, felt betrayed by Blair and felt he ignored their concerns about immigration. They either stopped voting Labour, stopped voting altogether, or turned to Nigel Farage and UKIP.

The American economist, Milton Friedman, has talked about the "fallacy of the fixed pie", i.e. the tendency to believe that an economy is a fixed pie and that one party can only gain at the expense of another. It's a commonly held belief. Many people do believe this, but income and wealth are not fixed pies, and neither is the size of the economy or the size of labour market. The Victorians believed in the 'wage fund theory' that maintained that there was only so much money in the pot. This was advocated by the economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

I remember that incident which involved a Rochdale widow, Mrs Gillian Duffy, and Gordon Brown. A lifelong Labour supporter and former council worker, Mrs Duffy bumped into Brown while she was out buying some bread. Mrs Duffy said to him, "All these eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?" With his Sky News microphone still on, Brown was heard calling Mrs Duffy a 'bigoted woman" and he had to apologise to her when it went public.

I think the incident showed how out of touch politicians like Gordon Brown were when it came to understanding the concerns of the British people. The confrontation with Mrs Duffy was disastrous for Brown and for the Labour government.  

Reeves urged to raise alcohol duty to improve UK productivity.

 

Keir Starmer's Labour government is being urged by the think tank, The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which has close ties to the Labour government, to raise alcohol duty to improve UK productivity.

Britain has experienced decades of low productivity but it's not because people drink too much beer. A lack of capital investment and investment in skills, are two reasons why Britain experiences low productivity. Another reason, is low wages. When wages are low, employers are less likely to invest in labour saving machinery, that can improve productivity. 

British pubs are already closing their doors at a colossal rate. Pubs are closing because of the burden of higher taxes, N.I., regulation and overall higher costs. Labour claims that it wants to grow the British economy but it doesn't seem to have much of a clue about how you go about this. The hospitality industry is one of the biggest employers in the UK and imposing higher costs on the industry, is going to close more businesses and lead to more unemployment. 

Why did it need the UK Supreme Court to tell us what a woman is?

 

UK Supreme Court Judges

I am not a medical man but I am aware that some babies can be born 'intersex' with sexually ambiguous genitalia. As I understand it, when this happens the child is assigned a sex and surgical procedures are performed to align their genitals with that sex.

Some people get confused with biological sex and gender which is a social construct. It's really about how we expect men and women to behave in society. Biological sex is not the same thing as gender and it isn't just about penises. In my view if a man undergoes surgery to remove his penis, it doesn't make him a biological woman. Nor does self-identifying as a woman, make you a woman.  

The Supreme Court decision was about how you define a 'woman' for the purposes of the Equalities Act. The court ruled that this is determined by a person's biological sex. Why it needed the Supreme Court to tell us what a woman is, says a lot about the state of British society. At the root of this debate, is relativism; the belief that standards of truth, morality and meaning, are not universal but are dependent on context, culture or historical period. Personally, I couldn't care less whether someone considers themselves a minotaur or a centaur, but don’t expect me to buy into it, because I still believe that reality is worth defending.

On this issue of transgenderism, we are being expected to collude in a fiction and abandon reality and this is what many people object to. They feel they're being gas lighted - being made to doubt their own reasoning. I believe that in the NHS, they give smear tests to transgender women, who don’t have a cervix. Some local authorities have been putting women's sanitary products in men's toilets. It's what the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, would have called "nonsense upon stilts." 

Plato's Republic & Might is Right.

 

I find the term "life changing" a much-overused and hackneyed cliché. I read Plato's Republic but I didn't find it "life changing." It's an inquiry into what we mean by 'justice' using Socratic dialogue. Today, most people if they thought about it, would consider justice, as 'isonomy’ - equality before the law, but Plato doesn't seem to use this definition.

Both Plato and Socrates were critical of Athenian democracy. To both of them, the vote of an ignorant assembly was no better than to allow the skilled navigator of a ship, to be over-ruled by a majority crew, untrained in navigation. It was a democratically elected Athenian jury that sentenced Socrates to death for impiety and for corrupting the youth of Athens. It's a book that's worth reading because it deals with issues that are largely unresolved to this day, such as "might is right."

The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, held that civilization as we understand it, was born from barbarism. It was a process of the strong eliminating the week, the educated eliminating the uneducated, and the able, eliminating the unable. He attacked the Christian values of compassion and pity which he believed empowered the weak and the underdog and fostered dependence.

