I
SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE SOMEONE CALLED ANGELA MERKEL!
Good on you David, Nick and Barak, but
alas, in the last week you’ve all been caught with your pants down doing
naughty things that even schoolboys would blush at. Never mind the piss poor
excuses made by Cameron and Obama that the now published revelations of Edward
Snowden weakens their fight against terrorism. Quite frankly, if you people
really wanted to fight terrorism you shouldn’t be playing kiss-kiss with Iran,
its main global sponsor. Neither should you be sending weapons and lending
support to the hard line Islamic fundamentalists trying to overthrow the nasty
little regime in Syria. You’d say a plague on all their houses and turn your
back on the lot! But then as we all know, many of these so called fighters grew
up in Britain doing quite nicely on our benefits system. No, excuses like this
simply don’t wash. They’re meant to deflect from what you’ve done together
elsewhere in the world.
The British Coalition Government’s spying
complex, GCHQ, acting in concert with the American CIA operation at Langley,
Virginia, have worked together for many years now under a special quasi-
military secret agreement giving them license to conduct covert, THEREFORE SECRET, intelligence gathering
activities against the political leaders of many European States and their
Governments along with, let it be said, their private citizens. Put coldly, America
and Britain jointly spying on friendly European nations and their political
leaders, the kind of people that British Prime Ministers and American
Presidents shake hands with on a regular basis and in the case of American
Presidents entertained like royalty at state banquets!
Yes, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, you
and your citizens have been spied on for many years and they’re still doing it
to you now!
Businessmen and bankers, trade unionists
and scientists, political activists, fashion
gurus and sports stars… Figures from the world of entertainment… Anyone
but anyone thought important just about anywhere were listened into. From
Russia and China, Mexico and Brazil, the Japanese, the Israelis and just about
everyone else, yes you were all being bugged if not buggered by Governments you
thought were your friends.
Whoops Chancellor Merkel. Did you really
think it could never happen to you? I mean, American spying technology getting
into places where other stuff couldn’t reach. And France, with your belief in
liberty, equality and friendship? Your belief in a free citizenry! Did you
think it would hold back your fellow American believers in freedom who, when
they’re not spying on people are shooting each other? I mean, you can excuse
the British! They’re just a gang of public schoolboys who think they’re okay to
say anything when they’re caught being naughty with the scullery maid. Squirm
their way out of anything! It’s quite okay, they’re only Europeans, you know,
Germans Italians and French. We beat them all in the War!
It’s this kind of blasé supercilious
attitude to criminal conduct, clearly in breach of agreements, treaties and
conventions that Britain has signed up to in Europe, that is frankly so
shocking. This country revealed as treacherously aiding and abetting the
Government of the United States to spy on their friends. Secretly hook up with
and listen into their electronic communications networks, political and
military; and the private telephone conversations of their leaders both public
and personal… This is something that runs deep and disturbing. In Britain,
where people are subjects - not free citizens as they are in Germany and France - the ordinary guy in
the street is of little importance except at election time. It’s politicians
and the Establishment that count. The few not the many. Elsewhere in Europe
however they take the freedom and liberty of ordinary citizens with a
seriousness that is barely understood here. The leaders of both Governments
have made it quite clear, it is one thing to spy on us, on political leaders…
quite another to spy on our citizens.
Spying on British people doesn’t matter to
Cameron and Clegg. After all, has any Liberal-Democrat come out and made any
fuss, or for that matter any of the Milipede mob? No, spying’s okay. Just don’t
get caught with your pants off!
It’s interesting that politicians like
David Cameron should attack Edward Snowden for revealing the truth about the
dirty things he’s involved in but then, if you don’t want to be caught out
doing dirty things to your friends I suggest you stop doing them. It’s simply
no good getting uptight and angry because you’ve been shown up as
untrustworthy, immoral and conniving. Just think about how they must think of
you now when you meet them in Europe. As a dirty little public school sneak!
Well that may be okay for you, but please, don’t tar us all with the same nasty
brush.
That said I want you to do the decent thing. Stand up and say, hand on my heart,
On
behalf of my Government I apologize to the people of Europe and the UK for my illegal
and immoral behaviour and sincerely promise never to spy on innocent people
again.
GRANGEMOUTH
Now to the dispute between the workers at
the Grangemouth industrial refineries and its shareholder owners.
Despite all the millions of words said in the media the story is simple. The shareholders of the company that owns the plant, chief of whom is Mr Ratcliffe, owning a majority stake, needed a sum of money to invest in its future development. Some three hundred million it seems. Without that investment he and his fellow shareholders maintained it had little to no future. That’s fair enough. A sensible management decision. The problem was where to get it.
It’s not a large sum. Not really when one
considers the wealth of the majority shareholder of the company. However it’s not
the sort of thing a man keeps in his pocket or a desk drawer. It has to be
obtained from a bank. Formally, a bank guarantee to provide such a sum. True,
it could have come out of his substantial capital savings. After all, it was
money he needed to invest in the
future of his company but that wasn’t
a satisfying route for a businessmen so an alternative had to be found. One
that wouldn’t place any liability on his already handsome assets. Well, if it
wasn’t to be Mr Ratcliffe and his fellow shareholders it had to be someone
else. Indeed, but who could it be?
The answer was staring them all in the
face. If it wasn’t the owners it had to be the workers! After all, the company
did them a favour. It employed them and paid them a wage. Put money by for
their pensions. Without the company they wouldn’t have any work. They’d have no
wage, wouldn’t be able to buy food and pay their bills. The company the
shareholders owned gave them all this and in return for their labour which kept
them fed and clothed they made a profit and took a dividend on their
investment. It seemed only fair.
Trouble was they needed more money to
invest. To keep their company profitable that is and therefore keep on
employing their workers. It was a favour you see. Profits for us and work for
the workers! That’s how they saw it. The workers being obligated to them! The
owners needed more money to keep the workers employed so they put it to them.
Help us out. We need to do a deal with you on the wages we pay you and the
pensions we hope to provide. We can’t afford to pay you any more money over the
next few years because we need it to invest in our company. We’re doing it for
you, really, to keep you employed in the future!
The Trades Union leadership of those who
worked at the plant didn’t like that. They saw it as an attack on their members
standard of living. A three year freeze on their wages would mean an effective
pay cut given current inflation and it also meant a diminution of the final value
of their pensions. They called a strike vote and narrowly won the support of a
majority of those who worked there. True, industrial relations had been poor at
the site over some years. Management and workers simply didn’t get on and when
a trades union representative experienced serious difficulty, a match was
struck that ignited a fraught and fragile situation.
It was precisely at this time that the
owners put their proposals to union representation for a freeze on wages and
pension conditions. They couldn’t afford to pay increased salaries when money
was needed for further investment. The unions rightly saw it as an attack on
their workers, the owners rightly saw it as an attack on the future
profitability of their company and the dividends they reaped for their
investment.
Only this time it was different. It was the
workers who would be investing in the company through an effective cut in their
wages, not the owners. The workers paying up front out of their wages for
future shareholders profits! It was all simple really. If the owners wanted to
invest in the future of their company let them take it out of their own pockets
not ours! The owners, i.e. the shareholders, didn’t agree. Maybe they were all
really hard up. Mr Ratcliffe down to his last shilling. Anyway the workers went
on strike, the shareholders met and said go ‘f’ yourselves, we’re closing the
unprofitable petrochemical plant. Result, eight hundred workers without jobs
along with thousands of contractors. Two sides opposing each other from what they
saw as a logical place from their own point of view. The owners needing money
to invest in the plant; guaranteeing their workers livelihoods and profit for
themselves. Money which would have to come from the workers. Unions rightly
viewing this as an attack on their members. If the shareholders wanted to
invest in the future of their company
they should use their own money!
Ultimately, as in all labour-capital
relations the capitalists held all the cards and closed down the plant. They’d
sell it, take the money, put it elsewhere and keep on earning money from
profits. One thing was sure. Their capital was transferable and they wouldn’t
go hungry! For the workers on the other hand, no jobs, no prospects of future
employment in the area and real problems collecting any redundancy pay given
the circumstances of the collapse of the company. They and their families were
facing real trouble. No money to pay mortgages, household bills and food and a
giant leap into poverty for the whole area. Despite all the blasé chatter on
television and seeming reasonableness of the owners approach it was clear that
they’d worked it all out. The Unite Trades Union was on a hiding to nothing and
capitulated to the owners demands. A pay freeze and no strike clause well into
the future. On the following day, as if by magic, the owners found good reason
to reopen the plant!
As if by magic! The owners had won and the
workers would pay for their future investment and profits out of their labour.
They indeed really owned nothing except their labour and the whole incident was
superb for a socialist study in labour-capitalist relations. There was of
course another solution! Nationalize the plant without compensation and let the
Government take over. Put in their own money or that of the taxpayers as an
investment for its profitable future much the same as they’d done with the
banks! Did anyone hear any politician mention this at the time. Anyone from the
Labour Party or the Scottish Nationalist Government? Not a word. Only a deafening
silence! It was a genuinely sensible solution but socialist and no-one could
have any of that! That’s how far the Labour Party has come since 1945!
ANDREW
MITCHELL AND THOSE NAUGHTY POLICEMEN!
In the last week three senior members of
the Police Federation appeared before a Parliamentary Committee investigating
the conduct of the police towards former Coalition Cabinet member Andrew Mitchell
and quite frankly they didn’t look happy. Their attitude throughout best being
described as who the hell do you think you
are to bring us here… There was little sign of remorse and no apology for
what was in effect a situation of being caught out, verbally claiming that the
man had said one thing and his taped recording of their meeting clearly showing
that it had been something different. In other words that they’d been caught
lying. The result was most interesting. They were clearly quite iffy, quite
diffident about it. They really didn’t like being accused of lying. They were
police and police weren’t liars… and they
really didn’t like that!
However as members of the Committee pointed
out, if police could lie about the conduct of a senior Parliamentarian, with
all the support he could muster in his defence, what might they be likely to do
in the case of ordinary members of the public! The issue, in this sense, was
much more general than that involving a single politician and had indeed become
a matter of public trust in the police, especially after a whole raft of
incidents involving police misconduct in recent years. It was all very well
then for the three members of the Police Federation to behave as though they
had absolutely nothing to hide and were lilywhite all the way through. You
could tell it from their manner and attitude. As though they wouldn’t have
Parliamentarians, or anyone else for that matter telling them what to do. And it was this that Committee members were really
worked up about. It was one thing for these people to organise demonstrations
of police on active duty outside the constituency offices of a member of the
Government, quite another for them to be caught out as liars and appear
arrogant when summoned to answer for this.
Let’s look at it coldly. The police and the
Federation that represents them are badly upset about the recent cut in pay
their members take home, and rightly. No question of it. They claim to be doing
a hard, often unpleasant, difficult and potentially dangerous job a lot of the
time and quite frankly they’re right about that!
They never know what kind of situation
they’re likely to find themselves in from one minute to the next with single
individuals or groups and the professional skills they need for dealing with a
multitude of complex situations are varied and many. And for all this they see
their pay being substantially cut at the junior end of the scale and they don’t
like it. In their eyes they’re doing an important job, work that’s increasingly
risky, and they’re getting no thanks for it.
They’re almost certainly right. Trouble is,
they’re all wrapped up in themselves and not thinking out of the box. They’re
not the only people in society who are doing an important and difficult job,
getting poor pay or having their pay cut. There are firemen, teachers, nurses,
public health workers and so many others, all of whom like themselves are
getting a poor deal, let alone so many other workers in general. The real
problem with the police is that they have their own highly defensive
self-affirming, self-supportive culture that makes them think that they’re different
to and better than anyone else, and alongside this is the fact that they’re often
poorly educated or semi-literate.
Their social role gives them an
authoritative status which they too often translate into power. They don’t like
being questioned or think they have the right to be questioned. That they have
a separate status to anyone else. It’s a kind of cultural substrata of diffidence,
even arrogance, that runs deep within their daily conduct towards people,
particularly those of the working class. The educated middle and upper middle
classes will only tolerate this kind of manner temporarily. They won’t have it
imposed upon them, especially the politicians. Little wonder that the
Government is cheesed off with the police and both the Home Secretary and Prime
Minister have strongly suggested that they apologize to Andrew Mitchell for
their clear attempt to fit him up for misbehavior because of their anger over
Government pay policy towards them.
Yes it’s all clear enough. If a poorly
educated group of people in our society are given power and authority then
conduct themselves on our streets in an illegal, unjust or violent manner and
do likewise towards the general public then they overstep the mark of trust and
need to be made aware of just who they are. Namely that no matter their
grievances, they are at all times public employees. That’s the heart of the
matter. The job they’re required to do is special but it’s no more special than
that of so many others like firemen, nurses or teachers, and when they think
that their work is more special they
begin getting funny ideas about themselves, who they are and what they can do! It is then that they overstep that mark
and come into conflict with those who regulate their conduct let alone the
general public.
The manner of their behaviour towards
Andrew Mitchell is indicative of their frustration and the all too often
unregulated authority they’ve been given to conduct themselves in our society. The
frustration is something that they themselves have to deal with in an orderly
manner just as they’d expect others to do. If not such conduct could be
something that elected Government may have to seriously scrutinize.
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