Labour - What is the Point? Part 2

Just when I began to think that irony was dead I took a look at the Labour Party's constitution.The first thing that jumped up to meet me was the description of the Party as a 'democratic socialist party,' and the next was the statement 'The work of the party shall be under the direction and control of party conference.'

 

I find such things tragic, because my first instinct is hilarity and then it strikes me how dangerous these people are and I realise that tragedy is indeed very closely related to farce. Last weeks Labour Party conference voted to return the Post Office to public control and the leadership immediately announced that they had no intention of taking a blind bit of notice of the decision of their Party's conference and would not be committing to any such thing. So much for a democracy and so much for their own rules that "the work of the party shall be under the direction and control of the conference."

 

So, democratic? Not a chance, that kind of party management used to be called Stalinism, although in relation to this group of Labour elitists I think a Furher concept is more apt. Socialist? I don't think I even need to comment on that one. Under the control of conference? Don't be daft. Labour takes the advice of Arthur Balfour who said he would rather take the advice of his valet than that of the party conference.

 

I write this on the day that the postal workers are taking industrial action, this was a week after the fire fighters. Labour refused to either support or endorse either of these actions, indeed since the election of Blair Labour have refused to support any form of industrial action for any reason.  

 

Anyone thinking of supporting the Better Together campaign in the coming independence referendum should give serious thought as to not only what they are supporting, but the type of personnel who they are voting for. This is a party that has abandoned the working people, the poor and dispossessed of this country in favour of millionaires and the people they call 'middle England' and who have made common cause with the most right wing neoliberal government in living memory. What about middle Scotland? What about the health and education sectors they have been slavish in privatising? What about the benefit cap they supported? Labour are quite simply lost. You have been warned

 

 

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat 

Benefit fraud is more serious than killing four people

Welcome to modern caring Britain. Dyson Allen was convicted of manslaughter yesterday in Preston Crown Court for starting a fire that killed four members of the same family, a two year old boy, two four year old twins and a 19 year old young man, He was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter for which he was given a life sentence and told he would have to serve at least nine years six months.

As I reported earlier, benefit fraud will now carry a potential 10 year prison sentence, so, in the eyes of our benefits hating government you may as well kill people as, in their eyes, that is not so serious as getting a few quid off the state when your not entitled to it. By the way, that was not meant to be ironic, these people genuinely think like that.

Benefits are a right, they are not a gift from the state. Benefits are the price the privileged pay for their privilege, the price the wealthy pay for their wealth, the price the landed gentry pay for their land, because their privilege, wealth and land was all gained at the expense and on the backs of, the rest of the population.

The largest recipient of benefits in this country are the Royal Family. The Queen is the ultimate benefit scrounger and skiver. Oh you can call her income the Civil List as that is nice and neutral, but it is exactly the same as your welfare benefits, unearned income from taxes. As the Queen is a welfare recipient, I wonder how the bedroom tax will affect her, as she must have a considerable amount of spare rooms in Buck Palace, Sandringham, Windsor, Balmoral etc?

The other prominent welfare recipients who must also be affected by the bedroom tax are the Prime Minister and his Chancellor who both live in council houses in London with their rent and council tax paid from public funds.

This is the appalling hypocrisy of this society and a measure of how the dominant powers have bred a towering hatred for the disadvantaged in our country whilst promoting class privilege.

Your Servant
Doktor  Kommirat

The Niquab

In a multicultural society we must be continually aware that we do indeed live in a multi as opposed to a mono cultural society. As a result, cultural purists must accept that they must be prepared to compromise for the sake of a meaningful social order. Freedom for all requires tolerance from all. We live in a society with a significant Muslim community that is wracked by an Islamaphobia that is actively encouraged by significant sections of the political class, the police and the media. This has led to a national debate on the subject of Muslim women who wear the niquab, the face veil, which threatens to descend into cultural persecution.

A fundamental principle of a free society is that, regardless of what you think of someone else's behaviour, if it is doing no harm to anyone else, it is none of your business. Thus, we must ask the question, on any scale of harm, what does a woman wearing a niquab register?

Britain is quite accurately described as a multicultural society. A multicultural society means that we do not live in a monoculture, thus, whilst one culture demands respect for their cultural norms, they must be prepared to respect others, in other words, cultures must be prepared to compromise. Human society is largely symbolic, meaning that, with respect to language and human behaviour symbols are significant because they supply cultural meanings to words and behaviour. In British culture, the wearing of a face mask is symbolically negative as it normally conveys the threats of danger, violence, mugging etc. and is intimidatory. We feel uncomfortable being unable to see the full face as we associate such behaviour with pirates, bandits, muggers etc.

Thus, whilst the niquab presents no threat whatsoever physically, it does present a psychological and symbolic threat, even though our reason tells us that this threat is illusory. In situations like this our reason becomes overwhelmed by our emotional impulses. As a result, the Islamic community must accept that whilst they demand complete tolerance for their cultural beliefs and practices there appears to be a reluctance on their part to extend that same tolerance to the wider community.

As a result, a Muslim woman must be allowed to wear the niquab out of respect for deeply held personal belief and requires tolerance from a civilised society. Her right to wear the niquab must be protected. However, she must also accept the cultural norms of the wider society and understand that it is not always appropriate, and that there may arise particular circumstances, for example in court, hospital etc. where failure to see facial expressions and emotional responses makes the wearing of the niquab problematic. As the niquab is not a mandatory requirement in the Islamic faith, and is a matter of personal choice, insistence on the right to wear the niquab in all circumstances cannot be accepted as a moral absolute and is a form of behaviour that, in a cultural order such as modern Britain, requires compromise where appropriate.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Independence is becoming a moral issue

The following is taken from a leading article in the Guardian this morning

"Benefit cheats will face increased jail terms of up to 10 years in a crackdown on those who "flout the system", Britain's most senior prosecutor has said. Keir Starmer QC warned it was time for a "tough stance" against the perpetrators of benefit and tax credit fraud as he set out new guidelines for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). The director of public prosecutions said the £1.9bn annual cost of the crime to the taxpayer should be at the "forefront of lawyers' minds" when considering whether a prosecution was in the public interest."

Thus, according to the government's most senior prosecutor, benefit fraud is estimated at £1.9billion. What is interesting is that there is an annual shortfall of £36billion in the take up of benefits, whilst an estimated £95billion a year is lost due to tax avoidance and tax evasion. Over all the term of the financial crisis, not one banker or financier has been held to account for the staggering criminality that took place. The Libor scandal not only broke British law, it broke international law and no-one has been brought to account. The BBC has just been found to have paid incompetent managers who have been dismissed for their incompetence million pound payoffs.

10 years is a greater sentence than rape, crimes of violence, paedophilia and most murders. The largest sentence for tax fraud in the past ten years was 5 years, and that was for over half a million pounds, but if you defraud the social for £100 you face 10. So much for justice and the rule of law.

If you want any more evidence of the class nature and the visceral hatred of the disadvantaged in modern Britain I don't know what would convince you. Successive governments with the aid of the  right-wing elements in the media have successfully demonised the poor, the disabled and the disadvantaged in our society to the extent that they can have the gall to actually propose such measures without outrage. Rich criminality gets a million pound bonus, poor criminality gets 10 years. The media war against the poor produced the belief, which I highlighted before, that benefit fraud amounts to 27% of the benefit budget, whereas in reality it is 0.07% That perception arises from outright lies spread by the government and its allies in the media.

Westminster is irreparably corrupt and the Scots must effect a divorce from these malignant right-wing criminals as a matter of urgency. Independence is becoming a moral issue, you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Where does the real danger to us lie?

Last night on Question Time the right wing journalist from the Times newspaper, David Aaronovitch was asked, during a discussion on the Syrian crisis, if the government should just have ignored the overwhelming opinion of the British public that they should refrain from attacking Syria, and he said yes. There were three MPs sitting on the panel and not one of them disagreed with him or took him to task. This highlights how democracy in Britain has become a farce and how the ruling elite simply ignore the wishes of the people who elect them, pay their wages and pensions, and who are supposed to be the sovereign power in what we laughingly refer to as a representative liberal democracy.

Aaronovich said that the government should take no notice of public opinion on issues such as this because that is what they are there for, to take such decisions. Thus, in this person's opinion the public are of no consequence when it comes to decisions such as waging war against another sovereign state and exposing that same public to the dangers of violent retaliation. The public are of no consequence with respect to having to finance such an adventure in the middle of the biggest recession in this country's history. In short, in the opinion of the British elite, the public are simply of no consequence whatsoever.

I have posted before, and make no apology for repeating, that we must never forget what are politicians and government are and what their functions are. Politicians are simply people like you and me who wake up one morning and discover that they have been elected into Parliament. There is no training, skills, expertise or exams required to be elected into Parliament, all that is required is the ability to harness the requisite number of votes to defeat your nearest challenger. If you turn out to be even semi-competent, then that is purely chance. The performance of the present government is ample evidence that we often get it dramatically wrong.

 

I have written before of the derivative nature of government. What I mean by this is that government's derive their existence from the will of the people and are thus subject to that will. In addition, we elect a legislative body, we do not elect the government. Thus, British democracy requires that the executive power must always be subject to the power of the legislature which, in its turn, is subject to the will of the people. This is obviously the reverse of political reality in Britain where the executive totally subordinates the legislature who, in their turn, simply ignore the electorate. If I may quote John Locke, the so-called father of representative liberal democracy

'there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.'

Thus, according to John Locke, supreme power must always lie with the people. The arrogance of the British elite and people like Aaronovich is getting to an unacceptable level in the UK. The danger to the British people lies, not with terrorists, Muslims or external forces. The real danger to us is our Parliament and its lackeys in the media. Scotland must distance itself from these people. You have been warned

 

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat

 

 

 

 

A Fascist Remedy for Unemployment

I checked my calendar today to make sure that it wasn't April the First as I genuinely couldn't believe what I was reading. It was reported in both the Times and the 'i' newspapers that the Policy Exchange had released a Report called 'Cultures of Dependency' in which it recommends that the unemployed should be made to commute 90 minutes in order to sign on. This is not a wind-up, as I went onto their website to check this. In addition, it recommends that where everyone in a family is unemployed they should be required to sign-on together as a group. The following is from Wikipaedia

"Policy Exchange is a British conservative think tank based in London. The Daily Telegraph has described it as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right".
The New Statesman named it as David Cameron's "favourite think tank" a view shared by the Political Editor of the Evening Standard Joe Murphy, who referred to it as "the intellectual boot camp of the Tory modernisers’"."

As a result of the obvious influence of this group, this is likely to become government policy. A red light was alerted in my mind when I went onto the website because they have a statement at the top of their site that the Policy Exchange is "the best think-tank in the business" and that comes from John Rentoul. For those of you who are unfamiliar, John Rentoul is described as a journalist who writes for the Independent newspaper. For many years now I have simply refused to read anything written by this person as I consider him the worst journalist I have ever read. Indeed to describe him as a journalist is to demean the whole journalistic profession, he is quite simply unreadable.

If you live in Scotland you will be aware that Glasgow is a 45 minute journey from Edinburgh by train and car, thus a 90 minute commute. Thus, what this think-tank is proposing is that all the unemployed in Glasgow should travel over to Edinburgh to sign-on whilst all the unemployed in Edinburgh will travel to Glasgow. Naturally, unless the authorities are going to pay for their travel, no unemployed person will be able to afford to do that and will therefore fail to register as unemployed, and that of course is exactly what the neoliberals in the Policy Exchange wish to happen.

This policy proposal displays a genuine insanity. All over Britain, the unemployed will be travelling  a 90 minute round trip from Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle etc. indeed all over the country, simply to register as unemployed. The person(s) who came up with such nonsense must be genuinely disturbed. It does however, reveal the depth of hatred and contempt that the neoliberals harbour for the disadvantaged in our society. This is another signal that Britain is descending into fascism. Again I repeat without apology that if you are thinking of voting against independence in the coming referendum then that is what you are voting for, and that is the type of person you are voting for. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat  

Book Launch

I trust you will forgive me if I indulge in a bout of self-promotion and advertising. I have a book being published next week called Human Rights in a Big Yellow Taxi and I will be having three launches. I live in Scotland and am having launches in

Kilmarnock, in the Dick Institute, London Road at 6.00pm on Thursday 26th September

Edinburgh, in Looking Glass Books at 6.30pm on Wednesday 2nd October

Glasgow in the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) Sauchiehall Street at 7.00pm

I would love to see anyone who happens to read this blog at any of these events and trust you will introduce yourself and tell me honestly what you think. I will resume blogging shortly.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Capital Punishment

I trust that anyone still in favour of capital punishment will have watched the news today and saw how the police not only had the wrong man convicted in the Rachel Manning murder, but got a second wrong man convicted afterwards.

If we had capital punishment one or perhaps both of these men would have been hanged, as would the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and many others who have been the victims of legal incompetence. Remember, the next innocent victim of the legal system may be you.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

The Shadow of Blair hanging over Syria

The press and our politicians are going though agonies of soul searching over the government's defeat on intervention in Syria. What is the place of Britain in the world? What does it mean if we are diminished as a nation? All garbage. What happened was that all the lies spewed out by our government's over the past 20 years finally caught up with them. No-one knows better how we are continually and habitually lied to by our political class than our political class themselves and Syria brought it home to them. They knew that the Prime Minister and his henchmen were lying through their teeth as usual and thought about the repercussions this could have for each of them personally if the Syrian adventure went pear shaped. 

According to the Daily Telegraph, on the night of the vote 80% of the British public opposed intervention. What government's have done, and this is Blair's real legacy, is destroy any trust we have in politicians, and that is the real danger for our country. Politicians exercise power, but they only exercise it on the authority of the electorate. Authority can be lost, and Westminster is losing its authority because the public simply don't believe a word they say. Not only has Westminster lost its authority, so have our so-called intelligence 'experts' who have been demonstrated as liars and incompetents.

British democracy is dependent on trust. As we have no formal constitution or a judiciary that can exercise restraint on legislation, thus allowing Westminster to do practically anything it wants to, we trust that our politicians will respect the law, the rule of law, honesty and that they act with integrity. Blair's governments must go down as the most appalling in British history. They were totally corrupt in terms of honesty, integrity, legality and democratic accountability, they were quite shameless, and that includes all of the personnel who served with Blair. By conducting government in that manner they left a blueprint for the Tories and their coalition partners that they thought they could follow. But the fruits of the Blair years have now come back to haunt them, the financial crisis and the Iraq war in particular, and they are now finding that they may not be able to simply lie their way out of everything any more. Trust no longer exists between Westminster and the British people.

What is happening in Syria is a genuine tragedy, but, if Westminster made a genuine mistake last week, the Syrians have Blair and his appalling henchmen to thank for it. However it impacts on Syria, what happened was finally a glimmer of hope for Britain and our democracy. The shame of their past crimes may be finally seeping into the conscience of our politicians, surely the most disreputable bunch of liars possible.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat