13/01/2023
Well first and foremost I’ll start with wishing you all a belated ‘Merry Christmas’ and as ‘Happy’ a ‘New Year’ as is possible given the circumstances.
2022 was a dismal year for many people. The impact of global warming was felt across the whole world, from the richest parts of the world in the USA to the poorest parts of Asia, namely Pakistan. Whatever your thoughts about a government that will happily spend perhaps half of its GDP on developing and maintain a nuclear capability when it’s people live in abject poverty it is (or should be) hard to not feel sympathy for those who are still struggling to survive in a flooded wasteland. Instances like this will become more and more commonplace and drive populations further north to more temperate climes where drought and famine are (for the time being anyway) still a distant nightmare away. If the UK Tories worry about refugees and mass illegal immigration now heaven help their corrupt sensibilities in the not so distant future!
Add to this Putin’s illegal and immoral war in Ukraine. Where will his aggression take the western world? China poses its own threats to world stability, not just its constant sabre rattling towards Taiwan and the wider Far East but the fact that after giving the world Covid-19 it is now letting its people loose to travel the world without restrictions. That’s one way of achieving world domination – infect the place with who knows what Covid-19 mutations have been breeding in until recently locked down Chinese cities. I’m staggered that people, nevermind governments haven’t been calling this out for the stupidly irresponsible action it is.
Of more immediate concern is the behaviour of the Tory government – and the Labour opposition – back home in the UK.
Years of deliberate Tory austerity measures have driven down the real purchasing power of every single person who works in the Public Sector – Civil Servants, all NHS employees, Teachers, Emergency Service personnel, Armed Forces personnel, you name them and they’ve been clobbered by very real pay cuts over a period of 13 years. Is it any wonder they have reached the end of their tether? Is it really any wonder that Health Service professionals now feel like they have no alternative but to take industrial action?
No amount of ducking and diving by the Tories, no shameless lies spouted across all media channels can hide them from the fact that the situation the UK now finds itself in is all down to them. No if’s, but’s or maybe’s – the Tories are the problem. Their deliberate policy choices have dragged a once proud country down into the gutter, reviled by many at home and abroad, a third world country with third world public services, no longer the gold standard for growing economies to aspire or grow towards.
You disagree with me?
Then ask yourself why all the professions that we depend on for our health, safety and welfare are leaving their vocations in their droves. There are thousands of vacancies unfilled within the whole of the NHS. Teachers are leaving their jobs faster than newly qualified teachers are leaving University, even the Police are seeing people leaving, or expressing a desire to leave quicker than Johnson’s acclaimed recruitment promises had us believe we could look forward to. And really this lot haven’t got a clue. Even Thatcher saw the need to improve Police morale, by dint of decent pay rises, before she took on the Trades Unions. The current crowd of clowns will have to turn to a totally demoralised Police service to try to enforce all these draconian pieces of legislation. Good luck with that then! And if the Police remain true to form and police the nation as the Tories would like – to ‘Protect and Serve’ my arse!! – who will prosecute these alleged crimes? The Judicial system is on its knees, the Prison and Probation services likewise.
Nesrine Malik had a good article in The Guardian on Monday 9th January 2023 covering this, have a look and tell me if there’s anything in it you disagree with.
Deliberate policy choices are slowly but surely destroying the UK’s public services, having already all but destroyed the UK’s economy. Don’t believe Truss’s economic vandalism was an accident, it wasn’t. It was a deliberate attempt to impose a neo-liberal economic regime which basically means only the financially fittest would survive. The rest of us would depend on miserly handouts from a withered state provision or charities. Neo-liberalism has grown in influence since the end of World War 2, lauded by those who want to see a return to the unrestrained economic activity of the 19th Century – basically these people want a return to the Victorian era. An era that gave us the delights of Empire where colonial powers ravaged what ex-colonial powers now refer to as the Third World purely to extract their natural resources and then dominate their home markets with, for instance British manufactured goods. Goods that generally the local populations had no need or desire for. Rob them blind and force feed them what their natural resources had been used for – all to maximise empire building nations profits. Try this New Yorker magazine article, it makes interesting reading.
Neo-liberalism is the engine to remove the welfare state that grew out of the destruction of the fabric of nation states and the sacrifices of the people who defended those, in effect the payment of the debt capitalism owed the general population of the time. It’s no coincidence that all those ‘ERG Spartans’ are too young to know anything about the horrors that rampant capitalist charged nationalism brought to the world. Reading a history book is obviously too intellectually challenging for them, never mind turning into The History Channel. All the politicians who served and fought through the 2nd World War have now long gone and taken their collective memories with them and, regardless of their political persuasion their fully grounded, mature opinions are sadly lacking in today’s political arena. Remember that the Welfare State as we know it now was supported by politicians on both sides of the House, as was joining what became the European Union, all very much as a consequence of witnessing first-hand the horrors of the war against the Nazis. The disaster that is Brexit and Putin’s war in Ukraine is now reminding people just how important the EU is as a principle and a body politic. It’s a shame there are too many numpties in the UK to see that!
So while we can sit back and enjoy watching the Tories implode we must never lose site of the fact that if or when we get a change of government it will take at least two terms of Parliament – 10 years – to repair the damage done by the saboteurs in the Conservative Party. And yes I do believe they have deliberately sabotaged the UK, for their own financial gain. If that doesn’t make them traitors then I don’t know what does. Yes we can all look forward to a future without a Tory Party, but at what price?
Not only are the Tories self-destructing, so is our (your) Royal family. Prince Harry, or Harry Hewitt as I prefer to call him, has really lifted the lid off the rotten can of worms that is the Windsor dynasty. When (if) the UK gets the modern, functioning constitution it needs – a Republic with an elected second chamber, with proportional representation and devolved regional autonomy – we can ditch this continuation of inherited wealth and privilege and replace it with a duly elected President who will be answerable to the country. The current British constitution is a joke, democracy as it is delivered in England is a joke and that the King has a veto over proposed UK legislation, before even MP’s get to see it, is beyond a joke. Come the revolution show them to the wall and pass me the rifle – metaphorically speaking of course. In the meantime someone needs to tell Harry to shut the f##k up, suck it up and enjoy the fruits of the country that has showered him in inherited wealth and privilege – or he can give his old man back his medieval title and crawl under a rock somewhere and hope he will be forgotten.
So how Starmer’s Labour faring whilst the Tories prepare themselves for self-immolation? I suppose that depends on which side of the right / left, leave / remain divide you stand (sit, in my case). The economic devastation caused by Brexit increases on a daily basis but it continues to destroy livelihoods and future prospects across the whole of the UK. And still it remains another ‘B’ word that can’t be spoken, unlike ‘bollocks’, which the whole Tory neo-liberal experiment can now be clearly seen to be. I’m no fan of Simon Jenkins but occasionally he sees sense – read this for instance. When will he come clean and tell those ‘Red Wall’ voters that they were wrong to lend Johnson their votes. The seats most at risk under the Tories are those very seats where the misguided took charge of the asylum and gave the loonies control. And it is those places that will really feel the pinch, if they aren’t already, with the cost of living crisis, because the Tories have no regard for normal people, people who are now living hand to mouth or food bank parcel to food bank parcel. This is 21st Century Britain, people in work unable to feed their children and keep their homes warm at the same time – assuming they can afford their increased mortgages or the increased rents that their landlords will have to impose to cover their increased rents. God help those who depend on benefits because the Tories won’t! When these particular birds come home to roost I’m afraid I will have trouble not telling them ‘I told you so’ because lets be totally honest here – they are as culpable as the nuttiest of nutters like John Redwood or Steve Baker.
As the Tories implode they continue to try to demolish things just for the fun of it, it must be for sheer devilment because there’s no sense or intellectual thought behind any of it.
Consider this:
New anti-Trade Union legislation that is so poorly worded a Minister could quite easily wake up one morning with an alcohol induced headache and literally rewrite a law with no need to put it before Parliament. Yes it would face legal challenges and the wrath of the House of Lords (heaven help them) but it further expands the Henry VIII clauses which almost undid Johnson. Listening to Shapps the other day spouting on about minimum levels of attendance and support made me chuckle – 13 years of Tory austerity is the reason NHS staff are striking in an attempt to stop the rot and allow them to offer that level of performance on a normal day. The man is an absolute knob!
This government has also ended the democratic right to protest. A fundamental tenet of any democracy is the ability of the population to peacefully voice their concerns about the state of the nation. Now, if a protest hampers anyone in even the most insignificant way the protester(s) can be arrested, charges and, if convicted, be sentenced to 51 weeks in nick – just for standing in someone’s way on a pavement!
Their next step? Well who knows? They already have the bulk of the mainstream media in their pocket and the BBC continue to fail to fact-check their blatant lies so there’s no real need to start censoring the news more formally – but it’s the next step in fascism’s play book. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Anyway, enough for now. If anyone has worked through this to the end I can only thank you oh faithful fellow traveller – hopefully I’ve still got some readers. If so please feel free to let me know what you think – good or bad. I’m quite happy to include contributions in my blogs.
Post comments or contributions good or bad to me at jem@jembrookes.com – a name check is guaranteed. Let’s make this a conversation rather than just me spouting my usual anti-vermin diatribes.
Take care of yourselves and your loved ones but don’t forget strangers – the world’s in a bad place right now and we need to be looking out for each other.
TTFN
Jem