Wednesday 27 August 2014

Better Together? It's a cruel and malicious joke!

I would like you all to contemplate what we are very likely to be facing following the next UK general election. Nigel Farage has just been selected as the Parliamentary candidate for his constituency. As he is already the MEP for that constituency he will almost certainly win. Boris Johnson is fully expected to be selected as candidate for a London constituency and it is certain that he will win. UKIP is also expected to win a goodly handful of seats, especially at the expense of the Lib Dems, so, we are looking at the very realistic prospect of a Tory/UKIP coalition government with Nigel Farage gaining a position in government.

However, even if, in the unlikely case, Labour win the election, we are looking at Ed Miliband as Prime Minister with Ed Balls as Chancellor. Balls has already committed Labour to implement all of the proposed cuts that Osborne has announced for after the election, so electing Labour will not make one jot of difference for either living standards or jobs. Miliband has frequently told us that he has no time for the trades unions and has no intention of reversing any of the Tories anti-employment rights legislation. Nor will he support workers in any form of industrial action, that is his words.

The Tories are planning ever more draconian 'anti-terrorist' legislation which Labour has denounced as not enough. I will remind you that the bulk of the present terrorist laws are applied, not against terrorists, but against British citizens lawfully protesting against injustice. Thus, lawful protest is being increasingly likened to terrorism and this has the support of all Westminster MPs, and, if I may remind you, Boris Johnson is purchasing water cannons for use against the British people in our streets.

I have asked you before to take a minute and read UKIP's policies. This is as close to fascism as you will get without actually calling it that. I told you how Boris wants to change the law to remove the presumption of innocence for people travelling to the Middle East and if you think that this will not be extended to cover all of us then you need to waken up. Do not simply dismiss this proposal saying that it will never happen. I remind you again, this creature will become a Prime Minister and may well be in coalition with Farage and his crew.

It is imperative that Scotland gets its independence because the future of the UK is a genuinely scary prospect. I leave you with this thought. If you think that the Scots will prosper under its devolved parliament in a Better Together Britain after September, then consider that UKIP is committed to abolishing the Scottish Parliament and Boris Johnson sees no need for it and definitely no reason to give it enhanced powers. Put that together with the carefully constructed narrative in England and Wales that sees the populations of those countries hostile to granting the Scottish Parliament any further power as current opinion polls are telling us and you can kiss goodbye to any further powers and a diminution of those we already have. Better Together? It's a cruel and malicious joke! You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Monday 25 August 2014

Boris Johnston, man of the people, friend of the Scots

I recently alerted you to the dangers of Boris Johnson who has let the cat out of the bag with respect to any future powers for a Scottish Parliament in the event of a No vote in the coming referendum. Boris does not see any reason for granting Scotland any more powers. Now, since he said that, I trust you have noticed that Westminster has been commissioning opinion polls that claim to show that a majority of English voters agree with him. What is happening here is that the ground is being laid for a scenario where, in the event of a No vote the Westminster parties will say, "oh yes we promised you more powers if you voted no, but now we find that English people are opposed to it and so we cannot ignore the wishes of the English people and so we have to refuse you any more powers."

Make no mistake that is what is going to happen. If we vote no next month and stay within the grasp of Westminster they will exact a revenge against Scotland for daring to challenge their supremacy that will take your breath away.

However, returning to Boris, he now wants to take the presumption of innocence away from people who travel from Britain to the Middle East if 'we' believe that they are going to help Islamic extremism. He claims that this requires a 'swift and minor change to the law.' Thus, anyone who travels to the Middle East for whatever reason can have their presumption of innocence revoked for any reason if the authorities decide it should. The presumption of innocence simply means that you are innocent until you are proven guilty. Now please think about that. What the Tories are planning is to charge you with being a terrorist before you have done anything and you will have to prove you are not. Now, in the United States, the training manuals that are used to train interrogators actually say that one of the proofs that you are a terrorist is if you deny it, and I am not making that up. I cannot stress enough how dangerous this man Johnson is, and  I remind you, he will be Prime Minister one day. Boris Johnson is an imbecile, but a very dangerous imbecile.

The presumption of innocence is a fundamental human right that has been the cornerstone of British law for centuries and was taken from Roman law which stated Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat (the burden of proof is on he who declares, not on he who denies). This presumption of innocence is enshrined in some of the fundamental documents of human rights such as The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was codified in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789, and is codified in The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe, The Charter of the Council of Europe and the Charter for the Fundamental Rights of the European Union.



However, according to the political and legal genius that is Boris Johnson, this is simply a "minor" legal matter. Now remember, this man is the head of the Metropolitan police and a future Prime Minister. I should not need to alert you to the grave dangers that accompany any dilution of our fundamental human rights, because if you think that the Tories will stop there you should not bother reading any more of my blog. I remind you I have just published a book outlining their determination to remove all of our human rights. This is the future that awaits you under Westminster rule. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

 

Thursday 21 August 2014

What makes a young British man want to behead a complete stranger?

Our papers and television are awash with experts lining up to try to understand what makes a young British man go to the Middle East and end up so radicalised that he merrily beheads a completely innocent human being and is filmed doing it. This is not dissimilar to the two Islamic warriors who tried to behead a young British soldier in a British street in broad daylight last year.

As the human being is a social being, if you strip away the normative parameters that give meaning to life and make sense of everyday human behaviour you will produce a condition that sociologists call anomie. This roughly translates as normlessness. Anyone suffering from the rootless conditions produced by a state of anomie will then seek, sometimes desperately, for new parameters that will provide them with meaning and a sense of stability. The most appealing structure of meaning, the most appealing structure that provides answers and points to a firm basis for purpose and stability in your life is religion. Religion is soothing, answers all of your questions and doubts and absolves you of the need to reason and think for yourself.

Since Thatcher's victory in 1979 the dominant and persistent ideological message has been that there is no such thing as society. Collectivism, which in British propaganda is ceaselessly promoted as communism, has been persistently demonised and portrayed as evil. The British state and its media has relentlessly propagated an ideology of aggressive individualism, which of course produces aggressive individuals. As the elite driven neoliberal agenda has been increasingly successful, so the elite in the UK have ruthlessly targeted all the groups who are seen to be hostile to the inequalities and poverty generated by the dominant British ideology, the poor, people on benefits, the sick, the disabled etc. Such groups have been demonised and constantly pilloried in the press and TV. As the neoliberals sought to consolidate their worldwide domination they targeted nations that were predominantly Islamic. As a result, Muslims became victims of the demonization of British minorities, and they were targeted for two reasons. First they part of an ideological system that was not quite so ready to doff their caps to the British class system, a system that sees them as outsiders and a threat to the anglo-saxon bourgeois elite, and second, they were convenient scapegoats as they are predominantly immigrants, who as we all know are all skivers and scroungers and fair game for any and every kind of abuse.

If you demonise people, don't be surprised if you produce demons! If you promote aggressive individualism, don't be surprised if you produce aggressively individualistic demons. If you promote greed and selfishness and a belief system that tells you that you should only care about yourself and your own family, don't be surprised if you produce people who don't care for you, your morals, norms and values. If you promote a belief system that tells you there is no such thing as society, then don't be surprised when people transfer their loyalty to a different social and belief system that gives them what they are not only seeking, but need, the identification with a collective that tells them they are valued, that they are wanted, that they belong, a system that doesn't demonise them, that doesn't exclude them, that makes them feel that they are a valid human being, a human being with dignity and a purpose. That is what religion will give them.

Britain is a seriously sick society that is producing seriously sick people, and the source of this sickness is Westminster and the cretins who occupy it. It is the ideology of neoliberalism that has destroyed our moral and normative order and relentlessly wages war on all sections of society that threatens its dominance. We are indeed reaping what we have sown. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Monday 18 August 2014

A No vote is a vote for the death of the NHS

I trust you will have read the reports about the dozens of people who have been damaged by having routine eye surgery performed by private health contractors in England. This is the result of the privatisation of our health service, where, since the election of 2010, 80% of all contracts awarded by the NHS have gone to the private sector. When Westminster politicians tell us that they have no intention of privatising our heath system they are lying through their teeth. In addition, if you believe a word that the Better Together campaign tell you regarding the position of the health service in Scotland you are simply delusional. Despite the fact that health in Scotland is a devolved responsibility, if you think that this will continue following a No vote you really are gullible. I ask you to contemplate that if we vote no in September do you really think that your health service will continue to be fully devolved when England and Wales are undergoing the full force of privatisation? Do you really believe that the private vultures who control Westminster will pass up the opportunities that will present themselves in Scotland for exploitation and profit-making?

Since 2003 £5billion has been diverted from the NHS into the private sector and the medical professionals have all been shouting to successive governments about the catastrophic effects this is having on patients with some companies failing to actually do up to 30% of the work they have been contracted for. One firm received over £35 million for doing nothing at all. The Tories are now openly talking about requiring you to pay to visit your GP and Accident and Emergency. What if you can't pay?

I am bemused why no-one seems to actually realise what is happening to the NHS, or what the Tories are openly telling you is going to happen if they win another term in office. I conclude that people cannot bring themselves to actually accept what is happening, and that they still believe what Westminster tells them. People genuinely look at me in disbelief when I tell them that over the past 25 years the NHS has lost half of all its beds. Official NHS figures show that in 1988 there were 297,000 hospital beds in the UK and there are now 135,000. This is because the government are applying the Shock Doctrine to the NHS by artificially creating a crisis and then telling us that the NHS needs reformed and needs the discipline of 'the market' to get if functioning efficiently. In other words, successive governments, and that includes Labour, have deliberately run the NHS down in order to justify privatising it. The other ploy is to remove services forcing foundation trusts to turn to the private sector to fulfil their statutory duties to patients.

I consistently warn you about the depths that Westminster will sink to in order to get its own way. They have been complicit in covering up patient deaths, such as Morecambe Bay and Mid-Staffs in order to hide the truth about private provision of essential services. This was the result of the NHS being taken out of political control at local level and away from any form of public accountability. This was started under Labour and deepened under the coalition. All hospitals are desperate to get foundation status that allows them to generate half their income from the private sector. Thus, bad news and patient deaths jeopardise that golden goose, solution, cover up any incompetence, simples.

I could go on for days about what is being done, its all in the public domain, unfortunately the public do not appear to be concerned. We should be very concerned in Scotland however because it can all be avoided. If you vote No in September, be under no illusions, you are voting for the end of the NHS. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Tuesday 12 August 2014

Beware Boris the destroyer

I was warning you recently about the real threat to our future from the inexorable rise of Boris Johnson. He has now commented on the referendum campaign and told us that he will not support any further powers for the Scottish Parliament if we vote no in the coming referendum. He is at least telling us that all of the recent promises from the Westminster parties are a farrago of lies, as I have repeatedly warned you. You vote no at your peril.

This creature will become leader of the Conservative Party and will therefore become British Prime Minister. He is genuinely dangerous! He has as much understanding of politics as my Yorkshire terrier. He is a publicist who is expert at public relations and advertising himself, but when it comes to the actual substance of politics he is quite ignorant. I have repeatedly alerted you to the real ignorance of economics that dominates this nation and its policy-making. It is the same with politics. Our economics is dominated by one model, what is called the neoclassical model. Any casual examination of this model will tell you that it bears no resemblance to neoclassical economics and is a method of transferring wealth from the bottom to the top. It justifies greed and legalised theft whilst scapegoating its failings onto the most disadvantaged in society.

Its political bedfellow does the same. Any person who still thinks that Britain is a democracy is genuinely delusional. Here we have a self-publicised thug who declares that he wants to stand for Parliament and it is not only taken for granted that he will, but that he will be found a safe seat to enable his desire to be realised. I wonder if that would happen if I wanted to enter Westminster? This is a person who has a publicly demonstrated hatred of working people, the poor and trades unions. He has nothing but contempt for the Scots, the European Union and any form of opinion that clashes with his own. Anyone with even a basic understanding of politics will recognise that no-one in British politics pays even a minimal level of lip service to concepts of democracy, accountability, the rights of the people or the wellbeing of the population. Remember, following the next Westminster election the Tories have honestly told you that there are another £125 billion cuts coming immediately. They will withdraw us from the EU, finish the privatisation of the NHS, end all employment rights and wage relentless war against the poor. Johnson will be their principal cheerleader. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Friday 8 August 2014

If we're going to decide our future on the outcome of a televised debate then we don't deserve a vote.

I despair at the idea that people could be so shallow and stupid that they could cast a vote in the coming referendum on the outcome of Alex Salmond's performance in his televised debate with Alistair Darling and on whether we will use the British pound as a currency in an independent Scotland.

First, this referendum has absolutely nothing to do with Alex Salmond and the SNP. This is a decision on Sctland's future, not about Alex Salmond. He could drop dead tomorrow and the SNP could lose the election that would be held following independence, so what? We are talking about the future for our children and grandchildren, a future that, if we vote no, looks increasingly likely to be shaped after the next Westminster election by a coalition of the Tories and UKIP. If we vote for independence we are at least looking at a future that will be in our own hands.

This is a vote to rescue us from foodbanks, zero-hours contracts, the privatisation of the health service, bankers bonuses, withdrawal from the EU and the consequent loss of our human and employment rights that a withdrawal will entail. This is a vote to rescue us from a ruling elite that has a pathological hatred of working people, immigrants, trades unions, the disabled, the public sector. It is a vote to protect social security, to protect our pensions, to protect the environment. It is a vote to develop wind and wave energy, to secure our energy future free from oil and imported gas and most importantly, nuclear energy. This is a vote to stop us selling arms and torture equipment to foreign dictators and get embroiled in foreign conflicts that only continually make things worse. It is a vote to sever the slavish dependency on everything American, particularly the American economic model that has destroyed our financial system and enslaved us to its neoliberal imperatives. It is a vote to stop the sale of our most precious assets to foreign companies and to take control of such assets for the benefit of the Scottish people.

I could go on and on about the importance of September 18th but really despair that people can't see this for themselves. Such is the power of the poisonous propaganda from Better Together that we are reduced to deciding our future for the next thousand years on whether Alex Salmond messed up a completely irrelevant television debate. It's genuinely pathetic. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Wednesday 6 August 2014

Tories with a conscience? Your having a laugh


I apologise for the gap between my posts but I have been moved to post today because of the resignation of Baroness Warsi on the morally indefensible stance of the British government over the Gaza crisis, a move I both applaud and support. However, it got me thinking about how incredibly hypocritical and morally relative the Westminster elite are.

I have not heard anything from the esteemed Baroness on the morality of staggering inequalities in modern Britain, nor of the immorality of the government's austerity programme, the benefits cuts and the attack on disability, or the millions of people who depend on foodbanks. She has no apparent problem with homelessness or of the deaths caused by the governments benefits sanctions where people have had all their benefits stopped on the most ridiculous excuses and people have committed suicide as a result. I have heard no condemnation of the immorality she and her party supported for the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are the people you are voting for if you vote no in the referendum in September. Alex Salmond's performance in the televised debate has absolutely no bearing on how you should vote. The referendum is about the future of Scotland, not about Salmond or the SNP. Salmond could drop dead tomorrow, and may not even win the election that would follow a Yes vote. If anything should motivate you it is today's news that Boris Johnston is going to stand for Parliament at the next election. This news should make you very afraid. This man will become leader of the Tory Party and therefore he will someday soon become a Prime Minister. If that happens and Scotland is still a member of the UK then you can look forward to leaving the European Union which will lead to the removal of all your human rights, the complete destruction of the union movement and the removal of the last vestiges of employment protection. This man hates working people and supports the extension of zero-hours contracts. What is certain is that he will completely privatise the NHS and turn Britain into a replica of the United States. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat