WHITE VAN MAN

If madness may be best defined as totally losing any grip on reality would it be right to say that Ed Miliband’s mad? That he’s totally lost it?

Such a question is not as unpleasant or rude as you may think! For example, if I’m a Labour Party supporter, which by the way I’m not although millions of people are, what am I to do if I see a white van passing me in the street? Especially one flying a Cross of St George flag on its aerial? It’s not so much of a joke as you might think because Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party thinks that we should all show respect to white vans, their owners and the English national flag, the red Cross of St George on a white background. Now I’m trying to figure out what this means and what I might eventually have to do. I mean, when the occasion arises and a white van passes me by, do I stand rigid on the pavement and bow by head or if it’s the case of my wife does she have to do an immediate curtsey?

And if we see a number of white vans all passing by one after the other do we keep bowing and curtseying or is one time enough? I mean, being decent hardworking people we’re dead keen to get it right and not be seen as anti-English in any way. And especially I might add, displease the dear Labour Leader in any way. So if Ed says show respect that’s what we want to do!

The point I’m making is this. If Ed says we ought to show respect then that’s presumably what he does, only how he does it on a daily basis I’m not sure and require guidance. For example, if Ed’s just leaving the House of Commons and he sees a white van passing does he do a quick bow, even if it means he might bump his head while getting into his car, or does he just stand to attention and give the white van a quick salute?

All this uncertainty comes about in my mind because Ed Miliband has said, in connection with recent events where the Shadow Labour Party Attorney General was forced to resign for what her Leader deemed to be an offensive photo-tweet of showing disrespect for someone who owned a white van and had Cross of St George flags in his house windows, that we should all respect white vans! Well pardon me. Since when have white vans been given the status of a Rolls Royce or Bentley?

Nour, nour, my lad, I can hear my friendly neighborhood policeman saying, don’t you be getting facetious…  Ee’s not talking abourt white vans as motor vehicles themselves, but abourt the people oo’s driving em.

Okay officer, I now understand. In Ed Miliband’s mind the white van is a symbol. It represents ordinary decent hardworking people, and to be disparaging about white vans in any way is to be disparaging about the said decent people. Right, I get the picture. Everyone, yes everyone with a white van is automatically decent, hardworking, and above all, someone that Ed hopes will give the Labour Party their vote at the next General Election. In short, to criticize white vans and their owners damages Labour’s chances of forming the next Government, so if the white van man has got English national flags in the window of his house that means giving them absolute respect  because Ed and Labour will do anything to get his vote. Sacrifice whatever principles they previously had for Essex and Kent’s white van man’s support!

Just consider the possibilities for a new United Kingdom that’s left the European Union! Above all the possibilities for a new reborn England. One that’s dominated by the culture of the white van. And certainly not to be left out of the equation, white van women! Fat, raunchy, hair-lacquered, beer swilling, fish and chip guzzling women. Ed Miliband’s type of women of course. Decent and hard-working. Well given that both white van men and women are both so important in the new England, isn’t it only fair that they should be represented in the national flag? That in each of the four squares of the Cross of St George there’s now a white van as the new national symbol.

The commercial possibilities are endless. For couples getting married a white van on the top tier of the wedding cake with the happy pair having a snog inside. White van wallpaper… some Premier League team having a white van logo on its shirt… baseball caps and clothes carrying the white van logo. Something that every kid wants for his birthday or Christmas. Yes, and every time Ed Miliband’s white van passes by in the street we bow and show respect like we’re all Chinese peasants. Yes, and that’s because he’s just gone and bought one himself!

A far-fetched description of a fantasy dystopia? Maybe not. If the leader of a political party who’s aiming to become the next British Prime Minister says on television that he respects white vans then perhaps it isn’t so far-fetched at all. However it’s not the van itself that’s the real issue here is it but the kind of culture and people it represents. Miliband has elevated the van itself to symbolic status. One coterminous with the working or lower middle class man. The latter, a self-employed tradesman, using it to drive around doing his jobs, in which case why hasn’t he got his name or the name of his company on the vehicle? I’ll tell you why! It’s because this decent self-employed hardworking man doesn’t pay any tax. He doesn’t want anyone to know he’s doing it all on the fly and claiming benefits besides, this fine Ed Miliband-Daily Mail decent hardworking man. Alternatively he drives a white van because he got it second hand cheap and cheerful and nobody wanted it because it looked a piece of shit, only you can’t say that anymore! That’s because thanks to Ed the price of a white van will soon cost you more than a Rolls.

So where is it all coming from? All this mighty peculiar stuff that’s making everyone think that poor old Ed’s finally cracked? Well it’s the view of certain insiders that most of the stuff he’s been coming out with of late is by way of his close political advisers, one of whom was some loopy feminist political confidant to Barak Obama. Oh dear Ed, what made you employ someone like that to tell you what to say? Didn’t it enter your head that British politics is an ideological world away from all the soporific shit over there? They don’t have trades unions, well not anything meaningful anymore and they regard social democracy as something close to communism. As for socialism you can forget it, but then Ed’s not much of a socialist himself anymore. Even so there are many trades unionists and members of the Labour Party who are and politically they’re light years distant from the slimy upper crust blue stocking democrats from millionaire families like those advising you Ed.

White vans! Nationalist flags! Showing respect! It’s American style populist crap that’s enough to make even a Nigel Farage blush. The working people, the poor and the needy who the former New Labour Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown betrayed want you to talk fairness and equality like you really mean what you say. And the students now being ripped off for nine thousand quid a year need genuine help and a far better deal. If you’re in Government and printing billions of notes why not give some to the people who need it instead of stuffing it back into the pockets of the bankers and financial criminals. What kind of person are you to talk psychological gobbledegook then turn your back on the many and once again fill the pockets of the few.

The Labour Party never came into being to do that so get a grip on reality before it’s too late!

NIGEL TAKES THE BISCUIT

So UKIP won the Rochester and Strood bye-election overturning a massive Tory majority of close to ten thousand and taking the seat with a 2900 majority and 42% of the vote. The Tories got kicked into second place with their share down 14% while Labour got a miserable 6000 for a seat they’d held not so long back. As for the Liberal Democrats well what can you say! A joke vote of 349 behind the Greens and less than one percent of the vote!

Time for the spokesmen of the main political parties to roll out excuses and so they did, but the facts are inescapable. Much as the now desperately cheesy Lib Dems run around wearing the cloak of martyrdom, that they went into Coalition with the Tories to help save the country, no-one believes that kind of bullshit anymore. They did it for themselves and public contempt has rolled over them by the bucket. One of their mouthpieces said on television that they’ll still be part of Government after next year’s Election. That’s plain delusional. As for David Cameron he’s been coming out with the usual guff about it being a protest vote, swearing by all that’s holy to win the seat back for the Tories next May. Fat chance! If you want to play King Canute I recommend the Old Vic or somewhere else in London’s theatre land. As for Labour, after last night Ed and his team are all white van boys and girls. Waving the England flag is compulsory and anyone who doesn’t, gets fired! Running scared after UKIP, Ed’s gone all nationalist these days.

Excuses by the bucket load. Come the next General Election it will all be different sure thing, only most of Westminster’s politicians know that it won’t. Last Thursday’s result wasn’t a blip or a protest. It was the shape of things to come. The old game is over. The Liberal Democrats are dead in the dustbin and David and Ed have got the genuine shakes. Cameron’s come out with his public school bluster while Miliband’s taking Labour soft right. It won’t do at all. On the other hand being seen holding a pint outside Rochester pubs in recent weeks Nigel’s UKIP has taken the seat but more important than that he’s taken Westminster’s cherry and what it says is what counts. He and his party want out of Europe and they want out of uncontrolled unlimited immigration into the UK. In the public mind that’s what they stood for. They’re a powerful wind of fresh air compared to the jaded, corrupt political clique at Westminster with its close to three party alliance supporting EU membership and opposing immigration control. Nigel and UKIP they see, have an uncompromising contempt for the old Westminster order and won’t be intimidated or bullied.

The laconic self-effacing Nigel is their man and UKIP their party of difference. It’s a view that’s been steadily growing and won’t be turned back. It’s strength, however, comes at a crucial time in the unfolding, perhaps unravelling of Westminster politics and what may be best described as old traditional certainties and ties. The Labour Party is in very deep trouble. It’s strength at Westminster has been historically guaranteed by thirty to forty safe seats up in Scotland. At the time of Tony Blair’s election victory for Labour the Tories were all but wiped out north of the border and the Scottish nationalists were only just up and running. From 1997 onwards the policies of Blair and Brown Labour Government closely following those of the Tories brought serious hardship for the people of Scotland, resulting in a fundamental shift of political allegiance. Today the Scottish Nationalist Party forms the Government up there with a majority of seats. At the coming General Election in May 2015 it’s likely that the Scottish Labour Party will lose most of what its’ got left. No more support for Labour from Scotland that it once absolutely thought it could count on. Thirty to forty seats down the drain leaving it likely to be in a permanent minority at Westminster. Worse! Having to rely on support from the Scottish Nationalists with their seriously more radical, even socialist policies, if they hope to form a Government!

Far worse still. Mortal dread! With its traditional working class support increasingly concerned with uncontrolled immigration, and what with Ed Miliband’s nodding donkey support for European Union membership, Labour’s facing a fast growing and steady erosion of its traditional vote in the north of England. There have already been signs plain as the nose on anyone’s face that Labour’s traditional working class base is steadily turning to UKIP. If the recent bye-election result in Manchester wasn’t a serious wake-up call with UKIP running them a deadly close second I don’t know what is and Nigel Farage knows it. On two political issues that increasingly count he’s lined up his party to seriously eat into if not gobble up altogether much of Labour’s heartland with millions of working class votes flowing his way. Ed Miliband’s got Labour stuck in a mold that millions of people simply don’t want. The last three months in politics have given him a real wake-up call and he’s increasingly come out sounding more radical but quite frankly it’s already too late. He’s been facing a steadily growing radical populist tide. Not radical in any ideological sense but radical in the sense of plain pointed difference to what is perceived as traditional Westminster consensus politics. Nigel has positioned his party as DIFFERENT and the public want difference. 

In short, Labour’s facing a double whammy. A powerful body blow from Scotland and a right hook from Nigel. UKIP’s ready and waiting to take Tory votes and probably seats in Essex, Kent, the south and south-west, but the major prize lies in the Midlands and North. If Labour fails to position itself on the issues of Europe and uncontrolled immigration in the next three to four months in the face of a UKIP populist tide,  it’s just about done for! Much also depends on how much support it gets from the populist media. With the Sun and Daily Mail behind it, it could be on a devastating roll. Sharing power with a Tory party fast shifting right over Europe. However a large populist vote doesn’t necessarily transfer into seats. Much depends on the populist media and the Tories all know it. Support from the populist press for a populist party could take Nigel high. If not a Prime Minister maybe a king maker!

David Cameron and his centrist support in the Party have every reason to really run scared. With their loopy Lib Dem Coalition partners round their throats as many Tory MPs increasingly see it, there are an easy hundred or more who’ve had quite enough. Above all they want out of Europe, something that’ll solve the big immigration issue. It’s as populist as they are. As populist as their Essex and Kent constituents have become under a tide of seemingly unstoppable East European and mass Muslim immigration. This Sun and Daily Mail constituency wants out and Nigel will show them the way. The promised land of a new Westminster where promises made are promises kept. A holy Covenant in fact between Nigel’s spiritual colleagues, of the Party itself and an electorate in search of plain speaking. The Tories may be traditionalist but they know a good thing when they see it and Nigel Farage knows that they know! If the dominoes are falling many will want to jump on the bandwagon fast before it’s too late. The UKIP bandwagon that is not a Thatcherite Tory Party. Nigel says what many of them want to hear. It rings a chord in their populist gut!  

Right now though I want to talk about the England’s flag and the greatest supporter of the idea that everyone should have one in their window to show what a genuine patriot they are. Yes you’ve guessed it, the Milipede! Now let’s follow it through to its logical conclusion in our new totally patriotic Great England. It has to be every window on every street and in every town so let’s start with Bath! The town census has been poured over by an army of clerks and lists have been made. One for every street, mews and alley. Every house numbered with the names of everyone living there… on the list. Okay, it’s time for the people of Pulteney Street. Everyone out their houses, line up and proceed to the flag collection point where your name will be called. Now here’s your flag. White background with a red cross on it.

It costs you a fiver but never mind. It’s the price you’re willing to pay for your patriotism. The policeman standing next to the clerk ticking your name on the list smiles affably. Right, now off you go sir, and make sure it’s in your window by three. Our hofficer will be round soon to check that it’s there.

By two o’clock every house in the street and every flat in every house has got a flag in the window. The whole house bursting with patriotic pride, and it’s the same in every street all the way through the town, and in every town and village all the way through the country. But not in Wales or Scotland ‘cos they’re not English you see! So now the whole of England’s bursting with flags and everyone’s now properly English. But wait, there are exceptions. Windows found without the English flag in them and reported to the police. The names of their occupiers passed on to the Daily Mail and the Sun so you can read them on the front page. And if they should go out in the morning they’ll find people waiting there. Oi, is it you ‘oos living ere. So why ‘avent you got a flag in your window. Well, if you’re not English what are you doing ‘ere then?

What, you’re refusin to put up the flag. Well we all know your sort don’t we. You gotta be from Romania or something… Come over ere to take our jobs is it? Well I can tell you mate, thank god we all voted for Nigel. Well e’s running the Government these days. In Coalition with Ed Miliband! It was ‘im ooh said we all ‘ad to ‘ave flags. Well I don’t have to tell you. There are places for people like you. I mean where you get sent for correctional training. They’ll teach you to put your English flag in the window all right!

Now haven’t you read it all in the Mail? All the new compulsory training. Your England Independence-New Labour Government insists that everyone must learn to drive a white van. The Government’s message is simple. If you can’t drive a white van you’re not English!

So now you’ve got an England flag in your window and a white van outside your house or in the driveway. And soon your beloved leader will be visiting the town. Crowd yards deep on the pavement. Parents holding up their kids. Your teenage son or daughter a member of the Milipede Youth Movement! You get it don’t you? Or maybe not! You’re living in a white van country with a flag in every window sporting the cross of St George. Well maybe you don’t get it because you are part of it all and can’t think outside the box anymore. That’s the England Independence-Milipede Box! Either that or you’ve been sent to some boot camp in Essex run by special squads of police for retraining. Knock all that middle class shit out of you so that you’re suitably white van people. The new working class or better still underclass and suitable to re-enter society in which Nigel is everyone’s hero. The founding father of the New England with the Milipede his devoted Young Apprentice. I can hear it all even now… A low cackle then the words, yes my Master!

The scenario of low volume discontent was set up years ago in the early nineties with increasing immigration that turned into a flood under Blair and New Labour. And with it came ridiculous decisions by the Judiciary on the rights and national status of immigrants with an arsenal of crazily misguided lawyers  fancifully believing they were the conscience of liberalism and the last word in human rights pleading for the rights of Islamic hard liners and terrorists. In the early 21^st century the tide was purposefully nurtured and allowed to turn into a flood which coupled with permitted financial criminality, economic collapse, national instability and a national anxiety that ran ever deep, a hard, insular nationalist reaction was inevitable. The position of the English working class as a thoughtful often left leaning social entity collapsed into a white van characterization of what it had once been with Labour Party politicians scurrying at breakneck speed to give up every decent value of communality they ever held. Enter UKIP with its nationalist certainties and a tide of crosses of St George and English identity running fast ever since.

The English nationalist box is now well and truly open with millions of people racing headlong towards it. Lower middle class Essex and Kent, the working class of the Midlands and North and a relatively new underclass of just about everywhere are leaving traditional ideology and politics for Nigel and UKIPS own ever confused, own ideological conflicts and uncertainties. For many, voting for UKIP has become like some kind of salve. Because you think you know what it stands for and know where it’s going it’s like taking a pill. Something that will relieve all your anxiety. All your uncertainty. Nigel knows what he wants and where he’s going…

It’s like taking a nice sugary biscuit. Nigel’s yum yum and UKIP something tasty and certain. A man and his party who understand all your anxiety, about Europeans, about immigrants, about Islamic terrorists slicing your head off. Suddenly there are bogeymen everywhere but then there’s Nigel and UKIP, handing out sugary balm and relief. Yes, a vote for Nigel will make you far more relaxed. Make you feel better and what is more you’ll know that you’ve done the right thing!

Oh really? Since when did you stop being British and give up the right to think?  

HUNK OF JUNK SPACECRAFT LANDS ON COMET

Hey, wait a minute, did I say lands? Well actually it kind of fell onto the surface then bounced a kilometre back into space before being pulled back down by gravity and falling on its side into a dark crevice next to a rock face where no sunlight can get to power the battery. Result, no battery, no program of science experiments no nothing! Now this occurrence don’t you know is being hailed as a fabulous and stupefying achievement by mission scientists at the European Space Agency! When they got a radio signal that it had initially touched down it was ear to ear grins, hi-fives and everybody kissing and hugging. It was described as a miracle and a first. A major achievement in all manner of things. Now a couple of days later the whole thing’s close to being a dead duck.

If none of the science experiments that took twenty years in the making work then what’s the point? But never mind. The scientists high on their own bullshit have desperately looked round and come up with something they think they can crow about. Well at least it got there! Having followed the comet or whatever they think it is through space over millions of miles they manoeuvred the probe into orbit then successfully detached a small landing craft. Yes, that was indeed an achievement but it was only a small part of the mission which was to land, conduct scientific experiments and send back data. And so far it’s done little to nothing except kind of crash!

Let’s start from the beginning. The European Space Agency Mission to land a vehicle on a Russian named piece of space debris took twenty years to put together. Twenty years of carefully planned space engineering science which gave employment to hundreds of scientists, technicians, engineers and administrators at a very considerable cost. These people weren’t GCSE candidates, they were supposedly experts. The vehicle that was supposed to land on the fast moving body whose surface surprisingly turned out not to be ice at all was constructed in the UK by a company which specializes in turning out space satellites. Trouble is, satellites travel in space. They’re not supposed to land on fast moving low gravity bodies and attach themselves to surfaces of unknown composition. Given the extreme difficulty of achieving this one might have thought that the primary task of its designers would be to find an absolutely fail safe way of achieving a permanent fixed anchorage. Instead they came up with what can best be described as a Heath-Robinson solution, that of firing harpoons from the landing craft’s feet into the surface in the hope of gaining a firm attachment.

What happened we are told is that the harpoons didn’t work. They either failed to fire or failed to penetrate the surface material. Which they haven’t told us. Success here was crucial for getting the craft to stay on the surface after it landed. Given this failure one needs to ask a number of questions. First, was the firing mechanism repeatedly tested during the lengthy period of the landing craft’s construction? Secondly was it tested on a wide variety of surfaces of different hardness and density? This being an absolute requirement in the scientific preparation for achieving the all-important successful anchorage. As things turned out this wasn’t achieved and the landing craft bounced off. So before the Mission scientists made with the self-congratulation and high fives maybe it was something they should have first and foremost tied down!

But now they’re saying it was simply bad luck! What, after all those years of preparation at considerable taxpayers’ expense these so called space scientists are saying it was bad luck that when the craft came back down after its initial bounce, the details of which were at first coyly hidden by Mission Control, somewhere they hadn’t intended. Furthermore it was lying on its side in a crevice next to a cliff in shadow, somewhere its solar powered batteries wouldn’t work because no sunlight could get to them. Oh dear, oh dear… It doesn’t sound like science to me. More like some place where politicians go to get their excuses for fuckups.

Actually it’s all fairly straightforward. In order to achieve any science at all the craft had to successfully land somewhere on the rock in sunlight for its batteries to work. That came first above everything. From there came the science, the real objective of the Mission. Now the jokers at the European Space Agency in Germany are saying that the real goal was to get the Orbiter to keep pace with the rock and get into orbit round it. Well yes, that was for starters but it wasn’t the fundamental purpose of the Mission. First, orbit had to be achieved then a successful landing only after which the Mission could really get moving. Well it didn’t and part of the fiasco is not just that it failed but the fact that the scientists and administrators involved have been treating the taxpaying public who funded their work with disrespect by continually spewing out half-truths and bullshit.

You numpties failed, so please don’t keep making excuses and trying to tell us you didn’t. You had twenty years to put it together and billions of euros and you fell at the second or third crucial hurdle. If everything depended on achieving permanent touchdown then why didn’t you nail it? The harpoons failed to fire… Now what kind of rubbish is that? When were they supposed to fire? Was it when sensors in the lander feet were instantly activated by the immediate proximity of hard surface? If so why did they fail to penetrate that surface and finally what process was used to exert downward force in close to zero gravity conditions?

There is alas another way of looking at things. The Lander was put together in the UK. Trouble is, while we were once great designers, builders and engineers, that was a long time ago. Since Thatcher and Blair did away with much of our industrial and manufacturing sectors we’ve become a nation given over to other things like financial services and cheap labour service occupations with consumerism and a bit of history and heritage chucked in. Sorry to sound a cynical note but what we’re good at doing in the UK these days is Remembrance, Heritage and Swindling which in our cheap labour GCSE economy means zero hours contracts, tax dodging galore by the rich, the labour of our youth being grossly exploited and demeaning. These are the things that characterize the world of work today for many British people, not scientific and technical excellence, so a space vehicle lander that doesn’t actually land isn’t much of a surprise!

In Britain today appearance is everything with substance and excellence of secondary value. Perhaps that’s why our spacecraft are no good at landing where they should or else disappearing altogether. The fiasco not so long ago of a British Mars Mission run by Colin Pillinger, otherwise known as Pillinger the Pillock is a case in point. With the landing all hyped up by the BBC as a great British space triumph and the Duke of York all hot and ready in the studio to give it his royal blessing, contact was suddenly lost with the Lander which mysteriously vanished as it was about to touch down, never to be heard from again! Oh dear! It wasn’t long before the good duke himself disappeared in a puff of smoke when the whole fiasco became evident! But then there was always a chance that contact might be re-established, or so it was put out, only the hours ran by and it wasn’t. Maybe it was just a bad landing. If so no-one seems to have figured out what went wrong and learned from the mistake because here it is all over again. A bit like England’s performance at the Football World Cup. Disastrous, but never mind that. Talk it up! Talk it up as a learning experience!

Saturday morning 15^th November. As I predicted the battery’s dead and the much vaunted comet lander just a useless piece of junk stuck on a rock doing nothing. Oh there’s been talk of its instruments drilling into the surface but no further information to go with it! There’s also been talk about somehow shifting the craft into the sunlight but nothing substantial about that either! It’s all the usual Mission Control bullshit! Well let’s hope the scientists and engineers stuck in their seats will show a little remorse after their recent cock-a-hoop antics and wait till they get some serious results from the science before any more bragging kicks off. After all, it was the taxpayer’s money you stuffed in the dustbin with your ill thought out project so in future let’s have a little more modesty, and don’t keep on telling us how well you all do when you quite plainly don’t!

And if you thought you was sending into space… to find another race… well you can kiss it. You people have got a whole lot of serious thinking to do before sticking out your hands and asking for money.

THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Okay, I want you to think hard. I mean really hard and see if you can name any person in public life who you could describe as good. I mean a really good decent human being? I’m not talking about someone you  personally know like a friend or acquaintance who’s quietly done many fine things for others and made their lives so much better. No, I’m not talking about someone who’s done these things quietly, privately and unknown. Someone that many of you out there just happen to know and are aware of all the good things they’ve done for others in their lives, unheralded and without thinking too much of it or themselves. No, I’m talking about someone who may best be described as a public figure. Whose decency and humanitarian deeds are known to us all one way or another through the media. A public figure. Someone we can all point to as a shining example of genuinely decent humanitarian behaviour.

What I’m asking here is whether can you think of anyone like that A fine man or woman who’s long been in the news. Okay, maybe someone from the world of politics, entertainment  or sport. Maybe from the world of work, or industry and finance? Some philanthropist or other? In fact anyone! Anyone at all who hasn’t got some dirty secret stuffed away in their shoe that some journalist might dig up and expose to all the world for being a plain dirty rat underneath all their do-gooding. Okay then, so can you think of any public figure who you could turn round and say was truly virtuous and decent?

Well I’m still waiting! What, no-one! Not even some politician somewhere who’s not crawling up his Party leader’s backside or believes somewhere in his head that he’s in it because he really thinks he can make a real difference. Well come on… come out here and name someone and give us all a laugh.

Well the public may know a few. People like Labour MP John Mann, who’s done some fine and honorable things in his time and there may be others elsewhere but truth is, these solitary figures are nowhere near any of the levers of power and neither are they’re allowed anywhere near them by their party hierarchy. Can’t have any of that sort of stuff! I mean people doing really important things for the masses or those who are needy! Making the lives of millions of people so much better. I mean what kind of place do you think this is mate, a charity? Okay, so forget about 99.99% percent of politicians anywhere in the world. They’re just professional liars or worse. People who started out with honorable intentions then sold out on everything they believed in mainly because they bought into some story whispered in their ear… if you really want to make a difference and change things my friend then you’ve got to compromise and work with the guys at the top… And so they do and next thing you know they’ve sold out on their principles, done the dirty on millions and retired to a nice little farm in the country.

One of the worst case stories in this regard and such examples are endless is that of Cyril Ramaphosa, leader of the South African Mineworkers Union who early on in his career fought for his workers then after apartheid ended was given a directorship in one of the big mining houses and became Deputy President of the ANC so when the South African police shot and killed dozens of striking mineworkers a few years ago he was there helping them along on behalf of the company!

No, decent public figures are like hens teeth the world over but they can still be found. I’d like to nominate two for my category of THE GOOD… One is the President of Uruguay Jose Mujica known generally to the people of that country as Pepe and commonly acknowledged as the poorest President in the world. He lives on a small ramshackle farm that belongs to his wife off a dirt road outside the capital Montevideo where they grow flowers together. Laundry is strung on a line outside their small house, their water comes from a well full of weeds in the yard and there are only two policeman on guard. As is well known he gives away 90% of his monthly salary of around £7,500 to charity and refuses to live in any kind of state palace. Now can you imagine ANY politician in Europe or America doing this, let alone any party leader? I mean, can you imagine any Labour leader living in a council house and working an allotment let alone any Tory?

My second nomination for a single public figure who’s done a great and good thing is the American Edward Snowden, now forced to live permanently in Russia. The thing he’s done for the people of the world, for everyone no matter who they are, is to let them know that they’re all being spied on one way or another by the intelligence agencies of the United States and Britain. That it’s not just a matter of governments spying on each other world-wide or their military doing the same. I mean the usual thing with the Americans spying on the Russians and vice-versa. No, this goes much wider than politicians or the military or industrial and commercial secrets. What I’m talking about here is EVERYONE being spied on. Just about all of us! Now that’s something new altogether.

Edward Snowden, who used to work for various American government and commercial spying agencies has revealed to everyone across the globe whether political leaders, corporate figureheads or just you and me that they’re all being spied on! And I’m not talking about any justification here like doing it for national security purposes or the prevention of terrorism, things that are indeed undoubtedly justified. No, what Snowden’s revealed is a total blanket invasion of personal privacy along with its methods, targets and perpetrators operating within national state security services. What he’s exposed is a huge world-wide dark web of secret intrusion into the personal lives of people across the whole planet. People who might have thought they were simply of no interest to anyone are uncannily on record as being persons of potential interest. And here we’re talking of databases of billions of people.

For his action in exposing these facts Edward Snowden earned the condemnation of the entire British and American political and civilian administration. So why was that? Why didn’t this narrow band of British and American secret society want us to know that they had the ability to check all of us out on a regular basis? Was it simply a lack of faith or trust in everyone all over the planet?

So now you know and such knowledge can’t be undone. That is the power of Edward Snowden’s revelation and the reason why the American Justice Department is so deadly keen to get their hands on him and dispense their own kind of justice somewhere in secret to someone who’s revealed a great truth. And if they are so incensed by his deed which they of course regard as a betrayal  it’s because he’s revealed their fundamental and deep lack of trust for those elected politicians who allow it to happen. Who are supposed to serve the people’s interest, not their own.

The rarity of individual GOOD aside, the real Good in our society are the hundreds of thousands of people who work for the NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE whether as doctors, nurses or ambulance drivers, cooking and cleaning staff, porters or anyone else who does a caring day’s work. All of these together make up a collective force of THE GOOD. They are the people who one way or another help to make the health of people in our society better and improve their wellbeing. And there is the wonder of it all really. These  people who do this good thing do it for little reward and are badly treated by those who could if they wanted reward them far better. I refer to the elected Members of Parliament many of whom cheat the public in falsifying their expenses claims. These politicians who treat THE GOOD so badly with a one percent or less annual pay rise are themselves famous for fraudulently claiming expenses from the public purse.

Who then are these people who habitually treat this slim strata of THE GOOD in our society so badly? Who claim there is no additional Government money to give them when they hand the banks billions of pounds for shoring up their finances and ensuring that their already wealthy investment jockeys receive great sums of public money as a reward for doing nothing. Why are such people and institutions so rewarded when THE GOOD in our society are told that there’s absolutely no money for them? Who then are they who are preferred and rewarded? Are they the good and decent people in our society who help save lives and help make us well, or are they part of what may best be described as THE UGLY?

So far I have gone some way towards establishing and identifying THE GOOD. This done I now turn my attention to THE BAD. Who are those we can say are the really bad people in life? Please, I’m not just talking about your nightmare neighbor from hell and goodness only knows, everyone seems to have one living next to them these days especially if you’re from Essex. I mean if it’s not his pit bull poodle pissing on your flowers after sneaking in under a fence it’s their cat having a shit on your hand crafted cabbages. But then I’m not talking about handfuls of minor nasties here and there. The kind of underclass beauties you see on the Jeremy Kyle show or the jerk-offs who screw a living out of politics or working in finance which simply put means lying to and cheating the general public. No, I’m not talking about the little league BADDIES like the Government that hacks into your savings and gives you a shit pension or the criminals from East Europe and the Baltic States who do likewise to your banking details and credit cards.

NO, I’M TALKING EVIL HERE. THE SERIOUSLY BAD!

That said, come take a trip with me to Mexico! Ah Mexico! Sounds all romantic doesn’t it? Well Mexico is now governed by something that used to be like an old socialist party. Believed in fairness and justice for the poor. That kind of thing. Now it’s all different. The old party’s still there and a President rules, but to help him do it Governors are elected for all Mexico’s various states and in each of the States there are towns and cities which have elected Mayors and local politicians round them. And in all these little towns and cities there’s a local police chief with all his friends round him too and once upon a time everything was happy and easy. You slept in the afternoon then got drunk and made romance in the evening. Alas, the oil and mineral rich economy that could have created prosperity for everyone never really got going.

So what you have instead is a country sandwiched between Colombia to the south, the drug producing epicenter of the planet and the United States of America, its main consumer market, to the north. In time the States of Northern Mexico became key in the drugs transit trade. First the drugs cartel gangsters bought the politicians, from Governors down to Mayors with the huge profits from the trade. The politicians then bought the police and other law enforcement agencies. In short the drugs cartel gangsters placed the control of the drugs transit trade ultimately in the hands of the politicians and the police. Now forget about these gangsters shooting and killing each other all over the place in what are described as turf wars. These killers are of no loss to anyone. Recently however things have changed.

Hundreds of thousands of people all over Mexico, revolted by what the gangsters are doing have begun fighting back. And so too have the gangster friendly police and politicians! Leading the fight against the vile drugs trade that has destroyed the lives of so many of their fellow Mexicans are Mexico’s students. A few months back a large party of them, 45 in all, travelled to Iguala, a town in the northern state of Guerrero to join a major anti-drugs demonstration. Prior to their arrival the Governor had been alerted and notified the town Mayor that they were coming to demonstrate. Such an event was likely to cause a bit of a  problem so the politicians decided to act. The Mayor contacted the Chief of Police who got together with his best officers and sensibly decided how to deal with the problem. Why not let their friends handle it? Why not indeed? When the students arrived the police rounded them up in their cars and took them away for safekeeping. To places where their friendly gangsters were waiting. After that the 45 students disappeared.

Days and weeks passed and none were heard from again. Families, parents and Universities began making enquiries until suddenly things became serious. Mexico’s President, politicians and lawmakers began getting involved! The Governor of the State was asked questions, then the town Mayor, then the Chief of Police. They in turn all disappeared after which the Federal Police were called in and large numbers of gangsters arrested. Some talked. All 45 students handed over to the gangsters by the police were murdered. Many choked to death, many just shot. All of them buried in dirt graves by the road. Meanwhile the Mayor and the Police Chief along with their wives are still hiding out. Enough said. That’s what I call THE BAD.

One other example of the seriously BAD has emerged from Latvia in the last week. Latvia’s one of the Baltic States many of whose citizens collaborated with the Nazis in perpetrating atrocities against civilians in the Second World War. Indeed, what astonished the Germans when they arrived was that so many Latvians, along with Lithuanians, volunteered to perpetrate and participate in these atrocities without having to be asked! Indeed in major towns and cities of these countries local police squads were busily occupied rounding up Jews or anyone else the Germans wanted to murder and interestingly enough, in Latvia today, former Latvian members of the Nazi SS receive a wartime pension from the Government for such services.

The really nasty news however has to do with a play now being performed in the capital Riga glamorizing the life of Herberts Cukurs a Latvian aviator and member of the notorious Arajs Kommando unit responsible for the mass murder of tens of thousands of Latvian Jews. He’d been actively present at the clearing of the Riga Jewish Ghetto and personally committed many atrocities there. He’d also assisted in the burning of a synagogue on Stabu Street, Riga, dragging many Jews out of neighboring houses and locking them inside the building before shooting them with his revolver after they’d broken windows trying to escape the smoke. Added to this is his active presence at the death pits of Rumbula with other members of the Arajs police Kommando where close to eleven thousand Jews were murdered.

After the War this fiend walked into Germany disguised as a soldier then escaped to Brazil via France. Soon he had a successful business career going, never trying to hide his identity. In 1965 he was lured to the Uruguay by the Israeli Mossad and assassinated in Montevideo  in February 1965. Since his timely death various attempts have been made in Latvia to rehabilitate this mass murderer as a national hero. The play now on glamorizing his life is one further Neo-Nazi effort which the current Latvian Government justify in the name of free speech.

In contradistinction to those whose activities justify them being called  THE GOOD, people like this and the murdering drug gangsters of Mexico justify being labelled plain BAD along with those who seek to glamorize their evil. They are all, to my mind, THE BAD…

THE UGLY however are another story and for some reason my thoughts keep drifting to the perpetually grinning or scowling face of Ed Miliband. There’s something unnatural about it. About the grins anyway. It’s like they’re contrived. Desperately over the top. A mad Miliband grin that always appears in times of adversity. Something purposeful, as if to say, no there’s nothing wrong at all mate. Everything in the garden is lovely, except you know that it’s not and it’s something put on because someone’s been gunning for him. In short he’s putting it on. Showing that absolutely nothing is getting to him! Trouble is it just isn’t working and everyone can that it’s plain artificial. In its own way plain UGLY, a bit like Gordon Brown trying to smile!

Well that’s really something! What, Gordon Brown jovial? A Merry Man? Please, pull the other one! The very idea is absurd. Something that doesn’t come natural. Something he just doesn’t mean. In fact he doesn’t really like you at all. Doesn’t like having to justify himself to a plain little shit like you. That’s not a spontaneous warmth in his face, more like an underlying distaste.

The smiles of both men are forced. Neither are naturally at ease with themselves and Gordon Brown in particular is clearly ill at ease with himself in public. It’s a very noticeable existential clash and a really bad birthmark for any public figure, especially a politician. Despite this, the man has done pretty well for himself and if the public have noticed it they haven’t reacted. Not even when his deeply flawed economic policies caused such catastrophic collapse in most people’s fortunes as well as that of the nation!

Gordon Brown’s ugliness is that he’s never thought his political actions were wrong. Perhaps he simply doesn’t have the mechanism to be self-critical. He’s undoubtedly responsible for causing a great economic catastrophe that’s inflicted such damage to the lives of so many people yet he simply won’t acknowledge the fact. Ed Miliband’s ugliness is possibly more serious. Though from a Jewish background, his Judaism has been a real problem for him, particularly with regard to his relationship to Israel. To an extent this has been conditioned by his fiendishly pro-Palestinian mother, a notorious enemy of the Jewish State. Dave Miliband, Ed’s older brother revealed her influence when as British Foreign Secretary, he showed his hostility by imposing export embargoes on certain trade areas between the two countries. Ed on the other hand, as current leader of the Labour Party has recently linked it to supporting the creation of a Palestinian State. What this effectively means is supporting a Palestinian leadership committed to terrorist acts and atrocities against Jewish men, women and children, not only in Israel but everywhere else. This is particularly true of the Fundamentalist Islamic movement Hamas which does not recognised Israel and has vowed to destroy it. These terrorists who politically control Gaza and recently rejoiced in the murder of a three month old Israeli child seek to form the leadership of Ed’s desired Palestinian State.

By committing the Labour Party to support for a Palestinian State run by Islamic terrorists and achieved through terrorist means is the worst kind of ugliness imaginable. These terrorists are not only completely hostile to socialism they are totally intolerant religious fundamentalists, yet Ed Miliband has committed the Labour Party to supporting these people against the existence of the democratic Jewish State. For my part I can think of few things more Ugly than this.

Equally depressing however is that this gormless individual, seemingly bereft of any political outlook or wisdom, is fast running his Party into the ground by his total lack of leadership on most of the important economic and political issues of the day. He has consistently refused to acknowledge the fact that the current great economic crisis the country finds itself in was directly caused by the policies of the previous Labour Government in which he served and therefore bears responsibility for them. He furthermore refuses to commit himself when and if elected to office in 2015, to radically improving the lives of the neediest people in our society, the working people and poor. He refuses to lay down any policy to tackle uncontrolled immigration and unreservedly supports Britain’s continuing membership of the EU. Perhaps this is why the vast majority of people in the United Kingdom have no confidence in his political leadership. He’s barely a social democrat let alone a socialist. In fact, truth to tell, he simply doesn’t seem to be anything at all.

There are just two things about this UGLY personage that stand out in memory. Firstly his ludicrous grin. Secondly, that in the best tradition of Labour Party leaders all the way back to the beginning he doesn’t talk about the working people or poor. The very people that the Labour Party are supposed to represent. What he does talk about however, in best tradition of Labour leaders is the country, or the nation. In this he’s exactly the same as the Tories. How very patriotic of you Ed! To so many British people now, along with Nick Clegg, you represent THE UGLY face of British political life. Not Nigel Farage but you!

Nick Clegg is indeed dreadful. You Ed Miliband ARE THE UGLY. You don’t even make a good political pistolero. Your ugliness lies in your simple plain awfulness.

THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY!

MAYBE IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU’RE COMING FROM… AND WHO YOU’RE GUNNING FOR…

OR MAYBE WHO YOU’RE GUNNING FOR DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU’RE COMING FROM!

OR MAYBE IT’S NONE OF THESE THINGS. MAYBE IT’S PERSONAL.

KNOCK KNOCK… KNOCK KNOCK… HELLO I’M CANVASSING FOR THE LABOUR PARTY!

Oh you are, are you? Well let me tell you something…

If there’s anything that your mob did in recent times, apart from being responsible for bankrupting the economy, impoverishing the lives of millions of working people and creating a cheap labour society it was making any discussion about its policy of unrestricted and uncontrolled  immigration something nasty and loaded with implications of racism. In other words you and your friends along with the bloody Liberal Democrats made it impossible to talk about the subject without being attacked as a bigot. Your defence for allowing five million immigrants into Britain from South-East Asia, North Africa the Middle East and Eastern Europe in such a short space of time in an uncontrolled tidal wave was to lash out and smear any critics with nastiness.

That’s the hard end. Your other approach was to endlessly pump out a well-worn mantra about how useful they’ve all been to the economy. Did all the jobs that British workers wouldn’t do and bring in lots of revenue as tax payers. Yeah, that’s what you said, and furthermore that they’re all good, honest hardworking people. We heard it on countless occasions. The same bloody litany. When your people weren’t mouthing it out it was coming from the BBC and Channel 4 wholesale News to Newsnight. All the sales talk rolled onto people like me without anyone allowed to ask any serious questions or point out the facts. Like exactly how three million Muslim immigrants many from Bangladesh and Pakistan were of actual benefit to the British economy. After all, few of their women actually worked except in their husbands’ shops where they never got any pay, and second, few of the men worked outside of retail and then mainly in small food stores or eateries. They weren’t people fleeing persecution back home and neither were they economic migrants. Difficult to say what they were but one thing I’m sure of. Most of them were Muslim.

The Poles and East Europeans who arrived near the end of Blair’s time in office were plain economic.  Leaving East Europe for work, and the social benefits freely available in the UK. Your former Ministers can shake their heads as much as they like. We only thought there’d be thirty thousand coming during the first year! Some joke. Five years on they’re still pouring in a hundred thousand a year with no intention of settling here and making their life in this country. They’ve got their own communities. They really don’t mix much with British people and most of them buy from their own POLISH SHOPS. And that’s not all, they don’t get involved in British cultural life. I mean like trying to speak English or learn it. Most of the money they earn is quickly sent home. Know what I think? Well they’re about as British as Sauerkraut. I mean they’re not a bad bunch but they’re only here for one thing and that’s help themselves. That said all the stuff about coming here for a better life is plain bullshit. They’re here because they’ve to the legal right to be here granted by virtue of Britain’s membership of the EU. The plain truth though is that they were encouraged to come as part of Labour’s economic strategy of driving down the cost of labour. Creating a cheap labour economy. If it meant creating a reserve army of labour available from failed East European States then so be it!

That was what New Labour was all about. Put the economic security of British working people into the hands of the banks and finance capital and hang over them a reserve army of labour. Mass immigration posed a dual problem. One was the arrival of millions of people with a different religious and cultural outlook who were generally indifferent to any broad cultural integration with the British people among whom they lived. Another was the sudden appearance of groups of East European semi-underclass jack the lads who didn’t want to be English let alone speak it. This influx, Blair and his Ministers insisted, would be healthy and profitable to the British economy and if anyone spoke out against it they got labelled intolerant, bigots and racists!

Today the worms finally turned. Labour’s losing its working class support to UKIP hand over fist so the game’s up for your leader! British working people have seen the results of Labour’s mass immigration policies. Islamic terrorism in British cities; youth unemployment and a cheap labour economy dominated by on-the-make East Europeans. People remember all the sweet talk about the benefits of immigration but they don’t believe it anymore and they don’t trust you. It’s the same thing as all the promises the Lib-Dems made in their Election Manifesto last time round and broke soon as they got into Government. No-one believes them anymore about anything so no-one gives them their vote. It’s the same with Labour and immigration. Sorry mate but you’ve all been sussed. We’ve all been there and got the tee-shirt!

Yeah, we’ve heard it all before, I mean about immigration being only one side of the message. Nastier still was Labour’s way of solving the economic crisis. Making the most vulnerable people pay by cheapening their labour. It’s far worse than anything Margaret Thatcher thought up but never mind. Let’s hear what Ed’s got to say about all those people who put away money year in and year out hoping they’d saved a decent sum for their retirement. While the investment gangsters raked in their bonuses for losing so much, millions of savers like me still zero interest rates for the hard work that we did. We’re the people paying the price for all the bank failures and swindles. So tell me, what do you and your Party say about us and the way we’re being cheated? After all, it was your financial policies that allowed it to happen? What have you got to say about all the millions of people losing the value of everything they’ve saved. Getting jack nothing for what we frugally put by, hoping for a secure trouble free old age?

No, we haven’t heard a peep out of you people let alone any sympathy for all the futures you wrecked with your banker friendly loose regulations. I mean I don’t recall anything. What I do hear is your Party attacking anyone criticizing your loose to nonexistent immigration control policy over twelve years till you  got booted out in 2009. But then Labour’s so called immigration control policy was always a bit of a joke. In ten years British cities were full of languages no-one had ever heard of before and millions of people we  never expected to see. It all happened so sudden. More like a tsunami than anything. Labour gift to all its voters. Mass immigration on the one hand, economic collapse in the other. Talk about loss of hope for a secure and modest retirement for the old folk and an attack on the standard of living of public sector workers and those in the NHS… the best and most decent people in our society who’ve had zero and one percent pay rises for the last 5 years. So what was it Gordon Brown called an elderly lady who’d expressed her concern about Labour’s immigration policy? He forgot the microphone was on! While he was working so hard to free up all the controls on the bankers he called the old girl a bigot.

I’m sorry but that’s it for Labour. Financial swindling is fine and the robbery of millions of savers okay, same as a cheap labour economy with millions on short time and contract work. Is that really something you’re proud of. And now you’re telling us that five million immigrants coming into the UK over ten or twelve years wasn’t a problem? No, the problem for Labour is people raising their voices and pointing it out, and it gets even worse. Well let me tell you something. Your real problem is the people you took for granted over so many years. All those millions of people you pissed on who won’t be voting for you anymore. You’ve had it in Scotland and in England you’ll be fighting Respect for the immigrant vote!

KNOCK KNOCK… KNOCK KNOCK… HELLO, I’M CANVASSING FOR THE LABOUR PARTY!

OH SORRY MY FRIEND, I THINK WE’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE!