Good Riddance

Purnell sliming off to more lucrative neoliberal concerns,  the BBC political correspondent Louise Stewart, hilariously writes-

James Purnell was a rising star within the Labour party: an innovative thinker and committed politician with real ability.

I think she must have him confused to someone who is not a conniving tory shit. No of course she doesn’t, yuppies flock together (ooh blast from the past, funny how you don’t hear that much now everyone is expected to be a careerist corporate shill).

Spoilt Cowardly Bigots

Professional footballers have refused to appear in a campaign video against homophobia because they fear being ridiculed for taking a stand against one of the sport’s most stubborn taboos,The Independent has learnt. Both players and agents declined a request by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) to take part in a video which was to use high- profile players as figureheads in the association’s drive against anti-gay prejudice.

Oh Consumerism!

Yes I have a cheap microfibre cloth to wipe down me mac so perhaps I am just being Scroogy decrying it comes in the form of a stuffed toy animal, but… Oh for chuff’s sake, enough crap already!

I Don’t See The Downside

RBS directors: Pay bonus or we quit

No bonuses and the chumps are out, or are we meant to think they are talented & irreplaceable or some such fairytale?

Clue 1- We will own 84% of RBS because they were so bad at running a bank it would have collapsed.

Clue 2- RBS  ‘the sole aim of the place is to get back to the way things were pre-August 2007. Humpty Dumpty has to be put back together again... The directive comes from the top.’

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass etc.

EDL’s Epic Fail In Wrexham

After the on the spot reportage now the Daily Post weighs in-

FOUR people were arrested at an anti-Muslim demonstration amid a strong police presence in Wrexham. Around 40 members of a group calling themselves the Welsh Defence League (WDL) shouted racial abuse and gestured towards locals, saying they were protesting against plans for a new mosque. Four people were arrested for public order offences, and North Wales’s Temporary Deputy Chief Constable, Ian Shannon said the day passed without “significant incident”. Meanwhile Unite Against Fascism held a counter-protest, near where the WDL gathered on Saturday.

And a Wrexham Communities Against Racism festival attracted around 200 people. Residents were joined by faith groups, the Wales TUC, Searchlight, Unison and members of Wrexham Council. Searchlight Cymru secretary Ian Titherington said none of the WDL protestors were Welsh, and they appeared to be members of the English Defence League (EDL). He said: “This was the final humiliation for the EDL’s disastrous visits to Wales. The only way they could hold an event was to bus in 30 from Bolton, who on arrival went to the nearest pub, got drunk and bawled out racist chants.

The EDL gathering did not exactly sell any local links, by displaying a Bolton Wanderers FC English flag and singing God Save the Queen.” The WDL was formed in June 2009 as an off-shoot of the EDL, which claims to campaign against Islamic extremism. The group insists it is not fascist. But at a march in Swansea in October, onlookers were confronted by jeering men giving Nazi salutes, and one was arrested for a racially aggravated public order offence.

An EDL supporter posted a short video (subtitled ‘Outnumbered and we still stand our ground‘ thus admitting their low numbers and it’s not so much ‘stand our ground’ as milling around where the cops said to stand so your small group doesn’t disrupt the traffic or any passing badgers) in which you can hear no Welsh accents, they chant EDL not WDL, plus the worst/funniest murdering of God Save The Queen I have yet to hear (a piece of music that is so droning, joyless & plodding it is almost impossible to wreck it, yet somehow…they do!). You almost feel sorry for them, I don’t think this is endangering any kind of no platform policy, propaganda’s meant to improve your image, not demolish it. Comedy gold-

Science Defeated By Drug War Hysteria

The UK’s chief drugs adviser has been sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson, after criticising government policies. Professor David Nutt, head of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, criticised the decision to reclassify cannabis to Class B from C. He accused ministers of devaluing and distorting evidence and said drugs classification was being politicised.

Well I told you so ‘Which means they will be ignoring this yet again‘ almost two years ago. But really I do love well paid professionals who are all surprised when New Labour turn out to be scumbags, What no WMD, well I never! To be honest I think they know but I refer you back to the ‘well paid’ bit. The consultation scam is a fig leaf over our lack of democracy and a great employment program for those involved, and that -very apparently- is all it is.

So in the absence of …erm science what shall we have inform drugs policy now we are going down the faith based route? (Faith in reactionary establishment hypocrites that is). How about Jeremy Kyle throwing darts at tabloid stories to decide things ‘He’s scored a double red top, The Suns says lock up these evil drug fiends. Home Secretary… he say Yes!‘ Or class it up a bit (a tiny tiny tiny bit) when Cameron comes along and have Noel Edmonds picking ideas out of little cases while Simon Cowell decides sentences all the while smirking at all the drugs he has *never* taken. This is as ridiculous as government by fundamentalist Christians who reject evolution and have creationism taught in schools, when will we ever have an adult, informed drug policy as opposed to a quasi mystical fear that keeps authoritarians in salaried employment (and banks liquid), authoritarians who -as I am sure many of us have observed- use drugs too.

Injustice

The man behind one of the largest cannabis operations in the UK has been jailed for nine years. Bo Xing He, 31, ran a series of cannabis factories across north Wales producing drugs with an estimated annual street value of almost £14m.

Caernarfon Crown Court was told that the cannabis factory in High Street, Bangor, Gwynedd, was believed to be the largest ever found in the UK. Another 15 defendants were sentenced to between two and five-and-a-half years. Bo Xing He, who admitted to conspiring to produce cannabis, was described by the judge as “head of an absolutely enormous conspiracy” who controlled the properties and workforce. The court heard that he had lived at a rented six-bedroom house in exclusive Gannock Park, Deganwy, Llandudno, and there was evidence of a lavish lifestyle. Police found £130,000 and an S-type Jaguar

A further 12 people, who were said to have played a “gardening role” looking after the plants, were also jailed. The judge said many of them were victims because they were working to pay off debts but, without them, there would have been no plants.

The War-On-Drugs is a ludicrous make work scam by the security/legal/prison establishment, not designed to solve anything but to keep chumps in jobs, jobs that often pay well and give them the power to wield state sanctioned violence. The only real crime committed here is an exploitative boss making himself rich while the workers were virtual slaves, however as that dynamic is played out on every high street and is eulogised in business porn like The Apprentice that is not the crime that anyone cares about. So everyone gets locked up for growing dope including the victims, the indentured workers. How perverted in our thinking, in our accustomed uncritical perception of ‘how things are’ have we become that growing a plant is a crime but exploiting others to enrich yourself is celebrated. The boss was not locked up for being rich, he was locked up for achieving it via illegal drugs, oddly if the drugs were legal he would be celebrated, even if they actually killed more people than cannabis *vioxx* cough*. And the Judge has no excuse, nor do the barristers and solicitors, they clearly had the life chances to become very well informed, to study, yet they chose instead to keep towing the line and have a successful career and nevermind the human cost. People look back to say…witch burning times, with horror and wonder, how could people be so horrible and stupid, well duh we are in the midst of it still and the answer is uncritical thinking, ignorance and greed (perhaps a useful definition of careerism). Not a single well remunerated person who was involved in this has done  a single thing of any worth other than stop an exploitative boss, but that wasn’t their intention, it’s a byproduct so no, they don’t get any credit for that. In fact they have done harm and most will not even have such a thought enter their head and worse still some do yet they take the money and keep up with this bullshit. And no I don’t know anyone who was caught up in this and no I don’t bother smoking dope either, but when something so clearly not justice is trumpeted as a great victory for such the dissonance is too much to bear.

And Jeebus I still can’t get over Judge/Recorder Nic Parry ‘but, without them, there would have been no plants.‘ Yeah and without the inmates of death camps they’d be no death camps so really the prisoners are the ones to blame, what a fucking imbecile.

Anti Fascists Outnumber EDL Morons 2 to 1

A good day for Manchester, would have been better if the EDL hadn’t bothered, but nonetheless, I suppose friendless bores & bigots rarely perceive when they are not welcome. Live site at the Manchester Evening News.

I would also add worth reading is this tangled tale that involves the racist senior EDL operator Paul Ray of the lamentable Lionheart blog, apparently forging online identities to create fake terror stories to smear Muslims with and the corporate media go along with it. No really, try to be surprised. This is in addition to the fine work of Tim Ireland @ Bloggerheads. Seems a number of racist fantasists form the backbone of a terror porn creating cabal that help keeps the war on terror bullshit flowing in tabloid land, all with a common trait of rabid Islamophobia. Of course creating incidents to gather support is a very old fascist tactic and that Patrick ‘once fired for racism‘ Mercer MP the Tory Chairman of the Commons sub-committee on counter-terrorism and erstwhile shadow spokes-mannequin for Fatherland ‘Homeland’ security is involved is so far being ignored by that same corporate media.

Unworthy

The lesser of two evils is still evil, New Labour might not be as horrific as the Tories, but really, how passionate or excited can you get about a desultory pragmatism that favours one style of management of neoliberalism over another. Judging from media/blogs apparently still quite a lot, I guess it helps people justify their pundit existence. The underclass will continue to be subjected to a sort of civic genocide, labour will be kept malleable and cheap through economic terrorism, foreigners will continue to provide a bloody canvas for our failings whether abroad or in migrant jails. And when the angry violent reaction comes the same punditocracy can talk incessantly about that to keep them in work.
Rinse and repeat.

And They Also Have Tasers Now…

Thames Valley Police has been fined £40,000 for breaching health and safety laws when a civilian worker was accidentally shot. Pc David Micklethwaite, 52, shot control room employee Keith Tilbury, 57, during a firearms awareness course in Oxfordshire on 30 May 2007. It was revealed at Southwark Crown Court that Pc Micklethewaite had failed a gun training course, but was allowed to continue working. He mistakenly loaded a Magnum revolver with live ammunition which was kept in an old Quality Street tin. The judge said this practice was a “disaster waiting to happen”.

Pc Micklethwaite was accused of “engaging in the pointing of weapons and the pulling of a trigger during role-play in the classroom”, “failing to examine or check the round of ammunition” and discharging the gun “while inadvertently pointing the weapon at Keith Tilbury”. Mr Tilbury, a control room employee for Thames Valley Police Authority, was shot in the stomach at point-blank range while he was listening to a lecture alongside 10 colleagues at the force’s Police Headquarters North in Kidlington. He suffered serious damage to his lungs, kidneys and bowel and spent two weeks in intensive care. Mr Tilbury has told the BBC he is unlikely to return to work.

The EDL Is Not Welcome In Manchester

Apparently the English Defence League Retarded Fascist Thugs are planning some kind of event in Manchester on 10th October. As a Mancunian I would like to speak for my city, we like diversity, we like a multifaceted solidarity, Manchester generally is left wing. So right wing nationalist fanatics using violent misfits (normally masking their personal shortcomings by supporting events where millionaires play a children’s game while they assault each other) to pursue a racist agenda really ought not to bother going all that way just to find out they are very unwelcome. Clairwill has an excellent suggestion inspired by news of the moron roadshow eyeing up Glasgow. The EDL represent a few hundred largely male Islamophobes and racists with a liking for dominance and violence, they concentrate on stories of Muslim extremists to license their own extremism, (together with a misreading of history that would fail the grade for even a Ladybird level). In other words they are what they profess to oppose, they welcome any narrative of other extremism because it gives cover to their own extremism which pre-existed and will always search for rationalisations. Every nation, every culture has chumps like this, it’s ensuring they do not utilise violence or intimidation to enforce their dysfunctional thoughts that is every citizen’s responsibility if we want to live in an open society that values the scintillating breadth of human experience and culture. Manchester has withstood fascist  attacks in the past, they failed to kill my family with their bombs and now what might be thought of as fifth columnists are troubling my fair city with their half-witted notions of ‘Englishness’. I don’t think so.

NB. While EDL fronts are at pains to claim non racism and that they are not fascist, whether it is misdirecting expediency or personal denial, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a fucking duck!

Lost Compass

No sense of direction…

Labour is in serious danger of drifting into opposition, influential backbench MP Jon Cruddas has warned the party.

He was joined on the platform by the former work and pensions secretary, James Purnell,

While talk of the pair forming a “dream ticket” in any future Labour leadership contest may be overdone, members of Cruddas’s team think he might run in any contest to become Labour leader

Yeah that’s what will do it, New Labour Lite, what a dream. Cruddas is full of nice talk, his actions… not so courageous.

Morons Lying to Children

• The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state’s education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God…One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that “there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature”, that “there is a creator” and “government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual”.
• The Nakba is leaving the education system: Education Minister Gidon Saar decided yesterday to cancel the subject of the Nakba in the Arab sector. The Nakba is the description used by the Palestinians for Israel’s victory in the War of Independence, and literally means “catastrophe. The topic was studied until today as part of the geography subject, after a decision made on the matter during the period of Limor Livnat, and was officially introduced into textbooks during the term of the previous education minister, Yuli Tamir. “There is no reason for the official curriculum of the State of Israel to present the state’s establishment as a Holocaust or catastrophe,” Saar said yesterday.

Common denominator? Ethnic cleansing and/or genocide excused because…God Made Me Do It! Translation- I avoid personal responsibility at the same time as claiming ultimate unquestionable supernatural authority for my actions. It’s the last undiagnosed mass mental disorder left on Earth. It also makes you doubt evolutionary theory, not as a whole, just as applied to Homo sapiens, clearly de-evolving at a rate of knots.

The Long War & All That

Article by ex US California State Senator Tom Hayden- Understanding the Long War, worth a read if only to see how content certain people will be to have a (another) 50 year catalogue of horror and repression. Still, UK recuitment’s up (see capital’s crisis is good for something) so hell, why not eh? What else is there to do?

Met Commissioner Tries Stand Up

It’s really the most absurdist lacerating satire-

“Part of the headlines should be … astonishing operation pulled off by the Met who did a first-class job,” he said.

Please stop, oh my aching sides, is this a new method of delivering police brutality?

“The overwhelming majority of officers, whatever the stress or provocation, carried out their duties in a professional manner and I want to give them credit for what they achieved.”

The provocation of doing their job without thumping people? Oh you cheeky monkey.

Stephenson said the Met had never misled anyone in the aftermath of Tomlinson’s death.

Now this one I think needs an extra line maybe- except with a fake post mortem! Ta-da!

Picking out the territorial support group (TSG) – which is at the centre of two IPCC investigations into Ian Tomlinson’s death and an assault on a woman protester – Stephenson said it was a specialist unit the Met relied on.

…to kill people!

Stephenson said he had received acknowledgment from police forces internationally for what the Met achieved during the G20.

I think they cut this one short, I’m sure he goes on to say, forces in Zimbabwe, North Korea and Burma!

Well don’t give up the day job ‘Sir’ Paulie but there is hope, even a fascist buffoon can be mayor nowadays! Meanwhile the Manchester force are staging a farce showing terrorists are so cunning these days they escape punishment by not being terrorists, the blighters!