THIEFA - YOU’RE NICKED – OR ARE YOU?

It’s a fair question! In recent days, further to long running criminal investigations in the United States by Federal authorities such as the FBI, the Attorney General and the Internal Revenue Service, executive members of this International Football Association were arrested at a five star  Zurich Hotel for sponsoring crooked international football sponsorship deals with giant multinational corporations, creaming off sizeable splits for themselves which they laundered through American banks and other financial institutions. In short the Government of the United States got the Swiss to arrest these people for crimes committed on American soil. These were not for allegations made but for Federal criminal prosecution. Soon after, a congress of this International Football Association met at a pre-appointed time to elect their President and took the decision to re-elect the man who’d already been running the organization for 12 years or more, the Swiss national Sepp Blatter!

After the shock and horror very recent arrests of FIFA executive members in Zurich where the organization has its head office, the decision to re-elect its current President came as something of a shock to members of Europe’s football executive authority UEFA. Why should the man who’d overseen the running of the organization for so many years and must have known about all the corruption going on have been chosen once again and with such a huge margin of votes to keep hold of his job and run such a tarnished organization for the next four years. And why, furthermore, did the man have such a big grin on his face and seem so sure of his victory after he stepped up to make his cheery, quirky acceptance speech? Despite a challenge from an Arab prince from which he quickly backed down, Uncle Sepp knew he had it in the bag even before the election was held, never mind that senior members of his own team were falling like ninepins over corruption charges?

Despite all the feverish conjecture in the European press let’s look at it coolly. Swiss national Blatter was re-elected because he got most of the votes from the African, Asian and South American football delegations and that’s close to a two-thirds majority of all the affiliated football association members. It was never going to be that much of a problem really. Blatter the Swiss national was always going to very good at what the Swiss are famous for and that is the organization of finance. It is little wonder that FIFA has its international headquarters in politically neutral Switzerland, a country that is neither a member of the United Nations or the European Community, and furthermore claimed neutrality during the Second World War and was left untouched by the Nazis only a jackboot away. Why this was is already well known. Swiss financial institutions at the time along with Swiss industry, with tacit Government backing, were privately doing some very nice deals with their Nazi neighbors exchanging gold from the teeth of dead Jews which went into their banks to help finance loans for industrial goods. More recently Swiss based banks have been up to their eyeballs in quietly and very privately acting as tax avoidance havens for countless international corporations and wealthy individuals.

Switzerland is not simply a country of cuckoo clocks, cheese curdling and watchmakers. It’s a place that’s spent most of its time claiming political neutrality so that it can be well out of the way for taking any kind of moral responsibility for anything and get on with what it does best… collecting money and being a base of activity for international organizations with large financial portfolios like FIFA. From Zurich the world center of international football organizes gigantic sponsorship deals with worldwide multinationals such as Master Card, sportswear companies like Adidas and food and drink outfits such as Coca Cola and  MacDonald’s for what are essentially advertising rights. In return for the deals FIFA uses much of the money it earns to promote football throughout the world, especially throughout Africa and Asia in recent decades. It has done this in many positive ways such as supporting national football associations, building football pitches and creating an enthusiastic and positive environment for the game. Such ways of spending money, especially in Africa, have earned the organization much credit and Blatter as President has gained considerable political support for his efforts and those of his executive team, especially as much of the money spent has been in some of the poorest areas where the promotion of football has been particularly welcomed by young people.

The personal credit gained for these football promotional activities has mainly fallen on the shoulders of FIFA’S organizing President. Is it any wonder then that he should be re-elected to his role with such a handsome majority. His political contacts and friendly relations with national heads of state, especially for organizing World Cup Football presentation for their countries, naturally filters down through their national football associations so when it comes to elections the way that votes go is hardly in doubt! On the other side however there’s all the business of organizing the loot in the first place. This is something left to his Executive members for discrete regions and territories each of whom in turn have their own kind of fiefdom and make their own deals with major national associations for countries like Brazil and Argentina. For every region and every national association there are always opportunities for kickbacks from sponsorship rights and just about everyone at any senior level gets a well hidden handshake from opposite organizing executives in the giant multinationals.

This all round dirt is one of the major reasons for the American indictments, especially as most of the kickbacks over the years have passed through their banks. However it is certainly not the only reason why the Americans are pissed. Somehow Russia won the right to sponsor The World Football Cup in 2018 seemingly against all the odds then Qatar went on to win the sponsorship for 2022. Both awards it seemed were contingent on heavy backing from the FIFA Executive in return for heavy financial support from both nations which in turn helped fix the result. If the Americans were badly put out it was because they’d hoped to gain the World Cup for themselves on one of the two dates. In consequence their Federal authorities began a lengthy and complex criminal investigation of FIFA taking in both the procedures of sponsorship and with the promotion of the World Cup Competition. Hardly coincidental the result of their investigation and the much publicized arrests in Zurich broke days before the new election for President and were clearly aimed at the individual they regarded as the central cause for their failure.

With his carefully organized shift of world football power from Europe to Africa and Asia over the last ten years, Sepp Blatter was able to give them two fingers and personally stay clear of any scandal. He must have known what members of his Executive Council were doing but stayed clear of it all and left them alone to rake in the loot. He was merely the President. The figurehead of the international football authority! In the very best tradition of Switzerland itself he remained neutral, in consequence untouchable and re-electable.

Yes, neutral Switzerland is certainly one of the great world centers of scandal and dirt but nearly always in secret of course! Perhaps that’s because what is morally scandalous to so many others is simply no problem to them! The Swiss are the world’s great shruggers of shoulders! Why should we Swiss get involved? It’s not our problem! Perhaps that’s why they allow such an organization as Dignitas, a business that promotes and carries out assisted suicide for financial gain to operate there with one of its senior advisors a struck off psychiatrist booted out of his profession not so long back. 

Yes the Swiss will do anything for money. Whether it’s profiting from the dead or killing the living… helping the rich hide all their loot to being somewhere you can earn dirty money from sport.

Switzerland! For the rich, the dead and the dirty! If you want someone to help you die go to merry Switzerland! They’ll even let you hear a cuckoo clock chirp before they shove a needle into your eyeball.

Finally, as was so very predictable after his sweet little re-election, the Swiss midget has immediately dismissed those nasty American indictments hanging over his mates as fractious and unimportant. Well you would say that wouldn’t you Blatter… Meanwhile it’s back to business as usual at Thiefa. How very Swiss of you Sepp!

THE EURO CAMP SONG CONTEST 2015… IS SOMEONE HAVING A LAUGH?

The Eurovision Song Contest of 2015 may be over and done with but most British people who switched into this festival of high camp must have watched with a powerful sense of derision mixed with a peculiar delight, the memory of the spectacle perhaps staying with them for a long time to come. That’s because it represented just about everything they detest about Europe. A blazing show of offensively vulgar cultural camp that stands at the opposite end of our British values of modesty and calm, resolution and unsung valor in the face of hostility and chaos. A kind of steadfastness against the silly showiness of pretence!

This Eurovision Song Contest symbolizes the character of modern European culture at its best and in doing so reflects everything about the European Union that most of us detest and want to have nothing to do with. Something that’s camp, hollow and demanding. A kind of totally over the top trashy cultural bullying with the music and contestants literally screaming at you with loud, noxious renditions of lyrical meaninglessness passed off as soulful in a kind of pretend game of national identity. The contestants all competing against each other for the best display of gyrating pretty boy, pretty girl camp doubtless watched by every dirty old lecher across the continent. This spectacle of awfulness may have been enjoyed by the gay and camp communities across the British Isles and Europe who probably don’t even know what the British people stood up and fought for in the late 1930s and throughout the Second World War. However the fact that the event took place on the anniversary of the heroic evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk by a flotilla of small ships in Operation Dynamo says it all.

Says it all because this year’s event was held in Vienna, Austria, birthplace of Nazi thought and the filth-hole that Adolph Hitler came out of. It has always been said that while the Germans made the best Nazis the Austrians were the best anti-Semites. Long before their rise in Germany, Austria had a vicious and virulent anti-Semitic mayor running Vienna from whom Hitler learned all his Jew hating. It gets even worse. This city, which forced its elderly Jewish population get down on their knees and scrub its streets got off free when the War ended because Austria was never held responsible for the War and put in the dock for War Crimes. Indeed the country escaped all condemnation for its dirty past so now, as quietly respectable members of the European Union, they gaily put on a show trumpeting liberal virtues with the theme of Building Bridges led by its national transvestite treasure, Conchita, the lovely lady-boy with a smartly trimmed beard.

I don’t know exactly what Conchita is but I do know what this person wants to be and that is immodest and attention seeking. All things to all men and women! One national hero gone so long live another! After Hitler, Austria’s love affair with cultural diversity! And to demonstrate their love for their devastatingly deviant cultural icon she was allowed to poke her head into just about every aspect of the show. Why, can’t you see how tolerant we’ve become? These days we Austrians want to build bridges with everyone, hence the insistence of Africans banging loudly on drums during a percussion type interlude. No, we’re definitely not those nasty Austrians any more. We’re part of a lovely European family these days!  

This kind of image makeover fools only the stupid. It’s not a matter of tolerance. Of being live and let live for everyone. It’s more a case of how the image is used and for what purpose and in the case of the Austrian nation’s love in with Conchita it smells of a serious desperation to please. The only people who love this kind of person and this kind of show are the cultural camp of Europe and the British Liberal Democrats. What was so particularly awful throughout was the intensity with which the Austrian hosts were so desperately trying to please. Being so sugary nice that it ran off us like syrup. And it all had to be perfect. Perfection for everyone in this great advertising opportunity for Vienna and Austria! Maybe that’s why Israeli flags were allowed to fly just about everywhere. Jews, we love you these days! Not sorry about what happened before because before never happened! And if it did it was all a long time ago and we’re now happy gay Europeans. Part of the European Union family of nations!

 

Sorry to sound cynical but you people were co-conspirators in one of the greatest crimes in human history. Something that will forever stay in your past so don’t go playing Mister Nice Guys just a few generations after the event with some rowdy little sing because it stinks and given half a chance you’d be up for it all over again! The British people haven’t forgotten. Not the best of them young or old. You can go play tolerant liberal camp in the EU but we know you only too well. You were never made legally liable for Hitler. Never made to say sorry for what you helped do and you can play happy families with all your former fellow collaborators in Europe but the British have got your number. And it’s the same for those happy-snappy bouncy Swedes who won the competition. So very social democrat these days and so neutral during the War but wait a minute, good old neutral Sweden opened up their railways to Nazi troops allowing them to cross their territory and invade Norway!

But let’s not dwell on such things! Modern Europe is so very different these days so let’s talk about this happy family European Union Song Show. I made some brief notes about some of the performances…  

Slovenia… Singer shouting gibberish, dazzling stroboscopic lights.                                                                        

France… Woman in black mumbling emotionally in French;                                                                

Israel… Man in dark suit with pretty male dancers around him gyrating to a meaningless tune, Golden Boy, and lyrics with a grin all over his face and huge yellow lights in the background.                                   

Serbia… A huge fat woman;                                                                                                                   

Sweden… Jazzy man in funny trousers;                                                                                                                     

Germany… Stunning bitch in black;                                                                                                   

Romania… Bald hippy;                                                                                                                                    

Greece… A stunning blonde shouting;                                                                                                                     

Georgia… Crazed tall bint in crazy black costume yelling Christ knows what;                                                  

Albania… Desperately shouting woman;                                                                                                 

Lithuania… All very love in;                                                                                                                                 

Estonia… Man playing a guitar and girl singing in English. Catchy tune and good harmony;               

United Kingdom… Jazzy 1920’s theme. Good beat, well sung, catchy lyrics. The song, Still in Love with You wasn’t really loved by anyone in Europe!

And yes, Conchita was just about everywhere throughout the Show trailing its theme Building Bridges twinned with ‘Coming Together’… Very much like the EU. Well let me tell you, watching it all, most British people don’t want to come together with a gang of scrubby I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine bureaucrats in Brussels who take the financial contributions of British taxpayers, second highest of any member state and hand it over to East Europeans in East European shit holes. The message is this. We don’t want to be part of your family where culture, history and national identity is dissolved into nothing. We have our own thank you very much and we lead a Commonwealth of Nations besides!

To continue! The percussion interlude was happily loud with all the performers smiling desperately with everyone desperately having fun in a desperately staged cacophony! Everything compulsorily perfect with ridiculous set pieces and more Israeli flags being waved for the ending of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony, choir and trumpets blaring out in a very Germanic finale (the man himself was an Austrian Jew who had to get baptized in order to advance his musical career). Finally the whole audience waving their hands and partying in an orgy of flag mania while the two hostesses showed tit one way or another in a kind of madly grinning agreeability. Yes it was all deliciously Kamp Austrian style, but better than Mein Kampf as on a previous occasion.

And now the points awarded. Hello Vienna… This is Gina from Armenia… Thank you for such a fantastic Show… Wait a minute, Gina from where? Last time I looked at an Atlas, Armenia was somewhere in Asia same as Georgia but never mind. There’s no chance of either place being asked to join the EU. But it was fascinating all the same to see all those countries coming in with either their pretty boys or titty girls giving us the vote. And all so fabulously predictable. The people of one country giving the merry little ditty of its next door neighbor either 10 or the maximum 12 points;

Finland: 12 points for Sweden! Romania 10 points for Russia! Greece: 10 points for Cyprus! Belorus: 12 points for Russia! Denmark: 12 points for Sweden! Serbia: 10 points for Russia! 12 for Montenegro next door: Azerbaijan: 10 points for Georgia! 12 for Russia!  Moldova: 10 points for Russia! 12 for Romania! France: 12 points for Belgium! (joke, joke) Armenia: 10 points for Georgia! 12 for Russia! Holland: 12 points for Belgium! (joke, joke) Macedonia: 10 points for Serbia! 12 for Albania! Lithuania: 8 points for Estonia! 12 for Latvia!

Just a small example of the mental character of the people of Europe. Not voting for the quality of the songs in themselves but for those of countries next door or those of political allies in what can best be described as an orgy of pure national self interest. Building Bridges? Coming Together? Are the Austrians who put up the Contest having a laugh? They must be! Furthermore the same thing happens year after year! All this cultural love-in shit except for the fact that the people of Europe only ever operate along the lines of narrow self-interest! Maybe that’s why Britain never wins! Because we don’t have any real friends next door in Europe. They don’t like us. They’ll take our tourist money and the contribution of our taxpayers for the beggars of East Europe but that’s about it! The European Union and the Eurovision Song Contest are taking the piss. Having a laugh at the British expense when your populations in general are all hot and ready to collaborate with evils like the Nazis and then you realize you need Britain’s help!

However please note. Our criticism of you doesn’t make us intolerant or unpleasant. We’re easy going in our great strength and historical depth of character. After all, we fucked the Germans over twice in two world wars so we’ve got plenty going for us. And actually Europe, you need us more than we need you, so remember it while you’re having a laugh at the expense of the silly British you think we are!    

PISSING ON ME… PISSING ON YOU…

The title of this Post is meant to convey something of the flavor of the Liberal Democrats who controlled the council in Bath and whose Member of Parliament represented the City over many years. The things that I describe below perhaps a microcosm for the conduct of Liberal Democrat administration throughout the many cities and councils where they’d formerly had control and received such a thrashing from an angry and deeply disenchanted public in the recent General and Council Elections. 

Previously Don Foster had held the Parliamentary seat for the Liberal Democrats with a majority of over 12,000 while his Party had controlled Bath and North East Somerset council with another handsome majority. In the recent elections the Conservatives blew away hopes a new Lib-Dem candidate with a swing of 15,000 plus votes and took control of the Council with many Lib-Dem councilors losing what they once thought was political office for life. Throughout the whole area the voters gave them a massive thumbs down. It wasn’t a bit of pinprick disgust here and there. The electorate turned their backs on them wholesale so let’s take a look why.

There were many policy issues in recent years that taken together caused deep disenchantment and despite Liberal Democrat seemingly do-good intentions began to smell of serious arrogance. Their councilors took on an air of aloofness to various public concerns. They simply appeared to be unable to listen. Understand the nature of public disquiet. In recent years, as part of a so-called money saving exercise, they began closing the great majority of public toilets in the City of Bath and throughout smaller towns in the area, doing it without any form of public consultation. They simply didn’t think to ask anyone. It never entered their heads that large numbers of people who might be disabled or had urgent medical reasons for needing to use them would be seriously disadvantaged. Instead they privatized their use, handing out the contract for servicing them to a company who’d charge them for use and if you didn’t have the right coin with you at the time wherever you were you could be in serious trouble.

