SOVEREIGNTY.

I recently shared a post on FB, about Labour’s pledge to put bad landlords out of business, with the comment that there was very little in the Labour manifesto that I disagreed with. A friend of mine suggested that I had a short memory, but to answer that in my usual long-winded way. For as long as I can remember there have been two main parties Labour and Conservative. Conservatives were always thought of as the party for the better off, and Labour for tax, borrow and spend policies. Having said that the Tories, since they formed the government a decade ago, have massively increased the national debt with nothing to show for it, can they still be said to be the party of economic competence? Most likely it has gone to their pals, just like the proceeds from selling the family silver, aka privatisations; austerity for the poor and champagne for the rich. There is a third party, the Liberals, later to become the Liberal Democrats, but they usually trailed a long way behind the other two. I think that the status quo is now changing and the smaller parties will be taking seats from the main parties, it will be beneficial for all of us. A good example is the SNP which has now become a mainstream party. It has to be said that their landslide victory was initially a protest vote following the Scottish independence referendum result. The same could be said of the result of the EU referendum. But where the SNP have helped unite Scotland the EU referendum was an unmitigated disaster. Whether you are a Remainer or a Brexiteer it has divided the country and will take a very long time to heal if it ever does. Ironically, it will make very little difference to most people’s lives whether we are in or out of the EU and there are many more important issues facing us. It will however make a difference to the very rich and multi-national companies who will benefit financially from Brexit and swerve some legislation which would make them disclose things about their wealth that they don’t want to disclose. Hence, they have run a campaign of disinformation in the Tory press that they own.

However, be that as it may the Tories since Margaret Thatcher have moved to the right and become more radical, but in a bad way. Labour, who should be the radical party, in a good way, moved to the right in order to get elected. That worked big time when Tony Blair, (the war criminal), won with a landslide, but they were no longer the Labour Party, just slightly paler blue Conservatives. Most credit goes to the post-war Labour government, who introduced all the reforms that we enjoy today. Not that I remember it, and not due to short memory but it was before my time. They brought in the NHS, state pensions and other benefits, they also managed to build more new houses per year than are being built today, despite the country being almost bankrupt as a result of the war. These policies were known as social security. Since their introduction, they have been slowly eroded as expectations quite rightly increased and they haven’t kept pace. They are now social insecurity for many people. This has happened continually under both Conservative and Labour governments and the Lib Dems didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory when in coalition with the Tories. We probably used to be one of the best of the European and Scandinavian countries but we have now fallen far behind and rather than the other countries looking up to us we have become a joke.

Among the worst crimes of the Tories were privatisation and selling off all the council houses at a huge discount. Now we have a Labour Party that is a proper Labour Party again, with the most radical, in a good way, policies for generations. I sincerely hope they get into government and reverse the diabolical privatisations inflicted on us by the Tories. Unfortunately, the public have been brainwashed by the propaganda in the Tory press that we cannot afford these reforms. Jeremy Corbyn, they always bring personalities rather than policies into the equation to muddy the waters, will bankrupt the country. Bollox, I refer you back to the post war Labour government when the Tory press said exactly the same thing. Thankfully no one listened, I think we are coming back to a similar consensus now, people are fed up with being screwed and the screwing is moving up the social scale. People are also getting fed up with the excesses of the privatised companies and the sheer cost and inefficiency of them. Public opinion might not have moved far enough for the forthcoming election, but if the Tories get in with a majority there could well be a revolution, I will be there at the forefront. Recent protest movements have been successful all over the world but unfortunately have had to become violent to do so. I am glad that we will only be facing wimps and not a vicious, authoritarian Chinese government. A Labour government will probably not be able to make the rich and big companies pay for all their proposals, those people have ways of protecting their wealth; but I would be happy to see a few pennies on income tax to tackle homelessness, have a properly funded NHS, reverse privatisation and see an end to the worst excesses of employers. All the renationalised services and industries will soon pay for themselves when the government gets the income from them rather than overpaid managers and shareholders.

Let me be clear I am not a member of the Labour Party or any other, in fact I am starting my own. I don’t support the Labour Party and I won’t even be voting for them in the forthcoming election; in my constituency they are a distant third, so I will reluctantly be voting Lib Dem to hopefully deprive the Tories of a seat but I would be happy to see Labour get in this time. Quite frankly though, I don’t have any confidence in any of the established parties. Politicians nowadays are on a par with the senior management of big companies; full of shit and incompetent, but not as well paid. The quality, ethics and morals of the political class has deteriorated considerably over the last few decades, the Tories have deteriorated the most.

As usual I have gone off-piste, this was supposed to be about sovereignty but I am just leading up to that. What are the threats to our sovereignty? The EU? that isn’t much of a threat and the benefits outweigh the liabilities, it would in any case be reversable if necessary. The fact that most of our infrastructure is now owned by foreign companies? this is a threat but can be solved by a radical re-nationalisation policy. The propaganda and data collection on us all from various right wing organisations representing the rich and big companies, Facebook, Amazon et al? The very worst threat is the possibility of a trade deal with the US negotiated by a Tory government and the implications of that are horrendous and would affect us all. Jumping out of EU frying pans and into US fires come to mind. It has to be said that a Labour government would deal with all these issues.

In the process of writing my book, (My Generation: Revelations and Revolutions: Revelry and Reverie. Available now on Kindle, paperback on the way), I have done a lot of research. I have learned a lot and tried to pass that onto you, things are never what they seem. I am not full of shit and I know what I am talking about, I also have a lot of personal experience of many of the things I refer to here. More details are in my book and earlier blog posts. Among all the reading I have read two books by Yannis Varoufakis, the former Greek Finance Minister, who I have great respect for, one about the origins of the EU and the role played by the US in this shortly after the war. And one about the way they treated Greece and the Greek debt crisis, he was let down by the EU, Angela Merkel, the European Investment Bank, the International Monetary Fund, his own colleagues and many others, who rejected sensible proposals, lied repeatedly and let him down; I know how he feels having experienced the same myself. The EU elite are bullies and arseholes they fight hard to keep the status quo when they should be reforming it, but to be fair they are only fighting their own corner, a lot better than we did incidentally. I voted to remain and on balance I still think that would have been the best outcome, if there was another referendum I would vote remain again. Having said that if we are definitely coming out we should have done so with no deal right from the start, that is the only way to truly deliver the promise of the referendum and striking while the iron was hot, straight after the referendum would have reduced a lot of the fighting between both sides of the argument. We would have saved a shed load of money and time, the chaos would be over by now and the EU would be coming cap in hand to us not vice versa. I said this right from the beginning as you will be able to see from my blog posts but unfortunately, I don’t yet have any influence. My priority in any case is to look after number one, sometimes I wonder why I bother trying help you all.

The Alternative Party Manifesto is coming soon and will be first published on this blog, I recommend it to the House along with my book and whaleoilbeefoct.

POETIC INTERLUDE

This probably owes more to the play what (sic) Ernie Wise wrote than the great tradition of the Romantic Poets, but thanks to Percy Shelley and the poem he wrote after the “Peterloo massacre”, for giving me the idea.

Rise like lions after slumber,

In unvanquishable number.

Shake off your chains, by now unlocked,

thanks to reading whaleoilbeefoct,

If more join us “The Man” will be cocked.

DREAMIN’

“You’ve got to have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you going to make a dream come true”. This coincides with my own philosophy and I have had the same dream, to change things, for many years. But before you can successfully change things, you need to know what you want to change them to. This may sound obvious, but the 99% are so crushed by the status quo that they allow the 1% to take almost everything and enslave them in the process, a process that has been going on for over 2000 years. “They” no longer control you by the sword, they control you by fear; fear of losing your job, your house and not being able to feed your children. They also enslave you with debt; people are indoctrinated, the status quo has been going on for so long they have forgotten that there is any alternative and that with solidarity it would be easily achievable. Individually it is possible to break free, but it takes a long time and can involve much sacrifice, collectively it would so much quicker and easier, but will you ever get people to co-operate with each other even for their mutual benefit? I have my doubts that it will never be possible to get more than a small minority to do so. It’s the same as the “working-class Tory” conundrum; people would rather have a perceived chance of gaining a large surplus for themselves than have a definite sufficiency for everyone. They are of course deluded if they think they have much chance of rising above their exploited fellows. If the people could be united and take their fair share they would all have much more than a mere sufficiency. Marx said, “workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”. Fine words but when it was put into practice as the USSR the workers didn’t lose their chains, they just had a change of bosses. The social ruling class was replaced by the Socialist ruling class who enjoyed similar privileges and wealth; they were even more unscrupulous and incompetent than those they replaced. So, although I would be the first to recommend revolution; we need to be sure we have objectives and a good system in place before we start it. We don’t want an unruly mob running things which is what often happens: for example, Russia, France, Cambodia, Zimbabwe and many others: or even a “ruly” mob as in the Chinese cultural revolution. As soon as there is chaos “leaders” begin to emerge and before you know where you are you have another ruling class who then turn the situation to their own advantage. Democracy is a fine thing, but we need intelligent, competent, ethical people to steer the majority in the right direction.

However, every change starts with a dream and the great thing about a dream is that you don’t need to compromise, even if it initially seems to be unachievable, you need something to aim for. In my dream there are about 1 billion people in the world and they share everything fairly equally, there will still be opportunities for some to be even better off if they wish, but by a factor of tens not thousands. It goes against human nature to share everything entirely fairly and logically, even when there is a considerable surplus. Many would say that to do so would crush aspiration; I say if everyone is already there who needs aspiration, if we have aspirations at all it should be to make the world a better place, not enrich oneself at the expense of others. Contrary to what “The Man” would have us believe, sharing everything out more equally would be a race to the top not to the bottom; the only ones who would lose out are those who have many thousands of times their fair share. Anyway, in my dream the much-reduced human population lives sustainably, in harmony with the environment and each other and they live well. Because there are far fewer of them and no one is taking vastly more than their fair share, there is more for everybody.

So, there we have it, I know what I want; could anybody argue that it would not be much better than the way things are now or the way they are heading? The question is how to bring it about and that is a bit more difficult. We need to ensure that everyone is aware they are entitled to their fair share, aware of their responsibilities and overcome their defeatist attitudes and inertia. However, getting over seven and a half billion people on board is nigh on impossible so initially we need to think in terms of creating an alternative for a substantial minority, I created one for myself, starting about fifty years ago. We can probably rely on nature to supply the solution to the overpopulation problem. We will never be able to solve the problems in the world until the population is reduced by several orders of magnitude; if we had not been so overpopulated there would not have been such drastic problems in the first place. The mass extinction has already started and the runaway train will be impossible to stop. It will be horrendous for those who have not, or are not able to, prepare, but a massive cull of the human population is necessary for the survival of the environment, other species and an eventual sustainable human population. Therefore, my dream is more about survival and some of us being ready to take over with a sustainable alternative when it goes bad for everyone else. In my dream the environment will eventually recover, and Earth will become a paradise for those of us who have survived. Unfortunately, those who were in power before will also have survived perhaps with some of their armies and they will want to take over again. Hopefully, it will be possible to subvert the armies and we should try and do that even prior to the extinction. But we may have to fight at least initially. Fortunately, it will be much harder for “The Man” to control small numbers of widely dispersed, intelligent, self-sufficient people, they need them corralled in cities and dependent to do that. Guerrilla fighters can be incredibly effective and in many conflicts have defeated much superior armed forces.

Despite the fact that it will be futile in terms of saving lives, we should still make an effort to stop destroying the environment. I am thinking an immediate worldwide ban on single use plastics, 100% re-cycling of plastic that is used for other purposes and an attempt to clean up as much as possible of the plastic that is already in the environment. We need to completely phase out the use of fossil fuels, worldwide within a couple of years, it is pointless to talk about reducing carbon emissions by 25% by 2055. We need to reduce them to zero now. There will be a lot of bleating from big companies, oh diddums, we will have to pay more tax, it will soften the blow if the very rich and big companies have to start paying their share, and we will be inconvenienced. Surely, saving the environment is worth it, probably the majority will only agree so long as it doesn’t affect them, fortunately they will be among the first to die. Most people are unable to see or are in denial that they are part of the problem; as with everything else, it’s always someone else’s fault.

We need to take a few steps back, I am not suggesting we become a world of agrarian tree huggers but I don’t want and we shouldn’t need industrial farming. What we need is a lot of small farmers sustainably producing organic food. Organic should go back to being the norm not a brand, and artisan food producers selling food in markets and small shops. The new Rick Stein TV series brings it home that this already happens in rural France, mainstream France is bowing to the same pressures as everywhere else and the two hour lunch has gone already for most. It happens on a smaller scale near where I live, a village with specialist food shops, including microbrewery, cheese shop, an amazing game dealer, a monthly food market and a Michelin starred restaurant, where the owner has his own local farm and produces nearly all the food he serves in the restaurant. Not to mention sticky toffee pudding. Obviously, this is only for the fortunate few, but I would like to see it become the norm, rather than industrial food production for an ever-increasing population, who merely exist. You might think this is “pie in the sky”, pardon the pun, but we are still in the dream here. We will continue to innovate and use science for problems such as clearing up pollution and alternative sustainable energy, instead of more gadgets and pointless mobile phone apps. The alternative minority will continue to use but reduce our dependence on technology; that dependence will be one of the things that reduces the population when the time comes. There will still be a lag and even if we reduce emissions to zero tomorrow, global warming will continue for decades, once most of the population has gone the problem will have solved itself. We also need an economic system that does not rely on continual growth, which is obviously unsustainable.

Most of the super-rich nowadays are vulgar philistines, they don’t own nice things, well they do but most of them are seen as investments and locked away. Money is locked away out of circulation in offshore banks instead of being invested in all our futures, paintings and objets d’art are locked away in vaults instead of being there for all to see, vintage cars are locked away in air-conditioned garages. Historically the rich used to build fantastic houses and public buildings, ran country estates and in some cases carried out great philanthropic works. Nowadays the super-rich are a miserable Scrooge like lot, some of them spend on ostentatious parties etc but it is more about outdoing the other super rich than enjoyment. They even move to another country to avoid a bit of tax; surely when you have millions or even billions it gives you the freedom to live wherever you want. Accumulating great wealth is just greed and what good does it do you? its only a figure on a piece of paper. For most of them being extremely rich is an end in itself. Once you have a really nice house, paid for, in a place you want to live and enough money to secure your present and future what more do you need? Don’t be fooled by present day philanthropists such as the Gates foundation. It’s just money for Big Pharma and a plot to depopulate Africa for Americans, when they have finished destroying their own country. They are in denial about it but might find that global warming puts paid to that; then they will want to come here, the rest of Europe and Scandinavia and Scaatland which will probably have a Mediterranean climate by then. Companies like Monsanto claim to be developing GMO crops for the benefit of Africa, bollox, it’s just a plot to patent crops so they can control the world food supply. See my book, previous blogs and soon to come The Alternative Party.

I also have a nightmare of a future dystopian world even more grossly overcrowded than now, most people are starving, much of the world is too hot to survive, much is underwater. The armed forces are having to slaughter millions of climate refugees who are trying to invade Northern Europe, and we are under martial law. Someone, somewhere is reading my book and thinking, “I wish we had listened to him”.

TV CHEFS

I am very happy to see there is another series by Rick Stein, my favourite TV chef, this time on France. Rick’s programmes are not just about food, wherever he goes there are interesting facts about the area and he is obviously a well-travelled and intelligent guy. He eats in interesting restaurants and is also strong on street food, markets and food shops. I quite fancy an extended trip following in his footsteps and I think this is something I will do in 2020, on my own or with a suitable playmate, who is free to travel. The present series is a road trip starting in Dieppe, so a ferry trip easily gets you started and it is quite a while since I had a road trip to France. Au revoir.  

POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

I am beginning to feel a wee bit more optimistic about the future and the most important aspect of it; people cooperating with each other to confound “The Man”. Protest movements all over the world are winning major concessions from their governments. Much as I hate to admit it young people are making protest more efficient and effective than in my day, we were probably too stoned and they have mobile phones and the internet now, they have some uses. Here the government is having to call a moratorium on fracking and begin to take climate change more seriously. Would this have happened without protests aimed at bringing London to a standstill, of course not. Peaceful protests are just ignored; no government or big company will take action until it can be seen that the protestors mean business, especially if they have majority support. I have found this in my own battles with “The Man”, when my actions, I like to think, helped cause the sale of the company to fall through, it must have cost them millions. If they have missed the boat for the sale and get re-nationalised it will cost the owners, an American bank, tens or even hundreds of millions. Fantastic, it has certainly changed their attitude in their dealings with me from extremely aggressive to conciliatory. If anything happens to me it will probably be because they have sent a Mafia hit man to sort me out.  Regarding the country as a whole it also helps that there is an election coming up. I would like someone to explain to me why, having been told that austerity, for the poor only, was so necessary for the best part of a decade, the government can now find billions to spend on public services etc? If they can do it to win the election they could have done it years ago, especially bearing in mind all the time and money wasted on bloody Brexit. They even tried to silence Nigel Farage by twice offering him a peerage, is this a valid use of the honours system? Nearly all politicians are full of shit, despite his cuddly Boris image, Boris Johnson is the worst we have ever had. We can do better.

We also need to ready to keep up the momentum after the election. It seems quite likely that the Tories will win, and that we will come out of the EU. So, we will need to increase the pressure to make sure that they are not allowed to carry on as usual. You never know it’s just possible that Labour will win and I am in agreement with nearly all of their policies, especially returning all our infrastructure to public ownership, it should be done without compensation, they have taken more than enough out already while running down the so called services. I am deeply concerned about the prospect of a trade deal with the US and the future of the NHS in that event. I don’t see how anyone could even consider letting them loose on that when our system is so much better than theirs. We need to do away with all the previous privatisation of services, not get more. Fortunately, one thing that will quite rightly get people together is any threat to the NHS. All the privatisations NHS, energy, transport, postal services and more have been a massive failure; I have seen this from the inside myself, back in the 1980’s when I worked for the MOD and was privatised myself. I was very fortunate to be in a position to cost the MOD millions, unfortunately I didn’t see any of it but I had the satisfaction of getting my own back, big time. We are now left with “services” that are much more expensive and much less efficient. The grossly inflated salaries of the incompetent pillocks who run them and the dividends paid to the shareholders probably cost us more than the payments made to the EU.

I think the time has come that people have had enough, nobody bothered much when it was just the poor who were affected but it is now working its way up the social scale. Then we have the appalling state of the privatised industries, everything is so much worse than it was 30 years ago and yet technology should have helped to make everything more efficient. I have had time to ponder this when on several occasions I have been sat on Lancaster station at midnight, the last train has been cancelled, the waiting room closed, the toilets closed, the replacement bus service has been cancelled and station staff have been running around Lancaster hailing taxis to take people home. Even the third world is better than this. Think on and power to the people right on.