Sunday 31 January 2016

The State is good for your health

It will soon be illegal to grow old in this country. Everyday we read analysis in the press or watch it on TV about the economic problems of the NHS, the benefits system, pensions and housing for example, that concludes that the fundamental cause of the problem is that people are living too long. We have too many elderly people and they are too big a burden on financial resources. This, of course is all utter garbage and a useful scapegoat for the Tories and their obsession with a low tax financial system. Britain, under successive free market driven governments, culminating in this neo-Nazi Tory regime that labels human beings fleeing disaster as 'swarms' thus likening them to locusts and other insects, and their supporters calling them cockroaches, and with a Prime Minister who now refers to actual desperate human beings as 'a bunch of migrants' has been successfully reduced to a society lurching from crisis to crisis because of its economic policy approach. I say that it has been successfully reduced, because that is the policy of the free marketeers, to produce a society in permanent crisis in order that they can promote their free market 'solutions' to the crises that they themselves have engineered. This is the application of 'The Shock Doctrine' as so graphically shown by Naomi Klein. I have written before that I thought that Gordon Brown has to have been the worst Prime Minister in British history, but I have had to change my mind. David Cameron has proven to be not only thick and incompetent, but a thoroughly nasty piece of work who seeks to demonise whole categories of people prior to dehumanising them in classic neo-Nazi style so that he can implement policies that are otherwise unacceptable to civilised society.  

However, to return to the elderly. Todays elderly population are a testament to the success of state intervention and point the way to how it will require a recovery of the state to promote economic and social recovery. It was state provision that removed the poor, the disabled, the sick, the unemployed etc. from the tyranny of the market. The private sector will let you die, starve, stay homeless and cope with your disability however you can if you cannot pay the market price. I have written before how the health of the nation and increased longevity had little to do with medicine and almost everything to do with state intervention. The single biggest factor was the establishment of council housing giving decent, clean, secure, comfortable and affordable housing to all in society. Other factors were the regulations regarding sanitation, sewage, clean water, factory acts, etc. etc. The state intervened to regulate the brutality and callousness of employers, landlords and the private sector in general.

We have to challenge and destroy the free market mythology that state intervention is self-evidently bad.  We have to change the free market narrative that the market is both self-evidently good and neutral. Finally we have to destroy the myth that there is in fact a market. Today we are governed by gangster monopolies that work in collusion with a gangster elite that governs in the interest of an ever smaller minority of criminals who pose as entrepreneurs and philanthropists. State intervention is not socialism, if it is then Adam Smith was a socialist as he advocated state intervention to establish essential public services and works, but, more importantly, to regulate the social and economic world in the interests of law and justice. Justice is the essential foundations of any society and without it, society will utterly perish, that is what Smith told us. We live in a world where justice is regarded as a constraint on economic interests and profit making. We live is a world that has been systematically stripped of all moral standards, a world where the elderly are a burden and a nuisance. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Sunday 24 January 2016

If Putin is as bad as the British portray him, why do they follow his example?

As you know, I do not share the Westminster pigsty's hatred and demonization of all things Russian. A nation that claims to be ruled by law must always implement the presumption of innocence, that is, they must always assume innocence until guilt is proven, but this week we have witnessed an orgy of anti-Russian propaganda in the British press and media because an inquiry concluded that Alexander Litvinenko was probably assassinated by the Russian state with the endorsement of its President. Probability is not proof, but it is enough for the British. We have indulged in an orgy of self-righteous indignation about the evil Russians and their fascist President. Now, what happened to Litvinenko was ghastly and inhuman, and I suspect that what the inquiry concluded was, again, probably true, but, rather than rush to judgement on something that has not been conclusively proven, I hesitate to condemn given that I live in a country that has a proven track record for extra-judicial assassinations and murders of its own citizens and should be careful not to invite a scrutiny of its own record. For example, in 1988 the British SAS assassinated three members of the IRA in Gibraltar. Thames Television made a programme showing that the three IRA had been shot whilst unarmed and surrendering and that the excuse that they had a bomb was false. The government shut Thames Television down and disbanded the Independent Broadcasting Authority when they found that the company had acted properly and in good faith. If Putin is actually how the British portray him, he would have been quite proud of such action.   

The British continually portray Putin as a tyrant, but I am continually warning about the creeping authoritarianism of the Conservative Party and how this Tory party are slowly developing a totalitarian Britain where they have a monopoly on power. For example, in Britain opposition parties in the Westminster pigsty get what is known as 'Short' money from the Treasury. This is money that enables them to operate in opposition with a greater effectiveness and enhances their ability to organise and hold the government to account. The Chancellor is going to cut this short money by 19% which the Labour Party estimates will lose them £6 million per annum. In addition, the Tories are increasingly making use of what are known as statutory instruments to bypass Parliament and bring in measures that will consolidate their power without scrutiny. In short, the Tories are becoming genuinely dangerous. Statutory instruments are a form of legislation that allows for provisions in any Act of Parliament to be brought into force, altered or amended without the scrutiny of the parliamentary process. It is known as secondary, delegated or subordinate legislation. They give ministers powers to enforce rules and regulations, but were never meant to be used in the unscrupulous manner that the Tories are using them. For example the Tories plan to scrap university maintenance grants for approximately half a million students by pushing a statutory instrument through a committee of just 18 MPs and completely bypassing Parliament..
Since Camoron first assumed power he has made no secret of his aim to remove any and all actions by European courts from British public life. In addition, if the Tories are united on any one thing it is their determination to scrap the Human Rights Act. He persistently condemns the House of Lords if it has the audacity to fulfil its constitutional function if that means finding against him and is determined to stop this. In line with destroying the Labour Party he is gerrymandering constituency boundaries to reduce the number of seats from 650 to 600. What is so bad about this is that he is going to base the new constituency boundaries, not on population as it has always been, but on voter registration. This has been estimated by all experts as a move to ensure that the Tories will never lose another election. In addition, he is planning to allow expatriates to vote for life rather than the present 15 years. Most expats are pensioners and at the last election pensioners voted for the Tories by a margin of 24% over the rest and registered a 78% turnout. He has already introduced voting measures in the Commons that reduces Scottish MPs to second-class citizens and has bullied the BBC to such an extent that it is hardly worth watching any more.

His latest move is, however, quite grotesque. He has announced that he intends to place British soldiers above the law. Thus, on one hand he condemns Vladimir Putin for destroying the rule of law, whilst announcing that he is determined to do just that himself. British soldiers will no longer, if he gets his way, be subject to British law, European law, Human Rights Law, or the Geneva Convention. Why, because if he is nothing he is at least predictable, it is costing the government money. British troops will no longer be legally accountable for anything they do, including torture and murder in case someone claims compensation. The British Defence Secretary, the abominable Michael Fallon, has announced that he is determined to remove British troops from accountability to human rights law because of "ambulance chasing lawyers". 
This post is already too large, but if anyone wants clarification on any of these matters, they are all in the public domain, or, if you wish I will be happy to clarify them in another post. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat







Monday 18 January 2016

I hope Trump wins the Republican nomination

I am writing this on the day that the British Parliament is debating whether Donald Trump should be banned from this country. This debate is in response to a petition of over half a million signatures demanding that he be banned from Britain over his outrageous and inflammatory remarks, particularly with respect to Muslims, made during his attempt to gain the Republican nomination. I trust that readers of this blog will anticipate my complete disagreement with any attempt to ban this person regardless of how odious he is. We must always heed the maxim (often incorrectly attributed to Voltaire) "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". It is vital that in this volatile and poisonous political climate today that we do not lose sight of the fundamentals, the necessary minimums that protect our safety and our human rights.

What alarms me most about Donald Trump is his popularity. He is a truly dangerous man who is quite evidently not very clever and it is a cause for concern that he is not a figure of ridicule in the United States. Rather than ban Donald Trump from this country, I would prevent him from conducting any business here. I would remove his licences for his various operations. He is welcome as a visitor and a tourist, but certainly not as an employer or as a fit and proper person to engage in business activities, unless and until, he dissociates himself from his remarks and gives assurances that such sentiments will not impact on British citizens.

I for one hope that he wins the Republican nomination as I refuse to believe that rational America will even countenance his candidacy and that the Republicans will suffer the largest presidential defeat in history. The Republican Party needs to be, not only beaten, but beaten so comprehensively that they are forced to have a root and branch analysis of their current political and ideological situation. I have watched America carefully recently and have watched numerous programmes including interviews with the Ku Klux Klan. I am convinced that a substantial number of Americans would vote for Adolf Hitler is they got the chance. It genuinely beggars my belief that anyone could vote for Donald Trump, but that is obviously what is going to happen. In my opinion this man has a very slim grasp of politics and even less of economics. His success in business is most certainly not testimony to a grasp of economics before anyone rushes to tell me how successful he is. Al Capone and Meyer Lansky were very successful but I doubt if they had any grasp of economic principles whatsoever. It is one thing to run a company and quite another to run a nation state.

I have no wish to appear critical of the United States because you know that I consider what they do to be their own business. What concerns me is the impact that people like Trump have on the world and in particular on the United Kingdom. His presence on the political scene has provoked a reaction in Britain that has produced a threat to freedom of speech. In addition, he gives succour to Britain's own Klansmen in the Tory Party. As you know, we have a government minister whom I regard as Britain's Adolf Eichman, and a Prime Minister who wants to deport Muslim women who cannot speak English. The Tories are not yet on the same scale as some Republicans, but they are getting closer. This Prime Minister is a man who thinks that single parents need parenting classes, but is the same man who, with his wife, went home from their local pub without their daughter. Anyone else would have been visited by social services. You have been warned.

Your Servant 
Doktor Kommirat     

Sunday 10 January 2016

In Scotland, the Tories couldn’t finish second in a two-horse race

For those of you from outside the UK who are kind enough to read this blog, I understand you may have difficulty with comments I make about the difference between politics in Scotland and the rest of the UK. The following is the conclusion of an article in a British national newspaper, the Guardian, about the coming Scottish Parliamentary elections in May. For your information, the Scottish Labour leader referred to in the piece is a lady called Kezia Dugdale and the lady referred to as Ruth Davidson is the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party. As an aside it may interest you to know that with Nicola Sturgeon being the leader of the Scottish National Party, Scotland is in the position of having women leading all three major parties, a situation I trust you will agree is quite progressive and healthy, once again underpinning my argument that Scotland is by far the most intelligent and civilised part of the UK.

Sources close to the Scottish Labour leader have revealed that her greatest fear is to be beaten into third place by the Tories, in which circumstance she would simply have to go. As each opinion poll shows the gap between the SNP and Labour growing yet wider, so Ruth Davidson has grown bolder in her proclamations that the Tories could finish second in May. In Scotland, though, the Tories couldn’t finish second in a two-horse race. Her opponents need merely remind the Scottish electorate that Ruth Davidson belongs to the same party as David Cameron and George Osborne.

I do realise that it may be difficult to accept my descriptions of the toxicity of the Tories in Scotland but here you have a national British newspaper admitting that the Tories could not come second in Scotland in a two horse race. Admittedly the author of the article is Scottish, but he is being paid by a London based newspaper for his reports. In 1955 when the Tories were called the Scottish Unionist Party, they actually polled over 50% of votes cast. Their merger with the London based Conservative Party in 1965 was their undoing, and of course the election of Thatcher marked the beginning of the end as Thatcher made no attempt to hide her contempt for, and hatred of, all things Scottish. But of course the real reason for their downfall was their enthusiasm for free market political economy and their war against the working class. I am of course giving a very course summary of the Conservatives decline in Scotland and it is more complex than that, but those are the bare facts. Their contempt for Scotland and their hatred of working people led to the massive Thatcher led deindustrialisation of Scotland and the deliberate destruction of Scottish industry, particularly coal and steel. It is probable that the rise in Scottish Nationalism is a reaction to the strident English nationalism of the Tories and latterly Mad Tony's New Labour Party.

It is this elitist, monarchical obsessed English nationalism that will be the foundation of the forces that wish us to leave the EU. If that happens then Scotland will almost certainly leave the UK. The Scots will not tolerate being governed by racists and elitists who hate their guts and who are determined to destroy the NHS and the welfare state. I don't know what these people are taught at Eton, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, but it is certainly not an appreciation of their own history, nor a proper grounding in political philosophy. When the Scottish philosopher David Hume went to Cambridge he lasted six months and demanded his money back, and Adam Smith tells us in the Wealth of Nations that Oxford was a complete waste of his time. The Tories are simply incapable of learning from their mistakes as we see from their obsession with all things American and war. They love bombing and killing people, and inflicting pain and humiliation on the weakest and most unfortunate within society. They are completely morally bankrupt. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Saturday 9 January 2016

The right to strike is a human right!

Just to update you on how you can be expected to be treated in modern Britain if you are on benefits, a lady from Essex in England who suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease received a letter from Iain Duncan Smith's Department of Work and Pensions telling her that she was not considered ill enough to qualify for her benefits on the day she died. Such incidents embody all the elements of Tory policy; incompetence, cruelty, brutality and callousness. If I can address another sinister aspect of Tory Britain, we can discern a pattern of the ideology that nothing other than economic criteria can be considered relevant in todays deeply sick society, an ideological position that affects every worker everywhere. Such matters should be alarming to all citizens in all societies because it is the effect of a poisonous dominant ideology that is destroying our world. This free market nonsense must become the focus of a concerted challenge from all who are suffering from its malignant presence.

I listened to a radio programme this morning where MPs and so-called experts were questioned by a studio audience and one of the questions asked was, should doctors, nurses and medical practitioners have the right to strike? I find such a question profoundly sad and alarming. I wonder about the intelligence of people who would even ask such a question, but even more about the evil of an elected representative who would agree with the position that they shouldn't. The arrangement between an employer and an employee is a contract. It is voluntarily entered into but it is a very unequal power relationship where the reality for the employee is that the only power available to them in a situation of intimidation, bullying, exploitation etc. is the removal of their labour. The right to strike is a human right and one of the few rights left to working people in todays neoliberal dystopia. Should anyone lose that right then they are effectively reduced to a state of slavery as they lose all control over their working life. You may say that they should leave, but that is not a viable option in a money economy, and even if you did, you would just be swopping one type of slavery for another. This is another case of relativity because, despite the ravings of Thatcher and her disciples, the right to manage your business as you see fit, is not an absolute right to do as you please, employers have responsibilities as well as rights. In Britain the police do not have the right to strike, but such exceptions are only manageable when the employees have carefully crafted safeguards and guarantees embodied within their terms and conditions of employment. Even with such safeguards, no body representing employees can ever trust the employer to honour and protect such matters. That is what the medical profession are finding out in their dealings with a government that is unbelievingly mendacious and untrustworthy. 

Westminster MPs of all shades of criminality persistently raise the matter of cancelled operations and cancelled appointments in the eventuality of a doctors strike. I will continue to persistently remind you of all the cancelled appointments and cancelled operations that accompanied the holiday that doctors were given to celebrate the royal wedding of William and Kate, just to mention the most recent of these joyous celebrations we are frequently subjected to. For those of you reading this from outside the UK, I would remind you that as someone who was born and bred in Britain and have lived here all of my life, I am not a citizen, I am a subject, and that is how the British elite want me to see myself, as subject to their rule and decrees. That is why they genuinely regard it as an affront that they can be challenged. The hypocrisy of the British when it comes to kowtowing to these dysfunctional reprobates is quite nauseating and I often think that the British deserve all they get. Don't misunderstand me, I haven't much sympathy for the medical profession as they are the type of people who keep the Tories in power and support all their vindictive measures against real working people, but that doesn't mean that I will not support their rights, I only trust that they will remember what it's like the next time they are inconvenienced by manual workers defending their conditions. When they Tories declared war on the miners, the steelworkers and all other manual trades, the doctors never dreamt they would someday come for them, they know now. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
  

Friday 8 January 2016

The anger and rhetoric of American gun enthusiasts is quite illogical and irrational

I have no wish to pontificate on another culture's normative order, but I do have questions about the current issue of guns in the United States. The US has cultural mores that I find difficult to understand and that I find profoundly unattractive. That is their business and not mine, I freely admit. But the question of guns raises fundamental issues that affect every society, so, at the risk of offending my American friends, which I sincerely hope I can avoid, let me make some observations.

 The first obvious fact of the American gun question is that it is enshrined in the Second Amendment. However, this is a piece of legislation that was passed in 1791 when the population of America was four million people, 95% of whom lived in a rural setting. As the USA was a fledgling society with no standing army that had just fought a war with the then dominant nation in the world, the US were quite rationally concerned that they would have the means to protect themselves with a speedily arranged and effectively armed militia should the need arise. In addition, this was a society where the sixgun and the rifle were normal as the Uzi, the Kalashnikov, the assault rifle with telescopic lens etc. had not been invented. There were no organised police departments, no FBI etc. and everyone was responsible for their own safety and the safety of their community. In other words, the USA of the 1790's was a completely different nation and culture to the modern nation state. Today's USA has absolutely nothing in common with the USA of the Founding Fathers. I raise this because I find it strange that no-one seems to take such matters into consideration in the debate about guns. I also raise it because guns and a gun culture are slowly making their way into the United Kingdom and we have a police force that are desperate to be armed. Quite honestly, an American style gun culture taking root in this country terrifies me and must never be allowed to flourish.

The other aspect of this complex problem I would comment on is the insistence that a curb on their ability to carry guns is a direct assault on American freedom. I find this approach quite wrong. I have a deep philosophical and political objection to the concept of absolutes. I do not believe in them. Everything is relative. There is no, and can never be, an absolute freedom. It is the same with rights. All people have the right to life, but that right is not absolute if you are going to exploit your right to life by taking away someone else's right. Freedom and rights are paradoxes, in the sense that your freedom and rights can never be the foundation for removing other people's freedom and rights. As the old saying goes, your right to swing your fist wherever you want to stops at the end of my nose. As a result, the right to bear and carry arms must be regarded as both relative and limited, that is, it should always be regulated, and this is what I find disturbing about the furore that has followed Obama's extremely modest proposals for the regulation of guns. The anger and rhetoric of American gun enthusiasts is quite illogical and irrational.

We had a very serious incident in Dunblane in Scotland when we were subjected to an American style shooting in a school. There was an immediate call for the strict regulation of guns that was eventually conceded by the government, but being a Tory government they had to be dragged screaming and kicking to submit to the will of the electorate. The local Tory MP refused to support measures to control firearms and was subsequently roundly defeated at the next election. He may have been Scottish but he was a traditional Tory elitist imbecile and got exactly what he deserved. As I repeatedly tell you, the Scots are far to intelligent and civilised to suffer people like that for too long. There have been no other Dunblanes. I do not know if this has any relevance for our American friends but I feel that if they do not address this issue as a matter of urgency it will have very profound implications for American society. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Wednesday 6 January 2016

Don't take ill if you are on benefits!

I have been reflecting on the state of the United Kingdom and of how I am aware that people have difficulty taking me seriously when I write that the Conservatives, who are the public face of free market fundamentalism, will not rest until the British working class are effectively reduced to a state of slavery. This is what their masters in the business and financial world want and that is what they are dedicated to deliver. David Cameron and George Osborne have assembled a group of ideological zealots in charge of public policy who are genuinely dangerous. We are now facing the first ever all-out withdrawal of labour by the medical profession in our history. If that is the way that the Tories are dealing with doctors, one of the pillars of bourgeois society and the kind of people the Tories went to school with, then what chance has the ordinary worker got? Thankfully, given that the Scots are a far more civilised and intelligent people, we will be spared this action. Tories disgust the Scots and whilst there are a residual 15-17% of Tories in Scotland fouling our politics and shaming us, their prospects for power are slim indeed, and for that the Scots are grateful. Indeed the only prospect for Scottish Tories is that those selfish public sector hating middle class who supported Mad Tony's New Labour because they realise that voting Tory in Scotland is a waste of time and that Labour will give them what they want anyway, will switch to them in despair at the state of Scottish Labour. So they may get a slight boost in May.

However, I am left with the empirical reality of a nation that is rapidly descending into barbarity. There was a very brief period in British history from the end of World War 2 until the election of Thatcher when Britain could be called a civilised society. This was a time when, however imperfectly, we genuinely attempted to build a more equal and opportunistic society, a society where everyone had the opportunity for decent housing, health, education and enough to eat. Thatcher was determined to destroy that society and she and her successors have achieved their aims. We recently had the spectacle of a lady in Dundee having her benefits sanctioned because she missed a meeting with a benefits adviser. For those of you outside Britain, if you transgress any of the rules regarding benefit claims you will be sanctioned regardless of your circumstances. This means that your benefits will be completely stopped for at least 30 days. That is, you have no income whatsoever in a money economy. The lady in Dundee's crime was that she missed the meeting because she was rushed to hospital with a miscarriage. That is not a good enough excuse in Iain Duncan Smith's Department and so her sanction was effectively put into place, she should have attended the meeting. There are thousands of cases like this in modern Britain, indeed people with terminal cancer but who are diagnosed with at least six months left to live are considered as being fit for work and if they do not make enough attempts to find work for the six months they have left to live they will have their benefits stopped. I could fill pages with such examples, such is the reality in modern Tory Britain. So please don't even try to tell me that Britain is a civilised society.

In 1990 42% of people in Britain lived in council housing, today it is less than 8%. British rail travel is six times higher than our nearest rivals on the European continent. The whole free market privatisation experiment is a disaster, but of course the propaganda of economy, efficiency and superior service was always a lie and even Thatcher didn't believe it. It is simply a mechanism to make vast profits out of the people most in need. Housing in Britain is in permanent crisis and unbelievably expensive. We now have over 1million people in the 7th richest country in the world dependent on foodbanks. Channel Four News uncovered a train journey that costs £1000. We have Dickensian levels of child poverty and malnutrition. The latest research shows that the average Chief Executive in Britain earns more in one day than the average British worker earns in a year. These few examples are just a flavour of life in modern Britain under free market obsessed criminals and gangsters. I was approached by a friend who asked to include in my blog for those people abroad who have difficulty understanding Scottish and Irish hostility towards British governments a wee reminder for them to do even a cursory look at British history and see what Westminster and our glorious monarchy did in both Ireland and Scotland, during, for example, the potato famine and the Highland Clearances. Such people are back in government today, you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat