Child Exploitation in Victorian Britain.

 

Victorian child exploitation

Many Victorian working-class kids were literally worked to death. Some of these children died of exhaustion. This is mentioned in E.P. Thompson's book 'The Making of the English Working Class'. He refers to the death of a young boy in Cragg Dale, in West Yorkshire. An Anglican minister, told a social reformer that he'd recently buried a boy who had died. The boy had been found asleep at work with his arms full of wood and had been beaten awake. He had worked 17 hours and was carried home by his father. He was unable to eat his supper and woke at 4.00 a.m. the next morning. He asked his brother's if they could see the lights in the mill as he was afraid of being late for work, and then died. His younger brother aged nine, had died previously. The father was described as "sober and industrious" and a Sunday school teacher.

The exploitation of children on this scale and intensity, was one of most shameful events in Britain's history. Thompson says that many English middle-class people of this period, were infected with class hatred for the labouring classes and suffered from "atrophy of conscience" and a "deformity of the sensibility." Lord Shaftesbury had said that the Anglican clergy as "a body...will do nothing on the children's behalf."

In Chapter 25, of 'Das Kapital', Karl Marx, quoted extensively from the work of Reverend Joseph Townsend called "A Dissertation on the Poor Laws, by a Well-wisher of Mankind.” (1786). Marx referred to Townsend as that "delicate priestly sycophant." Townsend had argued that poverty and hunger are necessary to force the working-class to labour for capitalists. He had written:

"It seems to be a law of nature that the poor should be to a certain degree improvident, that there may always be some to perform the most servile, the most sordid, and the most ignoble offices in the community. The stock of human happiness is thereby much increased, whilst the more delicate are not only relieved of drudgery - but are left at liberty without interruption to pursue those callings which are suited to their various dispositions..."

Like Edmund Burke, Townsend believed that the laws of commerce were the laws of nature and therefore the laws of God. 

Of the 346 soldiers executed by the British army in WWI, only three were British army officers.

 

Shot At Dawn

There were 3,080 deaths sentences given to soldiers serving in the British army during WWI, of which, 346 were actually carried out. The overwhelming majority of soldiers executed (266 out of 346), were shot for desertion. Most of these soldiers were private soldiers. Only three British officers were executed during WWI. (Source: Tommy - Richard Holmes).

In his book called 'Memoirs of a British Infantry Officer', Siegfried Sassoon, says that many British army officers lost their nerve, but they weren't shot for cowardice. Many of these remained in the barracks or were given desk jobs back in Blighty. Sassoon said you couldn't do this with Tommy. The ordinary soldier was given a No. 9 pill and he stayed where he was until he was wounded or killed.

In October 1915, Second Lieutenant Edward Underhill, "wrote bitterly that his county men had no idea what the war was about." Many did think that they were fighting a war to keep Britain from being ruled by the Germans. Although the Germans did shell and bomb parts of Britain, an invasion of Britain, was not really part of Germany's war aims. A British infantry officer, remarked on, "how much more seriously the company would take the war were the (Ypres) Salient, around Preston, or Bolton, or Manchester.”

Richard Holmes writes that, "Two general truths define the British soldier's relationship with his enemy on the West Front: the first is that he generally had a high regard for the Germans and the second, is that the fighting man, rarely felt a high degree of personal hostility towards them."

It seems that the Saxon Germans disliked the Prussians, more than they did the British. The same can be said of men from Alsace who were fighting in the German army. If Robert Graves is to be believed, both the Germans and the British, disliked the French, because they ripped both sides off. 

The Britain of my father's generation, was a lot less complicated than it is today.

 

The Home Guard

My Dad died in 2015 and would've been 100 next September 2026. He was called up as the war was coming to an end and he spent his army service in Britain. He was told that they were going to be used to fight the Japs.

Britain today, is not the country that my father or the elderly gentleman, on Good Morning Britain, grew up in. Before he was conscripted, my father was in the Home Guard aged 17 and that would have been, in 1943. He told me that on one occasion he was asked to go and check on an ammunition dump in the town where he lived. My father and another young man, were issued with two .303 Lee Enfield rifles and both were given five rounds of live ammunition. Can you imagine doing that today with a 17-year-old youth, who doesn't know what discipline or respect is? I believe that today, suicide is now the biggest killer of men in Britain, aged under 50.

For most of his adult life, my father drove articulated lorries, and he was never required to sit a driving test in his life, nor was he ever unemployed. He said that when he started driving there was no requirement to sit a test. He said you bought a car and if you could prove you hadn't a knock within six months, they gave you a driving license.

The Britain of my father's day, was a lot less complicated than it is today. Despite his age, I never heard my father ever grumble about the way in which he thought Britain had changed. He just got on with living and tried to adapt accordingly. He used to say to me that there was good and bad in every kind and just treat people as you find them. 

Those young lads who fought in WWII, were fighting the Nazis and Hitler. It's thanks to them that we never finished up with a Nazi jackboot stomping on our faces and a Europe dominated by Fascist dictators.

Multiculturalism.

 

"Multiculturalism" can mean a number of different things, but at its simplest, I suppose it can be defined as allowing many different cultures to co-exist within one nation and respecting one another's culture.

You often hear the term "BAME Communities", which is rather meaningless, because there isn't really such a thing. It's a lot of wishful thinking. These different ethnic groups don't really mix with one another and have little in common with one another and can often, be hostile to one another.

The old gentleman who fought in WWII, who appeared on TV, didn't say why he felt the way he did, so we can only speculate. The Britain that he grew up in, is very much different today. I'm 71, and as a child, I rarely saw a black face. Many people who came to Britain in the 1950s, from the Caribbean, saw Britain as their "mother country." As they were part of the British Empire, they had been educated in much the same way as English people. They were invited to come to England and met with a lot of racial abuse.

In retrospect, I believe that many people think that fighting Hitler and the Nazis was a war worth fighting. It's thanks to people like this old gentleman, that we never came under the heel of the Nazi jackboot and fascism. The plight of European Jews was not a casus belli for WWII, because most people didn't know about the concentration camps until the camps were liberated.

If economics is a science, why did so many economists fail to foresee the 2008 financial crises?

 

The economist J.M. Keynes made a lot of money from his investments, but being an economist, won't necessarily make you a rich man, or even a successful businessman. There's something called the "Fallacy of Composition", that suggests that although some people can succeed with a particular business, it doesn't mean that everyone can succeed with it.

 The American economist, J.K. Galbraith, said that "economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists." For decades, economists played an important role in creating the conditions for the 2008 financial crisis and dozens of smaller crises that came before it, arising mainly from financial deregulation. The 1982, Third World debt crises and the banking crises in Chile; the 1995 Mexican pesos crises; the 1998 Russian crises and the banking crises in Sweden, Finland and Norway, following financial deregulations in the late 1980s. Most economists didn't predict or foresee the 2008 financial crises that was completely man-made. It didn't arise from any war or economic depression but it nearly collapsed the whole capitalist financial system. It was the equivalent of financial markets getting mad cow disease.

The ‘Sage of Omaha’, Warren Buffet, called 'derivatives", the financial weapons of mass destruction, whereas, Alan Greenspan, of the U.S. Fed, thought they made markets more efficient. The complexity of these new financial products - Asset Backed Securities; Collateralized Debt Obligations and Credit Default Swaps, is exactly what made them dangerous.

In 2013, the Nobel Prize in Economics, was shared by two American economists who held completely opposing views about the causes of the 2008 financial crises. Eugene Fama, who believes in the "efficient markets hypotheses" argued that financial markets were a casualty of the recession and did not cause it. He argued that the U.S. government made lending and credit too easy to obtain and that banks acted rationally, in responding to the incentives put in place by an interfering government. In contrast, Robert Shiller, the other prize winner, stressed how investors can be swayed by psychology and irrational exuberance, which affects the workings of the market.

In a TV interview in 1995, Buffet said: "I personally think that society is responsible for a very significant percentage of what I have earned. If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru or someplace, you'll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil. I will be struggling thirty years later. I work in a market system that happens to mean that everyone can succeed within it."

Unfortunately, not everyone does succeed in the capitalist market system and there's a lot of evidence that markets are routinely rigged in favour of the rich and that there's mis-selling of financial products and lies told to regulators. Markets may also fail to produce socially optimal outcomes.

Lee (30 pence) Anderson, accuses the CAB of "gaming the system" to help people get disability benefits.

 

Lee Anderson

Lee Anderson MP, a former Labour councillor and Nottinghamshire miner, and former member of the Carlton Club, has just accused the Citizens Advice Bureau, who he used to work for, of "gaming the system" by helping people to get on disability benefits like PIP.

What a louse! If there's one thing I can't abide, it's a Tory in clogs and a Judas, who stabs his own class in the back. It wasn't long ago Anderson was denouncing food banks as unnecessary and claimed you could knock up a meal for 30 pence. If a wealthy man seeks professional advice to avoid paying tax, his he gaming the system, Lee? If a British MP fiddles his expenses, is he trying to game the sytem?

Each year hundreds of millions of pounds of benefit payments go unclaimed by working-class people because they find it far too difficult and complicated to fill in the forms and so, they seek advice and help from bodies like the CAB, to do so.

The Nottinghamshire coal fields, have a history of producing scab and blackleg miners like Roy Lynk and George Spencer, who have supported the Tories and the bosses during miners strikes. 

Colin Ward.

 

Colin Ward

An interesting article on the English anarchist Colin Ward. I used to read the magazine 'New Society' and wrote articles for Freedom Press. I am certainly familiar with the ideas of Colin Ward. This article quotes the historian Raphael Samuels, who wrote of Ward's 'constructive antinomianism' which took its energy from having "no articles of faith to subscribe to, no canonical texts to refer to, no gods or heroes to placate."

Ward said himself that the three people who had influenced him most, were Martin Buber, the German anarchist, Gustav Landauer and the Russian anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin. If Colin Ward did have a canonical text, it would have been "Fields, Factories and Workshops" by Kropotkin. Ward used the term "anarchist seeds beneath the snow", to describe his central argument that an anarchist society is already in existence operating quietly beneath the weight of the state. For Colin Ward, "anarchy in action", consisted of everyday acts of human organisation rooted in voluntary associations, mutual aid, self-management and co-operation. Ward advocated for tenant run housing associations, worker co-operatives, self-build housing, allotments, friendly societies, and self-help strategies. 

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute, was for Colin Ward, a classic British example of a voluntary non-hierarchical organisation driven by mutual aid. The lifeboats are manned by volunteers and the organisation is financed by public donations and not by the government.

In search of the pristine Englishman.

 

John Bull

Is there any such thing as a pristine Englishman? Our language is a mixture of French, Latin, Anglo-Saxon and Norse, and so are our genes. We talk about people having Roman noses. Many of the words we use, have originated from India and the rest of the British Empire. Old English would be incomprehensible to most of us and Middle English, barely comprehensible.

Around 6 million people living in Britain are said to be of Irish descent, including me. Given that we're a mongrel race, a mixture of all sorts of cultures, and have colonized and conquered much of the world, I find it strange that so many people in Britain, are fixated on colour and race and have an aversion to foreigners. At the end of the day, we're all part of the human race.

In 1940, Bill Connor, of the Daily Mirror, wrote: "Our children are guarded from diphtheria by what a Japanese and German did. They are saved from smallpox by an Englishman's work. They are saved from rabies because of a Frenchman. From birth to death, they are surrounded by an invisible host - the spirits of men who never served a lesser loyalty than the welfare of mankind." 

Epstein claimed he bankrolled the Duchess of York for 15 years.

 

Sarah Ferguson

I find it quite extraordinary that any British charity would have wanted their name associated with the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.

The royal biographer, Andrew Lownie, claims that the paedophile financier, Jeffrey Epstein, gave Fergie around £2 million. Epstein claimed the Duchess of York and her two daughters, met with him in New York, to celebrate his release from prison after being jailed for soliciting prostitution from a minor.  A source close to Fergie, insisted that neither she or her daughters, "had any recollection of such a visit."

Unearthed emails show that in January 2020, Fergie wrote to Epstein saying: "Is there any chance I could borrow 50 or 100,000 U S. dollars to help get through the small bills that are pushing me over. Had to ask " In another email, on July 10, 2010, Fergie wrote to Epstein, "My friend, am I allowed to visit Little St Jeff's? Or is it unavailable to bankrupts." Epstein responded by saying, "I'll meet you there. Call me", and gave his mobile number.

I remember when Fergie was caught out in a sting operation by the News of the World trying to sell access to Prince Andrew to a fake sheikh for £500,000. She told the fake sheikh she could "open any door you want. Look after me and he'll look after you... you'll get it back tenfold." When she got bubbled, she apologised and called it a "serious lapse in judgement." Prince Andrew denied any knowledge about the arrangement.

I think the English radical, Tom Paine, put it better when he wrote: "I have an aversion to monarchy, as being too debasing to the dignity of man." "The time is not very far distant when England will laugh at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick, for men, at the expense of a million a year, who understood neither her laws, her language, nor her interests, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the office of a parish constable."

The enigma called Joseph Stalin.

 

Vasily, Svetlana, and their father Joseph Stalin

If members of Stalin's inner circle shed tears on the death of Joseph Stalin, it was tears of relief. Khrushchev said they all knew they were temporary men. They didn't like getting invites to Stalin's dacha at Kuntsevo.

I have read a number of books on Joseph Stalin and he was a very cynical but interesting and ruthless man. He seems to have been devastated when he lost his first wife, Kato Svanidze, but he didn't care much for their son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, who tried to kill himself. Stalin joked that Yakov was that useless that he couldn't even kill himself properly. When the Germans notified him that they had his son in captivity, Stalin his reputed to have told them that he didn't have a son. His second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, gave him two children (Vasily and Svetlana), before she committed suicide. She was one of very few who would stand up to him in public and she was often seen arguing with him.

Stalin had many of his in-laws imprisoned, possibly because they knew too much, but he was close to Svetlana, as a child, who he called "My little sparrow." Nevertheless, when Svetlana inquired about the whereabouts of a favourite aunt who had disappeared, Stalin told her not to play the Attorney with him. He told his youngest son Vasily - who used his father's position to advance his own interests - that he wasn't Stalin and neither was his father, because Stalin represented Soviet power. It's known that Stalin would often send sums of money to old friends or pose for photographs with holiday makers in Sochi, where he had a holiday home. There were also occasions when he would tell his driver to stop the car in order to offer people a lift, if he saw them stood in the rain at a bus stop, on his way home to Kuntsevo. Artem Mikoyan, the brother of Anastas Mikoyan, one of Stalin's ministers, recalled having an angina attack when he was staying with Stalin at his holiday home in Sochi. He said he went to bed and late in the night, he felt somebody tucking him in. When he looked up it was Stalin.

Joseph Stalin turned a young peasant lad, called Pavlik Morozov, into a Soviet hero and martyr, after he'd been killed for denouncing his father as a Kulak who had hoarded grain. But Stalin was reportedly heard saying, "What a little swine, denouncing his own father." Stalin liquidated many of the old Bolsheviks and returned many German communists back to Germany, after he entered into a pact with Nazi Germany. Some say that Stalin killed more communists than Adolf Hitler.

In Remembrance of Private W.T. Cooper.

 

Meteren Military Cemetery 

I know of two men who refused to be conscripted in WWII. They were told they would have to go before a tribunal who would decide if they had grounds for conscientious objection. They both refused on the grounds that the only judge of their conscience was themselves and no one else. I think they went to prison.

I've never been a soldier but I believe soldiers don't really fight for king and country. What they fight for is to keep themselves alive and their mates alive. Why do you think Lord Kitchener set up “Pals Battalions?” The idea was to aid recruitment and it was thought by the military top brass, that men who knew one another, would support each other. After major battles whole streets in Britain could lose their menfolk.

I remember reading about my great grandfather's brother, who died in France. A married man from Stalybridge, with several children, he'd served 12 years in the British army and then went on the reserve list. He was called up in August 1914, served in the Warwickshire Regiment, and was dead by October 1914. Private W.T. Cooper, was buried in Meteren Military Cemetery in Belgium.  His name is inscribed on the cenotaph on Trinity Street in Stalybridge. His youngest daughter, Hilda, never knew her father, but before every Remembrance Sunday, she always pinned a posy of flowers next to his name on the cenotaph. Private Cooper's death was reported in the Ashton Reporter under the heading "Pathetic Coincidence", because he died on the same day as another man from Stalybridge, who also got killed in France. When I first saw a photograph of him in the Ashton Reporter, I actually thought it was my grandfather, because he was the spitting image of him. I remember thinking to myself, what's my grandad doing wearing an Edwardian frock coat with a nosegay in his lapel.  My great grandfather was more fortunate, because he lost an arm and was sent back to Blighty.

I doubt that many British soldiers in WWI, really knew what they were fighting for. Some may have thought that they were fighting to protect their families and loved ones from a hostile enemy, but an invasion of Britain, was never really part of Germany's war aims. The Germans did bomb and shell parts of Britain, but most of that war was fought in France. At the end of the war, Britain and France, carved up between themselves what was left of the Ottoman Empire, and Britain bombed the Arabs and seized the oil wells of Mesopotamia. That war was an imperialist war, a war between ruling classes. 

The Prince & The Paedo.

 

Prince Andrew & Jeffrey Epstein 

Prince Andrew took Emily Maitlis for a ride during the infamous "car-crash" interview. The "we are in this together" email that Prince Andrew sent to Epstein on 28 February 2011, was sent the day after the photograph of him and Virginia Guiffre was first  published in the British press. He told Maitlis that he ended contact with Jeffrey Epstein in December 2010, but this was obviously untrue.

I haven't seen the entire email but have only read extracts from it. I don't think Prince Andrew refers to that photograph in the email, which seems rather odd, given that he says that he's no recollection of having ever met Virginia Guiffre, and insists that the photograph is a fake. 

I believe Virginia Guiffre/Roberts, sold that photograph to the Mail on Sunday for £120,000. She settled a law suit against Jeffrey Epstein for $500,000 and settled a law suit against Ghislaine Maxwell for an undisclosed sum. Prince Andrew is reputed to have paid her £12 million to settle a law suit she brought against him. He didn't admit any liability and continues to insist that he's no recollection of ever having met Virginia Guiffre. Her lawyers, said they had six witnesses who could link Prince Andrew to Virginia Guiffre.

Religion & the rise of capitalism in Britain.

 

For the father of classical economics, Adam Smith, the merchant, entrepreneur, and manufacturer, were the best example of the "energetic man". But if you read his book 'The Wealth of Nations', Smith is very critical of the capitalist who he thinks shouldn't be involved in the affairs of government, "the rulers of mankind", because he's driven by narrow self-interest, and is a man, whose public integrity and acumen are severely compromised. He believed that both the capitalists and labourer look to their own self-interest, but they promote a beneficial social outcome that is not of their intention, guided by an "invisible hand." Nor is he much impressed with the politician - "the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician."

Smith writes: "Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions." Smith argues that civil government is instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor. Yet, he saw capitalism as the surest means of wealth accumulation and considered the signs of a properly functioning market system, to be the maximization of material benefits to society's lowest members.

If you read 'Religion and the rise of capitalism', by R.H. Tawney, you would wonder how Britain ever became a capitalist society. Religion and traditional virtue taught that avarice was a vice, usury a misdemeanour, and the love of money, was considered detestable. As the Bible says, "And having food and raiment let us be therewith content...For the love of money is the root of all evil..." (Timothy, Chapter 6, 8-10).

Christianity placed greater emphasis on the after-life than this life. Since this world for them, is merely the ante-room to eternity, such temporal things as wealth and poverty mattered very little.

The conspiracy that toppled Jeremy Corbyn.

 

I always thought that all the brouhaha about antisemitism being rife in Corbyn's Labour Party, was absolute nonsense. I suppose you can find anti-Semites anywhere, but do they really join the Labour Party?

This conspiracy orchestrated by political opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, was always about bringing down Jeremy Corbyn. We we're told that a Corbyn Labour government would pose "an existential threat" to Jews living in Britain. Even today, certain Labour figures continue to wonder why Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer campaigned twice - in 2017 and 2019 - to get Corbyn elected into 10 Downing Street, if they harboured serious suspicions about Corbyn's attitude towards the so-called Jewish community. Keir Starmer succeeded Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party and ripped up everything that Corbyn stood for. He excluded Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party, and sought to keep those on the left, from being adopted as Labour candidates.

In September 2018, Angela Rayner had stated that opponents of Corbyn and Labour, would need a "bigger smear" if they were to succeed in undermining the party. In October 2020, Rayner was publicly accused of having expressed anti-Semitic views herself by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA). Four months before becoming an MP, Rayner had referenced a book called the 'Holocaust Industry' by Norman Finkelstein in an article written for the Morning Star in 2015. Rayner is thought to have asked somebody else to write the article for her. The book had suggested that some members of the Jewish community exploit the Holocaust for political and financial advantage. Rayner had praised Finkelstein's book as 'seminal'. She was forced to make an apology, claiming that there had been a misunderstanding. 

Starmer says Birmingham's ban on Israeli racist football thugs is wrong and antisemitic.

 

Aston Villa have said that Birmingham City's Safety Advisory Group (SAG), have decided that football fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv should not be allowed to attend the Europa League fixture on 6 November, over safety concerns.

Many of the supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv are racist thugs and hooligans, who have caused widespread public unrest in other European cities. They have a reputation for doing this.  

Israel is an apartheid racist state and the country's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC). We should be boycotting Israeli football teams.

A self-confessed Zionist, Keir Starmer, has already said the decisions to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans was wrong and he declared, "we will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets." The government are trying to overturn the ban.

It is totally irresponsible for Starmer to question the decision of Birmingham City Council, if it has genuine concerns about public safety in its city. This is what makes Starmer totally unfit to be the UK Prime Minister. 

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.