Labour to the rescue of the Scots, Aye Right!

I was reflecting today on the welcome retirement from British politics of the war criminal and supporter of torture, David Milliband, and got to thinking how the people who are most in league with the Tories to prevent Scotland's self-realisation are the Labour Party who have given us the leadership of ex-Chancellor Alistair Darling to promote the Better Together campaign. I actually prefer to call Darling a Chancer, as opposed to a Chancellor as he was one of the prime architects of the financial crisis.

However, for those who may be persuaded that Labour may provide us with credible arguments, let me remind you of some of the achievements of these people whilst in office.

In their 13 years in office up to May 2010, the New Labour governments of Blair and Brown created 4,300 criminal offences, that is almost one new criminal offence for every day in office. This was not their output of legislation, merely the criminal legislation they passed. On average they created 28 offences every month but that conceals that under Brown's leadership they created an average of 33 every month. This compares with the 494 offences created between 1988 and 1996 by the Tories. From 1945 till the end of the 1980's, Parliament produced one major criminal justice bill every ten years, but from 1997 to 2010, Labour passed over 50.

This type of activity displays a madness. It is pathological, a compulsion. This government actually created an offence, punishable with life imprisonment, for causing a nuclear explosion. This is similar to the law that can see you get life in prison for committing suicide. I have tried to imagine who would be left to charge you with such an offence (assuming you survived the resulting explosion), then try you (if they can find 12 people left to form a jury) then find a building left standing in which to imprison you. It’s an interesting exercise. Yet, how many hours did intelligent civil servants and law officers spend in the drafting of such a measure? Well I presume they were intelligent.

Some other beauties, just to give you a flavour of this government’s priorities whilst in office, were the creation of an offence of swimming in the wrecked hull of the Titanic, (can you imagine such insanity, I often wonder if they have placed a policeman in an office on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean to monitor who is actually swimming in the hull), disturbing a pack of eggs when instructed not to do so by an officer, and selling, or offering for sale a bird of game killed on a Sunday or Christmas Day. Can you imagine how any government could get into such a pathological state as to dream all this stuff up, and actually believe that it had any importance? This is just an example of some of the crazier measures introduced into Britain by people we are supposed to believe are rational and sane. That folks is the modern Labour Party, so, if you vote for them, don't blame me. I will leave you with a reminder that both Millibands served in these administrations.

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat

Take your credit card if you go hill walking

I trust you are aware of our government's latest sacrifice to their free market god. They have privatised the search and rescue services presently provided by the navy and the air force to an American company; they hadn't even the decency to sell it to a British or European company.

In the United States, if you have an accident and do not have evidence of insurance with you at the time, you will not be picked up by an ambulance, you will simply be left to die, that is the reality of privatised rescue. So, if you go hill walking or sailing etc., you had better take your credit card with you as these people will probably be armed with swipe machines, because, if you require to be rescued by a helicopter or a rescue boat, you will be billed. At the present we have 12 search and rescue centres in the UK and two are about to be closed. Don't forget, the first thing that happens in any privatised service is that lots of jobs go.

This is ideological dogma gone mad, but I must remind you that what the Tories are doing is looting as much as they can before they are stopped. This has nothing to do with safety or efficiency, and everything to do with Tory ministers being given backhanders to sell off as much as they can to their mates for profit. In addition, the Tories are abdicating the very fundamental duties of government, the health and safety of their citizens. Governments are derivative, they derive their roles and functions, indeed their very existence from the electorate who put them in office to serve them. You were neither warned about, nor consulted on such decisions. These are national services, they are yours, not the governments, and no politician has any right whatsoever to take such decisions without the express permission of the electorate. The government does not provide such services, the state does and does it with your taxes. They are not government services, they are social services. The same applies to health, education etc.The Tories have such a visceral hatred of the state and anything public that they will leave this country with no facilities and with no public service sector. There is no low these people will not stoop to in their endless pursuit of wealth. If you think that anyone in the Palace of Westminster cares two hoots about you, about your health, welfare and safety, then you are genuinely deluded. This is outright and ferocious class warfare and we have only one solution left available to us. Scotland must take its independence as a matter of urgency as Labour and the Lib Dems are as guilty as the Tories. I trust you are all aware of the brain damaged man who cannot walk but was passed fit for work by Atos this week? Atos was given the workfare programme by Labour, not the Tories. This is the work of that appalling Yvette Cooper, so, if you think Labour are going to help you, you are in for a shock. Remember Blair started this sell off of services when he privatised ambulances.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Cyprus today, you tomorrow

Some people may think that I am too harsh on the people who run this country and who propagandise its dominant neoliberal ideology. If you do I want you to contemplate the neoliberal solution for the economic crisis in Cyprus. This solution is the result of discussions between the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. In these financial geniuses minds, the people who are to be held responsible for bailing Cyprus out of it predicament are not the banks, nor the politicians who put them in this position, nor the financial sector of the Cypriot economy, but the ordinary savers who put their money into the bank for safekeeping and security. A levy of at least 6.75% is to be deducted from the savings accounts of the poorest, going up to 10% to help stabilise the economy. So, if you have 1000 euros in your bank account for a rainy day, 67 euros is going to be deducted to help the bank get on its feet. Thus, the people who have been criminally incompetent, unbelievably greedy and completely irresponsible will get off scot free, and the people who have been careful, responsible and cautious are to be punished. Now, regardless of the outcome of this situation, even if it changes, it is the fact that our neoliberal elites can even contemplate such measures that you must focus on. It is this that reveals their mindset. They have a complete loathing of, and contempt for, ordinary people. Thankfully, at this time, the Cypriot parliament has had the sense to reject it.

One of the persistent claims of our neoliberal government who are as equally incompetent as our bankers, is that since the last election the private sector of our economy has created 1 million new jobs. This is a barefaced lie. Of those 1 million jobs, the government created 200,000 of them by simply reclassifying further education and sixth form college lecturers by moving them out of the public sector into the private. Thus, by a simple accountacy trick, they claim that the public sector has lost 200,000 jobs and the private sector has created the same amount. The vast bulk of the rest of these jobs are part-time and temporary offering minimum terms and conditions and no security, so, in effect, no real permanent jobs have in fact been created. This is why 60% of people who are on benefits are in employment.

Our government, indeed, all three major political parties, have neither shame nor dignity, they have no self-respect, either individually or collectively. I hesitate to call them whores, because whores sell their services in an honest exchange with their customers, whereas our politicians sell their soul and their respect for power and do not even begin to understand the concept of honesty. If the dominant neoliberal dominance is not stopped, the UK will cease to operate as a civilised society and then UK will cease to be united, not only with the seperation of the Scots through independence, but through class and racial conflict. I trust you will remember who warned you when it happens because I will not hesitate to tell you that I told you so!

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Freedom of the Press

I must be getting senile. I was sure that the nice Mr Cameron, our esteemed and honourable Prime Minister had given the country his assurance that he would implement the findings of the Leveson Enquiry in full, but I was obviously mistaken, because, as I've pointed out previously that our nice Mr Cameron wouldn't tell us a lie or mislead us would he? It could not possibly have been our nice Mr Cameron, the one who promised that the measures his government would take on the Levenson findings would be in consultation with the victims of press hacking and intrusion and that such measures were to be judged by how they satisfied the victims, who addressed the press on television today, because the man who was posing as the Prime Minister on television today broke every one of these promises, and our nice Prime Minister couldn't possibly do such a thing. I simply cannot contemplate the notion that our beloved and honourable Mr Cameron is a bare-faced stinking liar up to his armpits in corruption with the millionaire elite who control news in this country, so I confess I must be completely mistaken!

As our beloved leader points out, the freedom of the press is one of the fundamental foundations of a free society. However, a problem arises when that freedom is used to abuse the rest of us and engage in criminality. You see, if we uphold the freedom of the press, then the press must reciprocate and uphold our freedom not to have our phones hacked, not to be spied on, not to be lied about or lied to, not to have our privacy invaded etc. That is, the freedom that the press demands, carries responsibilities to the society within which it operates. However, what the British press demands is the right to exploit its position of freedom, whilst denying anyone else the same rights. For example, the British press is unanimous in its denial of the rights of working people to take strike action. The press must remain unregulated, the worker must be totally regulated and denied what little rights they still possess, and the Westminster Parliament sits and nods its head sagely in agreement.

The burden of proof in our society demands that guilt is established beyond reasonable doubt, and the press in the UK has demonstrated beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt that they are vermin and will do anything at all to get what they want. In addition, their owners and editors who constantly pop up on our televisions demanding freedom for their champions of democratic accountability have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that they will turn a blind eye to any and every form of criminality and immorality by their staff, applaud their actions and reward them handsomely as long as they don't get caught. In all this activity they are supported by Cameron and the Conservative Party, and, until recently, the Labour Party as well.

Freedom is not an infinite resource. Any increase of freedom for someone, or some groups,  will almost always involve a loss of freedom for someone else. For example, your freedom to swing your fist ends at the point of my nose. Your freedom of speech ends when you use it to abuse me, encourage violence and/or discrimination against me. Should you refuse to recognise such limits to your freedom, then you will diminish mine. As a result, freedom is not an absolute, but a relative, value. Your freedom cannot be regarded as absolute as it is relative to mine. What I mean by that is what I said above, that your freedom is contingent on your committment to respect mine. As a result, freedom has limits and you cannot make a moral case for freedom on the premise that you refuse to respect it for others.

I have previously noted how the human being is a regulatory being. Humans need to operate within a regulatory framework which we recognise, and which present to us as norms, values and formal law. No interactive human organisation should be allowed to operate without some form of regulation, and the press are no exception. The British press insist on self-regulation, but they are demonstrably not to be trusted as they are self-evidently structurally corrupt and venal. There are no arguments that the British press can make, nor their paid servants within the Westminster Parliament, that can persuade us that they can be trusted. They must be statutorily regulated as every other form of press regulation has failed. We must be protected from their criminality and never ending search for sensationalism at our expense. What the nice Mr Cameron is doing is giving the press permission to create another Millie Dowler affair, or another McCann affair, in the future as he is signalling to the British people that he doesn't give a hill of beans what the press do to us, or how they treat us 'cos they're his mates. I ask you, as you pass the newsagents each day, simply watch the headlines in the Daily Express and the Daily Mail and take note of how often each week they have a banner headline attacking immigrants, people on benefits, the EU and Muslims, and then tell me these people do not peddle lies to incite hatred.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

If its in the Express it must be true

One of the great successful confidence tricks perpetrated by the British ruling classes in the early 21^st century has been the demonisation of ‘benefit scroungers.’ Government has virtually declared war on people who are unable to work and have to rely on state benefits. Such people are by definition scroungers, and obviously undeserving.

In 2012 the British ‘celebrated’ the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth 11. She is head of the British royal family, a group of people who must rank as the ultimate benefit scroungers and largest recipients of state benefits in British history. In addition, this particular family must rank as one of the most dysfunctional families in the whole British Isles, but any suggestion that this family and its dependents are living on state benefits (in their case known as the civil list), is greeted with horror and suggestions of treason.

Another demonised section of the community are immigrants. There is hardly a day passes in the British tabloid press, particularly the appalling Daily Express, without one of them writing something derogatory and nasty about immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants who, as everyone knows because the government and its agents in the tabloid press are constantly telling us, are all potential suicide bombers and wish the destruction of British society and culture. The Queen’s husband is an immigrant, a Greek, but of course he is white and is not a Muslim so that's OK.

The English Premier League of football is becoming predominantly staffed by immigrants, teams like Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool etc. are almost able to field a whole team of players with no indigenous British players on the field. They are all multimillionaires. But they aren’t demonised, no, they are rich and famous, they aren’t working class or Muslim. Most of England’s successful football teams are owned by foreigners, some of them immigrants, but very wealthy immigrants. So that’s OK. So, who is to blame for Britain’s woes? Who is to blame for the greatest financial crisis in our history, and who must be made to pay for solving the largest budget deficit in our history? Easy, benefit scroungers and immigrants (as long as they are not royalty) simples! The dominant ideology in the UK has demonised the public sector and its workforce, people on benefits, the disabled, the unemployed, immigrants and what they term, the undeserving poor, and the British public have bought into this disgusting scapegoating and support policies that defy intelligent understanding. Disability campaigners in the UK openly state that the government is fostering a hatred for them that sees them suffer discrimination, name-calling and physical abuse. This has been followed by a war on disability benefits that threaten to beggar disabled people. Welcome to modern Britain, a good god-fearing nation of tolerance and dignified behaviour towards the downtrodden and the poor.

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat

Lessons from Eastleigh

If anyone wants a definitive reason for voting for Scottish Independence, then they only need to look at the byelection result from Eastleigh today.The good, and supposedly intelligent, electorate in Eastleigh have just voted for a party that have broken every promise they made to them at the general election, and have adopted the neoliberal working class hating, people on benefit hating, disabled hating and immigrant hating agenda with a gusto. They have supported the bankers, supported the privatisation and dismantling of the health service, tax cuts for the richest in our society and benefit cuts for the most disadvantaged. I could go on but you must all be familiar with this party's crimes. This is the party that is currently trying to protect one of its Lords on charges of repeated sexual harassment (after their leader was caught out lying through his teeth about having any knowledge of it) on the grounds that what he is accused of is 'quite mild.' So you just remember that, you ladies out there, if anyone touches you up, strokes your bum or your leg or brushes against your breasts, you have no business complaining because it is, after all, quite mild, and the Lib Dems will certainly not go out of their way to protect you (on second thoughts I think I may join the Lib Dems).

In addition, the good people of Eastleigh voted the quasi-fascist UKIP into second place. This is the party that openly peddles hatred for foreigners, wants to withdraw us from the EU, the only organisation that is concerned with our civil and political rights, and wishes to ditch our attempts to implement green policies to tackle global warming. This is a party of cranks, xenophobes and loonies. It says everything about them that they sent Neil Hamilton to represent them on Question Time last night.  

I trust you will watch with interest what this result will do to the Tories. They will now take a step further to the right (if that is possible) in order to try to recapture the voters who deserted them last night. They are led by the most incompetent Prime Minister and Chancellor in living memory who appear completely oblivious to the fact that their economic policies are both disastrous and ruinous. They have failed to meet every one of the targets that they themselves set as the benchmark for their government, yet their recipe for success will not be to review their failures, but to insist on more of the same, more cuts to the public services, more privatisation etc. On Wednesday they were the only leaders in the entire EU to object to the cap on banker's bonuses. They in fact applauded the £600million bonuses that I spoke of earlier this week being awarded by RBS. In other words, a bank that is so incompetent and criminal that it ran up a loss of £5.2billion in one year, is to be rewarded with performance related bonuses. You simply could not make that up. These are people whose salaries are the equivalent of winning the lottery every year, and they are demonstrably useless, but, according to the Prime Minister, they deserve their bonus. The head of RBS actually told a Commons Committee a few weeks ago that his £8million pound a year salary was 'quite modest.'

As I have said before, the Westminster system is so broken and corrupt that it is quite possibly beyond repair, and it is no good looking to the Labour Party because they are actually the authors of this mess. Whilst approximately half a million people in this country are being fed by handouts from food banks, the Westminister elite are applauding people who cannot possibly spend what they earn in one year, let alone in their working life, and telling the poor it is all their own fault. Watch this space.

As an addendum, I would simply ask if anyone can explain to me why bankers get bonuses at all? The vast majority of people work their whole lives, doing a good job, meeting all the criteria expected of them, but never ever get a bonus. Bankers bonuses are a complete mystery to me!

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat