The Guy Fawkes Option

Clever, clever, little David Cameron!.

2010-06-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

David Cameron announces that British troops will pull out of Afghanistan in 2015, before the General Election.

The many, many, British citizens who want our troops to leave Afghanistan now, may be tempted to say “At least that’s something.”

No it is not. It is clever politicking.

5 years more. We’ve been there already for 9 years. Cameron is happily countenancing a war of 14 years. For what? No one is yet able to explain what the British people can gain from this war. All it achieves is to allow British ministers to strut the world stage as though Britain was a “Great Power”.

How many more British soldiers will die to boost Cameron’s ego? How many more Afghan civilians?

And the politicking. Cameron will order British troops home just before the 2015 General Election, taking credit for brining them home, rather than admitting his disastrous decision to keep them there.

Do not be deceived. Cameron’ s recent speech indicates very clearly that he does not care about the deaths of British soldiers or Afghan civilians. All he cares about is the possibility of using this dreadful war to secure re-election for himself in 2015.

George Osborne cuts his salary by a quarter

2010-06-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

George Osborne stepped forward to deliver his first budget speech. As usual the House was full.

“You are all aware” he began “of the enormous deficit, and of the need to reduce it as soon as is feasible. All parties are agreed that we need both to cut government spending, and to raise taxes. The question is what spending should be cut, what taxes should be raised. But whatever decisions are taken, all British citizens will lose some money.

“You will have already read of our intention to order each government department to cut their spending by a quarter.

“Those who aspire to leadership should never ask their followers to do what they themselves are not prepared to do. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and I wish to announce now that we are cutting our salaries by a quarter for the duration of this Parliament.”

It was as if waves rolled on to the House of Commons shore – waves of murmurings and mutterings, which subsided into astonished silence.

George Osborne continued: “We have asked our ministerial colleagues, the heads of every Civil Service department, the Governor of the Bank of England, the chief executives of the major banks, and the hundred top FTSE companies to follow our example. They have all agreed. Her Majesty the Queen has also volunteered to reduce the Civil List payment by a quarter.

“Of course this reduction in our salaries will not reduce the deficit. We admit it is a symbolic action. But we offer it as a token of our sincerity to the British people. I now invite you all, Members of Parliament, to join with us in cutting your salary by a quarter for the duration of this Parliament.”

With one accord, the entire House rose to its feet. With one accord, they all shouted “Aye.”

***

Why is this a piece of satire, and not a sober reporting of the news?

How dare our leaders, who have collectively made such disastrous mistakes, ask the people of Britain for ‘sacrifices’ they themselves are not prepared to make.

Those who aspire to leadership should never ask their followers to do what they themselves are not prepared to do.

Slobodan Milliband; Slobodan Cameron

2010-05-25T03:55:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between Slobodan Milosevic’s killing of Kosovans, and Bush and Blair’s killing of Iraqis? Anyone who supports the invasion of Iraq supports the genocide of a hundred thousand Iraqis.

David Milliband says it’s “time to move on” from the invasion of Iraq. “While Iraq was a source of division in the past, it doesn’t need to be a source of division in the future.” Milliband insists on trivialising the invasion of Iraq, by treating it as a matter for disagreement between politicians, rather than a massacre of innocent Iraqis.

It is worth reading a website describing itself as the biography of Slobodan Milosevic. This presents him as a hero of Serbia, elected President of the Republic in 1990, by the first free multi-party elections since the Second World War.

March 11th 2006 Milosevic, on trial for war crimes at The Hague, died of a heart attack, before a verdict had been reached. To more or less everyone in the West he was acknowledged as a war criminal, who had committed genocide in Kosovo. To many Serbians, and, possibly, Russians, he was a hero of the Serbian people.

His death was thought to be suspicious. Some believed he had been poisoned, or had taken poison himself. Whatever the truth of this, it is accepted that he was refused permission to travel to Moscow for treatment which might well have kept him alive.

Milosevic is named a war criminal by the West for invading Kosovo and killing many innocent civilians. He would claim he did this to defend Serbia.

What is the difference between him and Messrs Bush and Blair, who also claimed they were defending their respective countries, and used this as an excuse for killing many innocent civilians during their invasion and occupation of Iraq?

David Milliband, by refusing to say the Iraq invasion was wrong, and by referring to it merely as something which caused controversy in the Labour party, trivialises what many thousands of people in the world regard as a war crime.

David Cameron on June 23rd, 2006, interviewed by Jonathan Ross, said he supported the Iraq invasion. Cameron was elected MP in 2001 as an obvious Tory high-flyer, and was a member of the Shadow Cabinet from 2003 to 2005 when he was elected Tory leader.

Since the Tories supported the invasion of Iraq, Cameron, like Milliband, apparently prides himself on voting for an action which has resulted in about 100,000 people being killed.

Suppose the Muslim block of countries were as dominant in the world now as they were during the Middle Ages. Suppose the International Court of Justice was at Mecca, not The Hague. If that was the case, Bush and Blair might well have been on trial there along with Milosevic.

What possible defence is there for supporting the Iraq invasion?

Iraq “doesn’t need to be a source of division in the future” says David Milliband. It will continue to be a source of division until the British government – after all with a Deputy Prime Minister whose party opposed the invasion – repudiates wholeheartedly, with reparations, what was not only a stupid decision, but also an immoral and illegal one.

The British Government needs to perform an act of repentance

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Anti-terrorist expert says British troops should leave Afghanistan

2010-05-21T02:24:00.000-07:00

A week before the General Election a candidate’s leaflet came through my door. A certain Crispin Black MBE was offering himself as an Independent for the constituency where I live – West Wiltshire.

I checked his biography. He had been commissioned in the Welsh Guards in 1982, just in time for the Falklands War; just in time to be bombed in the Sir Galahad by the Argentine air force. Speaking with the authority of someone who’d survived battle, he was contemptuous of generals who had not been shot at.

He became an intelligence expert, and wrote a book called 7 – 7 The London Bombs – What Went Wrong. As a lieutenant-colonel, he was seconded to the Cabinet Office 1999 – 2002, and prepared intelligence briefings for the Joint Intelligence Committee and COBRA.

This is part of his manifesto:
“Sadly, British troops in Afghanistan do not make us safer from terrorism in the UK. It’s time to withdraw them. The threat is here in the homeland.”

The only reason ever given by any British politician for continuing to fight in Afghanistan is that fighting there protects us from terrorists. That always seemed extremely dubious.

Now, there is no excuse whatsoever for sending British soldiers to die, and killing thousands of innocent Afghan civilians as ‘collateral damage.’ A top British terrorism expert has said the Afghan war is a useless waste of lives and money.

Bring the troops home.

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Clegg's 'Democracy'?

2010-05-20T04:13:00.000-07:00

Nick Clegg has just announced a programme of political reform ‘greater than anything since the Reform Bill of 1832,’

Many commentators have already questioned his claim. 1832 widened the suffrage only to 18% of adult males in England and Wales. Working class males did not get the vote until nearer the end of the century, and women were only given the same voting rights as men in 1928, living memory to those aged 82 and over.

Was the 1832 Reform Bill such a huge reform of poltics? How do the proposed Clegg reforms stand in relation to other extensions of franchise to ordinary British citizens?

Nick Clegg offers us, the citizens of Britain, the right to object to laws we don’t like.

Well, do you believe this? I'm afraid I don’t.

Here are some decisions on which I should like to vote. They all require straightforward yes/no answers. They all involve questions of money.

Should British taxpayers fund the replacement for Trident, which may cost about £100 billion?

Should cannabis be legalized? Subsidiary question: should it be sold over the counter like cigarettes and taxed similarly?

Should all drugs – even heroin - be legalized? Subsidiary question: should it be sold over the counter like cigarettes and taxed similarly?

Should British soldiers be withdrawn from Afghanistan?

Should wars only be undertaken if the decision to go to war is confirmed by referendum?

In my capacity as an ordinary British citizen, I do not claim the right to decide complicated problems in the NHS, or Education, nor do I have the solution for controlling bankers. (Nor do the politicians, but that’s another issue.)

The five questions noted above could all be put to the citizen body. They are all important. They all involve cost. They all impinge on our lives. If Britain was a democracy, as opposed to being governed by representative oligarchy, we would all have a right to take part in these decisions.

Politicians who say it would be wrong to put these questions to the citizen body, should also acknowledge that they do not believe we should be a democracy.

Then of course the next question rears its head:

Should Britain continue to be governed by representative oligarchy, or should it take the first steps towards becoming a democracy?

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Lib-Dems betrayed

2010-05-13T03:14:00.000-07:00

Make no mistake: the coalition between Clegg and Cameron has meant the abandonment of one of the most important promises in the Lib-Dem manifesto, the promise not to pay for the replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.

The Scottish Nationalists oppose spending money on the Trident replacement.Plaid Cymru at least calls for money to be spent on pensioners rather than on replacing Trident. But this hardly creates a powerful Opposition. Now the few MPs who oppose the replacement of Trident are likely to be shouted down. It is up to the unrepresented people of Britain, and those who voted Lib-Dem and now feel betrayed to form an Opposition of petition-signers.

Trident is indeed a symbol. With it, British ministers can edge their way into councils of ‘Great Powers.’

Are we prepared to allow these puffed up nonentities – for that is what they are – to spend over £100 billion of our money on this symbol?

One Vanguard submarine, fully armed, carries “more destructiver power than was unleashed in the entire campaign of World War II.”

If a British Commander-in-Chief was to order one Vanguard submarine to fire its missiles, this would create a nuclear winter to devastate most of Planet Earth.

I find it difficult to feel anything other than contempt for the current collection of mediocrities who call themselves our leaders. But I do think we are mercifully unlikely to have a genocidal, gaiacidal, lunatic in 10 Downing Street.

Which are the European countries least likely to be targeted by nuclear missiles? Sweden and Switzerland.

Let us, the citizens of Britain, follow the sensible lead of the Scots Nationalists, and protest at being asked to spend over £100 billion – which we most certainly cannot afford – on a piece of unnecessary equipment which does not protect us, and might in certain situations endanger us.

No to the replacement of Trident. We cannot afford it.

Real Change? Don't make me vomit!

2010-05-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

"We stand for Real Change." What a lie! What thumping great lie!

The Lib-Dems’ manifesto for the 2010 General Election announced that, if elected, they would not pay the cost of replacing the Trident nuclear deterrent.

May 12th, 2010. The Lib-Dem Party has joined the Conservatives in a coalition. One of the conditions imposed by the Conservatives, and agreed by the Lib-Dems, was that they would support the replacement of Trident, now estimated at costing £100 billion.

Please note the previous post.

A nuclear deterrent does not mean nuclear deterrence. What are the countries least likely to be attacked by nuclear weapons? Sweden and Switzerland, who possess no nuclear weapons and who have been neutral for over two hundred years.

Which country is by far the most powerful in Europe? Germany. Germany has no nuclear weapons.

The 2010 General Election poured verbal effluent into our ears. The most offensive word-splurge which I heard was the slogan repeated ad retch-the-guts-up nauseam: “we stand for Real Change.” Why do they bother to spew such lies?

Now, the Tories and Lib-Dems have signed up to more of the ‘Real Change’ politics in the old mould. This election offered a chance, a tiny loophole of a chance, that the British people might so vote that change (and I mean ‘change’ as understood by normal people speaking English, not politicians mouthing meaninglessness) might be forced on the mentally retarded mediocrities who preen themselves as our leaders.

Just suppose the Lib-Dems had acquired enough clout to insist that Britain did not replace Trident. Well then this would mean the British Prime Minister would no longer be able to strut about as a ‘world leader.’

We, the British, would have to adjust to belonging to a medium-sized country on the edge of Europe, a country whose industries had been destroyed by the stupidity of Conservative and Labour governments over the last thirty years, a country dependent on the wit and enterprise of its scientists and artists, as it had to do during the reign of Elizabeth the First, the last period when Britain had no overseas possessions, and no claim to be a world power.

After the Second World War, the Germans turned and renounced the trappings of dominance, and got down to the business of making things other people would buy.

This is what the British should have done two generations ago.

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CRUISE MISSILE OBLITERATES STOCKHOLM

2010-05-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

Cruise Missile Obliterates Stockholm!

At 3.0 am this morning, a cruise missile with a nuclear warhead landed in the centre of Stockholm. The city is now flattened, and there is at the moment no report of any survivors .

At 10.0 am the Chinese broadcast an ultimatum to the Swedish Government: if they did not hand over IKEA, its entire stock, its financial assets in totality, China was declaring war on Sweden. Commentators hastened to condemn the oriental perfidy which attacks first, and then declares war after the pre-emptive strike.

...

Absurd of course.

Sweden is almost certain never to be invaded, because it has given up invading other countries. The last significant war fought by Sweden was two hundred years ago, the Russian-Swedish war of 1808 – 1809. (There was then a minor war in 1814, when Sweden invaded Norway; it did not last long, or cause many casualties)

Dare we say the Swedish people have sensibly realised there is nothing to be gained by fighting wars?

We can find a long list of Swiss wars … in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth, centuries.. But the only war in the last two hundred years was the Sonderbund War, a civil war fought between the League of Catholic cantons and the Swiss Federation. It lasted from November 3rd to November 26th, 1847. There were less than a hundred casualties. Immediately the Federal army had won, they started ministering to the wounded, an action which led to the founding of the Red Cross.

I think we might certainly say the Swiss have sensibly realised there is nothing to be gained by fighting wars.

What is the role of Government?

The role of Government is to defend the lives of its citizens, and to maintain the currency.

Which Government has defended the lives of its citizens more successfully, that of the United Kingdom or that of Sweden?

Let us imagine the answer to that question given by a British mother who has received the body of her son blown to unrecognisable bits by an Iraqi or Afghan bomb.

“Minority Government is weak government.” Nonsense!

2010-05-11T03:03:00.001-07:00

“Minority Government is weak government.” Nonsense! Nonsense! Nonsense! Dangerous nonsense!

Every government since 1979 – and probably earlier, but I haven’t bothered to check – every government we British citizens have had to endure has been a Minority Government.

Minority Government during the last 30 years may have been BAD GOVERNMENT, and very often was. The trouble has been that it wasn’t weak enough.

Mrs Thatcher was able to destroy British industries like swatting flies, while squandering Britain’s temporary oil wealth to fund the international casino of the City of London. Mr Blair, continuing to squander oil wealth while funding the City of London casino, also led Britain into illegal, immoral, and misguided, wars.

For the last thirty years, and probably more, we have had to endure Minority Governments.

In 1979, the so-called Tory landslide victory, the Tories secured 43% of the votes. Labour and the Liberals secured 50.7%.
In 1983, the Tories secured 42.3% of the votes. Labour and the Lib-SDP alliance secured 53%. In 1987, the Tories secured 42.2% of the votes. Labour and the Lib-SDP alliance secured 53.4. In 1992, the Tories secured 41.9% of the votes. Labour and the Lib-Dems secured 52.2.

In 1997, Labour secured 43.2% of the votes. Conservatives and Lib-Dems secured 47.5 %. In 2001, Labour secured 40.7% of the votes. Conservatives and Lib-Dems secured 50%. In 2005, Labour secured 35.3% of the votes. Conservatives and Lib-Dems secured 54.4 %.

In last week’s election Conservatives secured 36.1%. Labour and Lib-Dems secured 52%.

On Tuesday May 11th, the BBC Today Programme interviewed various senior politicians – David Blunkett, George Osborne, Paddy Ashdown – to publicise their responses to the discussions between the Lib-Dems and Tories on the one hand, and Lib-Dems and Labour on the other.

George Osborne attempted to devote his time on air to repeating a refrain directed against the possibility of a Labour & Lib-Dem coalition. “Minority Government is weak government” he reiterated ad nauseam. Paddy Ashdown was able to point out that Labour and Lib-Dems secured 51% of the votes (one percentage point less than is given in Wikipedia.)

Osborne has not had time to read much. Minority governments were frequent in Britain before the Second World War, and work well in many countries, such as Scotland, Canada, New Zealand.

We must scotch this ‘minority’ argument fiercely and finally. The politicians, snuggling into their comfortable seats insulated from contact with the world outside, talk of majorities and minorities. But their definition of majorities and minorities is meaningless, depending on the random relationship of votes cast to seats allocated in Parliament. The next time a politician talks about minority government he/she should be shouted down, or, better still, left to talk in his/her own self-padded cell.

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Ban All Political Parties

2010-05-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Ban All Political Parties

I popped in to my local filling station for a carton of milk, and asked the man at the cash desk whether he was ready to form a government. Without hesitation, he said “Obvious what we need: fixed term parliament for two years, and the best minds from all three parties working together to get us out of the mess.”

I haven’t had deep conversations with him; he is no “homespun philosopher.” I guess he would be perfectly happy to describe himself as an ordinary working man.

How infinitely preferable it would be to have him organising the political system rather than the puffed-up nonentities who claim leadership over us.

This is the point. Anyone and everyone can see how to approach the problem: we have all got to do without a bit of what we’ve taken for granted over the last thirty years when we lived beyond our means. But that means all of us, not just nurses, teachers, and postmen; it means seriously taxing all incomes over £100,000. It means ordering the bankers to repay the money they have robbed from us under licence, and to surrender their passports so they are confined to this country for the next five years. It means the armed forces coming home from Afghanistan; it means Britain not buying a replacement for Trident; it means politicians not strutting around as if they were leaders of a “Great Nation”, for we are no longer a “Great Nation.” It means members of Parliament willingly and eagerly taking a salary exactly the same as a teacher’s.

There is, of course, one more thing. For the next two years all political parties must be dissolved; all party funds must be frozen; all party offices must be turned into temporary residences for the homeless. Members of Parliament must sit at random in the House of Commons. All ministerial offices will be held jointly by two, three, or four, people acting in concert.

Then there is a chance that the good old spirit of the good old British working man and working woman will rise to the occasion, and the jokes will be cracked, and the trousers patched, and once again the folk, the ordinary folk, will pull victory out of the defeat into which our self-serving, conceited, and supremely incompetent, leaders have led us.

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Can a politician ever put country before party? No

2010-05-10T04:06:00.000-07:00

Sir John Major came on the BBC Today Programme this morning May 10th, to appeal for politicians to put the interests of the country before those of the party. This statement by Sir John Major, ex-Tory Prime Minister, translates as follows:

“Liberal-Democrats, agree to vote for David Cameron as Prime Minister without insisting on reform of the electoral system.”

No politician will ever put the interests of the country before that of the party. His/her raison d’être is to secure the re-election of his/her party at the next election.

To ask a politician to put the interests of the country before that of the party is like asking a fish to run around on land like a horse.

Messrs Cameron and Clegg are having meetings. We know more or less what they are saying to each other. Although most recent governments have only secured a minority of the votes cast, Mr Clegg has, rashly, turned first to the Conservatives since they received the most votes.

We know precisely what Mr Cameron is thinking. His plan is plain for us all to see. If he can persuade Clegg to support him in some quickly devised plan to cover up the deficit in enough to persuade the British people something is being done to reduce it, while promising Clegg he will consider electoral reform “as soon as possible”, then he has won. The “as soon as possible” will be a rhetorical – and meaningless – refrain. After all “as soon as possible” in geological time could mean within ten thousand years. After a month or two, the Lib-Dems will realise they have been tricked, and rise in fury against Clegg. Then the Liberal revival will be smashed for another generation, and Cameron will be hailed as the saviour of the Tory Party.

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Tony Benn & Rory Bremner

2010-05-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

On March 30th, 2010, Tony Benn appeared on stage in Sheffield City Hall, for the second half of a programme whose first act was Rory Bremner
doing his comedy impersonations.

I can imagine the sneering reaction of pompous politicians to the idea of Benn appearing on stage with a comedian.

On October 4th 2007. BBC News contained an item about Tony Benn offering himself for re-selection as an MP for Kensington. But nothing more has been heard of Benn returning to the House of Commons. I wonder what the Kensington selection committee would think of him working alongside Rory Bremner.

On February 28th, 2009, Rory Bremner gave a speech about how our liberty as citizens is in danger. Bremner, Bird and Fortune, the Channel 4 satire show used laughter to illuminate politics. Bremner, Bird and Fortune: the Last Show before the Recovery was a three-part series on Channel 4 in 2009, which gave the bankers a bit of the lambasting they deserved.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place was a Channel 4 Bremer, Bird & Fortune show at the time of the Iraq invasion. Apart from making me laugh, I found it offered the clearest commentary on what was happening in the run-up to that illegal invasion. It was much more informative than the ordinary news.

I’ve written in many other places about how Aristophanes is a hero of mine. A poet, a master of silly farce, he was also passionate about politics, and devoted much of his huge energy to creating laughter in the cause of peace. Now, in the 21st century AD, as well as laughing with Aristophanes at the stupidity of the 5th century BC Athenian politicians and generals, we can also see the ordinary Athenians of the time brought to life by Aristophanes’ documentaries. How he would laugh at our scholars: but the fact is he now provides very important historical source material, and illuminates our understanding of the politics then. It is pitiful to see the destructive idiocy of Aristophanes' contemporaries. It is even more pitiful to see how our contemporaries repeat the idiocy even more destructively.

If important politicians and political commentators have, by some strange chance, happened upon this blog, they will no doubt have been appalled already by my ventures into fantasy and farce. But our situation is so appalling, we can only grasp how appalling it is through farce and fantasy.

On March 17th, 2005 The Guardian contained an article by Tony Benn titled Not apathy, but anger.

“My own experience,” he wrote “four years after leaving parliament to devote more time to politics, has convinced me that, far from being apathetic, most people are angry that no one seems to be listening to them; nor do they believe what they are told. Anger and mistrust are highly political responses and in no sense can they be described as apathy.”

As Tony Benn wrote in 2005, we are indeed very angry. But we are also flabbergasted at the insanity displayed by politicians.

Often the only sensible reaction to contemporary politics is to assume there is a kind of Gadarene swine mentality which has taken possession of them, and they are just about to hurl themselves at speed down the steep slope into the lake and drown.

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Michael Foot and City Bankers

2010-05-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

Michael Foot, who died on March 3rd, 2010, was led the Labour Party in the 1983 election to Labour’s worst defeat since 1918. His election manifesto was held to have made Labour unelectable. But this manifesto contained a promise to control the banks.

On March 3rd, 2010, Michael Foot died, aged 96. Shambling about in a donkey jacket, he was mocked as the Labour leader who made the Labour Party unelectable. In the 1983 election, eight and a half million people voted Labour, and over thirteen million voted Conservative, the Tories securing 397 seats in the House of Commons, as against Labour’s 209. It was Labour’s worst performance since 1918.

Michael Foot, then leading the Labour party, was blamed for the defeat, and resigned as leader soon after the election.

Labour’s manifesto, which was judged to have made the party unelectable, contained a promise to control the banks.

Before Michael Foot died, aged 96, he had witnessed the financial disaster caused by the uncontrolled banks gambling beyond their mean, and he should have been able to console himself with the thought he was right in 1983.

Michael Foot did the worst thing a politician can possibly do: Michael Foot was right.

Nothing can excuse a politician for being right.

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Hang the Bankers

2010-05-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Fred Goodwin, bankrupter of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has been given a knighthood for services to banking by Gordon Brown's government, and, when finally forced to resign, has secured a modest financial package which will probably mean that by the time he dies he has looted under licence about nineteen million pounds.

At noon on Midsummer Day, 2010, city workers noticed a man standing on the steps of the Bank of England. He erected a speaker system, and shouted into the microphone “I am Fred Goodwin, and I repent.”

Slowly he stripped off the jacket of his extremely expensive suit; he stooped and undid the laces of his black Oxford shoes, and took them off. He then undid his tie, and laid it on the ground. First the right foot, then the left: he carefully removed his socks. Then he quickly unzipped his trousers and let them fall. Off came the shirt, and he stood before the gathering crowd naked except for a pair of lime green silk boxer shorts. “I have sinned and I repent” he yelled into the microphone.

Unnoticed before, a man in dirty jeans and filthy wellies had been standing in the shadow with a wheelbarrow which he now pushed before Goodwin. The wheelbarrow was full of horse manure. Goodwin plunged his hands into the manure and started rubbing it over his face and body. More or less completely covered in dung — except for his silk underpants — Goodwin dropped to his knees and crawled up the steps, moaning and groaning that he was a sinner, but was repenting. When he reached the top pf the steps, another man appeared from the shadows and held up a placard, a six foot by four foot cheque like those given to lottery winners. The writing indicated that Fred Goodwin was paying nineteen million pounds to the British Treasury.

Goodwin stood up, took the vast cheque, and handed it to a smart dark-suited woman who emerged from inside the Bank.

“I have sinned” moaned Goodwin. “I repent. Here I return the money I robbed from the British people.”

At that moment, there was a flash of lightning, which struck Goodwin precisely on his forehead. He collapsed writhing. The sky opened to reveal a figure dressed mainly in sunshine, and wearing a halo. “I am the angel of Heaven’s gate” he said. “Fred, you have repented; you may enter heaven.”

Goodwin leapt up, and seemed to be floating a few feet off the ground. He stretched his arms in the air as if grasping for something to lever him up into the sky. The crowd had been mumbling and muttering mockery and contempt of Goodwin for the last half hour. Their anger grew louder and more violent. The angel’s words were too much; the crowd rushed at Goodwin, dragged him down to the ground again, and pulled off his legs, arms, and finally head.

“That’s not fair” shouted Goodwin’s head, “I repented.” “Sure you did” said the angel. “And if your repentance is genuine, you will go to heaven.” The angel looked down and grinned. “But think of the people you ruined by your stupid greed” he went on, “those lads pulling you to pieces – they’re making a metaphor of what you did when you pulled your bank to pieces. They’re doing a better job than you ever did.”

The concern of Christian morality is with the individual’s innocence and guilt. “I did not know” can often be a plea of innocence. But in matters of public safety or state governance, “I did not know” is never an excuse. We are, rightly, not concerned whether the Captain of the Titanic is innocent or guilty, merely with whether he is competent to steer through icebergs or not. In the same way we are not concerned whether Captain Gordon Brown is an innocent victim of the bankers’ dishonesty.

Innocence is no excuse. One of the things for which we pay him is taking care of the nation‘s wealth. He was a security guard who fell asleep when the robbers broke in.

He is a sentry who fell asleep while on duty, and sentries who fall asleep, however innocent, are shot.

The Prime Miinister says he did not see the bank disaster coming, so he is a sentry who fell asleep. The Leader of the Opposition also says he did not see the bank disaster coming, so he, under orders to take the next shift as sentry, is found asleep too.

What are we to do, confronted by such shameless captains of the ship of state, strutting the bridge in their finery and bawling messages of platitudinous assurance, while driving us on to icebergs at full speed?

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The Debt Britain Duet

2010-04-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

On March 24th, 2010, Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer concluded his budget speech by singing, approximately to the tune of the Flanders and Swann song “Mud, mud, glorious mud”, a new lyric he had just written:

Debt, debt, glorious debt,
We‘ll keep it going for many years yet.
We’ll never get paid
What it cost to invade
The wogs with our bombs and our tanks –
Never mind what we’ve given the banks –
’Cause bankers do like to bet.

George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor immediately stepped forward and joined him in a reprise. The crowded House of Commons leapt to their feet and applauded how well they harmonized:

Debt, debt, glorious debt,
We‘ll keep it going for many more years.
Though we’ve not been paid
What it cost to invade
The wogs with our bombs and our tanks –
Never mind what we’ve given the banks –
We’ll laugh through our grandchildren’s tears.

On April 29th they asked Vince Cable to join them so they could form a trio. But Vince refused unless he was given star billing. So Osborne and Darling were obliged to busk at the stage door while the leaders’ debate went on inside. They sang sadly:

Debt, debt, glorious debt,
We’ve caused a cock-up no one’ll forget.
When our debt increases
Till it dwarfs Greece’s,
Let’s not flinch or wince.
Let’s try to con Vince
That by sticking together
And babbling blether
We’ll con the voters as well,
And damn Britannia to bankruptcy hell.

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No, but seriously …

On March 24th, 2010, the Chancellor Alistair Darling presented a budget which revealed very clearly to anyone who bothered to listen carefully how he had absolutely no idea how to cut Britain’s enormous debt. All he could do was glory in the fact that the debt now appeared to be £167 billion, instead of £188 billion. Only £167 billion – whoopee!!

On March 25th, 2010, George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, interviewed on the Today Programme, revealed that he too had absolutely no idea how to reduce the debt. Evan Davies, interviewing Osborne, pointed out that Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor, showed more or less equal helplessness. One party might cut £5 billion slightly quicker than the other. But what difference would that £5 billion make to the enormous £167 billion total?

On April 29th, as the three leaders prepare for their TV debate on the economy, it is now clear that all three of them are equally at a loss as to how the British people can clear the huge deficit run up by the gambling bankers.

Perhaps a hung parliament, and a coalition which genuinely consults the citizens of Britain, may be the best result we can hope for in the coming election.

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Coalition Election: Neighbourhood and Family Values

2010-04-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

This is A Manifesto for the Red, Yellow, & Blue, Party

One party above all deserves to lead the country. A party with the right attitude. A party that cares about People, that puts People First.

These are the pledges of The Red, Yellow, & Blue, Party to You, to You personally, to You and Your Family, to You and Your Neighbourhood.

We Pledge Action on the NHS. The NHS is The Red, Yellow, & Blue, Party’s Top Priority. We Pledge To Further Strengthen The NHS. We Will Ensure Frontline Services In The NHS Are Protected.

We Pledge Transport For All. We Will Work To Improve Access To Transport. We Pledge Better Train Services From London. We Will Invest In Public Transport.

We Pledge Action On Education, Fair School Funding, Raising Standards in Schools, Giving Schools The Extra Money They Need To Support Struggling Children.

We Pledge More Police; We Will Put More Police On Patrol.

How could anyone not vote for a party which pledges to do all this.

Well, as you might guess this manifesto is composed of quotations from the three political brochures which have been put through my door by the Conservative, Labour, and Lib-Dem parties. There are a few minor differences: the conservatives, surprisingly, do not mention the Police; Labour does not mention Education.

They all believe in Fairness and Change, and Making a Difference. Why don’t we ask for three votes instead of one, so that we can vote for all three of them?

There is another thing these three brochures have in common:

None of them mention how they are going to pay for the wonderful promises they are making us.

Are we stupid? Well The Red, Yellow, & Blue, Party thinks we are.

But how do we show them we’re not really stupid? That’s the problem.

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Iraq War Justifications & David Milliband

2010-04-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

“You’ve punished us enough about Iraq” pleaded David Milliband in an interview in The Guardian on Saturday April 24th, 2010.

Tony Blair declared he was practising an Ethical Foreign Policy.
David Milliband was already a junior minister in Blair’s government by 2002, having been Head of the Prime Minister‘s Policy Unit from 1997 – 2001, before becoming an MP. We can therefore presume that David Milliband, owing his rapid promotions to Tony Blair, was also an enthusiast for his leader’s Ethical Foreign Policy.

How Tony Blair loved talking about Ethical Foreign Policy, and how we applauded the way he tirelessly fought as George W.Bush’s assistant in righting the world’s wrongs. How right David Milliband is to plead for forgiveness as a junior minister in a British government responsible for killing a few Iraqis, and possibly a British soldier or two, over the last decade. A few accidents like that should not stop us admiring the nobly Ethical Foreign Policy of Labour governments since 1997.

How we applauded Blair for the order he gave the Parachute Regiment to drop into Bulawayo and stop Mugabe’s soldiers massacring innocent Ndebele civilians because they supported Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

How we applauded Blair when he sent an ultimatum to Hu Jintao to withdraw from Tibet, and when the ultimatum was ignored, launched a Cruise missile on Beijing.

Well … an Ethical Foreign Policy ... adapted to the needs of the oil and motor industries.

An Ethical Foreign Policy which justified invading Iraq illegally, against the majority of the United Nations, as a result of which invasion Iraq is in ruins, and many thousands of Iraqis have been killed, not to mention the British soldiers.

Iraq under Saddam was a terrible place of evil repression and wanton murder. But then so is the Sudan. So is Burma / Myanmar.

So is Tibet.

So is Palestine.

George W. Bush deemed himself the noble emperor of the world, crushing petty dictatorships with his beneficent tanks and bombers.

So why only Iraq? Why not the Sudan, Burma / Myanmar, Tibet, and Palestine?

The United States could not afford the expense of all those invasions. Iraq has nearly bankrupted the richest nation on the planet, let alone the poor British camp-followers.

Ethical Foreign Policy will not rescue dying Matabele. Zimbabwe has no oil fields. Ethical Foreign Policy gushes ethics when following its dictates leads to gushing oil wells.

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The Homo Sapiens on the Endangered Species List

2010-04-25T10:18:00.000-07:00

Lord Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, has been President of the Royal Society since 2005. His book Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the 21st Century, (Heinemann) came out in 2003. On April 25th, 2003, when the book had come out, BBC broadcast an item about it. The bulletin starts “The human race has only a 50/50 chance of surviving another century” says Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal. (Martin Rees was not yet a peer then). Later on in that bulletin the prophecy of doom is slightly modified. “I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century,” Rees is reported to have said.

Our political leaders are prevented from doing anything to ward off the impending disasters, because they are bound to consider all action in the light of the next election, four years away at most. They are also trapped by the rigid party system: they must not think for themselves; they must work solely for the party’s re-election.

Mary Robinson, ex-President of Ireland, ex UN commissioner for Human Rights, interviewed on the failure of the Copenhagen Conference, stated her belief that governments were no longer capable of taking action to save Plane Earth.

Faced with this, to what shall we liken our political leaders? To Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean in his car with the accelerator pedal clamped down, and the car screaming at an ever-increasing speed, while Mr Bean sits there grinning inanely.

So here we are – us British citizens – in 2010, contemplating a General Election. I have not yet found in the last six months anyone willing to volunteer support for either Government or Opposition. Is there anyone here ready to ascribe to our political leaders any quality other than supreme incompetence?

It is not that they are all imbeciles. It is that they are compelled by their profession to stop thinking. It is as if, on being elected, they took a solemn vow: “I, Fred Smith / Emma Pilkington-Forsyth/ David Cameron / Gordon Brown / solemnly swear that from henceforward I will only act, propose, or think, in terms of the next four years. I will pull down a black veil of inattention over every problem whose solution will take longer than the term of this Parliament. I will devotedly ignore every idea, however promising, which can only become reality in five years or more. “

They are indeed trapped. It is not only a matter of ignoring the future. Even during their four year prison sentence, they must devote themselves to the party line. If they try to think for themselves, they may well be expelled from the prison. But such an expulsion means the loss of a comfortable salary, and, even after the adjustments of 2009, a generous expense allowance.

How can we possibly expect our so-called leaders to do anything to save homo sapiens from extinction? The British Government appears to pride itself on a transport policy which a normal person would assume to have been drawn up by lunatics. The British Government spends billions of pounds on blowing people up. Might it not be sensible to invest some of those billions in technology to make war unnecessary?

No political leader seems to show any grasp whatsoever of the dangers we are in. Their only noticeable talent is the ability to grin inanely like Mr Bean.

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Internet Democracy is World Democracy

2010-04-24T04:12:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama based his presidential campaign on using the internet to acquire supporters. But the internet is for everyone.

Avaaz has acquired 3.9 million members in 3 years, that is several million people who have signed up to receive Avaaz protest email petitions, some of which they will sign.

The internet has made it possible for an industrialised nation like Britain to be a democracy. Even politicians recognise that the internet has changed our culture irrevocably. Barack Obama based his presidential campaign on using the internet to acquire supporters. Now every politician is trying to work out how best to use the internet to their advantage. The internet is for everyone.

The internet offers citizens a chance to gather virtually in huge numbers. And once it is possible to present a million signatures to a protest, the further possibility peeps out that governments might take notice. Avaaz has acquired 3.9 million members in 3 years, that is several million people who have signed up to receive Avaaz protest email petitions, some of which they will sign.

On April 7th, 2010, Avaaz emailed all those of us who have signed their petitions with an update on the various successes which have been achieved. Policies have been changed.

It is probably easier to gather signatures to protest an injustice than to make a pitch for a new technology.

Avaaz
– “Avaaz” means “Voice” in many Asian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European languages” – has acquired 3.9 million members in 3 years, that is several million people who have signed up to receive Avaaz protest email petitions, some of which they will sign.

This is how Avaaz describes itself:
“Avaaz.org is a new global web movement with a simple democratic mission: to close the gap between the world we have, and the world most people everywhere want.

“Across the world, most people want stronger protections for the environment, greater respect for human rights, and concerted efforts to end poverty, corruption and war. Yet globalization faces a huge democratic deficit as international decisions are shaped by political elites and unaccountable corporations -- not the views and values of the world’s people.

”Technology and the internet have allowed citizens to connect and mobilize like never before. The rise of a new model of internet-driven, people-powered politics is changing countries from Australia to the Philippines to the United States. Avaaz takes this model global, connecting people across borders to bring people powered politics to international decision-making.

”Coming together in this way, Avaaz has become a wonderful community of people from all nations, backgrounds, and ages. Our diverse community is brought together by our care for the world, and a desire to do what we can to make it a better place.

“The core of our model of organizing is our email list, operated in 13 languages.

Avaaz is based in many countries – the United States, Britain, Brazil, etc. It is the beginnings of a world-wide group of concerned citizens. I am glad to have joined; Avaaz campaigns to save rain-forest, or endangered indigenous nations, to free political prisoners who have protested against tyrannical regimes.

In September 2009 Avaaz managed to get 100,000 people to join a phone-in campaign for significant results at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. On December 9th, Avaaz arranged for its members throughout Europe to phone their leaders for a few seconds of persuasion, few seconds in which to emphasise how many European citizens wished their governments to take a lead in reducing carbon emissions.

Avaaz protested with great virtual vigour. President Obama arrived as the conference was ending. Frightened of oil lobbies, motor lobbies, etc, Obama weakly concurred in an agreement drafted by him and the Chinese leader, which in effect bound no countries to reduce carbon emissions at all.

Avaaz points the way to world-wide citizen democracy.
But we are a long way from seeing this come into being.

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Tony Benn & the British National Party

2010-04-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

Tony Benn and BNP singing from the same hymn sheet

Front Page Headline in all major newspapers on April 23rd, 2010, St George’s Day.

Ridiculous? Sure. But, strangely enough, they do agree on one thing.

St George’s Day, 2010: the day which revealed to the British electorate that the system of political parties by which Britain has been governed is now utterly obsolete.

Both Tony Benn and Nick Griffin advocate immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. If those two, representing as they do extreme opposites in political alignment, agree on anything, we must concede that Right and Left have become meaningless distinctions in politics.

If Tony Benn can agree with Nick Griffin about anything, the old alignments of right and left in politics are manifestly meaningless.

On the eve of St George’s Day, there was a second debate between the three political leaders: Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Nick Clegg. Brown and Cameron were both determined to dim the lustre Nick Clegg acquired in the first debate a week earlier.

As in that first debate all three leaders were equally incoherent about the steps they would take to restore Britain’s finances.

Perhaps the most serious division of policy with which the electorate is presented is the issue of Trident. Should Britain buy a replacement for Trident at a probable cost of £100 billion? Clegg for the Lib-Dems says no; Brown and Cameron say yes. In the debate, Gordon Brown got a laugh by saying he agreed with David (Cameron). Agreement about Trident, yes. Agreement also in their attempt to crush Clegg, and return the election contest to the good old knockabout between two unrepresentative parties.

And so to the agreement between those two representatives of the extreme opposites in the right-left political line-up: Tony Benn and Nick Griffin.

Should British troops continue to kill and be killed in Afghanistan? This, like the argument over Trident, is a serious issue. The three-cornered leaders’ debate in Bristol on April 22nd gave a fascinating illumination of why each leader believes Britain should continue to wage war there.

Fascinating because the illumination was non-existent. Cameron and Clegg simply assumed Britain should continue the war, and saw no need to explain why.

Since a British general who commanded in Afghanistan has said the war is unwinnable, one would have thought an explanation of why we are continuing to fight an unwinnable war would have been helpful. Clegg and Cameron, terrified of seeming unsupportive of the army, preferred glorifying the soldiers’ bravery to telling us why they should be there at all.

Gordon Brown, however, rose to the occasion magnificently. He justified Britain’s military presence in Afghanistan with reference to Al-Qaeda.

We need to hunt down terrorists. But in the same sentence, he informed us there were members of Al-Qaeda plotting terror from bases in the Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and other places. Why are we not hunting these Yemen and Somalia terrorists? Why have we not invaded Pakistan?

Yes, I could agree there is an argument for sending small detachments of SAS into terrorist hiding places, perhaps working in conjunction with Pakistani special forces. But how can major military operations against the Taliban help in tracking down terrorists who work in teams of less than ten?

Why exactly do Nick Griffin and the BNP want to withdraw from Afghanistan? In a sense, their reason is irrelevant to anyone like myself who is against the rest of their policies.

Tony Benn’s opposition to the war in Afghanistan is stated with bald clarity: history shows that no foreign power has ever succeeded in dominating Afghanistan. Britain failed, Russia failed, and now NATO is failing.

I return to the headline, which the newspapers neglected to print. More than ever before there are issues on which the citizens of Britain would like to vote. More than ever before there is less and less reason to trust any political party to resolve these issues.

Even Brown, even Cameron, and certainly Clegg, mixed their sycophantic references to the electorate “It’s for you to decide, it’s your choice, etc” with vague promises of referendums. Let us see how quickly these promises are forgotten after the election.

Why don’t we have a referendum about the war in Afghanistan, if only to enjoy the sight of Benn and Griffin voting on the same side?

Minority Government & Collateral Damage in Afghanistan

2010-04-22T02:23:00.000-07:00

Leading the nation to war is the prerogative of the sovereign.

In the seventeenth century and before, the British sovereign was the monarch, who was an absolute ruler. By the end of the seventeenth century sovereignty rested with Parliament, as the representative of the British people. From time to time a British Prime Minister with a commanding majority has been able to act like an absolute monarch. This was the case with Tony Blair when he led Britain into an invasion of Iraq, declared illegal by the United Nations.

That Tony Blair should wield absolute power for a few years at the beginning of the 21st century seems especially wrong, when we realise that only 37 % of the British electorate voted Labour into power in 2001.

All this will form the subject of other posts. For the moment, I merely want to stress that the rights and wrongs of going to war, or continuing a pointless war, are an integral part of our notion of national sovereignty.

We, the British people, the British taxpayers, have been dragooned against our will into supporting involuntarily, first an illegal invasion of Iraq with consequent deaths of British service personnel and many many more Iraqi civilians, not to mention a huge expenditure of cash, and then secondly – with the same deaths of British service personnel and innocent civilians, and further huge expenditures of cash – a war in Afghanistan which is declared unwinnable by a British officer commanding there, and for the continuance of which no minister has given adequate explanation.

Sovereignty is only granted to Parliament as our representatives. How many of us consider ourselves represented by Parliament? The only secure justification for sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan would be if the British citizen body as a whole had voted for such invasions by referendum.

So war points the way to constitutional reform.. A possible first step: hold a referendum of the British people on whether to bring the troops home from Afghanistan. If the British people voted for withdrawal from Afghanistan, they might also throw in a vote to free Joe Glenton from prison.

Afghan Civilian Casualties, Queen’s Regulations, & PTSD Complex

2010-04-21T02:01:00.000-07:00

On Friday March 5th, 2010, Lance Corporal Joe Glenton was sentenced to 9 months in a military prison for going absent without leave during the summer of 2007,as his unit was preparing to return to Afghanistan. He first went to Afghanistan in February 2006 with 4 Logistic Support Regiment

His defence lawyer, Nick Wrack said “He (Joe Glenton) thought he was going to help Afghanistan, to help the local people. The experience and the reality began to conflict with that.”

After going AWOL, Joe travelled in South East Asia and Australia, then flew back to Britain, handed himself in to the military authorities, but then campaigned against the Afghan war, delivering a letter to the Prime Minister, and addressing a rally in Trafalgar Square.

Is it right to send Joe Glenton to prison for 9 months? Well, Army discipline
insists on punishing him for going absent. What sort of verdict would a civilian court have reached?

During the 1950’s, popular feeling turned against the death penalty. There were instances of juries refusing to bring in a verdict of ‘Murder’, because they did not want to be responsible for sending someone to judicial death. Thus the law of innocence and guilt was brought into contempt because the punishment exceeded what most people regarded as right.

If Joe Glenton had been tried in a civilian court, and if I had been on the jury, I should have voted for his acquittal, even though it was apparent that he had gone absent without leave. In previous posts, I’ve argued that the Afghan war is unwinnable, Senior British officers agree. It is being waged for no clear reason. Certainly no member of the British Government has ever seriously explained why British soldiers are being sent there to be killed and wounded.

Joe Glenton, however, offers us a different perspective on the war. His defence lawyer said “He (Joe Glenton) thought he was going to help Afghanistan, to help the local people. The experience and the reality began to conflict with that.”

We are regularly told NATO forces are in Afghanistan to help the country.

It has been difficult to calculate the number of Afghan civilians killed. But, by every estimate, more have been killed by NATO forces than by the Taliban and Afghan warlords. One estimate reckons between four thousand and five and a half thousand killed by Afghans, but between five and a half thousand killed and eight and a half thousand killed by NATO.

There are also the indirect deaths, including a vast number of children who have died as a result of starvation; one Afghan estimate states that 120,000 Afghan civilians have been forced out of their homes.

How does killing Afghans help Afghanistan?

If neither the British or the American government can give a good reason for continuing the war, and if NATO forces have killed more innocent people than the Afghan forces, we should now judge the war as not only ill-conceived, not only unwinnable, but also immoral.

Joe Glenton went to Afghanistan hoping to help the Afghans. Our leaders affirm that to be the purpose of the war. Joe Glenton has given up 9 months of his life for protesting that if we cannot help the Afghans, we should bring the troops home.

You may not approve of War Resisters International. But if the war in Afghanistan continues, protest against it is bound to grow, and to become more violent.

How does killing Afghans help Afghanistan? Bring the troops home.

Nuclear Sub

2010-04-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

On March 23rd, 2010, the BBC News contained an item which stated that Britain’s defence budget would be £36 billion in deficit within the next ten years. To replace Trident will cost at least £20 billion.
At present, Britain has four Vanguard class nuclear submarines armed with 16 Trident nuclear missiles, each missile with 10 independently targetable warheads.

I have just seen Sound and Fury’s
production of Bryony Lavery’s play Kursk. The Kursk
was, according to Wikipedia, “a Russian Oscar II class submarine which sank in the Barents Sea. The generally accepted theory is that a leak of hydrogen peroxide in the forward torpedo room led to the detonation of a torpedo warhead, which in turn triggered the explosion of up to seven other warheads about two minutes later. Despite a rescue attempt by British and Norwegian teams, all 118 sailors and officers aboard Kursk died.”

Lavery’s play is set in a British nuclear submarine whose orders were to shadow the Kursk, and even to dive underneath it, so as to photograph it in detail. In the course of the play, the British Captain says the Kursk has more destructive power than the total destructive power let loose in the entire Second World War.

The creators of the play – the two directors worked with the writer – spent a long time on research, including time in a nuclear submarine and discussion with two submarine commanders. The navy passed the play as factually accurate.

One thing emerged from the play which, on a moment’s thought, is obvious. Nuclear submarines patrol the oceans, and nobody – nobody in the Ministry of Defence, nobody in the Cabinet – knows exactly where a particular submarine is.

The previous post suggested the British Prime Minister as Commander in Chief will be able to strut the world stage for a while longer as possessor of a fairly posh nuclear deterrent. As long as Vanguard submarines and Trident nuclear missiles can be maintained, there is still enough destructive power on board one submarine to devastate over a hundred cities and create nuclear winter.

Surely rather than spending £20 billion on replacing Trdient, the sensible thing to do is to use the remaining lifetime of the existing nuclear missile system to negotiate for a world where every nuclear missile is destroyed.

Nuclear subs cost a lot to maintain. A pun comes to the surface: if we can’t afford nuclear subs, will we be able to afford the Sub for our membership of the Nuclear Club?

Even posh bankrupts can’t afford war.

Nuclear arsenal? Bankrupt Britain

2010-04-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

On March 23rd, 2010, the BBC News contained an item which stated that Britain’s defence budget would be £36 billion in deficit within the next ten years.

To replace Trident will cost at least £20 billion.
British politicians are, at present, arguing whether Britain should to buy a new nuclear missile. A TV channel has been running repeats of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. In one episode there is a discussion between Jim Hacker (Paul Eddington) and Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne). Hacker is proposing to scrap Trident. Sir Humphrey dissuades him with the following appeal – (I quote from memory):
“Among the nuclear missiles it (Trident) is the Savile Row suit of nuclear missiles, the Rolls Royce, the Chateau Lafitte 45.”

In other words, possession of Trident makes Britain a posh nation able to lord it over the yob nations which do not possess it.

And now, we taxpayer-citizens are told, we must pay up for an even posher version. In The Guardian of Saturday March 20th, Simon Hoggart wrote of a wine-tasting he attended to drink some Chateau Pétrus, the most expensive claret, costing £2,792 a bottle.

So I suppose our 2010 Sir Humphrey will urge the buying of the Lamborghini, the Chateau Pétrus of nuclear missiles on an even more impoverished nation than we were in the 1980’s.

Trident will last for quite a few years longer. British Prime Ministers who wish to strut the world stage as leaders of a nuclear power will, we hope, be prevented by angry taxpayers from flaunting Chateau Pétrus nuclear missiles, but they still have some time to flaunt their aging Chateau Lafitte Tridents.

Bankrupts can’t afford War

Cost of the Afghanistan War

2010-04-17T05:39:00.000-07:00

On March 23rd, 2010, the BBC News contained an item which stated that Britain’s defence budget would be £36 billion in deficit within the next ten years.

In October 2008, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade handed over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines. Interviewed, he said it would be impossible to defeat the Taliban.

A victory over the Taliban, he continued, is “neither feasible nor supportable.”

In October 2008, the Rupee News stated:
“NATO forces in Afghanistan have been defeated. The British, the Germans, and the rest know it. The US, instead of admitting it, is broadening the theatre of operations. It is dangerously expanding the war into Pakistan.”

For a very long time it has been accepted without question that when the nation is at war, there must be no argument about cost; what the military requires must be provided.

That is an understandable assumption when the nation is being attacked and fighting for its existence. Britain was on the verge of bankruptcy at the end of the Second World War, but the policy of all-out war, not counting the cost, did save Britain from conquest by the Nazis.

But why should that assumption apply to wars where there is no risk of Britain being invaded?

Anyhow, such arguments are likely to sound more and more abstract, as the British people discover they have less and less money to spend on the lethal fireworks of modern combat.

Millions of people in the Middle East think the war waged by NATO in Afghanistan is thoroughly immoral. Some of us may think so too. But now we need not bother too much about whether the war is immoral. On the one hand, it is unwinnable; on the other, we cannot afford to continue with it.

Bring the troops home.

Withdrawal from Afghanistan

2010-04-16T04:16:00.000-07:00

The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable.

History shows that no foreign power has ever succeeded in conquering Afghanistan.

The Americans were defeated by the North Vietnamese. NATO is being defeated in Afghanistan.

The people of Britain ought to be offered the choice: should the British troops come home? The British Government, elected by 37% of those citizens who registered to vote, does not represent the British people. The Opposition echoes Government policy.

It is a stupid policy to waste soldiers’ lives and enormous amounts of money on this war.

It has been difficult to calculate the number of Afghan civilians killed. But, by every estimate, more have been killed by NATO forces than by the Taliban and Afghan warlords. One estimate reckons between four thousand and five and a half thousand killed by Afghans, but between five and a half thousand killed and eight and a half thousand killed by NATO.

There are also the indirect deaths, including a vast number of children who have died as a result of starvation; in addition, one Afghan estimate states that 120,000 Afghan civilians have been forced out of their homes. How many children will have died through malnutrition and hypothermia, once they have no roof over their heads, or a place to store food?

If neither the British or the United States government can give a good reason for continuing the war, and if NATO forces have killed more innocent people than the Afghan forces, we should now judge the war as not only ill-conceived, not only unwinnable, but also immoral.

The Americans were defeated by the North Vietnamese. The United States Government produced face-saving lies and pretended the defeat was a kind of moral victory. A kind of mental blanket was thrown over the affair, and no one talked very much about it for many years. Luckily for the United States, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and America has been able to preen itself as top nation until now, when, in debt for trillions to China, it is starting to acknowledge its top-nationhood is passing to China.

There is another way to philosophise about defeat in war. One soundbite reason given for the First World War is the desire of Britain, France, and Czarist Russia, to prevent German dominance in Europe. After the slaughter of millions in the two world wars, which was the dominant economic power in Europe? Germany. Germany, with its exceptional economic growth rate during the 1950’s quickly overtook ‘victorious’ Britain as the major economic power in Europe, while the British economy was largely destroyed by the expense of the Second World War. After nearly a century of vast slaughter, Germany is more clearly than ever the dominant European power.

What is the point of winning wars? What is the point of war?

See next post.

Participation Politics & Tony Benn

2010-04-15T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Guardian on March 17th, 2005, contained an article by Tony Benn titled Not apathy, but anger.

“My own experience,” he wrote “four years after leaving parliament to devote more time to politics, has convinced me that, far from being apathetic, most people are angry that no one seems to be listening to them; nor do they believe what they are told. Anger and mistrust are highly political responses and in no sense can they be described as apathy.”

Tony Benn is living up to what he promised. He tours the country incessantly, calling on British citizens disillusioned with government, politicians, Parliament, and the inadequacy of a system which describes itself as democracy, but is not democracy, to take to the streets in public protest.

One of the causes for which he campaigns tirelessly is the call to bring back British troops from Afghanistan. Anyone who bothers to read history will know that no foreign power has ever succeeded in occupying Afghanistan.

The Afghan war is unwinnable. NATO should admit defeat, and if NATO insists on continuing to fight, Britain should anyhow withdraw its troops.

The Afghan war is unwinnable.

Bring the troops home.

See next post

Mary Robinson on government role in saving Planet Earth.

2010-04-15T03:35:00.000-07:00

Mary Robinson was President of Ireland 1990 – 1997 , and then worked for the United Nations in New York, first as High Commissioner for Human Rights 1997 – 2002 until George W. Bush had her removed from that post because of her support for the Palestinians.

Now she has been asked by Nelson Mandela to become one of the Elders,
a group of 12 ‘wise people’ under the chairmanship of Desmond Tutu.

She was the subject of The Aida Edemariam Interview, in The Guardian of Saturday March 13th, 201, The article described her disgust with the failure of the Copenhagen Conference. Mrs Robinson regards governments as incapable of dealing with the crises which face humanity.

If not governments, who then? Mrs Robinson suggests:
”Civil society: “I mean churches, I mean business, I mean trades unions, I mean the normal environmental groups, development groups, youth groups – as never before we have to build up the pressure.”

From that article, and in general, it is difficult to see what practical projects Mrs Robinson envisages.

But leave that aside for a while. What is immediately noteworthy is that a politician of her stature has given it as her opinion that governments – and therefore, by implication, the whole political process – is irrelevant to the important issues facing this generation.

Many of us powerless individuals have been saying for some time that Prime Ministers and Presidents, Cabinets, Parliaments, and Congresses, are now more or less irrelevant.

Now, an ex-President, has said she agrees with us.

Party politics: Marine pollution

2010-04-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

On March 3rd, 2010, The New Statesman contained an article which stated that, according to the Electoral Commission, 56 % of 17 – 25 year-olds have not bothered to register for voting.
They will, however, sign Avaaz petitions.

Avaaz is an international grouping of people who have signed up to its petitions to bring peace to Gaza, http://www.avaaz.org/en/gaza_time_for_peace/
to save the oceans from over-fishing, the BBC from Murdoch, to protect endangered civilians in the Congo,
to protest against Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory,
Iranian internet black-out,
and, perhaps most frequently, to urge action on climate change.
We could summarise Avaaz’s relationship to the non-electorate as follows:

British General Election ignores global poison. Young people ignore British General Election.

On February 24th, 2010, the Telegraph on line contained a post by Ed Cumming, taking a stance as typical of eighteen-year-olds for whom 2010 offered the first General Election in which they were entitled to vote. He used the post to announce he will not be bothering to vote, because none of the parties are interested in the issues which concern him.

“The thought of Brown staying in charge makes most of us want to oblige the fate prophesised (sic) for us and jump into the nearest wheelie bin to die from drugs.
…
“Yet David Cameron, slick with PR oil, is almost as unelectable. The polls appear to be noticing this, finally, but we’ve been saying it for years.”

Incompetent Brown, untrustworthy Cameron.

Bad luck, handsome David Cameron, they sussed you had air-brushed your poster
Poor Gordon Brown Charles Clarke - a man who seems to hate with passion anyone who isn’t Charles Clarke – is rounding on Gordon Brown again.

On March 3rd, I received an email from Avaaz, asking me for my signature on a petition to the British government to create a marine protection area round the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean.
The email states “The reports are dire: in 38 years our oceans could be completely fished out; in 100 years, all coral reefs might be dead.”

In the few minutes I took to write these paragraphs, between 30 and 40 signatures were added to the Avaaz petition.

Need we say more?

Yes, because it is not only young people who condemn the petty squabblings of our pathetic politicians. It is all of us.

There is a real possibility that we human beings will render the earth uninhabitable before those who are eighteen this year reach their life expectancy term.

Somehow we need to sideline these Brownlets and Cameronlets, and bring in democracy. Then the young people, and the old people, and the middle-aged people, will take part in a new politics, and possibly even save the world.

Shall we vote? Or save the oceans?

Reform Parliament: Corruption Education

2010-04-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

The political process provides outstanding object lessons for youth in what can best be described as corruption education.

So let’s congratulate David Chaytor, Eliot Morley, and Jim Devine. Although all three of them are well blessed with handsome salaries, and therefore should not be eligible for legal aid when accused of fiddling expenses, this noble trio has managed to manipulate the system so that when they come to trial, their luxurious legal fees will be paid by us, the British citizen body. If the case goes to Appeal, it may apparently cost us £1 million pounds.

The first lesson in corruption education gained from observing this piece of relatively petty chicanery is the obvious one. In politics, it pays to be a bit dishonest. Think back over history, most ‘great’ leaders have been rogues and cheats for much of their time in power.

But the important lesson is a subtler one. Reform Parliament is the shout. Too many MPs have cheated on expenses making us, the taxpayers fund their duck houses and second home furnishings, and so on. So – reform Parliament. Everyone says their piece, and a few MPs are sacked. Then there’s a General Election; new MPs arrive in the House of Commons, and most of the silly things done in Parliament for the last few hundred years will continue to be done by the next Parliament.

The real lesson of this sorry episode is that the forthcoming election will be argued on trivialities. Of course Britain’s enormous debt is not triviality. But the politicians of all parties have made it very clear to us that they have no idea whatsoever as to how to diminish the debt. So if we are thinking about how to reduce Britain’s deficit we might as well vote by spinning a coin as by listening to Messrs Darling and Osborne
There are questions, serious, important, questions, which the forthcoming election
should decide:
1. Should we withdraw from Afghanistan?
2. Should we now decide not to replace Trident nuclear missile system?
3. How can we most quickly and efficiently produce electricity for all the nation’s needs without using fossil fuels?
4. How can we turn Britain into a democracy, ie stop Britain being ruled by a political party elected by a small proportion of the nation’s citizens?

Reform Parliament? We may have to scrap it and start again from scratch.

Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage

2010-02-03T01:43:00.000-08:00

Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage

Posted as a comment to Daniel Finkelstein@s piece in The Times of 3.2.10 daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

The news today (press and radio), mentions the review of defence spending. We hear and phrases like “Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage”, “Britain being an Important Player.” I see ten year old boys (nine, eight, year old?), myself included, strutting their stuff. “I’m the leader, ’cause I can beat you up.”

Britain and France still spend much more of their GPD on Defence than other European countries. (Did I say “Defence”? Surely “Attack” is the correct term.) This is because British and French politicians delude themselves that national greatness depends on having plenty of guns and bombs with which to beat other nations up.

I hope – I think – that by the age of fourteen or so, I no longer believed being able to beat up other boys was most important thing to achieve.

Haven’t British politicians learnt yet that Britain’s greatness has nothing to do with shooting and bombing foreigners?

What British people will be remembered by the historians? William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin. Poets and scientists. Not generals and politicians.

The plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes are still being performed two and a half thousand years after their deaths. How many members of the public attending one of those performances would be able to say who Pericles was. The ‘great leader’ of Athens at her greatest did not even merit a biography for nearly five hundred years.

“Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage.” Maybe British leaders should take that phrase literally rather than metaphorically, and increase expenditure on arts and sciences, rather than on exploding bombs.

Has Gordon Brown become a democrat?

2010-02-02T02:48:00.000-08:00

Has Gordon Brown become a democrat? I doubt it. But let’s cheer his first hesitant toddler-stumbles towards democracy.

Britain, called a democracy by its political leaders, is usually governed by a political party for whom not much more than a quarter of the British people have voted.

Surely every British citizen — apart from Members of Parliament and the various entourages — must consider our method of selecting our rulers to be ludicrous. Our system in effect forces the British people to choose their government from one of two parties. We might as well save the expense of elections, and toss a coin to decide which party will form the government, while each constituency organises a drawing of straws for the local MP. That would be no less democratic than our current system, save a lot of money, and save a lot of politicians from having to tell lies.

Now Gordon Brown has suggested Parliament should consider another system of voting. We automatically assume this is because he thinks it might benefit Labour. It is not Proportional Representation, and we can safely assure ourselves that a very small number of the British people will know how the suggested system, referred to as the Alternative Vote System,www.electoral-reform.org.uk/votingsystems/systems.htm will actually work. www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson, Nick Robinson in his blog of 2.2.10, offers an explanation.

The only significant thing is this. Mr Brown has proposed this method of voting should be discussed by Parliament, and if Parliament passes the Bill, it should be referred to the citizens of Britain in a referendum. No doubt, if it ever gets that far, the width of choice offered the citizens of Britain will be minimal.

But whatever the wording of whatever referendum may finally be offered to the British people — if indeed it ever is offered, however limited, even unreal, the choice presented to us, this could be the breach in the walls of elected tyranny, this could be the tentative beginnings of turning Britain into a democracy.

The possibility of a referendum. The possibility of the British people being asked how they want to be governed. Such a referendum would be a baby’s first struggle to walk upright compared to the march past of the rigidly erect political parties.

If this proposal ever gets to a referendum, the wall of oligarchy has been chipped, the gate of democracy is ajar.

Behold the head of a traitor!

2010-01-29T02:51:00.000-08:00

A cold January day. The deposed King Blair, stripped of his royal robes, wearing only simple breeches and a white shirt with the collar open, is marched by a squad of soldiers bearing pikes and muskets, to the scaffold on Tower Hill. The executioner, dressed all in black, his face masked except for the eye slits, waits motionless, the enormous axe at his side. Blair kneels at the block. The traditional drum roll. The axe descends.
“Behold the head of a traitor.”

The camera’s time code flickers between January 1642 and January 2010.

Let it flicker a bit more. A more appropriate execution scene. It is 1789. Le Roi Tony, condemned by the people of Paris, is being driven by tumbril to execution, while Queen Cheri Antoinette nibbles at cake sandwiches helplessly. The tumbril approaches. Suddenly, the crowd is pushed aside; an unutterably hideous washerwoman, using her stinking laundry baskets like clubs, shoves her way to the guillotine. As Le Roi mounts the platform, the washerwoman draws a rapier, and disposes of the entire guard with a few fancy thrusts and ripostes. For, of course, once we see a hideous washerwoman anywhere near Madame Guillotine, we know it is that master of disguise and accent, Sir Percy Blakeney Bush, turning his aristocratic drawl into perfect Parisian gutter argot. Robespierre raises his impotent hands in horror, as Sir Percy Bush whips up the horses, and the tumbrel, with the King on board, gallops unscathed through the entire French Republican army, and another Carry On film shoot hears the call “Wrap.”

Today will be a farce. We all know Blair knew the invasion of Iraq was illegal. But Blair has escaped the scaffold, and will live out his life of shame, struggling in penury, forced to depend on pathetic hand-outs of $20,000 dollars a minute on the American lecture circuit.

Blair acted like an absolute monarch. Cromwell and co attempted to abolish absolute monarchy for ever. Absolutism popped up again, once the British Prime Minister established his right to act like a monarch and declare war.

In 2003 Parliament was incapable of checking Blair. Parliament is no longer a suitable defence of our rights as citizens to say whether our fellow citizens should die in foreign field.
Let the lesson of Britain’s illegal invasion of, and ultimate disgraced retreat from, the ravaged country of Iraq be written into our non-existent constitution. The right to declare war must be exercised by referendum of the entire citizen body. No other person or organisation should be allowed to usurp that right of ours.

Democracy and Derek Simpson

2010-01-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

I confess to special interest. I was booked on a British Airways flight during the week after Christmas, was, naturally, furious when the BA cabin crews were poised to strike, and, personally, was very relieved when the judge declared the strike illegal.

We recall Unite’s leader Derek Simpson, when he was a Liverpool Councillor, and attempting, in Thatcher-dominated Britain, to turn Liverpool into a Marxist mini-state with himself as Commissar. His was a dictatorial, not a democratic, approach to politics. He would have – quite rightly – said he was struggling against the equally dictatorial politics of Mrs Thatcher. I dislike any dictatorial approach, whether of the so-called ‘Right’ or the so-called ‘Left’, and tend to support compromisers, muddlers in the middle ground. But however dictatorially the Marxist Left behaved then, I passionately defended their right to represent their supporters. Throughout Mrs Thatcher’s virtual dictatorship, it was obvious we lacked a Socialist party (led by Tony Benn?) as an extra regular opposition party to represent the many people who felt the limping Labour party inadequate.

But democracy? Hmph? And, above all, democracy in the proposed BA strike? Double hmph. Derek Simpson defended the planned strike of BA cabin crew with reference to ‘democracy.’ But democracy means power to the people; it does not mean power to members of a particular union. Who were ‘the people’ affected by the planned strike. Surely ‘the people’ includes everyone involved – not only cabin crew members of Unite, but pilots, engineers, ground crew .. and passengers. Apparently a million passengers had booked flights which would have been cancelled. Surely if ‘democracy’ is invoked, then they too should have been entitled to vote.

Once Derek Simpson used the word ‘democracy’ to justify depriving a million people of planned holidays, visits to possibly sick relatives, adventures of one sort or another possibly connected to their own jobs and careers, then he exposed his members to scrutiny. First, it was noted that BA cabin crew expect to have an average annual income of £34,000, while Virgin cabin crew expect an average annual income of £24,000. (As I heard these figures, they were not precise, and I do not guarantee they are exact. But most accounts offered a difference of about £10,000.)
Furthermore, once it became clear that the BA cabin crew members were striking to increase an annual income of about £34,000, we could argue that many of the passengers whose flights were to be prevented were teachers, taking advantage of the Christmas holiday to get away from a stressful job. And the average income for a teacher without extra responsibilities is roughly £30,000, considerably less than the income of cabin crew. Cabin crew members may say they have responsibility if an accident occurs. But given modern technology such an accident is very rare. Teachers are responsible for the care of young people every day of their working life. Teachers may face a strong sixteen-year old pulling a knife, a child having an epileptic fit, an accident on a climbing or boating trip, etc. Teachers, social workers, nurses – suppose them passengers on a flight banned by Mr Simpson.

Of course Mr Simpson is entitled to wage his power struggles like anyone else. But let him be careful of seducing our support by the use of a term which means something different to us and to him.

Democracy is a beautiful word. Do not let us tolerate its misuse.

Balls Up

2009-12-15T08:53:00.001-08:00

Poor Ed Balls. He should have stuck to being a financial adviser. As someone responsible for the nation’s youth, he is an obvious disaster.

His Oscar-winning piece of stupidity was the recent legislation to make half the population undergo a test to prove they were not paedophiles. Such a test would be imposed on anyone who, as I do, performs shows to children in schools. Quite how a poet performing a show to an audience of 400 children in a school hall is likely to have an opportunity of practising paedophilia was not gone into. I’m surprised this demonstration of above normal subnormality by one of our cretinous politicians did not inspire a Ken Russell movie, an over-the-top demonstration of in flagrante perversion, perhaps with a Busby Berkeley dancing chorus .

Of course we poets and writers protested. We did not have much hope our protest would succeed. We accepted that we would lumbered with a further piece of incompetent bureaucracy.

But we are professionals: coping with CRB’s and ISA’s would be just one more irritation. What was obvious to everyone except poor old Balls Up, was that his ridiculous piece of legislation was telling the volunteers of Britain “No. Do not on any account volunteer to run a boys’ choir, be a scoutmaster, coach friendly football, take your mate’s kids for a walk, give a lift to an injured boy or girl stranded at the side of a mountain road.” In other words, do not perform any act of kindness whatsoever to a young person: if you do, some busybody will report you to the police, and your career and personal life may be irreparably damaged.

Our distorted sick culture is damaging the national psyche. Ten years ago, if, walking along a road or a station platform, I overtook a woman carrying a suitcase, I would always offer to carry the suitcase for as long as the two of us were going in the same direction. Now I mostly hesitate, in case I am accused of rape.

Yes, a sick culture. But this Balls Up offers us a glimmer of hope. People protested a lot at Balls’ balls up. And – Wowee! Wowee! – Balls has back-tracked, and his stupid legislation has been emasculated.

So it does make a difference. We, as citizens, have to take note that 95% of the decisions taken by politicians are wrong. We have to tell the politicians what we think of their stupidity, and tell them repeatedly. It’s hard work, but it may be worth it if we manage to change our political system a little for the better.

War is EXPENSIVE.

2009-12-02T01:39:00.000-08:00

We have now heard President Obama is sending 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and HOPES to be able to withdraw in 2011. We have also heard this will cost a further 30 billion dollars on top of the already vast US Defence budget.

What could we not do with 30 billion dollars to provide defences against terrorism in the United States and Britain?

Our first defence against terrorism is an obvious one: find ways of not needing so much oil, and therefore not needing to fight wars in the Middle East to obtain oil.

How many people have heard of Malcolm McCullough? Not many, I guess.

Malcolm McCullough has built a sports car. At the 2008 Geneva Motor Show it achieved acceleration 0 – 60 mph in 7 seconds, and had a range of 250 miles, with fuel consumption equivalent to 150 miles per gallon. Yes, of course, it runs on hydrogen. Each of its four wheels has an electric motor. Electric cars have come a long way from the milk floats we all remember. Malcolm McCullough accepted the challenge of building an electric car which would compete seriously with the best petrol-driven cars.

The 2008 Motor Show. 2008. Eighteen months ago. Why have I only heard of this eighteen months afterwards - in a specialised journal?

”A team of five final year students from Kingston University,have designed and developed an electric motorcycle to compete in the Isle of Man TTXGP Grand Prix, the first ever zero emissions Grand Prix.The Isle of Man is probably the most famous
road race for motorcycles in the world and the race is open to teams from
across the globe. The Kingston students developed several innovative design
solutions to give them the edge against the more established and well funded
factory teams.” This notice came to me today in the bulletin of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute.

Malcolm McCullough and the Kingston students are not alone. There are a fair number of engineers working with considerable success on building cars and motor bikes which will use electric engines, fuelled by hydrogen. The only waste product from Malcolm McCullough’s car is water. It emits no carbon dioxide; it makes no contribution to global warming.

It showed its paces at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show. Why in the name of all we cherish about our precious, fragile, planet, was Malcolm McCullough’s name not trumpeted across the media. Why in the name of sanity, is there not one sane woman or man in the gaggle of mental retards who inhabit the Houses of Parliament and the American Congress to propose funding the rapid building of cars and motor bikes along these lines?

What could not be done with even a small proportion of that 30 billion dollars which is going to be spent on blowing up Afghans?

Yesterday, I posted a blog praising Eddie Stobart for sending as much as possible of his freight by rail not road.

Suppose we could divert some of that 30 billion dollars from blowing up Afghans, and spend it on building a railway system, even if not good enough for a first world country, at least for the third world country which, thanks to our politicians, Britain is rapidly becoming?

War is expensive, in lives, in maimed personalities, in cash. Peace is also expensive, but it’s a more exciting adventure.

Vote for Peace - and that means spending cash on peace.

In praise of Edddie Stobart

2009-12-01T02:03:00.000-08:00

The news this morning, December 1st 2009, mentioned Denby Transport launching a truck 80 feet long on British roads. Let us celebrate this apocolocyntosis of transport policy. Denby, admittedly, are trying to maintain that an 80 foot truck will cause less carbon dioxide pollution than two trucks 40 feet long. Perhaps. But that is not the point.

In case readers are unfamiliar with the word apocolocyntosis, it refers to a satire on one of the Roman emperors. Instead of undergoing apotheosis and becoming a god, he undergoes apocolocyntosis and becomes a pumpkin. I guess many of us would reckon pumpkins would be better at planning Transport for Britain than the present officials in charge.

The trucks which are now ploughing up British roads, even the motorways, should not have been brought into existence. The goods which they carry should travel on railways.

But Britain, possesses a railway system appropriate, not to a third world country, not to a fourth world country, but to a fifth world country, a country governed by certifiable freaks, blind, deaf, and insane. No, one might excuse such people. But our politicians, acting like certifiable freaks, blind, deaf, and insane, claim to be in possession of their wits.

If Britain had a reasonably effective railway system, one which could carry freight, Britain’ s contribution to carbon dioxide emissions and global warming would be hugely reduced.

There is an extremely silly commercial on the television at the moment, which challenges us all to “drive five miles less every week.” Extremely silly, because it’s like New Year resolutions. Sure, we can all say “Yes, I’ll drive five miles less this week”, and possibly we will drive five miles less. Possibly we’ll even do so for the next week. And then the various pressures on us to use our cars will return, and we shall go back to our usual mileage. How else can someone in the country, with no available public transport, get to work?

Eddie Stobart runs a trucking business. I’ve never met Eddie Stobart. But he endears himself to road users by his custom of dedicating each of his trucks to a girl, and putting her as an emblem on the truck front. The problem is that motorists passing a Stobart truck may crane their necks dangerously trying to see whether the Eddie girl is a Dawn or a Cheryl.

A while ago, we noticed far fewer Eddie Stobart trucks on the road. Why? Eddie announced he was sending his stuff by rail. This even applied to freight from the continent. Well done, Eddie. It seemed as if this would be feasible.

Admittedly, we now do see Eddie Stobart trucks on the road again. But Eddie’s website proudly proclaims the frequency of his freight train services, and the amount of goods he does ship by train.

Trying to drive a few miles less each week is a worthy aim. But it is a gesture only. What we need to do is to persuade other haulage firms to behave like Eddie Stobart and force the railways to accept their freight. If all the haulage firms in Britain were like Eddie Stobart …

If all the haulage firms in Britain bombarded the railways with requests …

Well, perhaps then in thirty years' time, when the sea level has risen by the height of a tallish man, and floods like the recent ones in Cockermouth are regular occurrences, perhaps then something might be done ...

We need to remember that our politicians are not sane sensible people with whom we can discuss issues. They are like squabbling children in a playground, and we, the people of Britain, must behave like old-fashioned disciplinarian teachers, and shout at them to stop messing about and get back to work.

Return to Vietnam

2009-12-01T01:54:00.000-08:00

Return to Vietnam
President Obama is sending 30,000 (or more) additional soldiers to fight his unwinnable war in Afghanistan. The BBC Today Programme this morning, December 1st 2009, broadcast an extract from a 1965 speech by President Lyndon Johnson as he prepared to send 40 battalions or so to Vietnam. Johnson had recently won a convincing presidential election and was at the height of his popularity. History now excoriates Johnson for the mess of Vietnam, and the accompanying demoralisation of the United States. President Obama has recently won a convincing presidential election and is still nearly at the height of his popularity.
The Johnson speech, quoted on the Today Programme, is horribly similar to what Obama is now saying.
What can we can do, but beg President Obama not to destroy his reputation as Lyndon Johnson destroyed his.

Is there a cellar in the House of Commons?

2009-11-02T11:34:00.000-08:00

Is there a cellar in the House of Commons? If so, does it have a huge lock and key? If so, why can we not lock all the politicians inside, and sound-proof the building so we cannot hear them mouthing their platitudes?

Would any normal person behave with the stupidity of a politician?

Alan Johnson,www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/.../alan-johnson our mentally retarded Home Secretary, has sacked Professor David Nutt, his Chief Drug Adviser,www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/.../alan-johnson because Professor Nutt www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/.../drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked reproved the Home Secretary for “devaluing and distorting” scientific evidence on cannabis in order to justify reclassifying cannabis as Class B, not a Class C, drug – in other words to make out cannabis was more dangerous than the science indicates, for political purposes.

Why do we tolerate scientific illiteracy in our so-called leaders?

Surely, by now we should all be realising that what we need is more science, good science, careful science, and what we need to do is to learn about science so that we can enter the debates with knowledge and concern. Because we can be very sure it won;t be politicians who get us out of the mess we're in. Our only hope is the scientists.

More science: less politics.

Let’s all call for Alan Johnson to retire from politics, and return to working for Royal Mail, where he may well have done a good job.

Politicians, stop messing things up.

No to Tory; No to Labour; No, no, no, to political parties.

2009-11-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

Would you race horses shut in cages? Would you play football with your ankles chained together? Would you watch movies blindfold?

Political parties order their members to stop thinking, and follow instructions from the party leadership, while the party leadership only thinks about how to be elected, or re-elected.

What are the serious things wrong with Britain (and the rest of the industrial world)? We are fighting wars we cannot win with no clear idea of why we are doing so. We have a transport policy which could only have been dreamt up by the gibbering insane, and which is going soon to overheat Planet Earth so that the only habitation fit for a human being will be at the North and South Pole. We are locked into a criminally insane financial system. We are encouraged by our purbling so-called leaders into ignoring the scientists and engineers who are the only people who can possibly get us out of this shit. Etc, etc, etc.

And the politicians cannot start to think about what we ought to do, because they have one concern and one concern only – to be re-elected.

I’ve been reading comments on Facebook by people who refuse to vote for Tories or Labour. Are we moving towards a General Election with a turn-out of 0%?

No to Tory; No to Labour; No, no, no, to political parties.

Stop Starvation .... with Books! And defuse Nick Griffin as well.

2009-10-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

One reason to call for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan is that the war is costing the British taxpayer too much money. How much did the invasion of Iraq cost us? We are not told. Once war is declared the money needed to fight the war is ring-fenced. Generals, quite rightly, ask for the soldiers and equipment they need to “do the job.” We, the taxpayers, are never allowed to decide whether we want to blow all that money away in explosions, never allowed to say we would rather spend our money on something else.

Politicians are, by definition, ring-fenced. Our system means we have a Minister of Defence, whose remit is to extract as much money as possible from the Treasury to spend on soldiers, armaments, etc. Similarly with all the other ministers. We, as normal human beings, know we have a certain amount of cash, some of which we have to spend on food, heating, mortgage, etc, and some which we spend on various activities. If one activity costs too much, we give it up.

We might well find ourselves in the position of wanting, but not being able to afford, a New Year holiday in Barbados. But instead, we might go for a springtime cycling holiday in Cornwall. Government spending is allocated in such a way that once the decision is taken to go to Barbados, there is no procedure for changing to a Cornish cycling trip.

If the British government cut its large expenditure on war and armaments, there would be plenty of money left for cycling trip expenditure which might actually achieve more than war.

It is. however, necessary to use the cliché, and think ‘out of the box.’ Last night on BBC Question Time www.bbc.co.uk/questiontime/,Nick Griffin www.bnp.org.uk was one of the guests. Hedged around with shifts of language, we nevertheless gather that the British National Party wishes to drive non-white people out of Britain.

We all know that Europe is being infiltrated in vast numbers by immigrants from Asia and Africa; why? Because their own countries offer them little hope of improving their lives.

Do we approve of immigration? And if so, how much? Well, we can, and should, discuss that. But surely everyone must approve of abolishing poverty in Third World countries.

One reason why life in Third World countries is getting worse and worse rapidly is because the population is rising. Now it is no use us telling an African family to have fewer children. With no welfare, no pensions, etc, the African couple will have six, seven, eight, children in order that some of the children will survive to look after their parents in old age.

But there is a simple solution, tried and tested.

Simple does not mean easy.

In the 1980’s the United Nations predicted world population would rise to 12 billion, which is far more than Planet Earth can support. But, mercifully, this prediction has now been revised, and the forecast is now a bit under 9 billion round 2040 (which is still far more than Planet Earth can support).

But why the revision of 3 billion less?

In 1989, the state of Kerala, in south India, was one of the poorest parts of the world. The average daily earning was 89 cents. A Brazilian educator Paulo Freire www.ptoweb.org/freire.html sexyracy.blogspot.com taught that education should be about the basic problems of living. Kerala started a state-wide campaign to teach people to read, with reading material which discussed hunger, poverty, safe drinking water, etc. Singers travelled the state encouraging participation. A slogan was shouted “Kerala reading, Kerala beautiful”. There were reading classes in the fields, on the shore, in cowsheds.

By 2000, Kerala literacy was nearly equivalent to that in the First World.

And, and, and … the women were literate, and the birthrate has declined to 18 births per thousand per year, while in much of Africa it is over 60 per thousand.

In the 1980’s, in many of the poorest countries, only about 3 % of women could read. Where women have learnt to read, the birthrate drops.

It costs much less to teach people to read, than it does to drop bombs on them.

The solution is simple; not easy; in a way very complicated; but simple: we need to set the cost of the Afghan war against the cost of sending books and teachers to poor countries; we need to take into account the fact that if we do spend the money on books not bombs, we may start to stop the reason for the British National Party’s existence.

That is a simple solution.

Stop starvation … with books.

I I obtained some of these figures from The Meaning of the 21st Century, www.21school.oz.ac.uk/ by James Martin,www.campaign.ox.ac.uk/

Leave Afghanistan Alone; Prepare for the Real War

2009-10-21T03:10:00.000-07:00

It is surely obvious to more or less every thinking person in the world – except of course to politicians who are blinkered into short-sightedness by the need for re-election in four years’ time – that humanity is hurrying towards a crisis which will make even the horrendous deaths of First World War, Second World War, gulags, concentration camps, not to mention AIDS etc, look relatively trivial.

If Planet Earth continues to warm as it is doing now, vast areas of grain-producing temperate lands (such as the Great Plains of North America) will turn to dust, tropical countries will become completely uninhabitable, etc. It is now reckoned that of the fish which there used to be in the oceans only ten per cent are left. Etc. Etc. Incidentally the likely prediction is that if the Arctic ice melts much more, the Gulf Stream will turn from a warm current to a cold current and Britain and northern Europe will be submerged under 2 miles of pack ice.

There will be death not on a scale of millions, but of billions. Billions.

Scientists have discovered all sorts of ways of slowing down, even preventing, Global Warming. But politicians are, by definition, incapable of paying attention to scientists. First, most politicians are ignorant of science, and not interested enough to read about it. For heaven’ s sake, I’m not a scientist; I’m a poet. But I try and take an interest in what the scientists are doing, because they are changing our world – very rapidly.

Secondly, the solutions which might help Planet Earth – along with all of us human beings, not to mention the animals, birds, insects, fish, and so on – are not going to be working within the four years which is all that politicians think about.

So we, the ordinary citizens of the world, must hammer this message at our so-called leaders: Concentrate on what is really important. Stop wasting money (and sending people to their death) in Afghanistan. Spend a bit more of our money on what is really worth while.

More to come in future blogs.

The Emperor's New Clothes in Helmand

2009-10-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

John Hutton, www.johnhuttonmp.co.uk/ epolitix.com apinfo.co.uk who, in June 2009, resigned as Minister of Defence, was interviewed as a Defence spokeman on Channel Four News www.channel4.com/news/last night (October 14th). He uttered the standard government pronouncement on the need to send more British troops to Afghanistan, ‘to finish the job there.’ In answer to one of Jon Snow’s interjections, www.channel4.com/news/authors.jsp, Hutton asseverated this was ‘not a political matter” because it was “a matter of UK national security.”

But why?
Why is making war on Afghanistan “a matter of UK national security”?

Has Afghanistan got nuclear weapons, and rockets capable of delivering a nuclear warhead on London?

Has Afghanistan got a fleet of air craft carriers equipped with the latest aircraft such as the F/A-22 Raptor, the LCA, the EuroFighter 2000 Typhoon, the SU-47 (SU-37 Berkut). The SU-37Terminator, the MG/MAPO 1.42 MFI, the Aurora, the X-35 Joint Strike Fighter (F-35 Lightning II), the Chenghu J-10, the JF-17 Thunder (Chengu FRC-1), the V-22 Osprey?

How many regiments of Paratroopers does Afghanistan have? How many commandos of Marines?

How detailed is plan for the invasion of Britain which our intelligence forces have managed to steal from Taliban HQ?

Is there a fleet of Afghan submarines already patrolling the Atlantic western approaches ready to torpedo every oil tanker and merchant ship bringing fuel and food to embattled Britain?

How easily will the Afghan tanks be able to cross Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France, not to mention the English Channel?

Have the Afghans worked out a plan to seize the Channel Tunnel, and roll their tanks along the railway line?

No one in government has ever properly explained why defending “UK national security” entails attacking Afghanistan. We are, indeed told that terrorists are trained in Afghanistan. But they are also being trained in north-west Pakistan? Why are British troops not attacking Pakistan then?

I have not covered up the fact that this blog is written by a poet, and that the first person to become a follower of this blog is a song-writer. No one in authority takes any notice of poets. But possibly our craft is one of the best for training an ordinary adult to look at the world like a child. Let us remember Hans Andersen with his story of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The NATO governments display their shows of force in Afghanistan, as the Emperor, strutting starkers, displayed his astonishing new costume. Let us be the little boy who sees the nakedness.

The only difference is that the little boy is laughing at the Emperor’s sagging belly and spotty bottom. We must weep as the corpses of our soldiers, killed as a result of bad decisions by our rulers, are brought home.

Let’s bring them home alive. Tony Benn says so, and this time certainly Tony Benn is right.

Leo Aylen

War wrong? War stupid.

2009-10-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

I guess the majority of British people now think it was wrong for Mr Blair to follow Mr Bush and order the invasion of Iraq. Wrong. Wrong. An illegal war. Invading Iraq meant disregarding the principles of the United Nations. Blair’s decision now seems not only wrong morally, but also very stupid.

The real motive for invading Iraq must have been to get hold of as much Iraqi oil as possible. Has this been successful? We are kept in the dark.

What is the morality of sending British soldiers to fight in Afghanistan? Well, we could argue that for a long time. But, in a way, we don’t need to argue the morality, because we can simply say that the Afghan war is a very stupid mistake.

Read history. No foreign power has ever conquered Afghanistan. However we judge the morality of invading Afghanistan, there is only one sensible course of action left now: admit defeat, withdraw as soon as possible, and save the lives of British soldiers.

The Afghanistan Mistake

2009-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

In ‘Evenings with Tony Benn’ the Afghanistan war always comes up. How does Tony Benn react to the war there? He is highly intelligent and well-read; he knows history. His principle argument is incontrovertible.
NO ONE HAS EVER CONQUERED AFGHANISTAN.

The British tried three times in the nineteenth and early twentieth century: there were three Anglo-Afghan wars: in 1839 – 1842; in 1878 – 1881; and in 1919. The Soviet Union tried: their Afghan war lasted from 1979 – 1989, and ended in defeat and undignified withdrawl. In 2001 NATO forces invaded Afghanistan, and are fighting there still. NO FOREIGN POWER HAS EVER SUCCEEDED IN SUBDUING THE AFGHANS FOR LONG. Has there ever been any point in invading this wild mountainous country?

What arguments are there for continuing the Afghan war? Government spokesmen say Afghanistan is a training-ground for terrorists. But north-west Pakistan is an equally important training-ground. British ministers are obviously embarrassed by this fact, since Pakistan is officially an ally of the West. The Afghanistan war is justified as an attempt to control the production of opium, since most of the heroin sold on the streets of Europe and America is derived from Afghan opium. But nothing will stop the production of opium, as long as Afghan farmers earn vastly more for opium than for any other crop. So what use is the war?

I have the greatest respect for the soldiers fighting there. Of course it is dangerous, and uncomfortable. Nothing alters my respect for their bravery, fitness, and determination. But however brave they are, it does not alter the fact that they are fighting an unwinnable war in a country which is best left alone.

Every day ordinary lads in uniform perform acts of great bravery. The British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are highly trained professionals. Their wives and girl-friends, their parents and grandparents, accept their wounds and their deaths. But suppose the British Government had ordered conscription. When the United States fought and lost the war in Vietnam, their army of conscripts had no reason to behave with the restraint and discipline of professional soldiers. The Vietnam war damaged America hugely. Just imagine British conscripts fighting in Afghanistan, as the National Service boys fought in all those miserable so-called little wars of the 1940’s and 50’s. 21st century British conscripts in Afghanistan? They’d mutiny. But just because they are professionals it is still wrong to ask our soldiers to risk their lives in an unwinnable war. It is still wrong even though they remain silent and do not complain as conscripts surely would.

Admit defeat, and bring the troops home. How could any sane person not agree with Tony Benn?

The Anger of the Apathetic

2009-10-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

As I said in my previous blog, The Guardian on March 17th, 2005, contained an article by Tony Benn www.tonybenn.com.archive.html titled Not apathy, but anger.

“My own experience,” he wrote “four years after leaving parliament to devote more time to politics, has convinced me that, far from being apathetic, most people are angry that no one seems to be listening to them.”
I think this is a serious challenge to the citizens of Britain. How can we best follow the implications of Tony Benn’s Guardian article? There are two ways in which to push the debate forward. The first is to consider how and where we, the citizens of Britain, can influence government, and take more part in government. This of course needs a huge amount of discussion, and will be developed later, Alternatively, we jump immediately into current political debates about urgent political problems. The two most obvious and most urgent are the war in Afghanistan and the ‘drugs problem.’ In his ‘Evenings with Tony Benn’ Tony speaks eloquently on these two topics. There is no doubt where he stands on both these questions. For myself, I cannot see how any sensible person could disagree. Watch this space.

Tony Benn: "Not Apathy,but Anger"

2009-10-01T02:18:00.000-07:00

As I said in my previous blog, The Guardian on March 17th, 2005, contained an article by Tony Benn www.tonybenn.com.archive.html titled Not apathy, but anger.

“My own experience,” he wrote “four years after leaving parliament to devote more time to politics, has convinced me that, far from being apathetic, most people are angry that no one seems to be listening to them.”
I think this is a serious challenge to the citizens of Britain. How can we best follow the implications of Tony Benn’s Guardian article? There are two ways in which to push the debate forward. The first is to consider how and where we, the citizens of Britain, can influence government, and take more part in government. This of course needs a huge amount of discussion, and will be developed later, Alternatively, we jump immediately into current political debates about urgent political problems. The two most obvious and most urgent are the war in Afghanistan and the ‘drugs problem.’ In his ‘Evenings with Tony Benn’ Tony speaks eloquently on these two topics. There is no doubt where he stands on both these questions. For myself, I cannot see how any sensible person could disagree. Watch this space.

Guy Fawkes and Tony Benn

2009-09-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

Not apathy, but anger, an article by Tony Benn www.tonybenn.com.archive.html news.bbc.co.uk in The Guardian of March 17th, 2005, contained this paragraph:

“My own experience,” he wrote “four years after leaving parliament to devote more time to politics, has convinced me that, far from being apathetic, most people are angry that no one seems to be listening to them.”

My aim in writing The Guy Fawkes Option was to follow up on what Tony Benn wrote when he announced he was leaving Parliament to devote more time to politics. Tony himself tours Britain tirelessly; his message: politicians must not ignore the citizens of this country.

There is the reverse to this coin. The citizens of this country should start a continuous debate on how we can take more control of the way our nation is governed. I’ve called this project — an ongoing debate of citizens — The Guy Fawkes Option.