In Plato's Republic, I particularly like that quote by Pindar, “What must a man be, and what paths must he take, if he would live the best possible life? Shall I by justice or by crooked wiles ascend the higher wall and so fortify myself for life? For what do men say? If I am just, unless I also seem just, I gain no advantage, but manifest toil and pains. But if I am unjust and have acquired the appearance of justice, a heavenly life, they say is mine."

We talk about international law but what does that really mean in reality? The state of Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territories in breach of U.N. resolutions and international law and has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza, including thousands of women and children.  The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity and yet, when Netanyahu, address the American Congress, he gets numerous standing ovations. For the last eighty years, Europe's security has been underpinned by U.S. military might and if it wasn't for American financial and military aid, it's doubtful that the state of Israel could exist.

The Sophist philosopher, Thrasymachus, who is referred to in Plato's Republic, is quoted as saying: "If I have the power to impose my will on you, and choose to do so, your appeal to an abstract and objective morality will give neither colour nor strength to your cause. The natural superiority of the strong must and will assert itself in human affairs, public and private, in spite of all the claptrap about morality." It looks like Thrasymachus might be correct.  

Should Robert Jenrick join the Ku Klux Klan?

 

I am white English but I really couldn't care less about a person's colour. We're not living in Birmingham Alabama, are we? Perhaps Robert Jenrick, the Conservative shadow minister, should join the Ku Klux Klan.

As a white Englishman, I don't believe that I have much in common with Jenrick, either socially, politically, or economically. I believe Jenrick originated from Wolverhampton but grew up in a better part of Wolverhampton, so he probably didn't see many black faces. 

A black lady that I know, who is a dear friend, and who originates from Wolverhampton, once told me that they were the only black family on their street and people used to piss through the letterbox of their family home.  Doesn't it make you proud to be British!

Jenrick seems to play the race card all the time to score political points. In December 2023 he resigned his position as Minister of State for Immigration, because he didn't think the government's Rwanda scheme went far enough to tackle illegal immigration. In fact, this costly political gimmick didn't tackle illegal immigration at all, and the only beneficiary, seems to have been the Rwandan government who got billions of British taxpayers' money for doing nowt. In July 2023, it was reported in the press that this miserable little sod; the father of three children, had ordered staff at an asylum reception centre designed for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in Kent, to paint over wall art depicting cartoons and animals from the Jungle book and Micky Mouse, in order to provide a less welcoming atmosphere for the children. Jenrick could have fallen out of a story by Charles Dickens.

This idea that there is some kind of cohesive homogenous white British society, was always myth. Very often the white British population can't get on with one another for a variety of reasons - culture, social-class or regionalism. England is one of the most divisive class-ridden societies in the world. The Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw, observed: "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him."

The English middle-class poet Stephen Spender, wrote in an early poem, "My parents kept me from children who were rough." Eric Blair's (George Orwell) mother, stopped him playing with the plumbers' daughter. Orwell and the poet Philip Larkin, originated from dire English middle-class backgrounds that inculcated prejudice against Jews, the coloured subjects of the British Empire and the working-class. Larkin's father was a supporter of the British Union of Fascists, and his son, detested the trade unions and was appalled at the arrival of emigrants from the Caribbean and Asia. Many of these would finish up working in NHS hospitals, which over the years, has relied heavily on immigrant labour for doctors and nurses. Many of these nurses from the Caribbean were brought to England by Enoch Powell, when he was a Conservative government health minister.

Are domestic cats the biggest threat to British birds?

 

Red Kite

If foxes have to been controlled then I can't think of a more stupid way of trying to do it, than fox hunting. Foxes are a much-maligned creature and they do a good job in keeping the rodent population under control. Urban foxes have little to fear from man. One fox walked past me when I was walking down the road one Sunday evening in the town centre of Stalybridge. I have never been that close to a fox in my life. It wasn't startled at all nor did it fear me or threaten me.

Weasels and stoats kill rabbits because it's in their nature to do so, and they need to eat. As for Britain's bird population, their biggest threat is the domestic cat. They say that domestic cats kill an estimated 40 to 70 million birds annually in Britain but they also kill rats and mice.

Richmond Park in London is known for its deer, but these are continuously culled. The public doesn't see this because it's done at night. The park authorities say that if they didn't do this, there would be no deer and no park.

During the lockdown, I used to go to Ashton Park. People took their dogs into the park and let them off their lead. These dogs constantly chased grey squirrels. It's in the nature of dogs to hunt and kill and some are better at it than others. They also seem to like killing. I've no time for gamekeepers or anyone who shoots or poisons raptors. I would jail those who kill birds like the Red Kite. I've seen Magpies kill birds and I once saw a Sparrowhawk take a bird on the pavement. It was an amazing thing to see.

With a name like Jihad Al-Shamie, how could you not be on somebody's watchlist?

 

Jihad Al-Shamie

If you're single and want your own council house in Prestwich, call yourself Jihad Al-Shamie. With a name like that, how could he not be on somebody's watchlist? We know what 'Jihad' is, and 'Al-Shamie', translates as "the Syrian." You really couldn't make yourself more conspicuous.

It has been reported that Al-Shamie was on police bail after being arrested on suspicion of rape. His father is a trauma surgeon who was trained in Britain, but is now believed to work abroad. It should be reasonably clear to most people, that what drives anti-Semitism, is Israel's war on innocent Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories. The Israeli President, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Two people died at the Heaton Park synagogue and three were injured. One Jewish worshipper at the Mosque was accidentally shot dead by the police. As Jihad Al-Shamie was shot dead by the police, we will probably never know what his precise motive was for carrying out the killings. Nevertheless, what is reasonably clear is that Al-Shamie went to the synagogue to kill people and to get himself killed. Suicide by cop?

The conspiracy that brought down Jeremy Corbyn.

 

Jeremy Corbyn lacked the killer instinct and was a weak leader. He could never get to grips with the spurious allegations about Labour being rife with anti-Semitism, under his leadership. We were told that a Corbyn Labour government would pose an "existential threat" to Jews living in Britain. It was laughable and silly but Corbyn thought that he could placate his critics by buying into this conspiracy, about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. He stood on the side-lines and watched friends and colleagues thrown under a bus, as they were branded anti-Semites.

The Labour MP, Margaret Hodge, called Corbyn an anti-Semite in the House of Commons. When she received a letter from Jenny Formby, the General Secretary of the Labour Party threatening to discipline her, you would have thought that she'd received a summons from the SS boss, Heinrich Himmler. Hodge said that it reminded her of what her father, Harry Oppenheimer, used to say to her about always having suitcase packed near the front door, in case they had to leave in a hurry. The whole thing was a huge conspiracy to bring down Corbyn and to replace him with Keir Starmer-oid.

When Starmer-oid became Labour leader he excluded Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party and sought to keep those on the left, from being adopted as Labour candidates. Starmer-oid then repudiated and tore up everything that Corbyn stood for and what he'd previously supported. Starmer-oid's politics, are the politics of the whore. He will lie down with anybody if it brings him closer to the centre of power.

Nationalism and "imagined communities."

 

As an ideology, 'nationalism' seems to be rooted in the 19th century and was influenced by writers and poets. The Scottish national identity was to a great extent created by Sir Walter Scott. Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, are credited with creating the Italian national identity and the operas of Giuseppe Verdi are synonymous with Italian nationalism and the Risorgimento. Ukrainian nationalism, seems to stem largely from the imagination of the writer and poet, Taras Shevchenko.

Benedict Anderson was right to describe the 'nation' as an "imagined community" because we can't know everybody who is part of the nation. In a country like England, I think regional identities are probably stronger than national identities. There's definitely a 'scouse' identity and as they say, "You can always tell a Yorkshireman, but you can't tell him much."

I remember being in pub in north Devon when I got into a conversation with a local bloke who asked me where I was from. We got talking about the regions and I said that I wasn't that keen on Londoner's. He smiled and said to me, "You've got your bloody Brums"! A Scottish lorry driver who once gave me a lift, told me that as far as he was concerned, you could drop a bomb on everything south of Birmingham.

Say no to Starmer's digital ID.

 

Larry Ellison

Opposition to Starmer's digital ID is growing by the day. Already some 2 million people have signed a petition opposing digital ID. Why do state pensioners need digital ID if they're not working? Many don't use smart phones.

Tony Blair has been pushing for digital ID for years. Many of the financial backers of his modestly named 'The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change' are tech billionaires. The world's wealthiest man, Larry Ellison, of the Oracle Corporation, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Blair's Institute and is involved with digital ID.

This isn't about tackling illegal immigration; it's about surveillance and control of the UK population and making money for Blair's wealthy friends. Blair and Starmer, are obsessed with snooping on people and trying to control their lives and behaviour. Starmer, a former Marxist Trot and state prosecutor, is trying to build a Stasi-like police state in Britain.

Charlie Kirk and Atlas Shrugged.

 

Charlie Kirk

What happened to Charlie Kirk was appalling.  Nobody deserves to die for their opinions. Charlie was known as a "right-wing influencer". He was a proselytizer of a pro-capitalist right-wing ideology wrapped up as Christianity.

When I heard Kirk denounce 'empathy' as a dangerous concept, I knew that he was more a devotee of Ayn Rand rather than Jesus Christ. Charlie's Bible is Atlas Shrugged which has been described as the Bible of the American Congress. I read Atlas Shrugged some years ago and I found it a rather silly and absurd novel. When Rand published the novel in 1957, some critics found that the book lacked any sense of moral purpose and was elitist. Atlas Shrugged is a pro-capitalist dystopian novel which depicts an American society in the future that is brought down by too much state interference and regulation. Rand's heroic capitalist multi-millionaires, are depicted as Atlas carrying the heavens on their shoulders.

Ayn Rand railed against altruism and empathy and despised welfare systems. Yet she couldn't live up to her own ideals. As her health failed her in later life, she finished up on social security and Medicare. Charlie Kirk called himself an 'entrepreneur', but his business 'Turning Point USA', seems to have relied heavily on financial donations, which I suspect came from wealthy individuals with vested interests. Rand's heroic capitalists are not quacks and nostrum mongers, but steel barons, railway tycoons and oilmen.

Policing free speech in the UK and the U.S.

 

Rupert Bear

British social attitudes were very different in the 1960s and early 1970s, because the feminist movement was just taking off. Nobody really used the term sexist, or racist, nor was there a 'cancel culture'. Rupert Bear used to go to "Coon Island" and children still had golliwogs.

I remember the northern working men's clubs where there was always a comic on the bill. The comics weren't quite as filthy as Roy Chubby Brown, but they were quite risqué. They said that when Max Miller and Frank Randall were prosecuted for obscenity, their ticket sales increased at the music halls. Like the comedian Frankie Howard, Max Miller relied on the double entendre.

 On the Busses" was working-class comedy, a kind of shop floor type of humour or banter. It's in the tradition of the saucy seaside post card. I don't think you can really have politically correct comedy. What passes for comedy in the UK today, is rather pathetic. I thought the League of Gentlemen comedy series was an exception but it's an acquired taste.

Back in those days, it would have been unthinkable that people could be arrested by the police for expressing public opinions. There was really no such thing as 'hate speech" or "malicious communications". There were libel laws and laws regarding obscenity and blasphemy. But prosecutions for blasphemy or obscenity were very rare.

Boris Johnson, the former Conservative Prime Minister, said recently that the police were making over 10,000 arrest every year for comments made by people on social media. Nick Clegg, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said that 30 people a day in the UK, are being arrested by the police for comments made on social media outlets like X and Facebook.

Under Starmer's Labour government, Britain is beginning to resemble a police state. Although the Trump administration have expressed concerns about restrictions on free speech in the UK, people who apply for U S. visas, now have their social media sites searched for "indications of hostility" towards the citizens, culture or the founding principles of the United States. Visa applicants are required to list all social media usernames or handles of every platform they have used for the last five years. 

Early capitalism and the inculcation of work habits.

 

The German sociologist Max Weber, noted that wherever modern capitalism has sought to increase productivity of human labour by increasing its intensity, it has encountered stubborn resistance from pre-capitalistic labour.

It was Josiah Wedgewood's aim to "Make such machines of men as cannot err." In 19th century Britain, we know from historical accounts that some working-class children were literally worked to death by employers. Many factory children sustained terrible injuries. As the historian E.P Thompson notes, "The exploitation of children on this scale and intensity, was one of the most shameful events in Britain's history."

The exploitation of labour is not about pitting younger workers against older workers or males against females, or black against white, it has always been a feature of the capitalist system and the exploiters and exploited.  The pre-capitalistic worker rebelled against the notion of week after week of highly disciplined labour and considered waged labour an indignity. To them the factory was the 'Bastille.'

People are not born as factory hands but have to be turned into factory hands using a combination of the carrot and stick. What is required is an "inner compulsion", the "labourer must be turned into his own slave driver." 

Stalin used the death of Kirov to crack down on political opponents. Is Trump doing the same thing with the death of Charlie Kirk?

 

After Charlie Kirk was shot, it wasn't known who the assassin was or what their motive was for killing him. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump, immediately blamed the 'left' for the killing.

As of yet, those who are investigating this killing, have found no link between Kirk's killer, Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups. According to the Anti-Defamation League, since 2002, right-wing ideologies have fuelled more than 70% or extremist attacks and domestic terrorism plots in the United States.

It seems that the Trump administration, have turned the tragic death of Charlie Kirk, into political propaganda so they can introduce oppressive measures against left wing groups in America. Charlie Kirk's killing is to Donald Trump what the death of Sergei Kirov was to Joseph Stalin, an excuse for a purge and a crackdown of one's political opponents.

Barry Hines and Kes.

 

Barry Hines

Ken Loach's film 'Kes' is a great film based on the book 'A Kestrel for a Knave' by the author, Barry Hines, from the mining village of Hoyland Common in South Yorkshire.

Many of us of a certain age who are northern working class, can relate to Billy Casper and his life in this film. Many of us have encountered school teachers like the neurotic headmaster of Billy's school, Mr Gryce. My secondary modern school was like being in Borstal. The teachers, many of whom, were ex-national service men and a waste of taxpayers' money, would knock you about with their fists for the fun of it. A few of the teachers were quite decent and did actually teach you something. One of the teachers who taught my father, gave me a book prize.

The only thing these bastards instilled in me, was dislike of teachers, the middle-classes, and a dislike of authority. I've been a recusant for most of my adult life. Barry Hines wrote this book to show how young working-class lads like Billy Casper were thrown onto the scrap heap at a tender age by the British state education system in the I960's and early 197O's. If you went to a secondary modern school, you were destined to be factory fodder. Poor Billy was destined for the pit. Although Barry Hines, qualified and worked as a teacher in Barnsley schools, he knew what side he was on even if many don't.

The term 'Fascist' is banded about all the time, but do most people really know what it means?

 

Benito Mussolini

The term 'Fascism' is banded about a lot, but most people, don't really know what it means. The word is derived from the Latin 'fasces' which denotes a bundle of wooden rods surrounding an axe head, which was a symbol of the magistrates' authority in ancient Rome.

Benito Mussolini was the first Fascist dictator and Italy was the first Fascist regime, but Mussolini described Giovanni Gentile, as "the philosopher of Fascism." Mussolini had been a socialist. The Italian Fascist called their regime the 'Corporate State', and Mussolini, claimed that it was founded on the strengths of capitalism and socialism, which he called the "third way." Initially, Italian Fascism was not anti-Semitic and some Jews in Italy were members of The National Fascist Party (PNF). They probably joined the PNF for two reasons: a sense of patriotism or a way of getting on. Fascists don't care much for democracy, civil liberties, or a free press, and they're generally totalitarian regimes and dictatorships.

In both Germany and Italy, Fascism arose when the bourgeoisie (middle-classes), felt their interests were threatened by the working class or proletariat. The same thing happened in Spain in the 1930s. For Fascists, everything is subsumed into the state and everybody is seen as working for the best interests of the state - the motherland or fatherland. The 'leader', is seen to embody the very ideals of the state. Fascism is extremely nationalistic and militaristic, and in both Italy and Germany, trade unions and socialists and communist' parties were crushed. The Italian Fascists didn't murder Jews to begin with, but murdered socialists and communists.

Fascism has been described as a 'capitalist dictatorship' and it is certainly true, that industrialists, the wealthy, and the military, backed Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. Before the outbreak of WWII, the English bourgeoisie, knew that Hitler was on the side of the dividend drawer and hated Bolshevism. Before coming to power in 1933, the German Nazis often used anti-capitalist propaganda when it was politically expedient to do so. 

Franco sent a letter to the British Conservative Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, thanking him for his support during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Britain's official position, was one of neutrality when it came to Spain. Chamberlain's sister-in-law, Lady Chamberlain, was a great fan of Mussolini and an ardent Fascists. Winston Churchill called Mussolini a "Roman Genius" and when he visited Italy in 1927, he told the Italians that had been Italian, he would certainly have been a Fascist. He said that Mussolini and his Fascists had done the world a favour in getting rid of Bolshevism in Italy. In 1923, Benito Mussolini, was given the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, by King George V. This was only withdrawn when Italy declared war on Britain.

Is Andy Burnham planning to depose Sir Keir Starmer-oid?

 

Andy Burnham - Mayor of Greater Manchester

They say that Labour doesn't do regicide, but it's obvious that Keir Starmer can't last because he's hopelessly out of his depth as PM. He always was the default prime minister. He's never been able to establish any connection or rapport with the British public who generally dislike him or find him boring. Starmer and his government, can't even shoot straight.

I'm not sure that Andy Burnham would be any better at the job, even though press reports claim that he's planning to return to Westminster. He can't even keep the buses running in Greater Manchester. This Friday 19th September to 22nd September, there will be no buses running in Greater Manchester because 2000 bus drivers are going on strike over a pay dispute. In Greater Manchester there's now only the Bee Network and TfGM don't employ the drivers. If you can't get a Bee Network bus then you're knackered because there's no other bus service. Sharon Graham and Unite the Union have got us all by the goolies.

No doubt Burnham will say that his hands are tied, but if he can't keep the buses running in Greater Manchester, how can he be expected to keep a country running.

Dickens and Dostoevsky.

 

Charles Dickens & Fyodor Dostoevsky

I have read most of Dostoevsky's major novels twice and though I enjoyed reading them, I don't think they changed my life or had a profound effect on me. Crime and Punishment is a cracking novel and possibly one of the best of all novels.

I once asked a Russian woman if Russian people were like the characters in a Dostoevsky novel. She said are English people like the characters in a Dickens novel. Dostoevsky seemed to believe that the Russian people had a craving for suffering and delighted in their afflictions. In his 'Diary of a Writer', he wrote: "Even in happiness there is in the Russian people and element of suffering; otherwise, felicity to them is incomplete."  

English people aren't really like the characters in a Dickens novel but they are representative of a type of English person that we can often recognise.  I've never met a Mrs Gamp or a Wilkins Micawber, or a Harold Skimpole. They say Dickens modelled many of his characters on family and friends. They have called Dostoyevsky the Russian Dickens, but as an author, Dostoevsky is far more profound. He's more of a psychological writer.

I believe Dickens's novels were very popular in Russia and Dostoevsky wrote: "We, however, understand Dickens when rendered into Russian, almost as well as the English - perhaps, even all the nuances. Moreover, we love him - perhaps not less than his own countrymen. And yet, how typical, original and national is Dickens. What can be derived from this."

I believe that the 1952 film of The Pickwick Papers that was first screened in the Soviet Union in July 1954, was a great success. I have often wondered what the Russians made of that rogue Alfred Jingle and how his words translate into Russian.

Are bus strikes in Greater Manchester likely to become a recurring problem for Andy Burnham?

 

In my entire life I have never known a situation where we had no bus services in Greater Manchester for three or four continuous days. Even when there were bus strikes, which was a rarity, there was always an alternative bus service.

If the bus strike in Greater Manchester goes ahead on the 19th September, it will largely affect people who rely on public transport because they don't drive or have access to a car. It will impact mostly on the elderly, people with disabilities, and those on low incomes. These people will have three options: stay at home for three days, Shanks's pony or get a taxi. You had better make sure you've got plenty of shopping in before next Friday.

How does a situation like this, get people out of cars, and using buses, because they're told it's more environmentally friendly? Only a bloody fool would give up their car to use public transport as bad as this in Labour controlled Greater Manchester. We're now in a situation where bus services in Greater Manchester, are under public control, but Andy Burnham and TfGM don't have any control over the bus drivers or their pay and conditions because they don't employ the drivers who are employed by private bus companies like First and Stagecoach.

I don't blame the drivers for trying to get an increase in their pay because they know they're in a powerful position, because there's now only one bus service in Greater Manchester and that is the Bee Network. If you can't get a Bee Network bus you're fucked. Sharon Graham and Unite the Union know they've got us all by the bollocks, so I am amazed that this dispute over pay, hasn't been settled long ago. The bus operators will probably use this situation as leverage to squeeze more money out of TfGM.

Bus strikes are likely to be a recurring problem for Andy Burnham and TfGM. No doubt Burnham will tell us that his hands are tied and there's little he can do under the circumstances. But if he can't keep the buses on the road, how can he expect to run a country when he replaces Keir Starmer as the Leader of the Labour Party and becomes the next British prime minister?

What is the social cement that holds society together?

 

The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, pondered why the many can be governed so easily by the few and concluded that both force and opinion, play a role.

The Irish philosopher, Edmund Burke, who is seen as the father of modern-day conservatism, thought it was the 'little platoons' - families, communities, and local institutions - that were the foundations of society and which maintained social order and cohesion. The English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, talked about a theoretical condition called the "state of nature", which existed before government, where human life was a "war of all against all" which was characterized by fear, constant conflict, and a lack of morality, industry and society.

If this is the case, how did the native Americans live without a government or the aboriginal people of Australia? They lived in a state of nature for tens of thousands of years but they had their own rules, customs, and traditions. They were self-governing autonomous tribes that practiced mutual aid and co-operation. Is this what they call anarchy? There may have been conflict between tribes at times, over competition for natural resources, but those conflicts weren't anything like the two world wars of the 20th century. There was also a great deal of co-operation because in the long-run, it is in nobody's interest to be in a constant state of war. 

I believe that the Indian Chief Sitting Bull, came to England in 1887, as part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. In London, he was shocked to see the number of people begging in the streets. He couldn't quite understand why these people were going hungry when the shops were full of food. He said his own tribe did experience privation at times, but they shared what they had among the tribal members so that nobody went hungry.

I was never impressed with this Thatcherite idea of rugged individualism where we are all seen as competitive individuals pursuing our own greed and self-interests. Society works as well as it does because we're not really like that. If we were, we wouldn't have lifeboat crews or listening volunteers at the Samaritans. A society that is made up of an aggregate of self-interested egoists, is no society at all. 

Bee Network bus drivers to strike for three days from 19 September.

 

Andy Burnham

The Bee Network in Greater Manchester seems to be beleaguered with problems.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester promised the people of Greater Manchester a London-style bus network. We've seen buses crashing into one another or crashing into bridges. Only recently upstairs passengers on a double decker bus in Eccles, were nearly decapitated, when the driver tried to get under a bridge that wasn't high enough. Passengers in Greater Manchester now face the prospect of no buses from Friday 19 September to Monday 22 September in a coordinated strike over pay, when two thousand drivers will walk out.

This action will obviously have most impact on people who don't drive or own a car and rely on public transport to get about.  All the drivers are members of Unite the Union. Although the Bee Network has been brought back under local authority control, it doesn't employ the drivers or negotiate their wages. Many of these drivers will be employed by First or Stagecoach. As most of the buses are now part of the Bee Network, Burnham has created a monopoly which means that alternative public bus transport will be severely limited or not available to the general public.

Rayner admits to not paying enough stamp duty on luxury Brighton seaside flat.

 

Angela Rayner - UK Deputy Prime Minister

When I read Angela Rayner's public statement, I almost felt like crying. Angie was cynically accused of having removed her name from the deeds of her four-bedroom property in Ashton-under-Lyne in order to avoid paying £40,000 stamp duty (Tax) on another property in Hove, Brighton. She bought the house in Ashton with her former husband in 2016 for £375,000, when she became the MP for Ashton-under-Lyne. The property is now said to have a value of £650,000.

In May 2024, Rayner was accused in the press of having failed to pay capital gains tax for the sale of her former council house and of having wrongly declared her permanent address on the electoral register. She was cleared on both counts. Both Rayner and her former husband, Mark Rayner, a trade union official, had sold their former council houses in Stockport. These properties had been acquired under the 'Right-to-Buy' scheme. Rayner had maintained that her property in Ashton was her primary residence, and saved £2,000 in council tax on another property in London. She's now admitted to not paying enough stamp duty on the £800,000 luxury seaside flat in Hove, Brighton, but says this was done in error because she was incorrectly advised when she and her former husband put the family home in a trust, for their son who has disabilities and for her other children. In short, it's not her fault but the fault of someone else.

The problems seem to arise because Ms Rayner currently as three residences. When it comes to her constituents and her local Tameside Council, her primary residence is said to be in Ashton, but her local neighbours' say that they never see her. When it comes to saving £40,000 in stamp duty, her primary residence is said to be a flat in Hove, because she told the tax authorities this wasn't a second home but her primary residence. Her third home is a rent free 'grace and favour' apartment in Admiralty House, that was once the London home of Winston Churchill. This is now her primary residence when she's in London. She moved there when she gave up her rented property in London. Rayner has now referred herself to the watchdog on parliamentary standards and according to press reports, is under investigation by HMRC.

Boris Johnson says UK police arrest over 10,000 people a year for online comments.

 

"The UK police are now making over 10,000 arrests every year for online comments, more than the police in Russia itself, and this judgement is yet another propaganda gift for Vladimir Putin." (Boris Johnson - The Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2025). Johnson warned that Britain is becoming a 'police state' under Sir Keir Starmer.

I don't know where Boris Johnson got these statistics from, but if these figures are correct, then it does suggest that the British police like the East German Stasi, are spending a great deal of time monitoring the views that British citizens make on social media.

This seems to be clear in the case of Graham Linehan, the co-writer of the comedy series 'Father Ted'. He was arrested by British police when he flew from America to Heathrow Airport. The police told Linehan that he was being arrested for tweets that he'd made on the social media site X.

The Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, says that we have free speech in Britain, but this hardly seems to bear scrutiny. Even the Trump administration in the U.S. have expressed concerns about the crackdown on free speech in Britain.

When expressing moral concerns about genocide in Gaza is considered ‘intent’ and can get you arrested and imprisoned by the British thought police, then we ought to be seriously worried. Are British citizens going stand for being treated like "thought criminals" who are arrested for "thought crime"? As George Orwell said, "If  liberty  means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear."

Kemi Badenoch and social class.

 

Kemi Badenoch

As soon as the Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, opens her mouth, any working-class person would know that she's not of the English working-class, regardless of her colour. She speaks with a middle-class accent.

We don't talk about 'siblings' or 'social capital' even though I'm well aware of what they mean. I also doubt that many black people could identify with Kemi Badenoch, including Nigerians. Kemi really walks in a no man's land, and is not really one thing or the other. Some black people might consider her a 'coconut' - black on the outside and white on the inside.

Badenoch defines social class in terms of a person's occupation, but I think it means much more than that. Not all British working-class people are class conscious but many are. A British Social Attitude Survey carried out in September 2023, found that 52% of respondents identified as working-class, little different from the 58%, who did so in 1983. Nearly half, (46%), of those who identify as working-class, are employed in middle-class jobs. Some 77% of people in this survey, said that social class affects someone's opportunities in Britain and people are more likely today, than twenty years ago, to believe that it's more difficult to move from one social class to another.

In his essay, 'The Lion and the Unicorn', George Orwell, said that England was the most class-ridden country under the Sun. It's also one of the most inegalitarian countries. It still remains a country where property and financial power are concentrated in very few hands, even though its politicians talk a lot about equality, diversity and inclusion.

Gordon Reece, who was a political adviser to Margaret Thatcher, once told her that the type of people who were likely to vote for her, were people who listed to Jimmy Young on Radio 2, watched Top of the Pops and Jim I'll Fix It, and didn't read the broadsheet newspapers or watch in-depth late night news programmes. He told her that they weren't really much interested in politics at all, but if she wanted to become the next UK Prime Minister, she had better reach out and grab them.

Culturally, I don't think there's much difference between the Sun or the Daily Mail reader, but the former are probably less likely to be riddled with angst and insecurity and are more optimistic in outlook. Both are more likely to listen to Classic FM rather than Radio 3 and watch the Eurovision Song Contest. 

Sir Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff Engulfed in £6 Million Migrant Scandal

 

Morgan McSweeney

Morgan McSweeney's parents have been paid £6 million by the Irish government for housing asylum seekers. The company 'Togail Veil Glas Teoranta' (Limited green veil lifting), is registered at the same address as his father's accountancy firm and is part of a complex web of shell companies stretching to Cyprus. Tim McSweeney and his wife Carmel, are the only listed directors.

Morgan McSweeney, is the Downing Street Chief of Staff under Starmer's Labour government. Morgan McSweeney’s first cousin, Clare Mungovan, is a special advisor and lead policy advisor, to the Irish minister, Simon Harris.