Make America Sane Again as I increasingly despair for the UK

I am always reluctant to criticise other countries especially given the state of the UK, but if I were an American I would be deeply concerned about several actions taken recently by the 45 that do not bode well for America's future. There are three areas of real concern, the recent tax reforms, the drive for deregulation and the packing of the judiciary with politically motivated personnel. These actions may well have troubling long-term consequences.

The 45's tax reforms are totally ideological and have nothing to do with either good management or the public interest. Neoliberals have a deep and abiding hatred of the state and seem blind to the fact that a modern economy needs a healthy and interventionist state. All empirical evidence shows us that education, health, welfare etc, cannot, and must not, be left to the greed and exploitation of the private sector. It is the height of financial irresponsibility to heap even more burdens on a deficit that already defies the imagination. In a modern economy education is essential to the health and wealth of the nation, as are public works, welfare and health provision. All such activities need public funding through taxation and this cannot be avoided. Thus, tax cuts on the scale the 45 has delivered are both anti-social and deeply dangerous and cannot, under any stretch of the imagination, benefit 'the people'. They will benefit some people, the minority who already have, those, who in the Blessed Margaret's terms are 'one of us'. The rest of us can go do whatever we want, as long as we do not threaten the filth's monopoly on power and privilege.

I would have thought that by now the case against deregulation was unanswerable. Humans are social animals and by definition regulatory beings. Deregulation was the cause of the 2008 financial crash and proved beyond doubt that financiers of all kinds cannot be trusted, that they are dishonest, venal and corrupt. The fundamental individualism that free marketeers promote, particularly in the American context, is not only ideologically bankrupt, but dangerous. There is no such thing as an individual in the context that free market neoliberal enthusiasts portray, they not only do not exist, but cannot exist, and the principal inspiration behind this version of human nature is Ayn Rand, the main source for the ideological poison that motivates both the Republican and Tory parties. Ayn Rand's philosophy is quite insane, indeed it is not accurate to call it a philosophy, and explains the cruelty and nastiness of right-wing ideologues that becomes translated into public policy. As a result, the free market concept of freedom is wrong because they do not understand the nature of the human being. Freedom does not come with tax cuts and a bonfire of regulations, quite the opposite, such policies transfer all power and wealth into ever fewer hands, leaving the majority in dependency and forms of slavery, and, as I will never tire of warning you, is the real agenda of both the Republicans and the Tories, although in such matters the Tories are even more callous and cruel than their American brethren. I wish Americans would lose their fear and hatred of Marx, because on this, the quite deliberate concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, as on many other things, he was right. In addition, I remind you that Adam Smith warned of exactly the same thing one hundred years before Marx and that it is simply wrong to argue that Adam Smith said that the state should not intervene in economic matters. His arguments for free trade must not be extrapolated to encompass all economic activity. Thus, I submit that both Marx and Smith warn us against the path that the Republicans in America and the Tories in the UK are taking us down.

It was St Thomas Aquinas who told us that an unjust law is no law at all. The people who control both the US and the UK have no concept of justice and view real justice as a barrier to their goals. Justice is a constraint, and as we all know, these people will not tolerate constraints on their activities. Thus, the 45's motivation for packing the judiciary with free marketeers is exactly the same as the Tories desperation to exit the EU and the constraints of the European Court and Human Rights provisions. When you get people like that controlling the legal system and importantly for Americans, interpreting the Constitution, then you can look forward to a whole barrage of legalities that are deeply unjust and partial. Both the US and the UK will get progressively more unequal and unjust in the short to medium term future, but there is more hope for a form of redress in the US than in this class based politically ignorant midden. I am writing this on Christmas Day, is that sad, or is it not? But I am being fortified by Harvey's Bristol Cream and various delicacies. I wish you all well for the festive season but fear that the new year will be politically very dynamic and turbulent for both our unfortunate nations. As for the rest of the world, please learn from our mistakes and show more intelligence. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Westminster, the legion of the lost and lonely

People frequently ask me, when discussing politics, how, if people like Mad Tony and Theresa Mayhem are as bad as I paint them, do they become Prime Minister? How does a creature like Boris the Spider reach such prominence if he is truly an imbecile? Today the whole world is asking the question how could an intelligent and civilised society like America elect the 45? For brevity I will leave the 45 aside and look at the British dilemma, although the answers have many similarities. I have touched on this in the past on previous posts, so please forgive any repetition, but will try to answer with a bit more detail.

The abiding characteristic of British politics is the two-party system. They used to be quite accurately portrayed as 'broad churches' but that ceased to be the case with the election of the Blessed Margaret. Cruella's election marked the moment when the Conservative Party descended into an ideologically driven sect, the moment when British politics became characterised by 'them and us' and that was Thatcher's infamous description of her interpretation of good and bad. She was not called the Iron Lady without reason, and one manifestation of that was the iron control she exerted on her party. Under Thatcher candidates at all levels of the party had to meet her criteria of ideological soundness to the extent that she stopped local party selection panels choosing their own candidates. They were still allowed to choose their candidate for local and national election, but only from lists prepared centrally, all candidates were vetted to ensure they were 'one of us'. This ensured that the Tory Party at Westminster gradually become staffed with public school, Oxbridge clones who had no experience of the real world. All that mattered was background, class, a proper accent and a fanatical devotion to the Great One. This was achieved by weeding out all those in the party who were not 'one of us'. It was a centralisation of power and influence Lenin would have been proud of. It was also quite ruthless. It became quite ridiculous to the extent that we now have one of the stupidest men on the planet as Foreign Secretary, and his rival in the intellectual stakes in charge of Brexit.

But if you are familiar with British politics, I ask you to consider one Jacob Rees Mogg. It beggars belief that this creature could be taken seriously in a pantomime, let alone as a Member of the British Parliament. He stands as the ultimate product of Thatcherite ideology. This person quite genuinely poses as a refugee from a P.G. Wodehouse novel and is seriously a caricature. To say he is quite ridiculous is a complement. He must have spent years practising his accent and his manner of speech and apparently names his children after Popes. He characterises everything that is wrong about the British political system. If we had a genuine representative system of government he could only represent himself, and perhaps the profession of clowns, although he is probably too over the top for them. People like Rees Mogg make a mockery of a democratic system and epitomise the lie that is the Westminster pigsty. He is a real genuine extremist, yet promotes the persona of the calm, levelheaded intellectual, a real man of the people. If he is a man of the people, then I deny being people. The real danger of someone like Rees Mogg is that he is genuinely being considered as a future leader of the Tory Party, and therefore a potential Prime Minister. This takes us beyond parody, and shows us how dangerous the two-party system has become to our nation.

However, Thatcher's style of Party management was copied assiduously by Mad Tony, thus, by the time Thatcher and the Mad One had left office they had purged their respective parties of any talent that may have lurked there. Anyone with talent and an independence of spirit were targeted as threats to the Great Leaders and were purged. For example, the party of labour was successfully purged of its trade union sponsored MPs who were replaced by lawyers, bankers and public school Oxbridge graduates who stepped straight out of Oxbridge and into parliament under an identical form of central party selection list. Today Labour is staffed with people who hate trades unions and working people. That is why there was such resistance to Jeremy Corbyn and his supposed extreme left wingism. Under Mad Tony there was no significant distinction between a Labour or a Tory MP, even with respect to ideology and it is these same people who compose the totally unrepresentative Parliamentary Labour Party.

As a result, we have the two major parties in the UK, the parties of government, staffed with people who range from the mediocre to the completely useless who are in office, not as a result of talent and ability, but because of background and nepotism. If you follow British politics consider the antics of the Spider in Russia this week. Playing the fool in public he was described by Russian television as 'odious'. I frequently remind you how he is usually described as highly intelligent, but ask you to consider if an intelligent person would persistently conduct him/herself in the manner that this odious buffoon does? No, Boris is not intelligent, he is the archetype of the British class system, a halfwit who has advanced because of background. That is British politics, that is the underlying tragedy of Brexit and why the UK is being increasingly considered as a joke. If the UK is a joke, it is because it's political system of a two-party system buttressed by first-past-the-post voting is not fit for purpose resulting in our represention by a bunch of clowns and halfwits. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Brexit - Welcome to the Dark Side

I trust you will indulge me with this post as I am going to quote from an article from today's Guardian that reinforces what I have been telling you for many months, if not years. As I am Scottish I could be accused of bias, or even racism, if I were to write about the particular form of Englishness, that ugly and quasi fascist nationalism that is driving our politics and the Brexit process, but I will leave that to David Marquand, principal of Mansfield College Oxford. His article is entitled, "Britain's problem is not with Europe, but with England,"

In his article, Professor Marquand forcibly points out that the Leave majority was an England majority and that the political debate in today's Britain operates "in the goldfish bowl of an overwhelmingly English Europhobic press, driven by social media, which combine to leave a divided government lurching from one approach to the EU negotiations to another...But changes in the government’s mood music don’t affect the brutal reality: that the UK is set to leave the European Union because an English majority has voted to do so, ignoring the opinions of two of the UK’s four nations.....The great question is, why? Partly it’s that for centuries, myths, memories and rhetoric have transmitted a vision of Englishness of extraordinary power...It is a profoundly reactionary vision, but emotionally powerful. It conveys the message that England is a special, exemplary, even providential nation, set apart from others".

In other words, as I persistently remind you, this toxic mentality believes that English people are racially superior to all other races and ethnic groups in the world. This is the persistent message of the Mail and the Express who are now being unfortunately joined by the Telegraph. The other great debate in our press this week is the outcome of the poisonous propaganda from the Mail and the Daily Telegraph against those Conservatives MP's who voted against the government last week compelling it to hold a vote on the final Brexit deal in Parliament before any deal is ratified. Imagine that, the government forced a three line whip on the Tory Party to prevent the elected British Parliament getting a vote on the final conclusions of the most important decision it has been involved in since the Second World War. And we have the cheek to call ourselves a democracy! Britain is nothing less that an elected dictatorship. In the wake of this vote, those MP's who voted against the government line have been subject to a massive assault of threats and intimidation with people openly calling for them to be hanged or suffer other forms of execution. The Brexiteers in parliament have been demanding that they be deselected, despite the fact that our press have been highlighting how most of such Brexiteers have rebelled against their own government literally dozens of times themselves. The Mail and the Telegraph have called them traitors and treasonous, this is the level that the British press have sunk to. Several of the Tories under attack have sent dossiers of the threats and abuse to the police and have asked for an inquiry into the conduct of both the Mail and the Telegraph.

I personally think that this level of hysteria being generated by the detritus of British politics and social life is because they now see that there is a real chance that Brexit might not happen. All opinion polls this month have shown that there is now a majority of British people who believe that Brexit has been a huge mistake and want a second referendum. The polls indicate that 51% now want to stay in the EU and that the figures are continuing to rise. The people now increasingly realise that we were sold a lie by a bunch of criminal opportunists and that they were conned. This is exacerbated by the fact that it was only this week that the government met to actually ask the question, what do we want from the Brexit process? Surprise, surprise, they couldn't agree and so eighteen months after they won the referendum, they are not one step forward towards their goal, because the only goal they have ever had was leaving the EU, regardless of the consequences. Perhaps people will now start to believe me when I tell you that they really are that incompetent.

I have been telling you for years now about the racism and exceptionalism that drove the demand to leave the EU and the underlying fascist tendencies of the Tories and their supporting press. This is now obvious in the chilling language and threats against their own party members. Another warning I have persistently given you over the years is the Tory plan to remove all workers rights, and this was shown to be accurate this week when the leading Brexiteers, particularly Gove and the Spider, called for Britain to scrap all the provisions of the Working Time Directive. Mayhem was specifically asked if she was prepared to guarantee workers rights after Brexit and she refused to answer. Thus, the Tories will not guarantee either the rights of EU nationals living in Britain, nor any form of workers rights. Again I remind you, they are not just any kind of nationalists, they are neoliberal free market nationalists. They are sinister and belong to the Dark Side. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Greed and arrogance = incompetence

Today we had the most graphic example yet of the stupidity and incompetence of the British Prime Minister and government. If we were not witnessing the current events, we would have difficulty believing that even Tories were capable of such monumental incompetence and incoherence. Eighteen months after the referendum to leave the EU and nine months after triggering Article 50, formally announcing the decision to leave, the government made two astonishing admissions, they admitted that there have been no impact assessments conducted into the economic implications on our decision to leave, and that the government have yet to discuss their intended goals on what they want to achieve with their decision to leave. If a primary school teacher wants to take his/her class on a nature ramble they have to complete a risk assessment, that is a statutory requirement, and yet the government who requires such provisions for all such basic events has failed to engage in any form of risk assessment on the most important decision facing a British government since the Second World War. This is quite remarkable and an astonishing dereliction of duty. Despite the British Cabinet meeting at least twice every week, they have not discussed what it is they are seeking to achieve on the issue that has consumed their every waking moment in the past year and a half, and they have made no attempt to discover what effects this decision will have on crucial fundamental sectors of the economy such as agriculture, industry, finance, health education etc. The British public, who re-endorsed this coalition of imbeciles last summer are going to reap the full effects of hubris, and I have no confidence that they are capable of realising what they have done. The abiding characteristic of the British is scapegoating, it is always someone else's fault. As Tom Paine famously wrote, 'these are the times that try men's souls'.

If you read this blog you will know that I consider an understanding of the writings of Thomas Paine as crucial to understanding democratic governance. I was reminded of what he wrote in 1777 in his The American Crisis, a series of pamphlets he published in America in 1777 and 1778. 

If ever a nation was made and foolish, blind to its own interest and bent on its own destruction, it is Britain......Men whose political principles are founded on avarice, are beyond the reach of reason

I could not have crafted that as a comment on Theresa May's Tories any better as there is no more avaricious creature on the planet than a British Conservative. Brexit is a wonderful example of irrationality, ideology taken to the point of insanity, and put in the hands of callous and avaricious sociopaths who are completely indifferent to any interests other than their own. This collective flight from reason was an English and Welsh phenomenon as the intelligent Celtic sectors of the UK retained their reason and rejected the fascist styled leave campaign of immigrant and foreigner scapegoating that so characterised the referendum campaign. The Tories are even completely ignoring the interests of British business and manufacturing, their own core supporters, who are now on the edge of panic over the coming catastrophe. The Tories mismanagement of government has become a serious crisis as their fixation on Brexit has led to an almost complete abandonment of the rest of their governmental responsibilities with the result that British society is riven with problems in education, health, housing, poverty and inequality, just to name the obvious. I am running out of adjectives to describe the state of the Tories mentality, indifference, arrogance, incompetence, but it is their callousness and cruelty that really disgusts me. Paine again brilliantly summed up the British when he told us that
It has been the folly of Britain to suppose herself more powerful than she really is, and by that means has arrogated to herself a rank in the world she is not entitled to

How true does that ring today, when the mighty British parliament is being held hostage by a small group of Northern Irish fundamentalists. The British are speedily learning the message Joni Mitchell gave us in 1970 in Big Yellow Taxi, 'don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till  its gone' You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Britain and the US - Democracies? Aye Right!

A friend took me to task for my repeated assertions that the US and Britain are not democratic. I attempted to convince him and his wife that this is not some kind of abstract theoretical debating point, but a real substantial issue that has profound implications for both societies. Yes our nations both give most people a vote, but that is an entirely different matter than giving them any influence or meaningful participation in the nation's wellbeing or decision-making. Democracy means people rule, we are all aware of that, but is anyone seriously suggesting that in either society the people actually matter or are even considered by the elites in both countries who rule exclusively in their own interests? In Scotland we franchised our youth aged sixteen and over for our referendum in 2014 and the whole world praised that campaign for its freshness and genuine democratic nature and the debates that characterised it. It was a genuine participatory democracy, only sullied by the normal lies and deceits we expect as the norm from the Westminster pigsty and its craven representatives. What has been the lesson the pigsty took from that referendum? Under no circumstances will we enfranchise the youth, they were too smart and will probably not vote for us, that is the British democratic way. This youth tendency was again powerful in the EU referendum and if the 16 to 18 year olds had been enfranchised, all the polls show that Remain would have won.

Britain can never aspire to proper democracy as long as we have a monarchy and an aristocracy. Britain is ruled by class and the monarchy sit at the apex of the class hierarchy. The elite make concessions from time to time when they see their interests being imperilled, such as enfranchising the working class and women, but all concessions will be neutered and if possible removed over time to consolidate class rule and privilege, this was the stark warning that Marx gave us, and he was right. Today our press is reporting that one-fifth of the British population is living in poverty, so what is our votes worth to a British politician who lives in utter contempt of ordinary working people?

In a political system like the British, government is founded on trust. We have no constitutional mechanisms such as in the USA to hold governments to account if they become tyrannical or govern for narrow vested interests. Human beings are social beings and are all born with equal rights, there are no privileges or ranks and status in the birth process, we all enter this world in exactly the same manner.Thus, human rights are intrinsic and prior to both law and government. As a result, governments have no rights that exceed the people over whom they rule. They are elected to preserve peace and attend to the necessities of their populations, if that is not their motivation they should not be elected in the first place. As a result, there must be meaningful and moral restraints on power, no human being in any position of power or authority should be able to do as they please. If politicians break that trust then they must be removed immediately, and by force if necessary. Rule must always be subordinate to law and the agreement of the ruled. Government must therefore always be responsible to the law and the communities over which they exercise authority. Remember, government is derivative, it derives from a purpose, the need for the regulation of the human environment from which it derives its being. As the right to govern and rule are founded on trust, that right is revocable. Consent is the only basis of authority and rule. Therefore, as it is the legislature that is elected, the executive must never be allowed to dominate the decision-making process, and that is why British so-called democracy is a mockery. The British legislature is toothless and is simply the pawn of the executive, failing to hold them to account. After the monarchy, the biggest impediment to the democratic process in Britain is the poisonous two-party system.

In both the USA and Britain, class rules. The American system is dominated by wealth and finance and therefore hostage to the rich and powerful. The British dominated by the public school, Oxbridge elitism that represents the will of that same class of wealthy oligarchs. This monopoly on power, founded on a poisonous and destructive ideology, is destroying both our societies. If you really think you live in a democracy, then I respectfully disagree. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat 

Hold, Monsters (with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)

The opening scenes of "The Downfall" the German produced dramatisation of the last ten days of Hitler's regime are an interview with an elderly Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary. In the interview she says that she feels that she should feel anger at her younger self "for not realising the horrors, the monster, before it was too late, for not realising what she was getting into". This seems to me to be an apt metaphor for the American electorate with respect to the 45 and the British with respect to Brexit and this monstrous Tory government. However, I am gratified to see that an increasing number of American commentators are now calling a spade a spade and admitting that the 45 is quite insane. I watched Krishnan Guru Murthy on Channel Four news interviewing an American writer who (to my shame, I never caught his name) proceeded to liken America to 1930's Germany. Guru Murthy asked him if he was likening the 45 to Hitler and he answered simply, yes. He was then asked if he was indeed likening Vladimir Putin and the 45 to Stalin and Hitler and he again replied yes. Guru Murthy then said that both Stalin and Hitler were monsters so was he saying that Putin and the 45 were monsters and he again replied yes. I watched an MSNBC reporter asking when people were going to start telling it as it is and admit that the 45 was mad? Are we going to wait until he drops a nuclear bomb on someone he asked? CNN then reported several other American media outlets all saying similar things. The world is catching up with the Kommirat as I told you this over a year ago.

We in Britain cannot sit back at ease and look smugly at the American situation however. Our Prime Minister is not mad, but she is extremely thick and quite stupid and compounds this situation by being totally incompetent. What is most alarming though is her complete indifference to the chaos she and her government are causing by their incompetence. The entire Board of Management of the Social Mobility Commission resigned today as they told us that there was no longer any point to their work as the government completely ignored them. This Board comprised Labour and Tory politicians and academics. They said that it was not just the poorest in Britain who were losing out as whole communities and parts of Britain are being left behind economically and hollowed out socially. The entire progress, or lack of it, over Brexit shows graphically that no-one in government even begins to comprehend reality. They are so enveloped in their own class obsessed bubble, their public school, Oxbridge ethos, that they simply refuse to accept any form of alternative to their own narrative. The public are not much better. My heart sank this week with the announcement of another royal engagement. We were drowned with an endless parade of what Lenin described as useful idiots, drooling over how wonderful this was and telling us what wonderful people the royals and all their sycophantic hangers-on are. This means that, for the next couple of years all the British will be bothered about is a forthcoming royal wedding that will cost us a fortune and that will be used to cover up all the political horrors of Brexit and this government's crimes. At least the Americans are spared this dysfuntional soap opera of privileged parasites that are utilised for the consolidation of the British elite and to justify their wealth and privilege, allowing them to continue to loot the national treasury at their leisure.

The monstrous cruelty of this government was shown by the revelations that, when applying for the welfare benefit known as Universal Credit, people with terminal illnesses are required to attend sessions with a work coach. The role of a work coach is “to support claimants into work by challenging, motivating, providing personalised advice and using knowledge of local labour markets.” Now remember this is a requirement for the terminally ill. Failure to comply with this means you get no benefit, and our news is full of stories about terminally ill people dying before they are informed whether they will get benefit or not. This is about as callous and inhuman as you can get. This is Tory government policy. But we should not get too angry because we have a royal wedding to look forward to, which is more than most terminally ill people will be able to look forward to. This is the state of modern Britain, this is life under the Tories.

As with the 45, the British agenda is beginning to fall apart. The Tories are being forced to make concession after concession on Brexit to meet their responsibilities and as they are forced into the real world. As they continue to insult the Europeans they meet with ever stiffer resistance, just as the 45 is facing with his continuous attacks on the FBI and the media. Both Republicans and the Tories really think they have a right to rule however they please and to insult and attack those who disagree with them and call them to account. The constitution, rules, law, decency and good manners are for other people, the lower orders. But the one thing the Americans do have is an effective media who refuse to be cowed and bullied, unlike the craven lickspittles we have in the UK. The next year will be crucial in both our nations and will have a very powerful impact on the future of our respective political systems (I was going to call them democracies and realised how stupid that was). The Kommirat will be watching with interest. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

There are liars, damned liars, and the British establishment

As a member of the EU, Britain is involved in, and committed to, multiple capital projects that cost billions of pounds. From most of these programmes the UK gains many benefits, such as regional development funds and large capital projects like hospitals and schools. The present programme that covers such things apparently lasts until 2023, and Britain has financial responsibilities towards such projects in common with all the other 27 member nations. A major part of the Brexit negotiations is involved with both the EU and Britain attempting to come to some kind of agreement as to what Britain owes the EU for its part in, and its responsibilities for, these programmes. The dominant narrative in the UK is that the EU are blackmailing Britain for triggering Article 50 and daring to leave them. I watch news programmes of reporters questioning people on the streets of Britain on this issue and it never ceases to amaze me how ignorant the British, or perhaps I should say the English, are on such fundamental matters. Almost to a man and woman, they respond by telling the reporter quite bluntly that we should simply walk away and pay nothing as this money only goes one way and we gain nothing from it, that it is simply unfair and we are being robbed. But more importantly from the perspective of democracy and governance this is the dominant narrative being propagandised by the government, the Tory Party and the right-wing press; it is barefaced lying and disinformation of the highest order. I should point out here that British national news organisations such as the BBC and ITV almost never interview people from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland on such matters, the only views we are presented with are those from the streets of English towns and cities. That is why, to people from other nations tuning in to British TV and reading the British national papers, Britain appears to be so insular and nationalistic.

However, I do not accept for one moment that such public ignorance is either excusable or acceptable. If Britain is anything, it is the information capital of the world. The British have the greatest choice of media and divergent viewpoints available to them in the world, yet they still prefer the poisonous propaganda and lies spewed out daily by the Mail and the Express. It is a choice they make. What is happening is that the large parts of the British media appear to be in some kind of collusion to misinform the public on all matters pertaining to the EU and our relationship to it, and the British, particularly the English, love it. The Tories have not yet managed to establish their desired ability to control all media output and so this situation has not yet reached a kind of totalitarian propaganda exercise because many people are aware of the issues, but in order to sift through the propaganda and seek a sense of reality you require to work at it and consult widely, and most people are simply too lazy to do that. What is of particular concern is that even when the facts are explained to them, the average Brexit supporting, foreigner hating citizen simply ignores the facts, preferring the lie because its suits their racist and bigoted view of reality.

We see a similar phenomenon in the US with respect to the 45. I saw an interview on CNN where a 45 supporter told us that he would believe the 45 before he would believe Jesus Christ. This is not only a cause for great sorrow, but also for great alarm. Bob Dylan told us not to follow leaders and beware of parking meters, but people on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly prepared to ignore lying and demonstrable insanity and incompetence as long as they are being fed a daily diet of information that fits with their prejudices. The Daily Mail survived in Britain, despite being an enthusiastic pre-war supporter of Hitler and National Socialism, so we must logically assume that a goodly number of people in this nation did so as well, and that such support survived the war. This would explain the modern rise of fascism in our nations as parents and grandparents passed on such ideas to their offspring and they have been lying dormant waiting for the right conditions to nurture them. None of this excuses our leaders and our media organisations. But, once again I alert you to the real culprit, a dominant ideology that encourages and applauds greed, hatred and complete selfishness. That is how the hatemongers and bigots flourish and are bold enough to emerge from the sewers. They are encouraged by the hatemongers and bigots who occupy the highest positions in our society and enthusiastically promote this hideous ideology. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

The UK, welcome to your third world status!

Brexit hasn't even happened yet but here is just a flavour of the state of the UK after seven years of Tory government and eighteen months after the Brexit referendum. The following is merely four headlines from the British press this morning.
"UK facing the longest fall in living standards in sixty years"
"Britain has fallen out of the world's top five economies"
"Britain loses its seat on the International Court of Justice"
"UK faces twenty years of no earnings growth"
And that is just headlines for one day!

When the Camoron took office in 2010 his Chancellor George Osborne assured us that the UK deficit would be eliminated by 2015. In 2015 they told us it would be 2025, it has now been stretched to 2050. This is from the party that claims to be the fiscally stable and responsible party. By the government's own figures from yesterday's budget there will have been 5 billion pounds spent simply on the administration necessary for leaving the EU by the time we actually leave. The implication of losing our seat on the Court of Justice signifies Britain's relative irrelevance as a nation any longer. The 'Great' in Great Britain has become an international joke. The press are also carrying reports on how EU diplomats hold Britain's top politicians with disdain and scorn and note how the Brexit negotiations are in such a state of disarray because of 'the chaos in the Conservative government.' As I predicted, both David Davis and Boris the Spider are held in utter contempt by EU politicians and diplomats. Their arrogance and demonstrable stupidity means they are guaranteeing that the UK Brexit saga will end in tears and disaster. You get what you vote for.

The problem the British face is that their politicians, civil servants and leading government political and economic advisers are in an intellectual no-mans land. They are so socialised by the dominant neoliberal ideology that they neither understand the problem nor the solutions. What is so wrong about the Westminster pigsty is that they cannot see that they are the problem. You cannot solve a problem by treating it with the policies that caused it in the first place, and that is what they are persistently trying to do. This is a mirror image of what is happening in the USA as well. In neither nation is the state the problem, it is the political class and its obsession with the free market in economics, and individualism in politics. People forget that the state is not a thing. It is simply a reflection of those personnel who control it, and it is the Kommirat's conviction that only state driven initiatives can begin to solve our problems. This does not mean socialism in the sense that Americans and the Tories understand it. It means socialism in the sense that only a centrally driven and socially motivated collective effort will begin to alleviate the problem. What I mean by that is that public policy will have to be driven by social criteria rather than economic. The social must begin to take precedence over the economic as the social problems are now too acute to be subservient to further economic dominance. I feel that this is also the case in the US. Racial and class divisions in the US appear to be threatening the stability of the whole society. I hope I am wrong about that and my American friends are not offended, but I feel quite bewildered by how Americans appear to be quite unaware, or at least unconcerned, about the class nature of their society.

What this also means is that both the British and Americans must turn to people who understand the problem and can offer meaningful solutions. That means that the British must abandon the Tories and the Blairites in the Labour Party and Americans must completely abandon the present Republican Party. Of course that is not going to happen and so, as I said yesterday, I see no real hope for either country in the short to medium term. Brexit is going to happen because it is driven by racism and a hatred of foreigners, and the inevitable consequences will occur. We will become a third world country in a relatively short time. America will take longer, but it is headed down the same route. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

If you think a Tory cannot get any lower than he/she already is, think again

If you think a Tory cannot get any lower than he/she already is, think again. In an insight into what life will be like in the UK after Brexit, the Tories mustered a majority to vote down an amendment to their legislation for withdrawing from the EU that denies the status of animals as sentient beings. In other words, the Tories are putting legislation in place that denies that animals feel either pain or emotion. The Green MP Caroline Lucas had tabled an amendment seeking to preserve an EU clause in British law following Brexit that protected animals by declaring them sentient beings and the Tories whipped their MPs into voting it down. This of course is a precursor to abolishing animal protections embodied in European legislation, allowing for torture and experimentation on animals, the reintroduction of foxhunting and stag hunting etc. at the UK's convenience and sport. Humans will be next. Workers rights, animal rights, legal protections, the Tories are clearing the decks for their long-term strategy of imposing a Tory dominated authoritarian state. This is, as I always remind you, the long-term policy strategy of the Blessed Margaret. It is also the logical outcome of free market economics.

People often wonder if I exaggerate concerning the Tories and their agenda, which, as I always tell you, is quite deliberate. A study this week, published by the British Medical Journal, accuses the Tories of 'economic murder' stating that their policies of austerity since 2010 have been responsible for over 120,000 avoidable deaths, an average of about 100 per day. The authors conclude that without a radical change of direction the death total will reach 200,000 by 2020. From 2001 to 2010 mortality rates in the UK had fallen steadily but have risen sharply since the Tories took office - coincidence? I think not. You see, to the free marketeer, competition, as I persistently tell you, is the only legitimate motivator of human activity, and that includes competition for all forms of resource, whether monetary, medical, housing or even food. It is a winners and losers mentality and if you have no bargaining power then you take what the neoliberal is prepared to give you or you die, simples! However, more importantly, not only will you have to accept a slave like status or perish, but in the modern free market narrative, you deserve to. If you have no market value then you have no value as a human being, because your market value is your definitive value to these people. You are, as I am sure you are fed up with me reminding you, untermenschen, and you may be fed up with me reminding you, but I will never get fed up telling you. Remember the Blessed Margaret, there is no such thing as society. Well just as she was determined to destroy society, so her disciples are determined to destroy civilisation, and the 45 and his equivalent imbeciles in British government is a good reminder that they are winning. If you disagree with me please explain the Tories voting that animals are not sentient beings. I will also remind you that to the Nazis untermenshen were not considered as sentient beings either.

It may seem rather dramatic, but the survival of the human race is dependent on abandoning, and destroying, the entire concept of free market economics. It is the driver behind Brexit, behind global warming and the entire consequences of climate change. It has no values, no moral or ethical compass. People are of no value, they are simply consumption units, economic actors with no social or political dimension outside the free market narrative. Britain and America are doomed and cannot survive as meaningful nation states unless they change course dramatically. Should America descend into a race war it will be as a result of their economic structure and ideological commitment to the free market. Britain's obsession with neoliberalism has given us Brexit and a bitterly divided nation. I fear it will reinvigorate conflict in Ireland. I am confident it will lead to Scottish independence. We cannot continue on this trajectory, but I see no meaningful prospect of change as we have no politicians who even seem to be aware of the problems never mind the solutions. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat 

Why is it so easy for a Christian to turn a blind eye to immorality?

I have been contemplating the surreal situation on both sides of the Atlantic where, regardless of their crimes or misdemeanours, right-wing politicians appear untouchable as their core supporters seem quite unconcerned with their behaviour, indeed it appears that as far as Tory or Republican voters are concerned their representatives can do exactly as they please. This becomes even more acute with those righteous defenders of morality and probity, our pious Christian brethren who seem quite animated by sexual misconduct. As long as someone opposes abortion or same-sex marriage, our ethical policepeople are quite indifferent to their personal conduct. As the 45 famously noted, he could shoot someone in broad daylight on the streets of New York and these people would still vote for him, and he has taken unethical behaviour to new heights.

If an alien being landed on earth who was a stranger to human nature and witnessed the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, that alien being would be apt to imagine, that pain must be more agonising, and the convulsions of death more terrible to persons of higher rank, than to those of meaner stations. It appears to be a characteristic of mankind, to go along with all the passions of the rich and powerful, and it seems to be this proclivity on which the distinctions of ranks, and the order of society is founded. Even when the order of society seems to require that we should oppose them, we can hardly bring ourselves to do it. That kings are the servant of the people, to be obeyed, resisted, opposed or punished, as the public conveniency may require, is the doctrine of reason and philosophy; but it is not the doctrine of Nature. This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages. We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and great, than towards the wise and virtuous. We see frequently the vices and follies of the powerful much less despised than the poverty and weakness of the innocent.

I have just reproduced, with some judicious amendment, the words of Adam Smith, from his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759. It is quite astonishing that his words are so relevant to 2017 and only proves the old saw that the more things change the more they stay the same. I was once advised by a wise older person never to underestimate the stupidity of the average voter and the more I watch the current politics worldwide I'm afraid the wiser that advice seems. In Britain, the Brexit saga is reaching farcical proportions. All European personnel have consistently told the British that the Brexit process must follow a particular treaty based process and its as if they were talking to themselves. The British are either too arrogant or too stupid, although it is probably a combination of both as their stupidity is a consequence of their arrogance, to grasp this. The British government keeps repeating that the Europeans will have to be more flexible, and I keep asking why? It wasn't the Europeans who triggered Article 50, it wasn't the Europeans who decided to drag their nation back into the Middle Ages. But none of this utter farce appears to be making any impression on the British electorate, or rather the English electorate. They seem oblivious of the utter incompetence of the government, to the tragedy that is the Foreign Secretary, Boris the Spider. If anyone thought I was being rather harsh on Theresa May when she became Prime Minister when I told you she was thick and quite stupid, you can be in no doubt now that I was actually being quite complimentary because it is now demonstrable that she is far worse than that. Eight months into a process that must be completed in two years the British have accomplished absolutely nothing. We are not one step further forward, it beggars belief, but should not surprise anyone who reads this blog as I have been warning you as to the character of Tories for years now. Americans have their own Tories of course, right-wing ideologues who have no contact with reality, nor any moral compass. I am watching the saga of Roy Moore in Alabama with growing incredulity. As I said in my last post both Britain and America are in a very dark place. I will return to Adam Smith for solace and consolation as there appears to be no sources of wisdom and common sense in today's world. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Both Britain and the USA are in a very dangerous place

There can no longer be any doubt that both Britain and the United States are cursed with the most incompetent political class in history. Both nations are rudderless and heading for the rocks as a result of a governing class who are devoid of honour, dignity or self-respect. Most importantly they are both politically and economically stupid. But the character of government in both nations goes beyond incompetence and stupidity and harbours both dangerous and sinister ramifications. The character of our governments is manifest in persistent and pathological lying, the scapegoating of individuals and minorities, a complete disregard for norms and values, for honesty and common decency. I could go on but simply want to impress that the character of the governing and ruling classes of both nations is sociopathic and, indeed, frequently manifests itself as psychotic.

This has not come about by accident. It is the result of the adoption of, and obsession with, a sociopathic ideology, an ideology of destruction, greed and selfishness that breeds a pathology that neuters normal humanity in those who adopt and embrace it. The British and American obsession with free market neoliberalism, particularly that version of it promoted by Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, is both anti-social and inhuman. It is inhuman because it denies all the basic qualities that define the human being, and openly denies the fundamental characteristic of Christianity, love thy neighbour. I have no truck with religion, and Christianity does not have an exclusive ownership of the concept of love thy neighbour, but it just expresses it so well. It is the concept that underpins all philosophies that stress the natural social nature of the human being, the necessity to recognise that all human behaviour is both interactive and interdependent. I know I go on about it, but people must really come to an understanding of just how damaging and destructive are the deeply sinister implications of Thatcher's insistence that there is no such thing as society before they can begin to fully understand the nature of modern government and society. This is sociopathy in action, sociopathy masquerading as public policy because if there is no such thing as society, then we can happily dispense with the concept of loving our neighbours, or indeed even recognising them, and that was Thatcher's purpose in pronouncing it. If there is no society then you have no responsibilities to anyone else, not even your own family as Ayn Rand explicitly told us. It is a dystopian philosophy of pure and total selfishness and its consequences must surely be obvious to anyone who contemplates British and American public policy and attitudes today. It has not yet achieved total control of public consciousness, but it has achieved a dominant control.   

British government is in meltdown and its daily displays of incompetence would be a spectacle to behold were they not so serious. We have a political class who neither comprehend, nor care about, the fundamentals of democracy and the rule of law. They are so blinded by entitlement and class privilege they genuinely think they can do as they like without consequences. What other sane and rational political system would elevate people like Priti Patel and The Spider? They are reminiscent of medieval aristocrats for whom the rest of the world is simply there for their pleasure and they should be able to do and say what they want without challenge. Likewise the American political class are so obsessed with their own individual self-interest they are watching their nation being systematically undermined by a psychopath and his court of gangster buddies and refusing to challenge him. You see, the economic system has rewarded them and keeps them at the top courtesy of their wealth and connections, and nothing, neither the welfare of the people or the greater interests of society will be allowed to challenge that. Therefore, as they have their wealth safely tucked away out of reach, where they can access it if they need to flee from the imminent collapse of the society they have caused to collapse, they are completely indifferent to everyone else, and that is how it should be according to the philosophy that they live by. 

Make no mistake, this is generally how these people think. If you do not believe me consult 'On All Of Our Shoulders' published by the American Catholic Church in response to Paul Ryan's bid for the Vice-Presidency for a very rational analysis of neoliberalism. Better still read Ayn Rand for yourselves and experience philosophical insanity. These people will destroy the world if they continue to get their own way. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

There is no longer any doubt, the British elite are at war with their own people

If you need anymore proof of my persistent assertion that the British elite engages in active war against the British people then look no further than the revelations contained in the newly published so-called Paradise Papers. Between the Panama Papers published last year and this weeks revelations we now know that the British elite have over £350 billion secreted away in overseas tax havens, the equivalent of 15% of British GDP. We find that even the Queen and Prince Charles have resorted to this methodology of denying the British people their fair share of the national wealth, so much for the Royal Family empathising with the poor. I can find no better description of the British ruling class than that of Aneurin Bevan who told us they were lower than vermin. As a result, as I have persistently told you over the years, austerity is a fraud and a symptom of the class warfare that the Tories live, but more importantly rule, by. There is no shortage of cash for the NHS and education etc. such shortages are artificial and are the result of the British government colluding with, and assisting, a greedy and rapacious elite business and financial class to loot the national treasury at their will. There are no excuses for zero-hour contracts and all the other injustices and indignities that the Tories heap on their own people and people can scoff at the Kommirat no longer. As both Adam Smith and Karl Marx told us there is no wealth without labour. All of that wealth being secreted away overseas has its genesis in the labour of ordinary working people and the British ruling class are absolutely resolute in their determination that the people who create the wealth will not benefit from it. The elite don't create wealth, they only steal it. As I've written before, Adam Smith tells us that "All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind", and this is just as true today as when Smith wrote it in 1776. Today's revelations also strengthen Smith's observation that "the great never look upon their inferiors as their fellow creatures".

This is a graphic example of how something can be perfectly legal and completely wrong, an example of how law is made with specific interests in mind, but also how a gullible electorate can be persuaded to vote for people who are their enemies, not just ideologically or politically, but in everyday practical matters, whose entire policy agenda is to rob and cheat them at every opportunity. The tragic lesson of this however, is that even after all this evidence is presented to them, the ordinary British person will still stand and sing God save the Queen. It is enough to make you despair. The meaningful destruction of British society began with The Blessed Margaret and her sinister claim that there is no such thing as society. Piece by piece St Margaret and her fellow Crusaders, her cohorts and neoliberal successors of all parties, eroded and eliminated the entity that we used to identify as Great Britain, destroyed the community, the normative order and value system in the name of the free market, a fictitious and illusory concept that is quite meaningless. I see no real redemption for this sorry nation of the United Kingdom. A realistic assessment of the policies, and particularly the personnel, that govern these islands only produce pessimism and a profound despair. In studying politics and economics, those who seek instruction and guidance look to Socrates, Plato, Machiavelli, Locke, Mill, Paine, Hume, Smith, Marshall etc. The British elite and their hirelings in the Westminster Parliament look to Don Corleone, Tony Soprano and Nucky Thomson. Ironically, none of those gentlemen would have survived in competition with these people, they at least had a code of sorts, a sense of honour, regardless of how perverted it was, but the British elite and ruling class are completely devoid of any sense of honour. They do not possess a scintilla of self-respect or dignity never mind respect for anyone else. Their only code and guide to behaviour is their self-enrichment, regardless of who it damages. But sequences of events produce consequences and the future is most definitely not what it used to be. I mean, put simply, the entire British elite, including the Royal Family and the British government are all engaged in collusion to defraud the rest of the British population, there can be no other interpretation of the facts that have come to light. You have been warned


Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

All power to a repentant sinner

I have been writing to you since the start of this blog warning about the Tories determination to privatise the NHS and introduce an American style health system. Tories persistently deny this and accuse me of what they now label fake news and consistently tell us that the NHS is safe in their hands, and even friends of mine who would never vote Tory look at me pityingly and tell me that even the Tories would not do such a thing. If I wrote on this blog that the NHS is about as safe in the hands of the present government of Tory Brexiteers as a pet hamster is with a hungry python, I'm sure that I would be dismissed as usual as talking rubbish and simply promoting anti-Tory and anti-Brexit propaganda. That however, came from the ex-Tory Prime Minister John Major, and I invite anyone who doubts me to simply Google it.

Once again I am in the uncomfortable position of being in the same company as, not only a Tory, but a past Tory Prime Minister, but I welcome any penitent to the cause of highlighting Tory right-wing fraud and lies. As I trust you will appreciate, it is not me who is changing my opinions and views, but an increasing number of free marketeers who are beginning to realise what their criminality has nurtured and begun to spawn within our sorry society, and they are worried because they realise they are deeply at fault for their past record in office. In the case of people like Major, they simply did not really understand what they were doing and it is now dawning on them. Slowly but surely the Kommirat world view is becoming the norm.

Today a number of prominent medical personnel have initiated legal action against the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and the Department of Health over their proposals to restructure the NHS into a US style private health insurance-based system. It is reported in today's press that senior health professionals and campaigners have now come together to take legal action and demand a judicial review, to ensure full parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals. According to the papers, Dr Colin Hutchinson, Professor Allyson Pollock, Professor Sue Richards and Dr Graham Winyard are all working together to put the case to the Department of Health. As reported, Prof Pollock, a British Medical Association council member and co-author of the NHS Reinstatement Bill, said the proposals were an attempt to Americanise health care in England and that the NHS was progressively being dismantled. According to these healthcare professionals plans have been tabled to convert the NHS into a public/private enterprise, which they say is based upon the US private health insurance-based system.

For those of you who are not British and who so kindly read this blog, I write such things because, although they do not directly affect you, they must raise serious alarm bells as to the nature of modern politics. Such things show us that the description of Britain as a democratic nation could hardly be farther from the truth. The British elite govern totally in their own interests as they have nothing but contempt and hatred for ordinary people. I have written before that my view is that this is also how politics is practised in the United States. We are constantly being told that the Brexit referendum has shown us "the settled will of the people" and that it is people like the Kommirat who are undemocratic for refusing to accept the result. I remind you that the referendum was 52% in favour of Leave and 48% in favour of Remain, and I also remind you that the Brexiteers warned us, most famously by the abominable Farage on national television, that if the vote resulted in a 52-48 vote in favour of Remain, they would refuse to accept such a result and would demand a second referendum. In addition, it is now beyond question that the entire Leave campaign was one massive fraud and a lie. I do not recognise any form of democratic decision-making on such a basis. On the same basis, the entire Tory programme is a fraud and a lie, but at least some people are beginning to recognise them for what they are and it speaks far more powerfully than the Kommirat can ever speak that it is now coming from pillars of the establishment and indeed Prime Ministers. The 45 is producing a similar form of response within the American establishment. There may yet be hope. You have been warned.

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat

The Kommirat - A Voice in the Wilderness

The headlines in some of the British press today told us that "Capitalism 'has been broken', top UK business leaders warn". The Chairpeople of Santander, Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC banks, a past Chairman of Marks and Spencer and the Director of The Confederation of British Industry have all weighed in telling us what I have been telling you for the past five years that " the underlying promise of western capitalist economies - that a rising tide lifts all boats - has been broken", adding that  "The state of capitalism is in desperate need of reform and modernisation, according to some of the UK’s top business leaders, who claim that the system has been hurt by management greed, corporate tax dodging and investor short-termism". Writing in the Financial Times, the Chair of Santander said that
“The financial crash, a fixation on shareholder value at the expense of purpose, and the toxic issues of payment of tax and executive pay stand in the way of redemption”.

What makes this newsworthy for this blog is that these corporate giants, by their assessment of the crisis that they are responsible for demonstrate that they are in fact intellectually deficient, as they miss the crucial point of their own analysis, which has been the core theme of this blog since it began, that the issues they raise are in reality symptoms of a common cause, a particular economic model, and they are so fixated with this model that they fail to understand the real problem and so are incapable of providing a meaningful solution. They are an example of how Rabbie Burns implores us (I will write his words in received English) "Oh would the power the gifter give us, to see ourselves as others see us". It speaks volumes that these persons finally waken up to see what has been staring them in the face for the past ten years at least, such is the power of self-delusion, and these are the people we amusingly refer to as the elite. Oh they are elite all right, they lead the way in stupidity, venality, self-importance and a complete disregard for reality. However, even in their belated realisation of the carnage they have inflicted on the world, they are still light years ahead intellectually, of the residents of the pigsty who have not yet noticed the state of the nation and its economy. 

I repeat what I have been telling you since I started this blog, there is no such thing, nor can be such a thing, as a free market. It is an illusion and a fraud, and until these intellectual giants accept this they will never be able to offer solutions. The whole fundamental basis of their philosophical worldview is quite simply wrong. The fundamental assumptions of the free market model are wrong. Again I will bore you with repetition; nowhere does Adam Smith refer to the concepts of capitalism, the free market, laissez faire, or the concept of an unfettered economic system. So, if Smith does not talk about such things, where do they come from, and more importantly, what do they mean? This blog is obviously too brief to answer that, but if it were to we would have to radically rethink our whole understanding of market economics. Thus it is not essentially capitalism that is broken, it is the philosophical and intellectual foundations of the dominant model that are broken. Actually it is a mistake to say they are broken, because they have never been truly functional. There is no such thing as capitalism that can be accurately defined as a working model. It is a generic term, a template to attempt to explain a general methodology of production, ownership, trade, exchange and barter. For example, if Britain is a capitalist country, then the United States cannot be and vice versa. By the same token if Germany or France define capitalism then those others must be something else, as they are all quite different models of economic systems. The one thing that they have in common however, is that none of them can be described as free. They can all of course be described as capitalist, but there is no such thing as a capitalist model, that is also an illusion. Britain was still a capitalist country even when her major industries were nationalised, when most of its housing was public, when it built the NHS and the welfare state. It has never been what we understand as a socialist society. It is testament to how the political narrative has been so thoroughly corrupted that we can describe such measures as socialist, particularly when most of such measures were enacted by Conservative governments. The one worrying aspect of these developments is that the Kommirat is beginning to appear to be mainstream, sharing an outlook with bankers and industrialists. I have been a voice in the wilderness for too long to be comfortable anywhere else. You have been warned.

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat   

I think the American gun culture must be an illness

As you know I am reluctant to comment on other cultures and nations given that the UK has nothing to boast about. I have, however, been reflecting on the concept of socialisation in the aftermath of the Las Vegas tragedy. Very little shocks me but I listened in disbelief to the arguments of several defenders of the American gun culture and they struck me as being so irrational that they verge on the insane. What was completely unacceptable was the response of the 45. In terms of leadership, people like 45 will go to any length to defend the rights of people to bear and carry arms, but stay completely silent on the right to life, and the right to be safe in your daily life from indiscriminate murder. In addition, if that was not an act of terror, then nothing can be designated terrorist, but then again the terrorist in this instance was white, so that makes this crime something else. The United States is not alone in this racist view of course. White Anglo-Saxons can never be terrorists and the British share that view. It is helped of course that they claim to be Christian.

Many people have made the point that the Second Amendment to the Constitution must be viewed in its historical setting and should not be taken literally. Guns didn't even have rifling when that was written and were incapable of firing 100 shots per minute, which brings me back to socialisation because all of the evidence I have seen over many years appears to suggest that Americans are impervious to any nuance or relativist argument. We have a right to as many guns, of whatever make and calibre and an inexhaustible supply of ammunition for them as we can afford, simples. American culture is radically different from European in this respect and so there is simply no comparison, nor genuine understanding of this fundamental cultural and normative difference towards guns, mass murder and the seeming indifference in the USA to the psychopathy involved in gun culture. I actually thought that the killing of their children at Sandy Hook would permeate the American consciousness to the extent that they would be motivated by that most fundamental human instinct, the protection of one's offspring, but their dedication to guns has proven to be a greater force than their dedication to their children. A report on CNN noted that more Americans have been killed by their fellow Americans than all of the Americans killed in all of America's wars. That should surely give pause for reflection. More Americans have died than were victims of the Wehrmacht and the Vietcong combined without considering any other conflicts. Perhaps it is time that the Second Amendment was amended?

This cultural aspect of American life strikes me as a form of addiction, an illness that plagues the body politic. Socialisation is an extremely powerful human phenomenon that can blind us to many things, but particularly to reality. That was one of the lessons of Plato's analogy of the Cave and was famously characterised by Francis Bacon in his theories about the idols of the mind, as he tells us that "the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence, nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture" What is of great concern to me is that, as Britain becomes more and more a reflection of the United States, we fall under the same perverted fascination with guns and they become more and more normalised until we too claim a 'right' to bear and carry them. If the reality that the consequences of a literal translation of the Second Amendment are a far greater threat to America's future than either Hitler or Ho Chi Minh does not begin to register with the American consciousness then they are indeed facing a truly dystopian future. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

       

Britain, going down, fast

Theresa May’s speech to the Bank of England shows how devoid of intelligence the political narrative in our modern world really is. She announced that the free market is the greatest agent of human progress ever created but that it must be properly regulated and operate under the right rules and regulations. This is meaningless. If any system is governed by rules and regulations you cannot call it free.

This obsession with a ‘free market’ has taken on the mantle of religious faith, a belief founded on superstition. In her speech May stated that “We should never forget that raising the living standards, and protecting the jobs, of ordinary working people is the central aim of all economic policy. Helping each generation to live longer, fuller, more secure lives than the one which went before them. Not serving an abstract doctrine or an ideological concept, but serving the real interests of the British people.” However, since this blog first began I have been telling you that the concept of the free market is exactly that, an abstract doctrine and an ideological concept. What makes May’s speech so nauseating is that she is presiding over a government whose entire policy programme is directed towards lowering the living standards and destroying the jobs of ordinary working people. A free market operating under rules and regulations is a contradiction. What a Tory means by the free market is that employers, bankers, financial institutions and the business class should be free from the rules and regulations May hypocritically claims are necessary. I repeat what I have said before, there is a world of difference between the concepts of a market economy and a free market economy.   

In health, education, housing, indeed all areas of social and economic life, successive pigsty governments have sought to remove ordinary people’s rights and legal safeguards. These rights are seen as constraints on business, on profit-making and on what they continually call wealth-creation, another meaningless absurdity. What May betrays is that she doesn’t even begin to understand the very concept she worships. As I continually tell you, she is a typical example of the well-schooled but poorly educated. As her disastrous approach to Brexit daily demonstrates, she is as thick as mince. She is head of a system that systematically removed all meaningful rules and regulations from banks and financial institutions that resulted in the financial crash and that has done absolutely zero to remedy it since. She is head of the system that was responsible for the Grenfell Tower disaster and she has since been exposed as having lied persistently to the victims and the public. May and her government are in terminal decline and this is an attempt to spike the progress of the Labour Party under Corbyn, however, like her speech, it is meaningless and devoid of intelligence. What worries me is that the British Labour Party may well be actually worse in the form if its personnel. I can identify no-one in the echelons of the Labour Party who displays a scintilla of understanding or coherence of thought and vision. Amongst all of this we have the spectacle of the USA imposing a 219% tariff on British aircraft thus destroying at a stroke the cherished vision of post-Brexit free trade deals. We are indeed a nation built on sand and heading for disaster. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Perhaps the worms are turning?

At the British Trades Union Congress today there were signs that enough is enough. The public sector unions were indicating that unless the government scraps its cap on public sector pay they will organise for strike action. Significantly the head of the largest public sector union declared that if the circumstances meant that strike action would be deemed unlawful under the present legislation then that would mean that the union movement would break the law. Well said that man. The unions will have the full support of the Kommirat. We live in the most shocking climate of class war and discriminatory inequality in my lifetime in this country and it is a source of bewilderment how this has been allowed to continue for so long without significant resistance. We have a Westminster pigsty filled with the most corrupt and incompetent politicians imaginable who have inflicted a vicious programme of austerity against working people that has seen the average working person lose over £3000 per annum over the past five years whilst that same set of porcine criminals have awarded themselves twelve percent more in the past two years alone. They are shameless and devoid of any moral compass or decency yet demand that working people adhere to standards that are completely alien to the British elite who regard law and respect for others as matters for the lesser beings.

For example, why should the unions ignore the law surrounding rules governing strike action? In 2016 the government passed legislation requiring unions to be subject to rules that demand that strikes are only legal when at least 50% of the membership actually vote. If justice has to be the foundation of the law, then the majority of elected officials in the United Kingdom would be in office illegally, as would some of the members of the pigsty, as it is unusual for elections to command a 50% turnout in this country. Even at general elections some constituencies do not achieve it, but it is the norm at local elections. In addition they introduced a clause requiring that 40% of all those entitled to vote in the ballot must vote in favour of industrial action in certain public services such as health, education, fire and transport. Thus, in the event of a 50% turnout in those sectors, it would require 80% of all votes to be in favour of strike action for the strike to be legal. This is blatant class warfare and a violation of all known norms of justice and the rule of law. The withdrawal of your labour, the only resource available to a working person, is a fundamental human right, to deny it is tantamount to slavery. Clause 40 of the Magna Carta in 1215 states that "To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice". The Tories have taken us back to the Middle Ages. It was Augustine of Hippo who warned us about such legislation when he told us that "Surely we will not dare to say that these laws are unjust, or rather that they are not laws at all. For it seems to me that an unjust law is no law at all." And it was St Thomas Aquinas who told us that we cannot be bound to obey laws that are unjust because laws that violate reason are not laws, they are something else.

By its arbitrary abuse of law and reason the Tory government places the very foundations of the state in jeopardy. You are all well aware of how I quote Adam Smith who tells us that

"Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society amongst robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence, but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it".

Even the ancient Greeks understood this better than the British as Pericles told us that "Where the law is subject to some other authority and has none of its own, the collapse of the state is not far off". So much of British law today has no authority other than the hatred and prejudice of the Tories and the British elite, and things are only going to get worse. The legislation being rushed through the pigsty to cover the Brexit process has been described even by some Tories as shameful and unacceptable. It will of course be passed. British society is in a perilous state, divided and riven with inequality and injustice. The basis of all Tory policy is hatred, of working people, of Europe, of immigrants, or foreigners in general and the poor the disabled etc. But the largest driver of their policy agenda is class, as their class hatreds are awesome to behold. Britain is descending into darkness. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

The great never look upon their inferiors as their fellow creatures

I was reminded of the quote that is the title of this post as I read the UN Report that denounces Britain's treatment of the disabled as a human catastrophe. Those are really strong words and we should take very serious heed of them as they are an accurate condemnation of Britain's claim to be a civilised society. Adam Smith wrote the above quote in 1759 and one of the modern trends amongst academics is to denounce Smith and his friend David Hume's contentions that human nature was fixed and unchanging. Now I disagree that they actually meant what they are accused of, because what they were trying to say is that certain fundamental aspects of human nature are common throughout all of humanity throughout all ages, not that every person's nature is the same or that our nature does not fluctuate according to circumstances. Certain aspects of a person's nature are a reflection of their environment, such as the class attitudes we see embedded within British national culture. In that light he also reflects on the subservience of the poor towards those they are socialised into regarding as their betters and how we, if we did not know better, would assume that the rich and powerful  feel pain more agonising than the poor and the convulsions of death more terrible. What our modern academic is doing is trying to discredit what Smith and Hume were saying by discrediting what they regard as their fundamental hypothesis.

I could fill this post with quotes from Smith that could paint what you would have to admit was a very accurate picture of 21st century Britain that would dismay you and make you conclude that we have not progressed as a civilised nation one jot since the 18th century. What is certain is that with respect to the attitudes of the rich and powerful towards their inferiors we most certainly have not. There is an underlying barbarism in the UK lurking within the halls of Westminster and Whitehall that is an accurate reflection of the schooling such people receive in the so-called great  institutions of the private and exclusive British education system such as Harrow, Eton, Oxford and Cambridge. Britain is, in effect, two nations and one of them despises the other with a passion. As a result, Smith was quite correct in his observations that certain fundamentals of human nature remain basically the same. Such attitudes towards their inferiors are no different today than they were in 1759. The British elite, as reflected in the public policy of pigsty governments, loath working people and the disadvantaged and. although you are by now fed up hearing me saying it, are determined to reduced them to a condition of modern slavery. I have talked before about the Nazis description of the untermenschen, the lesser humans, and how the Tories and their allies share exactly the same opinion of the working people and disadvantaged in Britain. We are the subhumans and that is how the Tories and their allies are determined that we will remain. If you are less than a human being then you have no human rights and real human beings owe you no duties or responsibilities, you are dispensable and are in fact a nuisance that society would be better without. People have frequently taken me to task over the years for arguing that the British elite share the Nazis views on many things as we arrogantly pride ourselves on having risen above such things, but now the United Nations are officially confirming the Kommirat diagnosis, the British aristocratic and bourgeois elite are vile, venal and barbaric. That underlying barbarism had been suppressed by the civilising tendencies encouraged by people like Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine and other great writers and thinkers, but was unleashed and made respectable by the Blessed Margaret, that is why she is so revered by the great and good. She made greed and selfishness respectable but also provided the intellectual climate that unleashed the underlying barbarism that encouraged the demonization of the poor and working people and the philosophic justification for impoverishing and enslaving them.

As the political and social life of a society reflect the economic base of that society then only by transforming the dominant economic model can we effect any meaningful change. The free market neoliberal poison must be challenged and utterly defeated. In addition, those personnel who advocate it must be driven from public office. Civilisation and decency demands it, indeed, increasingly in British public life, the life of many people demands it as the free marketeers are literally killing them. Don't take my word for it, ask the United Nations. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

What does Stephen Hawking know anyway?

The person who occupies the presidency of the United States has so disgraced himself and demeaned that office that this blog will no longer honour him with that title nor address him by name, from now on he will simply be 45. You really need to be exceptionally bad to be criticised on a moral level by George W Bush. That in itself would make anyone with a scintilla of self-respect and dignity immediately resign and spend the rest of their life in a Tibetan monastery in contemplation.

I have been contemplating for some time on the type of person who still supports the 45 and those who still enthusiastically embrace Brexit. It appears to matter not one iota to such people that they know that are being lied to on an industrial scale and that the whole justification for their original enthusiasms has been demonstrated to be fictitious. The 45 is an outrageous liar, that is simply a fact, and the entire Brexit argument has not only been demonstrated to be a complete fiction, but is being admitted as such by its most vociferous proponents. Yet, significant sections of the public still cling to what are obvious fantasies. What is so problematic about this is that it is dangerous. The 45's daily rhetoric must surely result in some member of the press or media being killed. He now openly calls the media bad people, it is no longer their message that is bad, nor their journalism, it is they themselves. He is peddling hate from the most powerful platform in the world. But the result of his hate rhetoric may have catastrophic results for the US. He has fostered hatred for all of the institutions that bind America and emboldened the people who seek confrontation and racial division. Similarly, in the UK, race hate crimes have reached record levels as a result of the rhetoric of people like Nigel Farage and Theresa May and her Tory colleagues. In the UK the Brexit arguments are being falsified on a daily basis; there is indeed fake news, but it all emanates from the 45 and the Tories, but all of this just rolls off so many of our fellow citizens, they are indifferent to facts, rationality, or evidence.

What is so ironic is that those who support 45 and the Tories are looking to the cause of their problems for the solutions. Does anyone in the USA really believe that the 45 will satisfy any other sections of the US public outside of his own family and his businesses? In the UK none of the economic, political or social arguments for Brexit appear to matter to such people, we now all know it was purely about immigration, it was blatant racism and is now graphically demonstrated as such. In the fifteen months since the Tories invoked Article 51 to leave the EU they are not one piece of paper farther forward, not one thing has been agreed. EU diplomats are in awe at the sheer incompetence of the British government and are admitting to a disbelief in their ignorance. Despite most of our leading politicians having spent their adult lives in the pigsty, supposedly practising politics, whilst being members of the EU all of that time, they display a level of ignorance of the EU itself that is leaving EU politicians speechless. The head of staff for David Davies, the Minister for Exiting the EU, has just told the British public that Davies, the person leading our negotiations is a bully, a liar, and heart lazy. He is lucky if he works three days a week, and that only when he is sober. He never reads his staff briefings and goes into any meeting completely unprepared and indifferent. If you have read this blog for any length of time, you will know that I have been telling you about Tory attitudes, incompetence and ignorance for years. Remember you must never confuse people who have had a good schooling with being educated. If they are then that is incidental. The British are so class biased that if you speak with an Oxbridge accent, everyone automatically assumes that you are superior, competent and intelligent when the complete opposite is normally the truth. If you doubt that I merely call your attention to Boris the Spider.

There is no rational argument that can be made to those who continue to support the 45 and the Tories as their single mindedness is itself deeply irrational. They are correct to pinpoint the complete indifference of the political classes to their plight, but they then turn to the worst offenders for their solution. The people who are in power in both Britain and the US are incapable of considering others. That is surely self-evident. In Britain we have Stephen Hawking, the greatest mind since Einstein, calling out the Tories for their destruction of the NHS and their determination to privatise it, and, true to form, the Tories respond by telling him he doesn't know what he is talking about. I mean, this is only the greatest intellect in the world, who has spent literally years in the hands of the NHS and must have more experience of NHS treatment than almost anyone else in the UK, having had one of the most tragic illnesses imaginable since he was 21. He is now 75, but of course he doesn't know what he is talking about. You can blame a Tory for many things, but inconsistency is not one of them. It is only tragedy that will impact on our 45 and Brexit supporters, that is sad for the rest of us. You have been warned 

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

 

The free market, stupid and unworkable, a catalogue of contradictions and wishful thinking.

I have often written about the hegemonic grip that free market politics and economics has on our national consciousness. As a result, it is a taken from granted that the state is a bad thing in our modern Anglo-Saxon societies, and this is never challenged, not even by so-called socialists. They appear to have absorbed and accepted Karl Popper's thesis that the state is a necessary evil that must not be allowed to grow greater than is absolutely necessary. This is of course rubbish. The state is not a thing. It is a manifestation of human political, social and economic life. It is a human artefact and is a reflection of the people who are charged with its functions. The state can be bad, it can be evil, but it can also be a force for good, it is simply a reflection of the policies of the people who control it. The great paradox of modern life is that those same free marketeers who so demonise the state and demand its minimalisation, are the same people who utilise its powers ferociously and ruthlessly in pursuit of their own agenda. In the UK for example, it has been the Tories, under the direction first highlighted by the Blessed Margaret, who have relentlessly centralised power in a manner Lenin would have approved of. As a matter of interest, Thatcher, the enemy of the state and of public provision, who actively attempted to destroy the concept of council housing, as Prime Minister lived rent and tax free in a council house, 10 Downing Street. The Queen and the rest of her family are all social housing occupants and live off public welfare. The Prime Minister in Britain is the ultimate public sector employee and the Royal Family are the ultimate benefit scroungers. You couldn't invent these people's hypocrisy. So, where would Tory Prime Ministers and the Royal Family be were it not for the state?
 
What never seems to have occurred to the free marketer is that their present capitalist system could never have been realised without a strong and active state. The principal driver of an efficient capitalist system is communications. Roads, railways, air transport, docks, waterways etc. are all crucial to an effective economy. In the modern world we depend on broadband, telecommunications the internet etc. which in turn all depend on massive state investment. In addition an effective economy needs a healthy and educated workforce. None of these essential characteristics can be left to market forces and the private sector, Adam Smith recognised that 250 years ago. Stripped to its essentials, free market ideology is stupid and unworkable, a catalogue of contradictions and wishful thinking. As I have written before, it is characterised by a quite ridiculous concept of the individual, and simply does not even begin to understand the nature of the state.

It is the great proponents of the free market who love war and invading other countries. This could not happen without the state and its armed forces. In their never-ending search for new weapons and technology they are dependent on state sponsored investment and research. In the United States their space programmes were state sponsored. I could go on and on, but hope that you have the message, capitalism could not survive without a powerful and proactive state. More and more people are beginning to question the dominance of the free market and particularly its militant manifestation of neoliberalism. Why, because it has demonstrably failed and has caused serious damage at all levels of society. You heard it here first, you have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Donald Trump and Theresa May are enemies of civilised humanity.

I am writing this as I watch a programme on the history channel called "The Unseen Holocaust" documenting Nazi atrocities in the east, particularly in the Soviet Union, one hour after watching people carrying swastikas on the streets of Charlottseville chanting hatred for blacks and Jews and the Nazi slogan 'blood and soil'. I have just watched original footage of the discovery of a mass grave in Rostov containing 12,000 Jewish bodies followed by footage of the excavation of Babi Yar in Kiev where the Nazis managed to massacre 33,000 Jews in just two days. However, Babi Yar also contained graves containing a further 60,000 bodies of Russians, gypsies, the disabled etc. the untermenshen, the subhuman of Nazi mythology. I have personally visited Auschwitz and Birkenau and have stood in the gas chambers and at the selection site at the railway terminal in Birkenau. I have the full series of The World at War and have watched the series, The Nazis a Warning from History, three times. I also have Laurence Rees's accompanying books about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, including numerous other books about the Second World War with a particular emphasis on the Battle of Stalingrad. The Nazis were responsible for circa fifty million deaths in the Second World War with twenty-five million in the Soviet Union alone. It cannot be tolerated that we are witnessing American and British people openly demonstrating an allegiance to this political and ideological system on our streets and on our television. Every city, town, village and hamlet in the UK have monuments to the British men and women who died fighting these people to protect our way of life, and I expect the US has the same. If I were an American I would be demanding similar monuments to the victims of the slave trade and lynchings which was simply another form of holocaust because it was the systematic persecution and exploitation of a people considered untermenshen and expendable, instead these people erect statues to those responsible for slavery and lynchings. The black person was considered less than a human being when the US Constitution was written, and has been the subject of systematic atrocities since they first arrived in the Americas. The British treated them likewise in the West Indies and in the Indian subcontinent. Today we see our own citizens attempting to place this ideology at the heart of our nations and promote its adherents into public office, people who reject the concept of equality, who believe some sections of humanity are superior whilst others are inferior, who believe that races and ethnic groups will be polluted by mixing with others etc. If you believe Nazi and superiority ideologies then if you are in a position to do so you will happily enslave and exterminate other people; that has been empirically demonstrated throughout history. You will even justify it by reference to the word of whatever god you support.

I write this because there can be no justification whatsoever for attempting to draw a moral, political, or social equivalence between those who support such ideas and those who oppose them. The world watched events unfold in pre-war Germany because they could not bring themselves to believe that what eventually transpired was possible in what was one of the most cultured and civilised nations in the world, the nation of Goethe, Handel, Beethoven, Kant etc. Such is the power of ideas and the poisonous and cancerous growth they can manifest if they go unchallenged and unchecked. What the right in America has graphically demonstrated is that they will take America down that route in the blink of an eye. The right in Britain are just as culpable, but are more subtle. I remind you that the Daily Mail was openly supportive of Hitler, and we had a Prince of Wales who courted Hitler and his circle. If anything the Mail is even more right-wing now and is an organ of pure hatred.

By his words and deeds, Donald Trump has demonstrated his complete unfitness for office. Despite her condemnation of the ideas and philosophy of the KKK and white supremacists, by refusing to condemn Trump, Theresa May has disgraced her office and sold her soul, and the soul of the British people and should resign immediately. Trump is demonstrably insane, his narcissism is obviously a serious illness. May is simply a craven disgraceful human being, devoid of dignity, compassion, humanity, but most importantly, any form of responsible and rational leadership. She is, as I keep telling you, a particularly stupid person. May is a stereotypical Tory, sociopathic, completely selfish and, like the supremacists, filled with a sense of superiority and entitlement. We are in dangerous times. In the UK it is now accepted wisdom that Brexit had nothing to do with trade, the economy or any of the other excuses that Brexiteers invented to hide their naked racism. It was all about immigration and hatred of foreigners. Every attempt to seek an accommodation with the EU is thwarted and broken on the same rock, freedom of movement. Thus, could the holocaust happen again? Of course it could, and it could be coming to you soon. If these people get into power, it will definitely come to me, and don't ever forget the warnings of Pastor Niemoller. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat