Are trades unions relevant? what a stupid question!

I listened to part of a radio programme on the topic of whether trades unions were relevant in the 21st century. I turned it off after a bit because I find such discussions extremely depressing as, from my perspective, the necessity for trades unions is self-evident. The human being is a social being and is therefore a regulatory being. Humans must regulate their environment, as a regulated and parameter driven environment is essential for their health and well-being. Humans require necessary reference points. The absence of, or destruction of, such reference points produces the condition that sociologists call anomie. This is the great danger of someone in a position of power and influence like the 45, who is quite deliberately destroying traditional reference points, traditional norms and values governing human individual and collective behaviour because he has the power to do so to further his own personal, selfish, and malignant interests. In this he has a successful and poisonous role model in the Blessed Margaret because that was what she did in the UK, producing a fractured and divided society in which hate and division are the principal characteristics of the social and political order. Early industrial society was unregulated and deeply unjust, and working conditions were at the mercy of employers who were able to do whatever they wanted. Such conditions are anti-social and unnatural to the human being and, as a result, the collective of the working people sought to counter the selfish individualism of the employer and bring reason and harmony to the workplace through a balance of competing interests. The mechanism they used was of course the trade union. Adam Smith, for example, wrote about the unjust relations of power between employers and employees and was an early supporter of trades unions, although he did not call them that. He simply referred to combinations. Nothing was more important to Smith than justice and if there was injustice within any arrangement he was opposed to it. Justice can only be established within a regulated environment and is one of the reason I always tell you that Smith did not advocate something called the free market.

Trade unions brought regulation and rational behaviour into industrial society. They brought regulation into working hours, days, weeks and years. They established rational wage bargaining and brought civilised standards into the world through matters such as health and safety, holidays, pensions etc. There was a limit to what they could achieve within the workplace however as much of their needs could only be met with legislation. As a result they were forced to involve in politics and, because of the hatred of working people within the established order, and the refusal of the political elite to recognise the rights of the lower orders, the scum, they were forced to develop political organisations sympathetic to working people. The trades unions were therefore a major catalyst in establishing civilisation, democracy and decency. The methodology trades unions utilised to rationalise and democratise the workplace and the wider society was what we call collective bargaining. There is nothing socialist, communist or even left-wing about this methodology. There is nothing socialist, communist or even left-wing about trades unionism. Indeed it embodies all the requirements of a functioning market economy. Two parties, employers and employees, sit down and bargain over wages and conditions of employment. It is a market situation where there is a power imbalance, but where it is in each others self-interest not to pursue a completely selfish agenda. Each has a product, on the one side it has a position of employment to sell, on the other it has labour to sell. The great leveller is that each needs the other. It is a market situation of compromise and give and take with each attempting to maximise their advantage. If trade unions are seen to be left-wing it is because of the personnel who manage them and is not an inherent characteristic of the essence of their roles and functions. Trades unions are the same as all other social institutions, they are a reflection of the personnel who compose them, but, and this is never acknowledged, they have never challenged the fundamental essence of the capitalist market system, all they have ever sought to achieve is a greater distribution of the rewards of the system that is the result of their labour power.

It is no accident that the primary goal of the Thatcherite Tories was the destruction of the union movement. It is no accident that the Blessed Margaret's accession to power marked the beginning of the end of Britain as a civilised society. That the British working class are their own worst enemy is so obvious that it is hardly worth stating. Any working person who votes Tory is indeed a useful idiot. I actually know former miners who vote Tory, not many, but I do know them. The dominant economic theories tell me that the human being is rational, aye right!! You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

The Spider caught in his own stinking lying web

The fundamental concept that underpins a nation that purports to operate by the rule of law is the presumption of innocence, that you are innocent until proven guilty. I have repeatedly told you that Britain has long ago abandoned this benchmark of a civilised society. Britain is uncivilised because its ruling class are uncivilised and refuse to adhere to civilised norms and values, the essentials of a democratic order. The British government and the Conservative Party in particular believe that decency and civilised behaviour are for the little people, but in addition, they have neither the intelligence to answer questions honestly or the courage to admit mistakes. If found to have lied they immediately tell another lie to cover it up. In Scotland a fact-checking website found that the Scottish Tories were persistent liars, with seventy percent of the claims they made over the past year being untrue and their leader, Rape Clause Ruth, being the biggest offender. But the Tories are not just pathological liars they are congenitally stupid. There can be few imbecilic examples of political incompetence and stupidity greater than The Spider. He is in a class of incompetent stupidity that few can aspire to and even fewer reach. If there was anyone in the pigsty with a shred of decency they would immediately table a motion of no confidence in this repulsive cretin as he is a national disgrace and embarrassment. Without a shred of evidence he has created an international crisis with the Russians that has spread like wildfire.

Now, the Russian state may well have poisoned the Skripals, but, as I said at the start, a civilised and law-abiding society waits until it has proof of a crime before it rushes to judgement. Now I hope you will trust me when I say that I doubted whether the Russians were culpable of this crime right from the start. It just did not ring true to me that this was an act with official approval and carried out by state assassins. If they were they were quite incompetent. But, like the Spider I have no evidence, whilst unlike him, I did not rush to judgement and exonerate the Russians or make excuses for them as it may still turn out that they are guilty. What this odious creature and I have in common is that we just don't know. However, what is now demonstrated as fact is that, true to form and consistent with Tory Party values he has lied through his teeth. On German television he told the world that scientists at Porton Down had assured him personally that it was 'absolutely categorical' that the novichok used in this case had originated from Russia. On the strength of his assurances the British Foreign Office released a tweet that read “Analysis by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology laboratory at Porton Down made clear that this was a military grade nerve agent produced in Russia.” They have since deleted the said tweet and Porton Down has now admitted that they cannot tell us where the nerve agent originated from. On German television he told the interviewer that a member of the Porton Down team assured him that 'there was no doubt' that it originated from Russia. This was a bare-faced lie.

What also reveals all you want to know about the British ruling class is that he is still in a job. This, remember is the British Foreign Secretary, it is not just anyone making such claims and telling such outrageous lies, this is the official top diplomat in the British government. This has, and will continue to have, massive international repercussions. It is actions like this that start wars. Indeed it was just such lies and misinformation that led us into Iraq and the subsequent devastating consequences that are still reverberating throughout the world today. I cannot impress on you enough how dangerous the British Tories and the Westminster pigsty are. They lie persistently and constantly about everything, completely indifferent to the consequences of their actions. They lied outrageously throughout the Scottish Independence referendum, throughout the Brexit referendum, at the last general election, about the NHS, and every single public policy issue. As a result we have a bitterly divided nation, divided by class, ethnicity, race and region. They have bred hatred, of foreigners, of the EU as an entity, Muslims, the unemployed, immigrants, the disabled and everyone on benefits. As I constantly remind you they demand deregulation of all forms of behaviour that may impact on their activities and crimes and they have effectively carried this principle into every aspect of their environment. They have deregulated the common decencies and constraints on language, the truth, respect for other people and crucially, respect for the offices they have been elected into or appointed to. But their  greatest act of deregulation has been the deregulation of their own self-respect, their own dignity. They have effectively purged themselves of the capacity for shame. That is the reality of British politics and the people we look to for leadership. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
 

Slavery and poverty, the legacy of the Blessed Margaret

Since the start of this blog I have been persistent and boring on the two ultimate goals of Tory public policy, their determination to reduce the working people of this country to a state of modern slavery; to reduce them to a state of impoverished dependence that will allow employers and managers to impose whatever terms and conditions of employment they wish. As a result, austerity is the principal weapon to achieve such aims and ever increasing poverty and inequality is quite deliberate and systematic public policy. Thus the determination of Westminster to remove all employment rights as a precursor to removing all human rights. That is the principal reason for their enthusiasm to leave the European Union. I have been consistent on these issues from day one. I have been met with scepticism and outright amusement that anyone could actually argue such things, not from everyone, but from many. However, that is changing in the face of a reality it is now impossible to ignore. Our press and media are now awakening to both of these dangers and are being forced to confront a reality that they have been ignoring for far too long from their comfortable environment of privilege and safety. I quote from articles in today’s press. Commenting on the legal requirement for firms to report on slavery in their supply chains the Guardian notes that

“they make clear that the incidence of slavery has become normalised once again – and not just in criminal operations such as the illegal drugs trade or trafficking for prostitution, but in the mainstream economy.”

The Guardian goes on to note that

“In a world where the state has often absented itself from the enforcement of employment law, and where so many human interactions are reduced to financial exchanges at whatever rate the market will take, people have become commodities to use or sell. When competition and austerity are king, it is every man and woman for themselves and their family. Too often, we close our eyes and try to protect our own….Last month the National Crime Agency reported a 35% annual rise in the number of suspected slavery victims found in the UK, with more than 5,000 people referred to the government mechanism that supports them in 2017. Labour exploitation, rather than sexual exploitation, was the most common type of modern slavery cited…..It is hardly surprising that the most egregious forms of exploitation should appear where economic, legal and moral responsibility has been deliberately diffused. Modern slavery is the flipside of the coin that has seen corporates offshore their profits and dodge tax. Both represent a sloughing-off of what were seen in the past as important obligations to society.”

I do not wish to bore you with quotes, but I include these because they are conformation of what I have been warning about for these many years, and because people refuse to believe me and refuse to accept that these nice, civilised, intelligent and well-bred personnel in government and the political class and their supporters in the media would countenance such things. I mean these people are our elite, they went to Eton and Oxbridge, they are civilised. They obviously don’t know about such things and will be horrified when they find out. Aye right. As I have continually warned you, these people are the scum of the earth, devoid of a moral compass, completely lacking in human compassion or decency, they are in fact uncivilised and find justification and solace in a vile and degenerate ideology that supports their basest impulses and desires.

With respect to the issue of poverty there are numerous reports throughout the press and media from the teaching profession who have decided to speak out over their concerns for the return of what they have referred to as Dickensian conditions amongst the nation's children. They report how children are stuffing their pockets with food from school refectories and canteens because that is the only food they will get that day. One teacher told the press, “In some establishments I would imagine that would be called stealing, but in ours it’s called survival,” Many of our nation's children are turning up at school on Monday’s with dirty uniforms because they have no other clothes and have to wear their uniforms all weekend. When investigating widespread truancy they discover the children are missing school because they have no shoes and one primary school headteacher recently opened his school during the severe snow to ensure his pupils got a hot meal that day. Speaking at the National Education Union conference in Brighton, school leaders described how pupils arrived at the school gates with grey skin, poor teeth, hair and nails, with many of the union members described the situation facing their poorest pupils and families as “heartbreaking” According to the Child Poverty Action Group there were four million children in the UK living in poverty in 2016, equivalent to nine in every classroom of 30 pupils.

This subject could of course make a book but I wish to impress upon you the situation in the seventh richest economy on earth under the governance and cruelty of the Westminster Parliament, and provide you with an insight into why I call it the pigsty. There is no depth to which a Tory will sink to satisfy their greed and venality. In this Labour are little better. I do not apologise to tell you that much of this situation is confined to England and Wales. There is poverty in Scotland, but most of the above criticisms are confined outside Scotland, which is a much more civilised and decent society. And that is the clue, Scotland is much more of a society than the rest of the UK, with a greater sense of community and social responsibility. The English electorate voted for this, the Scots did not. A dominant ideology of greed and aggressive individualism will produce greedy, aggressive individuals and is why Scotland rejects Toryism and their obsession with Brexit. As I also persistently warn you, the above trends are the result of the dominant free market 'there is no such thing as society' poison preached as gospel by the Blessed Margaret. Unless this ideology is challenged and defeated things will only deteriorate. The final nails in the coffins of the working people of Britain will be Brexit, and that is what the English voted for. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Antisemitism, a cancer that may yet destroy the Labour Party

'by their fruits ye shall know them.' If you read this blog you will know that I am motivated by this Biblical instruction, as it encapsulates the essence of the empirical methodology I operate by. The only knowledge that qualifies as knowledge is what we receive from experience, all other information is speculation. In other words, what Christ was telling His disciples was to ignore what people were saying and focus on what they do, as their behaviour will reveal their true motivations. You may find this rather hypocritical from someone who eschews religion but it is a fool who rejects wisdom, even from those he/she disagrees with. I write this because I have been following what the Scots call a 'stramash' within the British Labour Party over the issue of antisemitism. From what I have observed of this stramash I am afraid that I have to conclude that the Labour Party does indeed harbour an institutionalised antisemitism and that Jeremy Corbyn himself is less than sympathetic to the Jewish people. I conclude this because despite many fine words about the evils of antisemitism and racism, the Party and its esteemed leader have yet to actually do anything about it. Indeed the only thing that appears to have aroused their conscience was a demonstration by Jewish groups outside the pigsty against Labour and its leader's apparent complacency and toleration of the very thing they insist they will not tolerate. To be fair, some Labour MPs were very concerned about this poison within their Party and joined the demonstration, but, rather than be applauded by their comrades for their bravery and principled stand, they have been vehemently attacked and threatened with deselection. This is because criticism of the Great Leader is the vilest form of treachery to these moral giants. If Corbyn refuses to tackle antisemitism within the Party, then it will have to be tolerated because criticism of the Great Leader is a far greater threat to society than hatred and persecution of Jews. The Labour Party proclaims a policy of zero-tolerance, but we now know that this zero-tolerance is focused on criticism of Corbyn and his policies. In addition, even if the proclamation of zero-tolerance is genuinely towards racism and antisemitism then that tells me that until now it has not been as such a declaration should be unnecessary and self-evident.

Zionism is a political concept that has been sullied by its incorporation into a religious idea, thus blurring the original nature of the Zionist cause. In far too many contexts, Zionism has become a term of abuse that is utilised as an excuse to vilify the Jewish people as a whole, and unfortunately, far too often the actions of the Israeli state give succour to such elements, actions that in my opinion betray the spirit of the Zionist ideal. As a young man I read Der Judenstaat by Theodor Herzl and concluded that he was correct to anticipate that without a Jewish national home the Jewish people faced the prospect of total annihilation at the hands of those powers who detested Jews and made even more likely by the indifference of the rest of humanity, who, history shows, will never raise a whisper of protest to the fate of the Jewish people. This is particularly true of the two great religions. I still believe that this has been borne out by historical events. This does not excuse the behaviour of some Jewish groups who call themselves Zionists and who appear to seek the annihilation of the Palestinian people and who display an indifference to their situation. Such a position is inexcusable. I feel that proper Zionists should be the first to recognise that the salvation of the Palestinian people lies in having a Palestinian state, a homeland, and that they should be bending all their efforts, political, diplomatic, and international, to achieve this in concert with the Palestinian authorities. 

In our modern world anti-Zionism has become synonymous with antisemitism which is a form of racism as Jews are a racial group, a racial group that happen to have a religion peculiar to their race. Zionism on the other hand is, as I said earlier, a political concept. Thus, not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. That distinction unfortunately escapes our politically charged anti-Zionist warriors who happily layer the blame that they apply to Zionist motives and actions on all Jewish people, regardless of whether or not they agree with and support, the actions and motives of the Israeli government. This is the dilemma facing the Labour Party who have neither the capacity nor the intellect to distinguish between the two. This is the task facing the Labour leadership, to make a clear distinction between opposition to Israeli governmental policy and the larger Jewish community. Of course this dilemma is not confined to the Labour Party, it exists at all levels of all societies, but the Labour Party is in a unique position at this point of time to give a lead to one of the greatest cancers in the body politic throughout the world. I have neither the faith nor the confidence that Labour has either the will of the intellect to tackle this problem. I sincerely hope I am wrong. You have been warned

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Brexit may yet produce a British Putin

As I have written here before, democratic government is founded on trust. This is particularly important in the British context as we operate by an unwritten constitution, and therefore must rely on our political class and the legal system at all levels to honour and uphold the law and the traditional normative order of rules and regulations, and importantly, traditional custom and practice, the bedrock of the normative order. In both the UK and the USA the behaviour of the political class has destroyed that trust. Our political class are the most outrageous and prolific liars imaginable and they do so with a certain pride and braggadocio in the full knowledge that we know they are lying but that they know they can get away with it. But it extends far beyond the political class, it is a British disease produced by the poison of the free market. There was a time when banking, the law etc. were honourable professions with those who followed such professions being regarded as role models and trustworthy. No longer. I cannot speak for the US but in Britain I know of no-one in my circle of acquaintances that trust any of such people. As you will be aware, our police, legal authorities and politicians have been exposed as conducting the most heinous campaigns against groups in this nation over many years, with the police and authorities indulging in criminal behaviour and the politicians covering it up because the authorities were acting in the interests of the ruling elite. This is another of the poisonous legacies of the Blessed Margaret whose terms of office were cancerous and malignant. She was responsible for the real beginnings of the decay of the British state and the destruction of the traditional verities of British political and social life. This has produced a legacy where the British public are alienated from all forms of authority, in the sense that they have no trust in them nor respect for their authority. Why, because they refuse to be bound by common decency and the laws, norms and values that they not only expect, but demand, from everyone else. The behaviour of the Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum has destroyed any trust that may have lingered in our system for the foreseeable future. This form of distrust and suspicion was deeply embedded in the British public over the lies and machinations of Mad Tony and Daphne Broon, but the Tories have taken it to new heights. What Americans are supposed to make of their government I can only guess. We have the spectacle of the past Director of the CIA, John Brennan, telling the 45 that

"When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history."

Here is one of America's foremost personages openly telling the President of the United States that he is base and depraved and openly corrupt and for sale to the highest bidder. That is unthinkable, but the most tragic part of it is that it is true. What American can ever have dreamt of hearing such language used against their head of state? What American can ever have dreamt that it would have had to be said at all? At the same time we have the Russians openly rebuking the British government for its language. Regardless of guilt or otherwise, the language employed by British Tory governmental politicians is unacceptable on a world stage and offends against all traditional norms of international communications. The Russians are right to be offended, and, I hope you will agree, betrays a genius on behalf of the British to make Putin look like the victim. It is to the Russians credit that they have refused to adopt such uncivilised language in retaliation. I ask you to ponder the stupidity of Boris the Spider. He went on national television to tell us that it is 'overwhelmingly likely' that Putin sanctioned the Salisbury poisoning. Now you know how I bridle at this cretin being described as intelligent. This is the product of Eton and Oxford. Would I be amiss in my understanding of the English language to argue that if something is described as overwhelming then that would negate it being described as likely? How can something be overwhelmingly likely? Surely if something is overwhelmingly likely then it must be correct, a fact, and therefore no longer likely? I await enlightenment. I mean anyone with a scintilla of intelligence would never make such a statement, and yet I have yet to hear of anyone taking him to task for this, so I am probably mistaken. My point is that our ruling elites have not only debased our politics, but our normative order and our language.

Lack of trust in, and contempt for, the political class has become the new norm, but is a norm under which we have no security nor point of reference. Human beings need security and a sense of certainty in order to live a peaceable and anxiety free life. We need to know that if we approach a policeperson for directions he/she is not going to punch us in the face for example. We need to trust the authorities. A lack of such trust, the absence of meaningful and predictable norms and values produces what we call anomie, a condition of normlessness and an inability to make sense of our environment, our milieu, and such conditions are the seedbed of fascism, of the demands for strong authoritarians to restore security, confidence, honour and dignity. Vladimir Putin is the beneficiary of just such similar circumstances in Russia after the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union. Brexiteers beware, and always remember, history is normally the study of the unintended consequences of intentional action. Your desire for control and national aggrandisement is unleashing a chaos that may produce a British Putin and your deployment of language is a condition of a chaos you are creating whether you mean to do so or not. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat

Private sector power is breeding fascism

I apologise for not having posted for over a week but one of the reasons is that I have been overtaken by events. I had a post prepared on the subject of the dangers to our traditional normative order from both the pigsty and the White House when I saw programmes on CNN on just that very subject and so, as I do not wish to be accused of plagiarism, I have deleted the said post but will discuss this in a different form to what I was proposing if you will bear with me, because it is important and shows us how the governments of both the US and the UK are systematically attacking and undermining our democratic systems in the interests of private individuals and corporations. This, as I continually warn you, is the necessary consequence of free market economics. Free market neoliberalism necessarily leads to authoritarian and even totalitarian government as it will not accept constraints on its activities or regulation. Such private individuals and corporations who, following successful bribery and corruption, own our political class, then demand that the political class order public policy to satisfy their selfish and particular interests. The political system then embarks on a sustained propaganda exercise to convince us that the private sector is self-evidently morally and economically superior to collective public and state activity whilst demonising the public sector, its personnel, its activities and its aims, normally portraying them as 'socialist' which is again expected to be taken as self-evidently evil. This activity then requires that both the pigsty and the White House are solely occupied by personnel who accept this ideology and obey the dictates of the persons whose interests it serves. Only one ideology, one political class who support that ideology and one set of public institutions that underpin that ideology are acceptable and so we slide down the inevitable road to authoritarianism. That is the narrative that really underpins Brexit and continues to support Agent Orange. The tragedy is that such a process requires a political class and governmental personnel who are not only incredibly incompetent, but remarkably stupid as they must always be willing to do the bidding of their corporate masters whenever they are obliged. Again, please don't anyone try to tell me that May, Boris the Spider, the '45 etc are educated and intelligent people when they are demonstrably as thick as two planks, and, in the case of Agent Orange, quite insane. I insert here a paragraph from a Guardian column that puts the case against the 45 far better than I could (I apologise for using his name here as that has been defenestrated from this blog many moons ago as I refuse to soil these pages by recognising it. He is always referred to as the 45 or Agent Orange on this blog, and even that it too respectful).

"Witnessing Trump’s presidency unravel so spectacularly provokes a perverse joy. The venality is so baroque, the vulgarity so ostentatious, the inconsistencies so stark, the incompetence so epic and the lies so brazen, it leaves you speechless. His vanity is without guile and the scandals that embroil him without end. Almost everything he says and does has been publicly contradicted, by himself, usually on Twitter. On Tuesday he said of Tillerson’s departure: “Rex and I have been talking about this a long time … We were not really thinking the same”."

This is why our normative order is being destroyed, because the normal conventions of politics and government would have removed the entire British government and the 45 long before now. Decent and civilised societies governed by civilised behaviour, by respect and common dignity, would not have tolerated such vile cretins for five minutes. Our political class are vile, but so are far too many of the electorate. They are shameless because not only do they have no respect for others, they have no self-respect. This is the characterisation of the majority of our media as well, both press and television. We no longer have any form of journalism left in major areas of the media, we only have shameless and craven propaganda. Thus, the destruction of the normative order extends into the media as well. We are in the midst of a political storm over the poisoning of a Russian and his daughter in Salisbury just now. The Kremlin may well be guilty, I do not know, but neither do those who have found them guilty irrespective of evidence. This nation has now abandoned that most important norm of the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, and this position has been adopted by the government, the pigsty, the press and media and the general public. We are committing the crimes against Iraq, Libya etc. all over again in our desire to scapegoat the foreigner for our own failings. Whilst I was thinking about the character of our political class I was reminded of a quote from Bertrand Russell who said that 

"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his interests, he will scrutinise it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way".

Our instincts in Western society tell us that Russia is bad, full stop. They are the enemy and we are the good guys. Thus, we are guided by a certainty founded upon suspicion rather than proof because we are self-evidently far superior in all human aspects to the Russian. I wonder where we heard that before? which leads me on to one more quote from Russell.

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” 

The pigsty and the 45 are incapable of self-doubt. You should reflect on that, and again, you have been warned   

Your Servant

Doktor Kommirat





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Who on earth is a native of anywhere?

I have written here before that if I was asked at what point did Britain become a civilised society I would point to the introduction of council housing. With the NHS this was the central core of Britain's welfare state. Both these initiatives are now in deep crisis because successive governments have abandoned them to legalised gangsterism. Right-wing ignoramuses label initiatives like the NHS and council housing as examples of socialism which is of course utter nonsense and demonstrates that they don't know what socialism is. Such initiatives are primary examples of a response to pressing needs, indeed the only logical responses available, particularly at that moment in British history, and, as I have also noted here before, the great expansion in British council house building was under Conservative governments before the rot set in under the Blessed Margaret and her poisonous free market filth. The only objections to such initiatives are ideological and indeed at this point in our history there is an urgent need to return to such policies because their crisis has been caused by an ideology and an ideology that has demonstrably failed. Such right-wing responses are similar to the halfwitted criticisms of publicly funded health care in America. What on earth is socialist about such measures no-one ever seems to explain, it is enough to level such an accusation to make your average right-wing ideologue froth at the mouth. This is the result of nation states becoming dominated by the fraudulent concepts of individualism and the free market.

We have the same poisonous phenomenon becoming dominant in the political sphere in Britain and Europe, the stupid, but dangerous notion of nationalism and patriotism. I frequently ask people what they mean by Britishness? I would ask the same of the Agent Orange, what does he mean by Americanism? I was watching people openly admitting to being fascists in the Italian election campaign lamenting the fact that native Italians are in danger of becoming a minority. What on earth, I thought, is a native Italian? At the height of the Roman Empire the city of Rome numbered over a million people. It was the policy of Rome to grant citizenship to anyone who gave loyal service to Rome and even grant them land and property holdings. The bulk of the Roman army in Britain were Gauls, Germanic and even Polish, even the officer class were non-Italian. Many of these soldiers settled here and married into the population. This was later followed by Vikings, Normans et al. The great Scottish hero Robert the Bruce was a Norman, his name being Robert De Bruys. It was the same in Rome itself. Soldiers, slaves given their freedom, gladiators, traders, craftsmen etc. from all over the Roman Empire, settled in Rome and the wider Italian community, married into and integrated with the Roman population and Rome gradually became a mongrel state in the sense that it was the result of its own conquests and the importation of peoples from all over the Empire.

Agent Orange wants to make America great again, but what made it great in the first place? It was the massive cultural mix that came from its immigration policies and the recognition that they were utilising talents and skills from every corner of the world, blending them into the production of a modern superstate just as Rome did. Orange's parents were German and Scottish and two of his wives have been Czech and Slovenian. I mean you couldn't make it up, a man like that objecting to immigrants and pandering to, and drawing his support from, right-wing anti-immigrants and racists. Rome could never have conquered the world if it had restricted its armies to Romans. It would never have produced its great architectural and artistic achievements had it not utilised the talents and skills of a multitude of diverse cultures in the same way America did. My point is that the rubbish spouted by right-wingers and Brexiteers about foreigners and immigrants, is exactly that, rubbish. Of course any nation can take too many immigrants to the point that it cannot afford them in economic and social terms, but to object to foreigners on racial grounds is simply idiotic in exactly the same manner as objecting to anything promoted and funded by the state on the grounds that this is socialism. That is why this blog refuses to recognise race as a legitimate political term. Patriotism is indeed the last refuge of the scoundrel. We are all descended from foreigners at some point in our history. Australia was built on British immigration, even if the originals were convicts. Countries are geographical and political structures, they are not racial. The world is descending into a barbarism fuelled by xenophobia and racism, blinded by the false doctrines of individualism. It is underpinned by a vicious and sick political and economic ideology. That ideology is in its death throes but is like a cornered rat, lashing out in hate and venom. We must challenge such attitudes and reject the ideology that supports and fosters them. You have been warned.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat