Buying Something You Already Own

Charities could take over post offices, pubs and parks, says shadow communities secretary Caroline Spelman. The Conservatives have pledged to introduce a ‘community right to buy’ that will allow not-for-profit groups to take control of struggling local facilities, such as post offices, pubs and parks. Under the scheme, community groups would have first refusal to bid for publicly owned assets as well as failing privately owned ones, such as post offices, pubs and shops.

Also ‘failing privately owned ones’ will include previously privatised assets, so just how stupid do the Tories think people are? Election as national IQ test will be an amusing phenomenon. It’s better than just selling them off to their chums in business but the road to hell is paved with lesser evil good intentions. But where do charities & communities get the money (hmm maybe a loan from a bank, hey there see how that works)? They are creating the distinction that government and local councils are not ‘us’ they are neoliberal governance entities and so have no responsibility to the public and what they own on our behalf…is not ours, but hey lovely Davy boy will let us have first refusal on buying our own property. Ooh, have I just summed up Red Toryism?!?!? Privatisation but with the words *community*, *charity* plastered all over it?

Missing Words

And todays missing words from this report are ‘framed‘ and ‘lied‘, as in- the government, police, FBI and CPS framed Lotfi Raissi and lied about the evidence. Yet as we know the powerful do not have the such words used about them that’s just for the likes of us guv’nor. Even the prospective covering up of a massive war crime is called a whitewash. Yet one word appears frequently ‘independent‘ in respects to all manner of official doings, no words are missing here but we must remember definitions change, independent means- a really super extra special effort at Public Relations to convince the chumps we didn’t do the crimes we did.

Apparently the ‘retiring’ (yep there’s another) Met Chief Blair is getting more as a pay off (warning D**ly M**l) than the family of the man he had killed, Jean Charles de Menezes. After an independent inquiry pressed no charges in a whitewash. Always worth a re-read, LRB- ‘Make sure you say that you were treated properly’ Gareth Peirce writes about Torture, Secrecy and the British State & The Framing of al-Megrahi.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Better late than never, oops. GodlessLiberalHomo has a post that both reminded me and meditates on loss from the structural violence that bigotry can quietly and sinisterly rely upon. It’s up to every person to rigorously examine their own thoughts, attitudes and assumptions and for us to challenge ourselves if we are to break with historical, religious and cultural traditions that are imbued with hatred and lies and the privilege of one group over others. Such change is vital, morally right and rewarding, it is page one of human rights and as a human, that works for me.