This may seem a small thing only it wasn’t. It created genuine inconvenience to many people disadvantaged by age or medical reasons. No consultation, no consideration of a very personal interest. To save money employing their own maintenance staff they simply closed or privatized toilets and too bad about that. It was a similar situation in the Council’s hiring out of public spaces and amenities for private use to make extra cash. Parks and Gardens were given over to private events from which the local public was forcibly excluded by private stewards on gates or the fencing off of spaces in parks. Those who’d paid money for their upkeep out of their rates were kept out with all the unpleasant arrogance of private property. Kept away and kept out with their pleasure in being able to use what they’d rightly thought of as being a civic amenity available for their use now taken away. It went down badly with people and stank.

One of the worst assaults on public sentiment however was the extraordinary Liberal Democrat policy of extensive long term road-works both within the City and many other small towns in the area and here let me say immediately that my use of the word extensive is no exaggeration. The Council took a decision to kind of modernize and make kind of pedestrian friendly a vast swathe of the main London Road leading east out of the City while at the same time adopting the same style for a main route leading south-east towards Bristol. Contracts were awarded for these ‘improvement’ schemes to the same company which alas, in the early stages of works announced it was bankrupt leaving huge swathes of uncompleted works and chaos in crucial areas of road traffic movement. Most unfortunately it seemed, the road works arm of the company had transferred most of it assets to other areas of business leaving it unable to complete the huge program it had signed up for. These now incomplete schemes left the transportation system of the City in a diabolical mess with gigantic traffic queues endlessly clogging up the City throughout the day and Council seemingly unable to rectify the situation. Excuse me… Don’t blame us for it all!

The fury of the motoring public of Bath knew no bounds, particularly when, immediately prior to the elections, the Liberal Democrats published a leaflet saying how well they’d done with local road traffic improvement schemes, promising many more and especially infuriating, guaranteeing they’d turn crucial areas of road space over to cyclists, naturally saying nothing of course about how their schemes of recent years had completely stuffed up road traffic in the City. The leaflet, showing the grinning face of the Council Leader along with a photo of the new Lib-Dem Parliamentary candidate with the arm of the former MP round his shoulder was like waving a giant red rag to a bull. Motorists throughout the City were infuriated, particularly when for the last six months there’d been little sign that the works would be completed. Both areas mentioned above resemble gigantic coned off drilled out building sites with great quantities of material strewn just about everywhere. In the London road, amazingly, completed works show a vast extension of pavement area for pedestrians and a serious narrowing of the roadway from four lanes down to two and furthermore the works having been completed at one end have now extended east towards the City! More interesting than anything perhaps in respect of these works is that for months on end while negotiations between the Council and the ex-company dragged on, no constructions workers were to be seen anywhere doing anything to the palpable fury of tens of thousands of motorists.

On election day then with the Liberal Democrat controlled Council trumpeting its pride as responsible custodians of the City’s road traffic, its inhabitants saw fit to tell many of its councilors exactly where they could stick it!

In this respect I have my own small contribution to make. Interested in the fact that for many years the Council Health and Safety Department has allowed various Polish shops within its area of control to sell perishable meat, fish and dairy products without labels in English stating their content, sell by date or storage instruction, this being a criminal offence, I decided to make an enquiry and telephone a Liberal Democrat councilor whom I thought might provide some advice. After a brief conversation my enquiry was brought to a halt by the good lady’s insistence that I address her as COUNCILOR… Councilor this and councilor that but insistently and most definitely as COUNCILOR in a splendid, entirely unselfconscious manner. I didn’t pursue the enquiry with her but noted that in the elections the public had booted her out on her arse!

In Bath and North East Somerset, with its toilet closures and road-works the Liberal Democrat Council had literally pissed all over the people, and with the elections my friends the people had actually pissed back all over you! It wasn’t an accident. That’s what you got for your stupidity and arrogance!

IMMIGRATION : THE BIG LIE

Quite frankly it’s a waste of time saying that from 1997 to 2007 New Labour was the Party of uncontrolled mass immigration, mainly from Pakistan and Bangladesh. A waste of time because if you didn’t already know you must have spent your time living on the Space Station. At much the same time and on to 2010 it was likewise the Party of uncontrollable mass immigration from Poland and elsewhere in East Europe. Uncontrollable because EU policy on the free movement of labor throughout Europe demanded it and British Labour politicians were hot to bring down the price of labor in this country and make it cheap as they could.

Throughout this period Blair and Brown had the full support of the Liberal Democrats to make the British labor market cheap as they could and supposedly competitive, never mind that it was against the policy of the Trades Union movement and took away millions of jobs from British workers. In doing so it was met with the politically orchestrated and well rehearsed lie that British workers were lazy and didn’t want to do the jobs that immigrants were taking. Nothing was further from the truth. It was just another way of creating a false image to denigrate British workers so as to justify the ever increasing cheapening of labor in Britain. Employers organizations along with politicians and their friends in the media joining together to tarnish working people with the same dirty brush as a precursor to making them face the unemployed of East Europe ready and willing to work for half rates of pay and send taxpayer funded benefits back home in Romania and Poland.

From 2010 however and a new Tory led Coalition Government there was going to be a new game plan. Cross his heart and hope to die David Cameron was going to control and bring down mass immigration. If he hadn’t sworn on his mother’s life, British people were assured he’d be doing his best. A bit like the boy scouts! Of course, don’t you know, nothing happened. The story put out and making the rounds was that he was kind of hamstrung by the Liberal Democrat Coalition partners he was sleeping with and alas at the mercy of European Union free movement of labor regulations. So sorry… so very sorry, there was little to nothing he could do! It was like a joke regularly making the rounds. Prime Minister Cameron’s hands tied. Nothing he could do about the endless flood coming in but from the point of view of the public those working at points of entry supposedly policed by the Border Control Agency were just waving them through!

Day after day after day… Waving them through with a smile without checking their pieces of paper. Millions of immigrants who knew all too well what lay ahead! No need to make up any excuses that they were facing severe persecution from Mongolia to Manhattan, not any more. If they’d come from the Philippines looking for work with a nursing qualification printed in Xerox Alley, no problem. They could get a job killing patients in NHS hospitals somewhere up north! Never mind. Salvation was at hand. Tory Prime Minister Cameron had promised to check the flood and after his election victory of 2015, with any Liberal Democrat obstacle to immigration control ditched he could go sailing ahead. He’d carry on the good work at the border controls. Keeping promises!

Suddenly mid-May the already well known truth struck home. Despite all those promises, immigration into the UK had just about doubled in the last 12 month period! Three hundred and eighteen thousand new immigrant arrivals over emigrant departures in 12 short months! Sounds bad but don’t you worry, BBC News has already been busy justifying it all with their carefully selected expert opinion, same as they get their Islamic terrorist friendly experts to comment on the latest murderous atrocity.

Oh dear, oh dear! Poor David Cameron! His immigration control pledges and promises all torn to shreds. and not worth a stuff! And there’s poor Mother Teresa at the Home Office, her face more lipsticked and contorted than ever somehow trying to justify the rat-shit statistic. But wait for it, time for a speech. Dear David promising to make things good soon at the EU. He’ll control benefits… confiscate wages paid to illegal immigrants… have stricter checks on those coming in. Yes, he’ll tell them all in the EU what Britain wants. After all, he’s just been re-elected! He’ll tell them all what he’s going to do or else he’ll reconsider our membership!

Yes, we’ve all just heard the promise he made on television. He’ll act to control benefits, control the wages paid to illegal immigrants working in Britain of which according to the BBC there’s just a few hundred, joke joke! Yes, in the light of those shocking figures he’s sounded the bugle… he’s going to act! Can you see a picture of him in your mind’s eye, wearing a hard hat somewhere up north munching on a stale sausage roll! It’s his version of Churchill’s fight them on the beaches stuff only unlike the war leader it’s simply plain bollocks. The uncontrollable immigration forced on Britain by the EU is one thing, but what about the unchecked and welcomed hundred and fifty thousand or more coming in from every patch of shit over the globe?

Besides, did you see him at the summit of EU leaders in Latvia? He was going to tell them exactly what reforms Britain was insisting on regarding immigration. You only needed to see some of their faces to know that they thought he was having a bit of a laugh!

In a way it’s a bit like getting on a first class intercity bus travelling in India. You pay for 4 seats. You, your wife and two extra for baggage so you won’t have 10 people sitting on top of you! Well the journey starts fine. Every legitimate seat taken but then at the first stop a lot of other people get on and the gangway is packed. Next stop the people who occupied the gangway are now sitting on the floor with people standing on them! Two stops later the driver’s compartment is packed to the rafters. Okay, the journey continues. By the time you’ve passed through another two stops there are twenty people up on the roof. Well that’s alright, it’s a bit like the EU. But then suddenly things begin to get serious. At the next stop there’s a new influx. Out of the blue there are three people sitting tight next to you and a fourth with her body perched on your lap and holding a baby. And even worse it’s the same for your wife! Well at least all your luggage is safe… or so you thought. The last influx has picked it up off the seats and put it on their knees, so the four seat space you’d booked and paid for is now occupied by ten people or more with two or three trying to sit on yours truly! And furthermore the baby’s arse is all shitty! But never mind, it’s all okay, you’re British and a liberal democrat!

This story will be familiar to anyone who’s travelled by a first class Intercity bus in India but it’s not as far -fetched at it might seem. Britain is a small island. Its population has grown by ten million in forty years most of whom never spoke English. Ten million people whose cultures, values and religion are fundamentally alien to ours and who’ve made little effort to integrate into the wider British society but prefer to keep themselves to themselves. The influx may be great from an employer’s perspective of creating a dirt cheap labor economy but from a historical point of view of maintaining traditional British values and a culture traditional to this island it signals a serious threat. Immigration has proved useful in the past bringing with it new ideas, new skills and new cultural characteristics. Today however, with a notion of Britain being multicultural forced on its indigenous British population by politically motivated ethnic politicians among others and a deeply misguided liberalism, mass immigration has become a very real danger to all the good things that have formed part of our island’s heritage. That’s the truth of the matter whether you like it or not.

NIGEL FARAGE… AN ATTEMPTED POLITICAL ASSASSINATION

But first some other tit-bits of news.

The Sun and the Daily Mail are Britain’s two best selling newspapers. Is it any wonder then that the Mail has again publically referred to Ed Miliband as Red Ed while the Sun has recently delighted in publishing a front page picture of Sally Bercow the Speaker’s wife looking tearful and deeply distressed while detailing her marital problems with her husband. As I’ve already said in earlier Posts the Red Ed characterization of Ed Miliband by the Daily Mail is so very typical of a newspaper once a keen supporter of Hitler and the Nazis in the 1930’s and typical because it mimics the tactics of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda chief in associating Jews with communism. If you recall it was part of the Mail’s recent attack on Ed’s father Ralph as an ungrateful refugee Jewish immigrant, smearing Ed, then leader of the Labour Party, in the process. The Red Ed smear as I previously pointed out is at best ludicrous because Miliband himself is about as much of a communist or socialist as bumbling Boris Johnson. For this visceral right wing rag however he’s Red because he wanted to drastically curtail exploitative employment practices such as Zero Hours contracts, substantially increase the Minimum Wage for lowest paid workers and put a freeze on rampant energy price increases. And for these fundamentally decent and caring proposals he was labeled as Red.

Well doesn’t it just typify such places as Essex and Kent, roost of the lower middle class and home from home of Sun and Daily Mail readers. A place where the Red Ed smear is liked and understood for what it actually is! The Sun’s bringing the Bercow family problems to public scrutiny and ridicule is something else. This is a private matter and while the lady herself has been foolishly outspoken in the past, lacked moderation and behaved unwisely in an unbecoming exhibitionist manner, it was bad taste of the newspaper to highlight her troubles. On the other hand was she so stunningly naïve in failing to recognize that the British news media is in main a filth exchange conduit between its owners and the general public. Sally Bercow should have kept her marital disenchantment to herself and been sufficiently strong to keep her to herself and not hand it to people who make money out of the anguish of others.

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE BBC!

One of David Cameron’s first acts as Prime Minister of the new Tory Government was to appoint John Whittingdale as his new Culture Secretary, a man with very little love if any for the BBC! Well Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire helped the Conservative Party’s election campaign, has long wanted to put the main rival to Sky Television in harm’s way and Cameron’s recent appointment may be his best chance. His way saying thanks to a friend! This main media outlet of the British Establishment with its well known hostility towards Israel and palpable Islamic fundamentalist friendly sentiment has long been well past its sell by date for neutral unbiased reporting, news coverage and honest neutrality of its panel based shows where it has often been accused of fixing the audience.  In recent years such attitudes and conduct have caused serious public disquiet.

Whittingdale’s appointment has therefore been seen by the press as a potential threat to BBC finances, particularly its lawful ability to demand a license fee from television viewers. This might be a good thing. The organization has repeatedly sounded off its belief in the value of impartial reporting. Hypocritically, it has been remarked, due to its too often uncritical almost sympathetic airing of the views of Muslim extremists and terrorists. There’s something dirty about BBC television news reporting these days. It’s full of sentiment that millions of people just don’t want to hear and this, along with the fact that it protests too much about its own impartiality and independence, have made it increasingly seem like a bit of a joke. Its reporting is no longer impartial and its stories are slanted towards editorial taste and flavor. It has become unwieldy, out of touch and unresponsive to criticism. Many of these, especially in the Conservative Party, maintain it has become the tool of a metropolitan liberal elite. This may be so but would they prefer it to be the tool of an Australian media magnate with the sensitivity of a lead tipped stick who recently had to shut down one of his rags for illegal, immoral conduct? By putting a check on BBC financial powers the new Culture Secretary will undoubtedly fire a warning shot over its bows. Behave and get back into line with balanced reporting because we’re watching you, and next time it could be the heavy hand of Parliamentary  regulation you have to deal with!

ALL CHANGE AT THE TOP

The last week has seen the leaders of two of Britain’s main political parties fall on their swords. Such a romantic way of putting it! Much better to say that they were forced to resign by the electorate who told them exactly where the Parties they led could go and in that sense telling them where they could go likewise.

Nick Clegg’s five year lie-in with the Tories cost them nothing and the Liberal Democrats everything. That’s what happens when you give up your political cherry to a gang of dirty old men after promising the public you’d be faithful and true. You got done for breach of promise. Came out of it all at the end like a whore full of excuses and a reputation for honesty gone down the toilet. Its leader stripped of all his political power, Mister Deputy Prime Minister this and Mister Deputy Prime Minister that if you please with his face white and soggy was the first to beg for forgiveness. And even then he was still unashamed! Had no regrets for anything he’d done! It was all for us, for the people don’t you know! He did it all for the country.

In which case EX DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER why did you and your Party get such a kicking?

It wasn’t much different for the Milipede. The hammering Labour took in Scotland was a contemptuous two fingers, mainly for the past betrayals of Blair and Dark Gordon, two Scots Labour Prime Ministers who did nothing north of the border over ten years and more except maintain the destruction of its once industrial economy until there was not a lot left except tourism, tartan and whisky. Little wonder that nationalism grew, returning contempt with contempt. For years Scottish Labour turned a blind eye, thinking nothing would happen! That the Scots who’d voted to remain part of the UK would stay faithful but not anymore. In 2015 they turned their backs big time. Goodbye fifty plus seats and cheerio any hope you had of being Prime Minister! But that wasn’t all. The English weren’t happy either. The Labour Leader’s promises to get rid of nasty employment practices such as zero hours contracts that removed the security of a regular wage from millions of workers and substantially increase the wretched Minimum Wage, along with a commitment to block energy price increases all sounded fine but just weren’t enough.

Conservatives promises to repair an economy severely damaged by Labour’s failure to control the banker’s  investment activities was something that hung over Miliband. An inheritance he couldn’t make up, even with promises. To win the election he needed to gain seats in England but lost them instead and like the Liberal Democrats his Party went down the tubes. He had to go and went with a full set of teeth shining as ever in darkly jowls. Once again, saying sorry wasn’t enough. He left Labour in rags. Not because of his honorable intentions but because of the toxic inheritance bequeathed by Blair, and Brown, with Mandelson, Straw and Blunkett chucked into the mix.

In the last week the election result has been analyzed and debated by media pundits and so called experts over and over. All wanting to get their oar in, giving reasons for this, that or the other. My own take is simple. The two main losers in the General Election were Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Both Parties and their leaders were keen supporters of Britain’s membership of the EU. Both had little to say about the problems of out of control mass immigration. The Liberal Democrats had hardly a word to say and indeed seemed to support it. Labour on the other hand was undoubtedly the architect of uncontrolled mass Muslim immigration and all the nasty problems of Islamic extremism that went with it from 1997 when New Labour took office. These problems and this inheritance was neither forgotten nor forgiven by an uptight electorate that gave Nigel Farage and UKIP close to 4 million votes. Such a success clearly didn’t come out of the blue. The British people were uptight and turned their backs on what they didn’t like and didn’t want anymore. So goodbye Labour we must leave you…

 

ATTACK ON THE TRADES UNION MOVEMENT

The very first act of the new Conservative Government had been to announce a curtailment of the right of Trades Union members in the Public Sector to engage in strike activity. This refers specifically to those workers engaged in essential services, whatever that phrase might mean and to whoever it applies being determined by the new Conservative Business Secretary Sajid Javid, son of an immigrant bus driver but actually the brainchild of Tory manqué Boris Johnson. Tory legislation will soon require that 40% percent of all union members balloted for strike action must vote to support it. Come to think of it this might not be such a bad idea as many on the Trades Union side might think as it will force them to get their membership together and fully behind them for any strike action. It may in fact have the effect of coalescing and hardening membership support, something they will now need to organize rather than simply accept as something taken for granted.

Strangely then, this seeming attack on Union activity may actually have the effect of strengthening it and achieving greater membership solidarity. Trades Union leaders should see it as a potential plus and not be so quick to write it off as the attack it seems to be. Their view of course is understandable considering recent Government policy. On immigration alone they could justifiably argue that it wasn’t enough for Labour and Conservative Governments to create a reserve army of cheap immigrant labor to depress worker’s wages… the Trades Unions themselves had to be muzzled with new voting restrictions, an idea mooted a couple of years back by ex-public schoolboy Johnson himself whose carefully contrived bumbling exterior hides a vast jungle of reactionary dystopian views in which the idiot like mumbling disguises an altogether more primordial political baying, namely for the blood of radical organized labor.

The notion of curtailing the rights of workers is stupid and its consequences not seriously thought out, but then the politics of labor management in Britain, unlike that in Germany, has only ever sought short term political ends. Things that always seem good at the time. Sorry then, Tory son of an immigrant bus driver and Bumbling Boris, you could well be encouraging things you’re so keen to put the skids under!

AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION 

In the week since the General Election there has been an extraordinary assassination attempt on one of the main Party leaders. Let me say immediately that it hasn’t been one that necessitated the involvement of the police but even so the matter has been widely publicized and brought to the attention of millions of people. Mercifully the attempt seems to have failed and we must all be thankful that no-one has suffered serious injury in the process. Are you still mystified? If so let me say that I am of course referring to a singularly dirty deed. Nothing physical but dirty all the same. I am of course referring to the attempted political assassination of Nigel Farage, leader of a Party that gained nearly 4 million votes at the General Election. More than the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalist Party put together and third in the share of the popular vote. For that they had one Member of Parliament elected while the other two gained sixty seats plus. Now there’s democracy for you!

No matter. His splendid management of his Party throughout the campaign and staggering public popularity wasn’t good enough for some of the senior Party figures around him. The man resigned his Party leadership as he promised he’d do if he failed to win the seat he contested of South Thanet but a day later its Executive, under huge pressure from his loyal supporters refused to accept it. In consequence he soon changed his mind saying that with important European elections coming up this wasn’t the time to absent himself from the role he was best at, leading the Party that he’d created.

Alas it wasn’t good enough for those with ambition around him. He was immediately attacked by his Election Campaign Chief, Economics Spokesman Patrick O’Flynn who described him to The Times newspaper as someone who was “snarling, thin skinned and aggressive” and risked turning the Party into a “personality cult.” If that wasn’t enough a senior supposedly UKIP source told the BBC that Nigel Farage should face a leadership contest; the source being former senior member Godfrey Bloom who time back was forced to resign from the Party for making insulting and highly derogatory remarks against women. Bloom himself was one of a considerable number of party peculiars whose influence its leader had sought to diminish for obvious political reasons. They were making it look like a party of cranks, diminishing its chances of gaining widespread support so he and others like him had to go.

In the last week however it seems like they’ve all been trying to make a desperate comeback. Attacking Farage’s reputation and calling for a leadership contest. Godfrey Bloom may talk about the dangers of personality cult, rightly pointing to the 1930’s, but just try to imagine someone like him leading UKIP! No votes from women with you running the show!

This attack by the disenchanted, happily taken up by the BBC on an hourly basis had its effect. Two of Farage’s closest party political aides were forced to resign. The charge being that they’d allowed him too much freedom in promoting its election campaign. Now, egged on by Farage’s greatest media enemy, BBC Television, the Party’s single Member of Parliament Douglas Carswell, was drawn into what had been up till then a row about electoral tactics and called on his leader to take a break from running the Party which effectively meant resigning. Giving up the job to someone like him! Truth is, if the Party had more than one Member to represent them in Parliament such a suggestion could justifiably be construed as betrayal.

Farage however had something much more powerful up his sleeve to deal with treachery like that. UKIP had just won a huge electoral following that justified his policies so no need to feel his leadership challenged. Politically ambitious people at the top could bay for blood but as Party Leader he had the support of millions. The loyalty of the electorate was to him and his Party not to those circulating around it or in it.  Clegg and Miliband could hop it as leaders. They’d lost the support of the people. He hadn’t!

The BBC, main orchestrators of the get rid of the Nigel Farage campaign for day after day were getting nowhere fast. With no more ammunition or gossip to feed off their reporting staff began making the rounds, looking for any sign of temper or temperament. Farage however, knowing the nature of the beast and how shabbily it had treated him and his Party during the General Election played it low key and calm. By the weekend all the mud they’d been hoping would stick washed away into the gutters of a dead story with nowhere to go. Having failed to blow him out of the water the BBC fell back on its current news items of Royal chit chat and immigrant boat people.

CHUCKER UMUNNA

Encouraged one minute by good friend and mentor, slimy Peter Mandelson, to throw his hat in the ring to be the new Labour Leader, next minute he’s fishing it out and running for cover from breaking news stories about his tax haven Channel Island investments that for some reason he forgot to tell anyone about! Oh dear, you’ve been such a naughty boy Chucker, chucking it away because you didn’t think it was important to tell anyone in the Labour Party about all the dosh you had salted away! Could it be because it serious ran against the grain of Labour Party propriety? I mean, didn’t you even tell your dear friend Peter, former Labour Business Secretary and Blairie Boy in Chief that you had all that dodgy money stashed away?

Oh dear, oh dear! Here one minute gone the next. Didn’t want all the publicity that came with all that dosh in dodgy places or the weed you once smoked when you were young and with it. Hope you won’t be altogether out on your political arse because Streatham can be a dodgy place if you’re booted and suited and not so slick anymore. Never mind, with your slick and easy ability to talk maybe your Labour business friend Peter can find something for you, but then I forgot. He’s kind of ex-Labour himself a bit like little Lord Levy, another Blair crony with a quid in his pocket still pretending he’s someone or other when he’s only publicity dog-meat!

But frankly there’s really no future in Labour if that’s what you’re hoping for. The Party’s out of power for ten years or more so no hope of being Andy Burnham’s Chancellor one day soon. Until that time you’ll have to wear out your bum on the back benches or alternatively get a job at some university or other. Perhaps a lectureship in Politics. It might be a good place to start!

FLUSHED DOWN THE TUBES!

With the Election over there’s no better expression I can think of to describe the experience of Scottish Labour Party Members of Parliament at the hands of the Scottish electorate or that of the Liberal Democrats at the hands of English voters in particular. Both Labour in Scotland the LibDems in England took a serious kicking. Just as bad for Labour though was that they also took a drubbing from the Tories in the south of the country. In this election there was no making anything up. Liberal Democrat candidates lost their deposits in half the seats they contested and literally got blown away top to bottom. All their Coalition Cabinet members with the exception of Nick Clegg had the plug pulled while the leader himself only just managed to hold on in Sheffield by the skin of his teeth. First it was Danny Boy Alexander up in Scotland with George Osborne’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury getting a stiffy from the Nationalists. Then it was the turn of the Scarecrow himself. Poor old Vince! Looked like he was deep in his dotage when he was woken with the news after which it was Ed Mister Energy Davey, so beloved of the Big Six Energy suppliers whose price fixing capers he’d happily overseen during his time in Coalition. Alas, they weren’t the only ones! So sad about the dear boys from Bermondsey and Yeovil, Simon Hughes and David Laws. So sad for them and gobby Jo Swinson, one of those very loud Liberal Democrat ladies who finally had a sock stuffed in hers.

To a degree the contempt held for the Liberal Democrats by the electorate for being political opportunists who broke their election promises last time round was mirrored by the damage done to Ed Miliband’s cronies. Ed Balls, his Shadow Chancellor and long time political pal from the time they’d served in Dark Gordon’s Government… knifed in the back up at Hallam and looking like a beetroot on a stick. Earlier Ed’s Shadow Foreign Secretary was bludgeoned by the Nationalists not long after midnight after which came the turn of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy, put to the sword like a sack of meat by Nicola Sturgeon’s Highlanders with the Girl in the Red Dress, winsome as ever giving the proceedings a hearty chuckle and urging it on! Labour butchered throughout Scotland! That’s what you get Ed for telling us you’d rather sup with the devil than do a deal with the Scots! Yes, there was something undeniably winsome about Nicola, grinning happily all over her face while Ed and his Party were drowning in blood down in England.

Political analysts who’d been investigating electors’ intentions in recent months through surveys and polls must have had their eyes firmly closed to have come up with predictions that were so badly wrong on these two crucial elements. Firstly, the powerful political hostility of the nationalists in Scotland towards the Scottish Labour Party and its steadily growing vulnerability there. Secondly the unforgiving contempt of the British people in general for a Party perceived to have broken faith and reneged on its promises to them. On the night these two factors doomed the two Parties but then they’d been a long time coming and how they’d been so badly underestimated was quite frankly a serious oversight.

There was no oversight however of the impact of UKIP. Nigel Farage’s Party received over four million votes nationally, coming second in dozens of seats to the eventual victors and third in others. Nationally it replaced the Liberal Democrats as the third largest party for share of the vote, its performance demonstrating one of the great inequities of our electoral system where despite its performance nationally it gained only one Member of Parliament. Nowhere was this national challenge more evident than in the northern working class heartland of Labour. Forget Essex and Kent! UKIP made powerful inroads into traditional Labour territory with its twin messages of immigration control and hostility to the EU, striking a powerful chord but alas to no avail. It was unable to break the traditional two-Party lock on hundreds of constituencies despite receiving substantial support throughout the Midlands and North of England.

For the Conservatives the night was a triumphant procession, especially in West of England at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, put to the sword from Cornwall to Gloucester! One of their greatest victories was in Bath where they comfortably overturned a Lib-Dem majority of 12,000 without much of a problem. So much for the sparkling legacy of Don Foster otherwise known locally as do-nothing-Don! The result in Bath was strange. Even the very young Labour candidate doubled his vote in a City of many students, now sick of all those of broken Liberal Democrat promises along with large numbers of motorists who’d had it up to the eyeballs with years of mind-bending Liberal Democrat Council road-works for which they made themselves quite detestable. Perhaps it was the same story wherever they controlled the Council along with occupying the Parliamentary seat!

This recent time of cataclysm, of putting old certainties and well known political personalities to the sword, these twenty four hours of political storm and stress reached a great climax in the suicide of three Party Leaders. First Nick Clegg, then Nigel Farage and finally Ed Miliband, all doing away with themselves in public, each with a love note for all their admirers. There was no… it’s a far better thing I’m doing… or  there’s no greater act of love, speech from any of them. Just Clegg’s face, all white and sick, giving the performance of the dying swan or Miliband putting on a demented version of cheer! Only Farage had it right and why shouldn’t he? He and his Party had done exceptionally well, however he’d earlier promised to go if he failed to win his own contest and now he said he might come back after he’d taken a holiday. Nothing could have sounded more sensible!

Three political leaders gone in an hour! It must have been a world record. Just an afternoon left laying a wreath at the Cenotaph to mark 70 years since the end of the Second World War then off into the sunset looking for jobs but not at the local employment exchange. Two gone for good and Farage promising the possibility of more fun to come. It begs the question, for Clegg and Miliband why did it have to be so desperately final?

David Cameron won a great political victory for the Conservatives. However it wasn’t as sensational, only the manner and demeanor of his two main political rivals helped present it as such. More like a catastrophe than anything. Ed Miliband in particular should have been made of sterner stuff. Promising to rebuild and return to fight another day. The truth of the failure of both men lies in the contempt of the public and the character of their vote. It was a vote of dismissal, and indeed one of contempt. Overwhelming rejection heaped onto the Liberal Democrats in England. In one simple word, disdain! In Scotland on the other hand plain fury at past Labour Government neglect. What the Scots saw as contempt by Blair and Brown, both of them Scots themselves! And this was their big chance to give it back in spades! Put crudely, knee them in the bollocks!

All of it unfolding under our eyes in a most splendid night of political entertainment. The British electorate giving it to the politicians they didn’t like for whatever reason. Politicians at Westminster stuffing the people for years while lining their pockets... well here was the people’s chance to do likewise! This was a night of retribution. A night of the long knives! Pay-back time for over the board grievance. Clegg and the Milipede walking into the gates of hell with their eyes wide shut. It begs a very fair question. Were they both stupid? Did the Leader of the Liberal Democrats really have no idea whatsoever what the consequences would be of getting his whole Party into bed with the Tories to support their attacks on public welfare and a public sector wage freeze? This was a massive betrayal of what his Party had stood for over the years. Had the leadership of the Labour Party entirely forgotten what Blair and Brown had done to Scotland over all those years when they’d governed the country?

Had they both been totally blind or were they taking their Parties into an election just whistling along in the dark, hoping that people anywhere and everywhere would forgive and forget? Well they didn’t. In a democracy that’s what you get for lies and betrayal… and if the Liberal Democrats keep on with their bullshit that they did it all for the country, soon there won’t be enough of them left to get on the back of a bike!

DAY BEFORE THE ELECTION COMEDY CAPERS

BORIS JOHNSON

Appears on the front page of a national daily hair all over the place looking like something David Cameron pulled out of a washing machine. Features insouciant and mouth all gobby as ever saying something barely coherent, he’s the Tory Party’s pop up jack in the box. Ever leery, ever ready to amuse by conveying his well polished demeanor of convivial stupidity, this ever present boil on the bum of his Party has been considered more of a liability than an electioneering aide by election campaign managers at Central Office and so has only occasionally been allowed to be seen alongside his master David Cameron. This time only yesterday so close to the end where any potential damage from madcap Boris type remarks was containable. Ah Boris, you loveable jokey liability… just a few minutes out of your box for a bit of fresh air before closing the lid and stuffing you back in the cupboard!

See you again soon in the House of Commons! You’re much too risky right now, after all, there’s no knowing just what you might say!

NICK CLEGG

Dressed in the costume of an 18^th century French Musketeer and Playing the Great Pretender…

Oh yes I’m the Great Pretender…

Pretending that I’m doing well (With the Lib Dems down in the polls to 7%)…
I seem to be what I’m not, you see…
I’m wearing my heart like a Clown… (So sad for you Nick, so sad!)
Pretending that you’re (the British electorate) still around!

There he is, up on the great stage of British politics. Alone now in an empty theatre with the spotlight still on him and the audience all gone home after having seen his final performance. His face is pallid. He wouldn’t mind another five years playing alongside DeCameron but knows in his heart of hearts that nobody trusts him and his fellow Lib-Dem musketeers anymore. But never mind! He can still pretend to be in the centre of just about anywhere propping up some Party or other so if it’s not the Tories why not Labour and Miliband? Just about anyone will do.

He’ll even try his old alone in a dark room technique… with Natalie Bennett! Because she’s got a look that makes him weak!

NIGEL FARAGE AND THE BBC

How is it you may justly ask do the Liberal Democrats, currently registering only 8% national support in all the opinion polls get to be judged as Britain’s third largest Party by the BBC ahead of UKIP which the polls show as having support running at 15% plus? It was because of such a highly prejudicial judgment that the BBC gave the Liberal Democrats overwhelmingly more publicity and electioneering airspace than UKIP in the televised election debates. There is clearly something wrong here. An attitude by the national broadcaster that is clearly anti-democratic and in a way smelly. UKIP’S leader has already pointed out his clear distaste for a broadcasting policy which unfairly left his Party at a considerable disadvantage in the crucial sphere of national publicity at a time so close to the General Election.

The BBC may have made its decision on the basis that the Liberal Democrats were partners to the Conservatives in Government over the last five years but all of that ended from the time that Parliament was dissolved and an election called. And from that time till this the BBC had ample opportunity to assess the relative strength between the Liberal Democrats and UKIP and would have clearly seen which Party now had the greater national support. I’m not a supporter of UKIP but the BBC decision to relegate it to fourth place and give the LibDems by far the greater publicity seems to my mind to be grossly unjust. Little wonder then that its leader is furious. In showing favoritism the BBC’s action has been a deliberate attempt to damage that Party’s chances in the supposedly democratic process of the electorate freely choosing a Government and as compulsory license payers to that organization as we all are I do not think it has served us at all well.

Most of its critics allege that BBC governance reflects a liberal minded establishment elite at its centre which in turn reflects its political outlook, one more likely to favor liberal minded political expression rather than anything extreme, left or right. UKIP however, while certainly not inclined to the liberal left is very far from being hard right in any way. Clearly however its views on controlling mass immigration and its hostility to the EU have offended the broadcaster’s executive elite and UKIP’s leader has promised to remedy the situation as to what he regards as its bias should he be given the political opportunity. A view that has substantial sympathy with the general public.

ED MILIBAND THE BACON SANDWICH

If anyone from Rupert Murdoch’s Conservative Party supporting scummy Sun newspaper thought they were doing Ed Miliband damage just a day before the election by publishing a full front page photo of the Labour leader fumbling over a bacon sandwich he’d stuffed half way down his gob, they should have another think coming. There are few things that a Jewish guy likes more than a really good bacon sandwich… Three or four rashers in soft medium white bread with HP sauce and quite frankly why not. Yes, I know I’ll get bollocked by some religious organization that’s hot and orthodox in dietary laws, me being a Jew like Ed Miliband, but nonetheless I understand where he’s coming from because I love it too and there’s nothing I tell you, nothing, that’s coming between me and my bacon sandwich so I understand Ed Miliband’s pleasure. But quite frankly, for the Sun to knock it with the words in the caption used IS QUITE A BIT SMELLY. It’s got an anti-Semitic Daily Mail touch about it that quite frankly the guy doesn’t deserve.

He’s a good man is Ed Miliband. He genuinely cares about the poor and underprivileged people of this country and wants to do everything he can to raise and improve their standard of life. And he’s perfectly sincere in asking us for our vote because this is what he intends doing. I don’t think he’s a genuine socialist of the old style. They disappeared from the Labour Party long ago and those who didn’t were wiped out by the ghastly Tony Blair. However I’m firmly convinced that he’ll do a whole lot more than his unashamedly hateful predecessor Dark Gordon Brown. Politics however is the art of the possible and Ed Miliband has already cut the ground from under his feet. By refusing to consider a working relationship with Nicola Sturgeon in a very obvious broad alliance of policy between Labour and the Scottish Nationalists, he rules out his chances of governing, placing what he sees as national solidarity over social policies of fairness and social justice.

He believes that the nationalists place Scottish national political interest over the social welfare not only of Scotland but of Britain as a whole. The Scottish Nationalists however, with their social policies coming from much further on the socialist left than Labour’s have never made their views absolutely clear. In the event of a hung Parliament their support will be crucial for Ed Miliband to create a Labour Government. Without it, this seems unlikely. So what is preventing Mr Bacon Sandwich from working with the leftist nationalists of Scotland? Could it be that the Scots are too far to the Left or is he scared they’ll push the boat too far out on independence? The nationalists are about to wipe out the Labour Party in Scotland. That’s not because the Scots are suddenly hostile to socialism. On the contrary, they’re hostile to a Labour Party led by Gordon Brown and before him Tony Blair which did absolutely nothing for their country and impoverished many of their people. That’s a fact.

And it would indeed be a tragedy if Ed and his Sandwich would have to pay the ugly price of his Party’s historical neglect. It doesn’t have to be this way… but if it does, is he and the Sandwich more likely to do a deal with the disgustingly cheesy on a stick Liberal Democrats? To those who want to make the country a whole lot fairer, more just, whole lot better place to live in without the police beating people up left right and centre, the idea of Coalition Government between the two is to appalling to contemplate. Almost as nasty, but mercifully not quite, as seeing Dark Gordon back in power all over again.

DARK GORDON BROWN

There was something kind of nasty, in a way sickening, in seeing Scottish Labour’s answer to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy come out on the stage in recent days with his scowling mug desperately trying put on a fraction of sweetness and so desperately failing as the old master of mumbling menace pranced around on stage like a demented hyena, niftily stepping that way and this and throwing his arms out like some crazed Baptist preacher telling his audience about all the delights of Labour’s policies of equality and fairness in education, health and jobs. All these and so many more wonderful things coming from the Labour Party of the people up in Scotland voted for it and gave it their support over the nationalists.

Such a performance, with those little cheeks of this former Prime Minister puffing in and out and even an occasional expression of merriment, forced as ever it seemed, playing over his glowing jowls. It got me to thinking! All these wonderful things! So alien to him during his Premiership when he turned over the financial stability of the country and the welfare of millions of working people to the gimcrack, jack the lad financial marauders of the economy bringing the entire nation close to ruin in the process! The appalling mess he created during his time in office is a legacy that none of us who subsequently lived through it and suffered in the process is ever likely to forget. Yet here he was, telling us how good everything might be when the disaster he so recently created is still a damnable blight on our lives.

How is it then one wonders that Ed Miliband and Scottish Labour actually allowed his presence on stage to infer all the sweet promises of fairness, equality and social justice when he himself only so recently switched off the lights and plunged us all into hard times and darkness. What kind of plain madness was it that prompted them to parade him before us with our memories of his plain unadulterated fuck up so raw in our minds. Here, look… here’s the last lovely Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown come to say hello and give his support to the new Labour leader Ed Miliband! What kind of crazy thinking was it to make them believe he could now woo any Scot for whom he did little to nothing during his time in office away from the reactive force of Scottish nationalism when it was him and his policies that the entire nation became dead against, resulting in a nationalist landslide. Did they really think he could charm them back to the fold with his now cheeky-chappy chat?

Sorry Scottish Labour! Dark Lord Gordon darkened too many lives. Ed and his Sandwich already had too many mountains to climb north of the border without you bringing him out of his coffin and making the Scots remember the dark times. On an even stranger note, what made Labour in Scotland think it was doing good by having Eddie Izzard turn up in lipstick to support leader Jim Murphy at one of the hustings? He really should have been up on stage with the Dark Lord himself, giving him all the opportunity he ever wanted to display his brilliant talent for dark humor at its very best! Something the Tories would never have had the imagination to think of. Here, ready at hand was a genius of comedy himself ready to make people laugh but the opportunity was wasted. They just never thought of the idea that what the Scots needed was something to laugh about rather than see Dark Gordon and cry!

THE GREEKS AND THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS!

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first send mad is a well known saying from Greek mythology though whether ancient or modern there’s no-one who’s ever been better with bullshit. Today they’re running rings round their German paymasters in the European Union using delaying tactics and making endless excuses about paying back all the bailout money they’ve borrowed. Meanwhile their new Left wing Government keeps laying down conditions and promising reforms, coming out with any old guff they think sounds good. Trouble is it needs more and more money by the day to pay bills at home such as public service workers salaries but with nothing more on offer keep going round in circles without a hope in hell of playing catch up. The Greeks don’t make anything, and they don’t export much of anything either except drama, false promises and bullshit. In that sense they’re very much like the Liberal Democrats before the General Election. Full of tales about all the wonders they’ve worked and full of dramatic promises about the amazing things that they’ll do if people vote to put them back into Coalition Government!

Tales about all the wonders they’ve worked and promises to work more wonders and miracles… Quite frankly, anyone listening to all of this coming out of their mouths might ask whether they themselves have gone mad or whether it’s the Liberal Democrats, who like the Greeks have simply lost it! Or maybe it isn’t like that at all. The Greek Government knows it can’t pay the Germans a penny and the whole population is deep in the shit so whatever they say or whatever they do it won’t make a difference! In which case why not simply go on saying anything when nothing actually matters and furthermore there’s nothing that anyone can actually do! Right now it’s exactly the same with the Lib-Dems. They’re endlessly talking up their record in Government to the electorate, asking for understanding and sympathy while making more and more promises like the lying toe-rags they are, knowing that none of it matters. For five years they threw in their lot with the Tories voting for welfare and benefits cuts and there’s nothing they can do now except come out with bullshit, trying to justify their conduct and spend all their time talking it up, down or sideways!     

It’s like listening to some old French tart on a gramophone record. She’s got nothing to regret and will keep on opening her legs all over again. Some kind of promise that is! Keep on giving people another dose of the clap and all self righteous that she’s making a difference and would you believe it, promising to protect the NHS at the same time. And for that you’ve really got to have nerve. That’s the message, the promise of integrity that the Liberal Democrats are coming out with daily, nationally and all over the board. Trouble is, too many people already believed in virgins and fairies and went down with a dose like the jobseekers, the poor and the students and what the Germans think of the Greeks is the same that British people now think of those old talk it up tarts wearing orange. They’re so far down in the polls that every time they open their mouths you can’t help smelling the rot.

Let me give you a current example of such Liberal Democrat electioneering promises made at the local level of politics. The Party has long controlled Bath & North East Somerset Council and one of their recent manifestos leaflets, Bath’s traffic… We all know the problems tells its own story, or does it? It was printed in response to endless complaints from angry motorists in and around Bath and throughout much of the area. Over the last eighteen months they’ve experienced an endless series of catastrophic road-works instigated by the Liberal Democrat controlled authority which have enormously added to the already existing and quite frankly needless congestion. Two of these schemes incorporate so-called fancy pavement improvement in an effort to give the respective areas what might best be described as a more green villagey character. In one of these, a major transportation conduit, the works, already extensive and causing staggering traffic chaos throughout the day were suspended when the builders used by the Council declared themselves bankrupt. Since then, all building activity incorporating various roads and pavement ‘improvement’ has been virtually abandoned resulting in astounding traffic chaos to a wide southern area of the City.

Along the London Road, leading to the M4 Motorway and the old A4 road to London, the Council’s road widening and fancy pavements scheme has been running for many months with no end in sight. If it wasn’t already plain bad getting into the City from the east because one of the two available lanes was given over to infrequent taxis and buses, the entire area has now become a staggering rat run of cones which keeps extending along both sides with no foreseeable end in sight. For over a year sanity has been dumped down the tubes with businesses along the road suffering devastating loss. But that’s nothing compared to the general loss of trade by shops throughout the City. In the last year what may best be described as FLASH-WORKS have appeared just about everywhere. “It’s like going to bed at night and waking up and finding the street you live in suddenly dug up and everywhere surrounded with fencing, and workmen with digging machines causing traffic chaos that’s never been there before,” is how one resident described it to me.

These FLASH-WORKS and the suddenness with which they appear have been an astonishing experience for the motorist. Both for those who live in the City or travel through it. The traffic chaos over the last year or more has been astounding. What was initially bad was made far worse by Liberal Democrat council controlled works over the last eighteen months which, for both motorists and small business has turned the place into a hell-hole. Alas, that’s not the end of the story! A main arterial, the A36, leading to Wiltshire has completely disappeared from use and for how long nobody knows. Or if anyone from the council does they’re not telling! It’s oh so very Liberal Democrat!  

But wait! In response to all the many complaints, your friendly Lib-Dem team whose new business rates have all but strangled the life out of most small shops, have brought out a flash pre-election leaflet telling people how, if re-elected, they will do away with all Bath’s traffic problems… Making Bath even better…

This is a truly astonishing document detailing plans build a huge road tunnel under a main railway line, river and canal just a few miles outside the City together with a new rail station and giant car park. The scheme is so enormous that it is comparable to the size of the works needed for the Channel Tunnel. Nothing on the little map illustrating the scheme shows a railway, river or canal in the vicinity but they’re there all the same! It’s an interesting thought that if the chaos caused by the roadwork schemes elsewhere are anything to go by along with the time spent, the effect of this new Lib-Dem proposal would be to stuff up the entire City and take at least twenty years to complete. It might even mean ending much of the use of road transport throughout the City itself and its suburbs.

The Liberal Democrats who control the Council make their intentions plain. GET COMMUTER CARS OUT OF BATH their leaflet roars, and in a little inset they say, ‘The government welcomes the strategy… Approval from Westminster for our plans (November 2014)’

Just a brief word about this. There’s a big difference between the government welcoming the strategy and approving it. Alas for the Liberal Democrats no formal approval for the scheme was ever given, mainly because of cost and furthermore the original plan they submitted NEVER INCLUDED A TUNNEL UNDER A RAILWAY LINE, RIVER AND CANAL SO IMPLYING IT DID IS SLIMY IF BEST AND PLAIN UNTRUTHFUL!

But never mind that. The Liberal Democrats of Bath as with Liberal Democrats everywhere are at their most friendly when it comes to supporting cyclists who most motorists in Bath regard as rats on two wheels. Here is a list of their new cyclist friendly intentions

We aim to spend 10% of the Highways budget to support cycling.

We will introduce cycle traffic lights to give cyclists a head start.

We will encourage bus companies to fit racks to carry cycles up hills.

We will review junctions to make them more cycle friendly.

As stated in a previous post, BICYCLE FIENDS, cyclists in Bath rule its streets and pavements, jumping the town’s traffic lights with impunity and thinking nothing of knocking over and abusing pedestrians, yet they are thought by the nimby-namby Lib-Dems to give the town greenness and character!

The road traffic scheme these Greeky Liberal Democrats intend for Bath is verging on madness. It would cost hundreds of millions, money that can’t be obtained from central Government funding and which the council they run doesn’t have. Apart from the little problem of finance, given the slower than snail’s pace progress of current road-works in the City, regarded by most of its residents as a very sick joke, the time scale is likely to be run into decades. As someone recently said, they’ll be at in for the grandkids to see…

At the back of the leaflet there’s a photo of the ex Lib-Dem MP Don Foster with his arm on the candidate’s shoulder, both of them looking into the camera like something out of the film Total Recall with the evil administrator of Mars and his buddy, Hauser, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie. If you know the film and then see the photo you’ll know what I mean! Under it are the words spoken by the former MP…  

‘These schemes will make our city a much better place and Steve knows how to get the money for them out of the government.’

Some boast! Especially as the candidate has never had anything to do with government before yet is said to know how to get hundreds of millions out of Labour or the Tories. Well for this completely mad Liberal Democrat promise to free the City of Bath of its road traffic chaos with such a scheme, all he’s ever likely to get is a resounding kick in the butt. Thinking they could assuage the fury of Bath’s motorists before the General Election with this kind of thing, the Liberal Democrats rushed it out hoping it might win them back a few votes and maybe save them losing control of the council. The scheme however is mad, its costing unspecified and its technical complications simply unstated. Yet there it is. A leaflet with a crazy little map and full of clever little photos of what the Liberal Democrats think makes people happy. Of course it’s nothing new. It was first proposed ten years or more back and abandoned as totally impractical. And now it’s been rushed out all over again with Bath’s skanky Lib-Dems hoping to save face for all the wretched traffic chaos they’ve caused.

It’s like a Greek kind of promise, but then as I said earlier, it’s a very Greek kind of thing! Those whom the Gods seek to destroy they first send mad… and this is clearly the way the Party is heading, not only in Bath but all over the country. They can make promises, any old promises, till they’re blue in the face but people know these clapped out political tarts for what they are. They’ll do anything… say anything to keep hold of power and that’s the most terrible thing really. They honestly believe that they’re the best guys in town and what makes it worse is that there are people around who actually believe them.

Now how sad is that!