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