I think we may be witnessing the beginning of the end for the Thatcherite free market programme. As we watch the Greek tragedy unfolding we are continually being told that we are watching a crisis for the Euro and the Eurozone. That is not accurate. Certainly the euro is in crisis, but the real culprit is not the currency but the economic ideology that is controlling both the currency and the financial system within which it operates. Should we actually have the foresight and the intelligence to properly identify the cause of our financial problems then the euro would operate perfectly well and efficiently in a properly controlled and regulated economic system that replaced the current neoliberal free market disaster we see today.
In today's economic system wealth is equated to money. Greece has run out of money and so it has no wealth. But that is simply wrong. The wealth of any nation lies in the amount of goods and services it produces. Because we think that wealth is money we fail to regulate the financial system and fail to ensure that the money we do have services the economy rather than dictating the economy. Money is a means of exchange, it is not an end in itself. It should be directed to investment in both capital resources and labour. What we do is take money out of the economy, we give it in huge bonuses to gangsters and in profits to large multinational corporations who hoard it in different tax havens all over the world. Our money leaves the country rather than being invested in the country. Thus, as in Greece, there is no meaningful investment and therefore no meaningful production. On top of that, the elites in all developed countries have been reducing the amount of money available to the general population thus removing spending power thereby reducing demand. Additionally, those who are in work are seeing their income falling and therefore the government is losing tax revenues, whilst those on benefits are seeing their income falling as well and so no-one is spending money. So, not only are we failing to invest, we are quite deliberately depressing demand for any goods that are available. As a result, our stock of wealth is steadily diminishing regardless of how much money some people might have.
This is the economics of the madhouse. The people who attacked the tourists in Tunisia understand this. Tourism is a valuable export for any country. Just as when the Scots sell a bottle of whisky in America to earn dollars, so what tourism does is sell a service. If an American comes here to play a game of golf, he/she is effectively buying a product and is paying for that product, so, in that sense golf is an export. The terrorist knows that if he/she effectively damages the tourist trade, they damage the export trade and deny that country valuable income. By attacking tourism the terrorist is effectively attacking the countries wealth. Tunisia's wealth is not its hoard of money, its in its beaches, it scenery, its climate and in the goods and services it has to offer. In Scotland our golf courses are as valuable and as productive as our whisky industry, they are a real source of wealth, a national asset. Robert Burns has been dead over 200 years but is still part of the wealth of the Scottish nation. Money is not wealth, money expresses wealth, but only up to a point. If a nation's wealth declines its money loses value and a point arises when the money becomes worthless.
The free market economics that dominate all our public and private policy-making is a fraud and is destroying our society. It has destroyed Greece, is threatening to destroy the UK and is most certainly going to destroy the EU. The only way to avoid Scotland becoming independent is to abandon the austerity demanded by our neoliberal masters, and that is not going to happen. The Tories are going to produce an austerity driven programme over the next five years with consequences that we can only imagine, and austerity, as I continually warn you, is a lie. If the Greeks have any sense they will align themselves with Russia. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 29 June 2015
Monday 22 June 2015
The Tories are actually claiming they have a right to starve and kill
There can be no doubt that the Westminster programme of austerity is hurting people. There can also be no doubt that the austerity programme is quite deliberately targeting the most vulnerable people in British society. There can be no doubt that the people suffering the results of austerity are the people least responsible for the financial crisis that Westminster claims is the reason for the need for such austerity measures. Under the austerity programme, all figures show that the disabled have been hit nineteen times harder than the average. Hate crimes against the disabled are soaring with disabled people being publicly abused as skivers and scroungers, they are being spat on, physically abused and demonised. All this is being ignored by Westminster, the press and the police, because the disabled are the most vulnerable and therefore are fair game for people's need to express their hatred for the disadvantaged and are of course a wonderful scapegoat for the Westminster gangsters. So I can only conclude that this is being imposed on the British people quite deliberately with a callousness that is difficult to comprehend. This is todays' Great Britain. What on earth kind of society have we become where we openly justify and make excuses for disabled poverty, child poverty, foodbanks and obscene inequality? In addition, our rulers and their useful idiots in the media constantly tell us that this is both necessary and for our own good. Is this the kind of society we want to live in? It is the result of a quite deliberate campaign by the Tories and the press to deflect people's attention to the real crisis that affects this society, the poison of neoliberal free market economics.
Around half a million people have just demonstrated against austerity and already we have the scum oozing out of Westminster telling us that they have just won an election and therefore have a mandate for their policies. Well I have to tell them that regardless of the result of the election, no-one has any mandate, justification or right to quite deliberately hurt innocent people. No amount of votes gives you the right to starve people or deny them a decent lifestyle. Austerity is causing genuine hunger, it is causing people to die. People don't have enough to eat, enough to heat their homes. Austerity is causing real physical and mental damage and no amount of votes gives anyone the right to do that. If the government is claiming that they have both the permission of the British people and the authority to continue with this programme then we have reached a profound stage in our history and no longer have the right to be described as a civilised society.
If people in England and Wales really do support this government's attacks on the poor and support the coming welfare cuts then those countries are no longer fit and proper societies, they are something else, they are a collection of barbarians who have lost all sense of decency and humanity. There is absolutely no reason nor excuse for a country as wealthy as Britain to go down this route, there are plenty of other alternatives. If you claim that the government has a right and a mandate to drive people into ever increasing poverty and hunger because they won 24 votes out of every possible hundred, or that the majority of people support them, then you are using the same excuse that Hitler used to persecute the Jews, it must be OK because the people support it. There will be consequences if Britain does not alter direction, one of them being that Scotland will definitely become independent. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Around half a million people have just demonstrated against austerity and already we have the scum oozing out of Westminster telling us that they have just won an election and therefore have a mandate for their policies. Well I have to tell them that regardless of the result of the election, no-one has any mandate, justification or right to quite deliberately hurt innocent people. No amount of votes gives you the right to starve people or deny them a decent lifestyle. Austerity is causing genuine hunger, it is causing people to die. People don't have enough to eat, enough to heat their homes. Austerity is causing real physical and mental damage and no amount of votes gives anyone the right to do that. If the government is claiming that they have both the permission of the British people and the authority to continue with this programme then we have reached a profound stage in our history and no longer have the right to be described as a civilised society.
If people in England and Wales really do support this government's attacks on the poor and support the coming welfare cuts then those countries are no longer fit and proper societies, they are something else, they are a collection of barbarians who have lost all sense of decency and humanity. There is absolutely no reason nor excuse for a country as wealthy as Britain to go down this route, there are plenty of other alternatives. If you claim that the government has a right and a mandate to drive people into ever increasing poverty and hunger because they won 24 votes out of every possible hundred, or that the majority of people support them, then you are using the same excuse that Hitler used to persecute the Jews, it must be OK because the people support it. There will be consequences if Britain does not alter direction, one of them being that Scotland will definitely become independent. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 18 June 2015
An Identity crisis? Now who would have thought of that?
I never cease to be amazed at how the great British experts of social commentary continue to lag at least 10 years behind the obvious. They have now discovered the cause of Islamic and ethnic extremism, identity. Young Muslims and immigrants are searching for meaning, for an identity. This is the theme of various articles attempting to analyse why such people are rejecting 'the British way' and are leaving to join Isis and other such groups.
This is first year secondary school sociology, it is basic and blindingly obvious, but of course the great and the good never read sociology because all sociologists are unrepentant Marxists, anti-establishment and unpatriotic. So, we can all happily ignore sociology and go home! Beginning in 1979, the reactionary elements in Britain launched a war against the entire concept of Britain and sought to remodel the nation in their own image. They were very successful. Britain today is almost unrecognisable from the Britain I grew up in. Their great achievement was the election of Margaret Thatcher who immediately set about destroying the society that was Britain at that time. The Thatcher experiment was all about destroying the collective culture, destroying the community, its norms and values and the engine of the British way of life, the welfare state. Thatcher initiated the great move to individualism, to an aggressive 'me' culture with its roots in greed and acquisitiveness as typified by her now famous 'there is no such thing as society'. The British value system was scrapped and replaced by one single value, monetary success. Economic criteria was the fundamental judge of every action, every policy and every outcome. If it made money it was good, if it didn't it was bad, simples. Most importantly, Thatcher determined to initiate a massive transference of wealth and power into the hands of a selective elite, those people Thatcher described as 'one of us'. Thatcher and her disciples, and this includes the modern Labour Party, quite deliberately erected a social structure that is ferociously exclusive, in that it excludes all those who do not share the Thatcher vision or who pose a threat to the dominance of her ideology, the neoliberal free market.
Emile Durkheim showed us, over 100 years ago, how events such as those initiated by Thatcher inevitably produce what he called Anomie. This is a condition of normlessness, of a loss of our social, collective and personal identity. Destroy a society's norms and values, debase its culture, and you will have rootlessness, a sense of loss and belonging, a crisis of identity that affects society both individually and collectively. There is nothing difficult about providing an explanation as to the problems we face today, what is difficult is accepting that this has been done deliberately, with malice and is our own fault because we, the British, embraced the greed, the 'f..k everyone else' approach and have voted for it consistently since 1979. Britain is a country obsessed with hatred and driven by a scapegoat mentality. We were swamped by a ceaseless propaganda of hatred, hatred of the collective nature of society that was continually categorised as 'socialist', hatred of trades unions, of the unemployed of immigrants, of the disabled, people on social security etc. As a result we applauded the destruction of the unions, of local government, the dismantling of the nationalised industries and the health service. We supported selling off our local and national assets to foreign companies whilst fuelling a pathological hatred of foreigners. We applauded the demonization of the poor and the disabled, we supported the welfare cuts and therefore we supported the dismantling of a civilised society and its replacement with barbarism. If you want to know why Muslims are embracing Isis, ask Durkheim, if you want to know why the Scots are embracing independence, ask Durkheim. If you want to know whose fault it is, look no further than Westminster and the right-wing press. When Blair went to war in Iraq he was simply following the logic of Thatcherism and the dominant ideological concept of Western ethnic, social and economic superiority.
I see no redemption for Britain. If I want to understand the problems facing us I consult people like Durkheim, like Marx, like David Hume and Adam Smith. The Westminster elite look for inspiration from Tony Soprano and Nucky Thomson. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
This is first year secondary school sociology, it is basic and blindingly obvious, but of course the great and the good never read sociology because all sociologists are unrepentant Marxists, anti-establishment and unpatriotic. So, we can all happily ignore sociology and go home! Beginning in 1979, the reactionary elements in Britain launched a war against the entire concept of Britain and sought to remodel the nation in their own image. They were very successful. Britain today is almost unrecognisable from the Britain I grew up in. Their great achievement was the election of Margaret Thatcher who immediately set about destroying the society that was Britain at that time. The Thatcher experiment was all about destroying the collective culture, destroying the community, its norms and values and the engine of the British way of life, the welfare state. Thatcher initiated the great move to individualism, to an aggressive 'me' culture with its roots in greed and acquisitiveness as typified by her now famous 'there is no such thing as society'. The British value system was scrapped and replaced by one single value, monetary success. Economic criteria was the fundamental judge of every action, every policy and every outcome. If it made money it was good, if it didn't it was bad, simples. Most importantly, Thatcher determined to initiate a massive transference of wealth and power into the hands of a selective elite, those people Thatcher described as 'one of us'. Thatcher and her disciples, and this includes the modern Labour Party, quite deliberately erected a social structure that is ferociously exclusive, in that it excludes all those who do not share the Thatcher vision or who pose a threat to the dominance of her ideology, the neoliberal free market.
Emile Durkheim showed us, over 100 years ago, how events such as those initiated by Thatcher inevitably produce what he called Anomie. This is a condition of normlessness, of a loss of our social, collective and personal identity. Destroy a society's norms and values, debase its culture, and you will have rootlessness, a sense of loss and belonging, a crisis of identity that affects society both individually and collectively. There is nothing difficult about providing an explanation as to the problems we face today, what is difficult is accepting that this has been done deliberately, with malice and is our own fault because we, the British, embraced the greed, the 'f..k everyone else' approach and have voted for it consistently since 1979. Britain is a country obsessed with hatred and driven by a scapegoat mentality. We were swamped by a ceaseless propaganda of hatred, hatred of the collective nature of society that was continually categorised as 'socialist', hatred of trades unions, of the unemployed of immigrants, of the disabled, people on social security etc. As a result we applauded the destruction of the unions, of local government, the dismantling of the nationalised industries and the health service. We supported selling off our local and national assets to foreign companies whilst fuelling a pathological hatred of foreigners. We applauded the demonization of the poor and the disabled, we supported the welfare cuts and therefore we supported the dismantling of a civilised society and its replacement with barbarism. If you want to know why Muslims are embracing Isis, ask Durkheim, if you want to know why the Scots are embracing independence, ask Durkheim. If you want to know whose fault it is, look no further than Westminster and the right-wing press. When Blair went to war in Iraq he was simply following the logic of Thatcherism and the dominant ideological concept of Western ethnic, social and economic superiority.
I see no redemption for Britain. If I want to understand the problems facing us I consult people like Durkheim, like Marx, like David Hume and Adam Smith. The Westminster elite look for inspiration from Tony Soprano and Nucky Thomson. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday 16 June 2015
Westminster has even perverted our language
Anyone familiar with the discipline of sociology will be aware that we live
in a symbolic universe. What that means is that we make sense of much of our
social reality through symbols, and a large portion of such symbols are
delivered by language. When I use the word chair, each of us have a symbolic
representation of a chair in our consciousness and so I do not have to explain
what I mean by a chair. It is the same with words like kettle, pen or computer.
If I use a word like love however, or a word like Muslim or Catholic or black
or gay, then the symbol that each of us carry in our consciousness for words
such as these that do not denote a physical artefact will depend largely on our
socialisation which will render such words either positive or negative
depending on how we have been socialised to see them. Language is dynamic, in
that meanings alter between and within societies, and over time. For example, in
my lifetime the word gay has changed its meaning completely and is almost never
used in the Anglo-Saxon form that I learned as a child. In my world, a fag is
something you smoke, but in the US it is something quite different.
The same thing has happened to the word welfare, which was always referred to as social security until the Tories decided to adopt the derogatory and demeaning American use of welfare and thus embed within the consciousness of the British public an association with a negative and demeaning symbol in order to stigmatise the people who depend on it and all the Westminster parties have bought into this crime against humanity. We never use the term social security today, despite the fact that for much of my adult life the government department that was responsible for the benefits system was called The Department for Social Security. This rebranding of social security was quite deliberate in order to begin the process of demonising people on benefits, presenting them as enemies of the state and creating a national hatred for them amongst those who are fortunate enough to have a good job. People on social security are scapegoated for the failures of government and labelled as welfare scroungers and skivers in order to further the Tories ultimate goal of introducing modern forms of slavery, and they are well on their way to achieving this by stigmatising and demonising people on benefits and driving as many people as possible out of the benefits system and into low wage, zero-hours employment with no rights and no security, thus replacing one form of dependency with another. The people in such low wage, part-time, temporary and zero hours employment will be totally dependent on the employer and be forced to accept whatever terms and conditions are on offer. They are being systematically deprived of all employment rights, and that is a form of slavery. Under successive governments language has been deliberately distorted in order to present a distorted picture of reality. Welfare now denotes dependency instead of its Anglo-Saxon definition of well-being and care. It is a stigma today to be a welfare claimant when you are in fact a recipient of social security. In the English language, Welfare means health, happiness, prosperity and well-being, but in modern Tory Britain it means stigmatisation, dependency, food-banks, poverty and in many cases starvation. To be on welfare means you are unworthy, a non-person, the people the Nazis referred to as ‘untermenschen’.
This is in line with Thatcher's infamous statement that there is no such thing as society. If there is no society, then society has no responsibilities as it does not exist and therefore there can be no such thing as social security. All forms of security must be the responsibility of individuals and families because as Thatcher said, there are only individuals, families and voluntary associations. Feckless and irresponsible individuals and families get welfare, usually from charities and voluntary associations, but people who are citizens of a real and caring society get social security. Social security is anathema to Tories because it signals that society has a responsibility to those citizens that society has failed and they will not admit that. I mean we cannot accuse Thatcher of being wrong can we? People in need of social security are in that position because, according to the Tory gospel, it’s their own fault. Now, admittedly, some people who need benefits are themselves to blame, but, in the cause of a much greater social need, it is of little consequence if these people are included even though they don't really deserve it. That is the hallmark of a civilised society. We know that benefit fraud accounts for only 0.7% of the benefits budget whilst the Tories policies have produced tax fraud on a truly Olympian scale, foodbanks, widespread poverty and in some cases starvation, so which is the greatest fraud? If you share the Tories use of language you are as guilty as they are. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The same thing has happened to the word welfare, which was always referred to as social security until the Tories decided to adopt the derogatory and demeaning American use of welfare and thus embed within the consciousness of the British public an association with a negative and demeaning symbol in order to stigmatise the people who depend on it and all the Westminster parties have bought into this crime against humanity. We never use the term social security today, despite the fact that for much of my adult life the government department that was responsible for the benefits system was called The Department for Social Security. This rebranding of social security was quite deliberate in order to begin the process of demonising people on benefits, presenting them as enemies of the state and creating a national hatred for them amongst those who are fortunate enough to have a good job. People on social security are scapegoated for the failures of government and labelled as welfare scroungers and skivers in order to further the Tories ultimate goal of introducing modern forms of slavery, and they are well on their way to achieving this by stigmatising and demonising people on benefits and driving as many people as possible out of the benefits system and into low wage, zero-hours employment with no rights and no security, thus replacing one form of dependency with another. The people in such low wage, part-time, temporary and zero hours employment will be totally dependent on the employer and be forced to accept whatever terms and conditions are on offer. They are being systematically deprived of all employment rights, and that is a form of slavery. Under successive governments language has been deliberately distorted in order to present a distorted picture of reality. Welfare now denotes dependency instead of its Anglo-Saxon definition of well-being and care. It is a stigma today to be a welfare claimant when you are in fact a recipient of social security. In the English language, Welfare means health, happiness, prosperity and well-being, but in modern Tory Britain it means stigmatisation, dependency, food-banks, poverty and in many cases starvation. To be on welfare means you are unworthy, a non-person, the people the Nazis referred to as ‘untermenschen’.
This is in line with Thatcher's infamous statement that there is no such thing as society. If there is no society, then society has no responsibilities as it does not exist and therefore there can be no such thing as social security. All forms of security must be the responsibility of individuals and families because as Thatcher said, there are only individuals, families and voluntary associations. Feckless and irresponsible individuals and families get welfare, usually from charities and voluntary associations, but people who are citizens of a real and caring society get social security. Social security is anathema to Tories because it signals that society has a responsibility to those citizens that society has failed and they will not admit that. I mean we cannot accuse Thatcher of being wrong can we? People in need of social security are in that position because, according to the Tory gospel, it’s their own fault. Now, admittedly, some people who need benefits are themselves to blame, but, in the cause of a much greater social need, it is of little consequence if these people are included even though they don't really deserve it. That is the hallmark of a civilised society. We know that benefit fraud accounts for only 0.7% of the benefits budget whilst the Tories policies have produced tax fraud on a truly Olympian scale, foodbanks, widespread poverty and in some cases starvation, so which is the greatest fraud? If you share the Tories use of language you are as guilty as they are. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Labour, party of the brain-dead
I trust you will bear with me if I post another piece on the Labour Party, but I have become convinced that they have a death wish, because it is difficult to believe that they could be so collectively stupid. As you all know, I loath the Labour Party but at the same time I realise that a meaningful democracy must have meaningful debate and opposition. The problem is that within the Labour Party there is nothing remotely resembling meaningful. All of the leading personnel in the Labour Party in both England and Scotland are committed neoliberal free marketeers and not only cannot see any genuine alternatives to the poison of austerity but don't want to consider any if they are presented with them.
It beggars belief that the Scottish Labour Party are seriously considering Kezia Dugdale as their next leader and is testimony to the real absence of any talent within this sorry institution. If you want to know the real poison within Labour just consider their retiring leader Jim Murphy. It tells you all you need to know about this person when his final speech as leader of Scottish Labour was given in London to the Policy Exchange.
The Policy Exchange describes itself as a conservative think-tank. It is based in London and the Daily Telegraph newspaper described it as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right". The Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, is reputed to consider it his favourite think-tank, whilst the Political Editor of the Evening Standard referred to it as "the intellectual boot camp of the Tory modernisers’". The right-wing Independent journalist, the quite appalling John Rentoul, called it"the best think-tank in the business". The following is true, I did not make it up. On Wednesday 11th September 2013, I checked my calendar 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 recommended that the unemployed should be made to commute 90 minutes in order to sign on. To make sure that this was not a wind-up, I went onto their website to check this. In addition, it recommended that where everyone in a family was unemployed they should be required to sign-on together as a group. I live in Scotland where it is a 45 minute journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh by train or car, thus a 90 minute commute. The reasoning behind this proposal is that commuting to claim will ”boost the unemployed person’s confidence and open up their chances of finding work further afield”. 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. Presumably, in the course of this commuting, the unemployed from Glasgow will discover many employment opportunities in the Edinburgh area whilst the unemployed from Edinburgh will find similar employment opportunities in Glasgow. If such opportunities exist, why are there unemployed people in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the first place? Perhaps I am missing something in this cunning plan? However, 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. If the authorities do pay the journeys then the Social Security bill will escalate exponentially, but of course that will not 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 malignant nonsense must be genuinely disturbed. It does, however, reveal the true depth of hatred and contempt that the neoliberals harbour for the disadvantaged in our society, and it is this society that Jim Murphy is a supporter of and it is such policy proposals that are animating the leadership of Labour. Remember this person is already a member of the neoliberal right-wing Henry Jackson Society. This is the nature of the Labour Party in 2015 and is why the membership of the Scottish Labour Party is currently sitting at around 15,000 and falling.
Unless members of the Labour Party are going to raise their voices against the destruction of their party by these brain-dead careerists then it is goodbye Labour. There are simply no underlying ties between the concrete realities facing Labour in Scotland and those facing them in England. Winning in England requires adopting policies and strategies that will kill them stone dead in Scotland and if they can't see that then they don't deserve to survive. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
It beggars belief that the Scottish Labour Party are seriously considering Kezia Dugdale as their next leader and is testimony to the real absence of any talent within this sorry institution. If you want to know the real poison within Labour just consider their retiring leader Jim Murphy. It tells you all you need to know about this person when his final speech as leader of Scottish Labour was given in London to the Policy Exchange.
The Policy Exchange describes itself as a conservative think-tank. It is based in London and the Daily Telegraph newspaper described it as "the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right". The Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, is reputed to consider it his favourite think-tank, whilst the Political Editor of the Evening Standard referred to it as "the intellectual boot camp of the Tory modernisers’". The right-wing Independent journalist, the quite appalling John Rentoul, called it"the best think-tank in the business". The following is true, I did not make it up. On Wednesday 11th September 2013, I checked my calendar 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 recommended that the unemployed should be made to commute 90 minutes in order to sign on. To make sure that this was not a wind-up, I went onto their website to check this. In addition, it recommended that where everyone in a family was unemployed they should be required to sign-on together as a group. I live in Scotland where it is a 45 minute journey from Glasgow to Edinburgh by train or car, thus a 90 minute commute. The reasoning behind this proposal is that commuting to claim will ”boost the unemployed person’s confidence and open up their chances of finding work further afield”. 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. Presumably, in the course of this commuting, the unemployed from Glasgow will discover many employment opportunities in the Edinburgh area whilst the unemployed from Edinburgh will find similar employment opportunities in Glasgow. If such opportunities exist, why are there unemployed people in Glasgow and Edinburgh in the first place? Perhaps I am missing something in this cunning plan? However, 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. If the authorities do pay the journeys then the Social Security bill will escalate exponentially, but of course that will not 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 malignant nonsense must be genuinely disturbed. It does, however, reveal the true depth of hatred and contempt that the neoliberals harbour for the disadvantaged in our society, and it is this society that Jim Murphy is a supporter of and it is such policy proposals that are animating the leadership of Labour. Remember this person is already a member of the neoliberal right-wing Henry Jackson Society. This is the nature of the Labour Party in 2015 and is why the membership of the Scottish Labour Party is currently sitting at around 15,000 and falling.
Unless members of the Labour Party are going to raise their voices against the destruction of their party by these brain-dead careerists then it is goodbye Labour. There are simply no underlying ties between the concrete realities facing Labour in Scotland and those facing them in England. Winning in England requires adopting policies and strategies that will kill them stone dead in Scotland and if they can't see that then they don't deserve to survive. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday 9 June 2015
The Labour Party RIP.
I am becoming more convinced that the Labour Party is finished and has become an irrelevance. If Labour has any common sense they will come clean and admit that they sold the Scottish people a pack of lies at the referendum with their vow. They will then admit that what is being offered to the Scots in the new Scotland Bill is an insult and stop trying to defend it. If they took such a course of action, then the people would probably accept their confession and give them another chance. But that will not happen and what convinces me most about Labour's imminent demise is the appalling personnel that represent them at the top. All of the candidates for the leadership have scoffed at the idea of an independent Scottish Labour Party, and I repeat, an independent Scottish party is Labour's only hope in Scotland because Scotland and England are now set on two very different agendas and political trajectories. These people are not in denial about what is happening to them, it is an outright refusal to accept it. Most of the people vying for the national leadership are bigger Tories than the real Tories and have all bought into the austerity argument. They are fully committed to Thatcher's "there is no alternative" and are quite incapable of any genuine intellectual solutions to the crisis of neoliberalism and free market economics. Not one of the candidates have spoken out against the cuts, they argue about how to implement them, but not about the principle of cuts.
Labour's only MP in Scotland, Ian Murray, is an example. You would think that if only for his own survival he would take his party to task and seek to reverse its demonstrable incompetence but his slavish kowtowing to the familiar London party line epitomises the complete lack of talent in the Labour Party and as for Kezia Dugdale, if anyone in the Labour Party thinks she is the answer, then they haven't even begun to understand the question. She may well be a very nice lady, but she makes Jim Murphy look intelligent. She appears to be quite incapable of answering any question without attacking the SNP. These people still haven't grasped why so many of their own supporters voted SNP and are making no attempt to understand it. As I keep saying, many people are only voting SNP as a vehicle for opposition to Westminster and its personnel. The SNP are a means to an end and attacking them cuts no ice with such people as they are not SNP supporters and only become increasingly disgusted with Labour's childish behaviour and refusal to see reality. This is the result of an overweening arrogance built up over many decades of undisputed power, they genuinely think they have a right to be dominant in Scotland, which makes the future all the brighter for those who wish to see an independent Scotland because if that is the principal opposition to the independence argument then we are home to tea, because, although people like me are not natural SNP supporters, there is no doubt that they are talented, capable and have the best leader in the UK by a long way.
I repeat, for Labour to recover in Scotland they will have to be very different from England. The UK is finished, it is only a matter of time. Scotland and England are two very different and quite incompatible cultural entities now. The fissures have been appearing for many years, but they became very graphic during Mad Tony's spell in government and were made worse by Daphne Broon and his disastrous Premiership. Scotland was lied to, persistently and repeatedly, and were treated with contempt by Labour. With the Tories the Scots are never in any doubt that they are regarded with utter contempt, indeed hatred, but they have come to realise that these views were shared equally by Labour. The Tories dismiss us, Labour takes us for granted. No longer. Labour has been sent homeward to think again, the problem is that they do not have the intellect to manage a decent bout of reflection. They have time yet, but it is fast running out. Perhaps I will offer my services as an adviser? The problem is they are not worth saving. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Labour's only MP in Scotland, Ian Murray, is an example. You would think that if only for his own survival he would take his party to task and seek to reverse its demonstrable incompetence but his slavish kowtowing to the familiar London party line epitomises the complete lack of talent in the Labour Party and as for Kezia Dugdale, if anyone in the Labour Party thinks she is the answer, then they haven't even begun to understand the question. She may well be a very nice lady, but she makes Jim Murphy look intelligent. She appears to be quite incapable of answering any question without attacking the SNP. These people still haven't grasped why so many of their own supporters voted SNP and are making no attempt to understand it. As I keep saying, many people are only voting SNP as a vehicle for opposition to Westminster and its personnel. The SNP are a means to an end and attacking them cuts no ice with such people as they are not SNP supporters and only become increasingly disgusted with Labour's childish behaviour and refusal to see reality. This is the result of an overweening arrogance built up over many decades of undisputed power, they genuinely think they have a right to be dominant in Scotland, which makes the future all the brighter for those who wish to see an independent Scotland because if that is the principal opposition to the independence argument then we are home to tea, because, although people like me are not natural SNP supporters, there is no doubt that they are talented, capable and have the best leader in the UK by a long way.
I repeat, for Labour to recover in Scotland they will have to be very different from England. The UK is finished, it is only a matter of time. Scotland and England are two very different and quite incompatible cultural entities now. The fissures have been appearing for many years, but they became very graphic during Mad Tony's spell in government and were made worse by Daphne Broon and his disastrous Premiership. Scotland was lied to, persistently and repeatedly, and were treated with contempt by Labour. With the Tories the Scots are never in any doubt that they are regarded with utter contempt, indeed hatred, but they have come to realise that these views were shared equally by Labour. The Tories dismiss us, Labour takes us for granted. No longer. Labour has been sent homeward to think again, the problem is that they do not have the intellect to manage a decent bout of reflection. They have time yet, but it is fast running out. Perhaps I will offer my services as an adviser? The problem is they are not worth saving. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 4 June 2015
Let the Barbarism begin
Less than one month after the general election the barbarism begins. Before the election the Tories told us they were going to
immediately implement £13billion in cuts but today announced another
£4.5billion on top of that. £1.5billion of the government’s proposed savings
will be achieved by the sale of the last 30% of Royal Mail still held in public
hands. Remember the £13billion cuts announced before the election are just for
this year and 2016, there are £30billion in cuts waiting for the two years
after that.
If you live in England and read this blog then you must simply accept that this is what you voted for. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
This is neoliberalism in full swing with the malice of the
Tories being unleashed with no constraints on them. Never underestimate the
hatred the Tories harbour for the public sector and their determination to
utterly destroy it. Not one experiment in privatisation has been a success
since Thatcher began the process in 1980, but that is of no consequence to the
Tories to whom privatisation has been amazingly successful in providing
fortunes for them and their mates. This is indeed a Westminster malaise as it
was the incompetent Lib/Dem clown Vince Cable who completely cocked up the
first tranche of Royal Mail privatisation, but undeterred the Tories are
completing the destruction of one of Britain’s oldest public institutions for
purely ideological reasons. This has nothing to do with value for money,
efficiency, or any other spurious excuse, it is purely for exploitation and
profit making by the Tories and the financial elite who control them. This has
been the lesson of every other privatisation that we have witnessed so far. Remember,
Royal Mail shares were sold for 330p and today are selling at 526p. The public
were robbed blind and never raised a whimper, voting these licensed gangsters
back into power four weeks ago.
In this Parliament I want you to watch closely the activities of the Business Secretary Sajid Javid. This is a dangerous man and an open and enthusiastic supporter and admirer of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy. Having said that, there is nothing philosophical about Rand and Objectivism; it is unadulterated psychopathy. A follower of Objectivism is quite simply a nutter! This belief system is as extreme and as dangerous as Nazism, because it is avowedly hostile to democracy and hates the public sector with a passion. It describes the poor and the disadvantaged as scum and parasites and argues that if you are poor and cannot feed yourself or your family that is tough, it is your own fault and you don't deserve any help and this philosophy is now deep in the heart of British government. Should anyone wish further guidance on Rand and her odious ideas I will be glad to assist.If you live in England and read this blog then you must simply accept that this is what you voted for. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday 2 June 2015
Charles Kennedy
This is just a short post to pay homage to Charles Kennedy. Charles was a very good friend of mine at university and we were debating partners for a time. He was Convener of debates at Glasgow Univ. when I was Convener of debates at Strathclyde and I was a frequent guest speaker at Glasgow thanks to Charles. We were also colleagues in the Social Democratic Party after he was elected to Parliament and sat on the Scottish Executive Committee together. The only time I have been in the Westminster Parliament was as a guest of Charles. He was a good man.
Charles was quite genuinely one of those rare people who was just what you expected. He was open and genuine, he was an actual gentleman. I haven't seen Charles for many years but I remember him fondly. I am persistently contemptuous of Westminster politicians as anyone who reads this blog will know, but I exclude Charles from my withering contempt. He was a generous man in word, deed and spirit and he will be sorely missed by many people. I was glad to be his friend.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
Charles was quite genuinely one of those rare people who was just what you expected. He was open and genuine, he was an actual gentleman. I haven't seen Charles for many years but I remember him fondly. I am persistently contemptuous of Westminster politicians as anyone who reads this blog will know, but I exclude Charles from my withering contempt. He was a generous man in word, deed and spirit and he will be sorely missed by many people. I was glad to be his friend.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat.
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