Alternative Britain
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On Sunday I read an article in which Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London likened Scottish Nationalism (embodied most readily by Independence for Scotland, I assume) to racism.
www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scottish-nationa...
At first, I assumed this was merely inaccurate, biased, incompetent or malevolent reporting from an outdated mainstream media channel… it wouldn’t be the first time. Having read the (rather patchy) article, it is clear that the intention to brand Scots as racists is not clear-cut.
However, Scots seeking independence are likened to those who voted for Brexit, in that they seek to divide people (maybe along lines of race, income and class). Essentially, Khan says we must all move in the right direction, which I assume is to conform to his vision of Blairite Labour Party values in a Globalist World. A vision which he believes can be achieved by voting Labour in Scotland under the leadership of Kezia Dugdale, Sadly, for Mr Khan it appears the vast majority of the Scottish electorate thinks otherwise, which is why they have voted for the SNP overwhelmingly.
Of course that leaves the subject of the EU referendum. By insinuation if you voted for the UK to exit the EU, (52% of the UK electorate), you are tarred with the ‘Racism brush’. Being concerned about the Sovereignty, democracy, prosperity, security and values of the nation state in general and your own country in particular is NOT racist. The self-proclaimed or so-called ‘Progressives’ of this world have used the ‘R word’ so many times, especially when it does not even apply, that it no longer has any meaning or shock value in closing down any debate. We should all be grateful for that.
However, in closing I would like to offer this other frightening possibility. If people start disbelieving repeated meaningless accusations of racism this may harm society in that genuine examples of foul racism are over-looked. So, please, anyone reading this text, do not rush to judgement, consider the evidence presented to you, find more evidence and then come to a reasoned stance. Don’t just assume your side of the argument is the only valid one. Thank you for reading.
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Whatever we may think of David, his personal story of poverty and blindness and overcoming the odds is extraordinary.
Tony Benn's funeral.
That was quick, even by the standards of today’s amoral, ultra-cynical politics, where the ends are seen to justify the means. It took Rachel Reeves just 25 days in office to admit that she will be increasing taxes in her first Budget, over and above all of the horrors already announced.
Sure, she will be sticking to the letter of Labour’s manifesto, but that disgraceful document must now be seen for what it was: a series of flagrant lies by omission, a shameless ploy to dupe voters into believing that the party had moderated. It did not give a true and fair view of the policies Labour will actually end up pursuing in the October Budget and later fiscal events, and many of the most significant non-financial decisions to date – the abhorrent cancellation of the Tory university free speech reforms, the despicable likely ban on arms exports to Israel – weren’t in the manifesto, either.
Income tax, National Insurance and VAT rates won’t be hiked for now, but every other levy is up for grabs, especially all of those that the party kept maintaining “it had no plans” to touch. Dissembling, much? What will happen to capital gains tax, to inheritance tax, to pension tax relief, to council tax, to Isas? What new taxes will be invented? Will we end up with an actual wealth tax?
The Government promised that it wouldn’t put up taxes on “working people”, yet millions who work, often very hard, are about to be clobbered, often for the sin of having built up too many assets to get on to the housing ladder, to look after children and families, or in readiness for old age. Most will feel that they have been played by a brazenly dishonest Government that hides behind legalistic verbiage.
What is most galling is that Reeves continues to take us for fools: instead of admitting that she wants to spend more, she is pretending to have discovered a black hole in the public finances. Yes, the Tories adopted tough assumptions about future spending. But all of this was well-known to the Labour team, as was the cost of the now cancelled Rwanda scheme – there was no mysterious, unaccounted for “gap” large enough to justify a fresh tax grab.
The inescapable conclusion is that Labour remains a party enthralled by class warfare. It seeks to take rather than create, to coerce rather than incentivise, to control and regulate and tax all that moves. It divides the country into two classes: its friends, the “good” people, and its enemies, the “bad” people. Its mission is to hammer the latter pitilessly while helping the former in every way possible, partly out of misplaced ideological conviction and partly to buy votes.
Woe betide if you fall in the “wrong” category, if you work too hard, are too thrifty, too prudent, too successful, too productive or too entrepreneurial: the Labour Party is coming for you, for your income, for your capital gains, for your school fees. “Unearned” income, a Marxist concept that demonises the proceeds of investment, including dividends, interest, rents and capital gains, is deemed inherently suspicious, as opposed to “earned” income from salaries and wages, which is “good” as long as there isn’t too much of it.
But if you are a member of the “working people”, that amorphous category which includes some who work and others who do not, you will be just fine. Take junior doctors: they will be enjoying a 22 per cent pay rise over two years as a down payment before the next strike, paid for by raiding the pockets of supposedly less-deserving folk.
This simplistic neo-Manichaean worldview, derived from a combination of Labour’s pre-Blairite class-struggle heritage fused with self-righteous woke ideology of more recent import, will be a disaster for the country. It is also the best prism through which to understand Reeves’ plans. I happen to agree with one of her decisions – the scrapping of the winter fuel payment for most pensioners – but it fits into this pattern, and of course Labour claimed last month that it had “no plans” to change the benefit’s eligibility.
Asset-rich pensioners who made sure they have plenty of savings fall into the “enemy” class, and will also be ripe for much higher taxes, a vindictive and incentive-destroying move designed to punish those who strive to reduce their reliance on the state. Even the new homes targets – more in the “bad” shires, fewer in “good” London – smacks of the same Manichaean approach.
So far, two of Reeves’ preannounced tax attacks – on private schools, and on non-doms – have materialised in the most brutal form possible, and the attack on private equity will doubtless be equally ruthless. Her repugnant raid on schools will commence at the earliest possible moment, on January 1. Education is tax-free in almost all countries. New Zealand is the notable exception, and only because it charges a flat 15 per cent sales tax on almost all goods and services, including food and university fees; as the Adam Smith Institute notes, the NZ government pays a compensatory subsidy to lower and mid-priced independent schools. Britain stands alone in its vindictiveness.
The state was set to confiscate 37.1 per cent of GDP in tax on Tory plans, its highest level since 1948. Reeves will break records. The damage will be immense. High taxes are bad for growth, a lesson the Tories, to their great discredit, have forgotten and that Labour cannot even countenance.
Attempts at equalising outcomes come at a severe opportunity cost. Higher taxes reduce the payoff from work, investing, setting up a business or accumulating assets, and discourage the behaviours that are conducive to greater national prosperity and individual autonomy. Steeper taxes allow the state to increase in size, which also cuts growth: a bigger welfare state traps more people in dependency, and public services come with abysmal productivity and greater malinvestment.
Yet it isn’t just the wasted GDP that is so galling. The loss of trust will be almost as pernicious. The Government proffered endless non-denial denials about proposed tax increases, and has now admitted that it is about to turn the screws on Middle England. How can it expect the public to believe it on anything else ever again?
The Daily Telegraph, Allister Heath
GLC Birthday Cake, RFH, Festival Hall, South Bank, Lambeth, 1984 84-8i-33
In 1984 the GLC celebrated 95 years of the London County Council and Greater London Council working for London with an exhibition inside a giant birthday cake. Thatcher was then at loggerheads with the GLC and had already begun the process to abolish it which was completed in 1986, leaving London suffering from a lack of central planning and leadership until the re-establishment of a London-wide authority, the GLA, in 2000.
These were a disastrous 14 years for London, something London recognised by electing Ken Livingstone, the former leader of the GLC as London Mayor in 2000 despite his having to defy the Blairite Labour Party and run as an Independent. He began his acceptance speech with "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago..."
Unfortunately Livingstone lost the third Mayoral election in 2008 to a man who proved himself to be a liar and a bumbling fool - and went on to repeat this when elected as our prime minister.
This picture was taken from the upper deck of a 38 bus. That in itself is the result of a community victory, bendy buses no longer operate this route.
We are at the point where Balls Pond Road crosses the Ermine Way and becomes Dalston Lane. The routes are ancient. The Ermine Way was built by the Romans, now it is Kingsland Road (off to the right and down to Shoreditch) becoming Kingsland High Street (off to the left and going towards Stoke Newington). The roads follow ancient lines that long predate modern traffic engineering. The crossroad is off-set and pragmatic . . . I'm tempted to call it eccentric.
The building ahead is a Victorian survivor. The Crown and Castle (East Garden) Noodle Bar once was a pub. I remember Guiness, Sentanta TV, gaelic league football, and Irish building workers.
We approach memory lane and Patrick Wright's metaphor for the loss of of the Welfare State. We could look out from Dalston Lane as it is now and see it as an encapsulation of Blairite Britain, and we could keep a watching brief to see how Dalston Lane copes with Cameron, Osborne, and Clegg's New Austerity Britain (we are all in it together . . . not).
We are on our way to meet some active volunteers from OPENDalston.
GLC Birthday Cake, RFH, Festival Hall, South Bank, Lambeth, 1984 84-8i-34
In 1984 the GLC celebrated 95 years of the London County Council and Greater London Council working for London with an exhibition inside a giant birthday cake. Thatcher was then at loggerheads with the GLC and had already begun the process to abolish it which was completed in 1986, leaving London suffering from a lack of central planning and leadership until the re-establishment of a London-wide authority, the GLA, in 2000.
These were a disastrous 14 years for London, something London recognised by electing Ken Livingstone, the former leader of the GLC as London Mayor in 2000 despite his having to defy the Blairite Labour Party and run as an Independent. He began his acceptance speech with "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted 14 years ago..."
Unfortunately Livingstone lost the third Mayoral election in 2008 to a man who proved himself to be a liar and a bumbling fool - and went on to repeat this when elected as our prime minister.
" injured service people received the 'best artificial limbs available - higher than the standard available in the National Health Service', Mr Reid added " - BBC News
That must be a comfort to them.
Might have been better if Reid and his boss Blair hadn't lied the troops into a war in the first place.
See also Reid dismisses troop union. UK casualties, Iraqi civilian deaths.
Also, an interesting article about John Reid. Blairite, former Communist and friend of Bosnian Serb war-criminal Radovan Karadzic.
Stagecoach Manchester 37037 [YX63ZWE] Dennis Enviro 200 SFD/Alexander B37F turning into Stamford Street with a daytime 370 from Stockport.
The sign on the lamp standard reminds us not to drink on the street: ridicuous Blairite nonsense.
Minolta Dynax 7xi Minolta Zoom-xi 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 AgfaPhoto VistaPlus-400
My ref: C016514-CNV00029a
I'm not a big fan of the Blairite city academy agenda, but I have to admit that this works for me as architecture. Nice departure for Shacklewell - and I am delighted to see the name of this old East London district (which has been fading away, eroded by Dalston and Stoky) revived.
Although I could have taken this in 1999, when I was actually taking a photography course at the University of East Anglia, I'm fairly certain this was actually taken by me independently, and then developed in the darkrooms of the UEA Photo Society. I'm not sure, though. The year on the poster, of course, is referring to the 2001 UK election, as this poster is ridiculing Cherie Blair's obsession with mysticism and superstition. In the end, of course, Britain was doomed by a weak opposition and voter apathy to 4 more years of Blairite incompetence and corruption, which included the Iraq War, and yet another unsuccessful attempt to get rid of him, so one has to consider this poster as being unsuccessful, if indeed The Times dared to take a political position against Blair. It is a bit of an ethical grey area for many journalists, to be sure, when a serious newspaper like The Times does something this blatantly partisan. I've always thought that this photo was very interesting, though, in that it perfectly captured the mood of the times (no pun intended), and even included a reference to the British Rail Crisis, all in a major railway station! :-)
I'm not a big fan of the Blairite city academy agenda, but I have to admit that this works for me as architecture. Nice departure for Shacklewell - and I am delighted to see the name of this old East London district (which has been fading away, eroded by Dalston and Stoky) revived.
Peter Mandelson is adamant: “I’ve always been capable of being diplomatic.” Indeed, the Labour peer widely known as the Prince of Darkness, aka the Dark Lord, reveals that his sinuous skills have won the recognition of none other than President George W Bush. “Do you know what he calls me?” Mandelson asks. “Silvertongue.”
He's back: the Prince of Darkness returns: All political careers may end in failure, but the UK's new ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, isn't done yet. on.ft.com/4hkheUe
Peter Mandelson called Donald Trump a “danger to the world” and “little short of a white nationalist and racist” in 2019.
www.wiltshiretimes.co.uk/news/national/24913325.mandelson...
Spin doctor? Prince of Darkness? Champagne socialist? Communist? Ambassador? Blairite? Silvertongue? Peter Mandelson (born 1953), is a British Labour Party politician. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson
CC licensed portrait of Mandelson by the World Economic Forum via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/CxuB
My licence to practice has expired! There have been a few complications and I have had to make a rare visit to the MOG, Ministry of Gay (Minipoof in newspeak). Formerly known as the Office for Homosexual Affairs it was re-branded in a typical bit of Blairite spin, but continues to administer the same brief.
Here licences are issued to practice homosexuality, usually reissued annually. They have a wide remit including everything from the registration of gay pets to the publication of the bi-annual Camp Indices against which all gayness is measured. With the publication of the most recent index, which shows a net increase in camp over the last 6 months I think I have dropped off the bottom of the scale, so have to fill in some forms at the Ministry to declare my orientation. This sort of thing is more usually dealt with on-line through the MOG’s web site Gaydar, which also doubles as a dating site and revenue stream. I have not registered for the on-line service, I find it a bit sinister that the government has access to my details through my computer, so here I was at the Ministry offices. It is not really I expected.
I was thinking that it would be a little more ‘festive’ in appearance. Inside was no better, grey in various bureaucratic shades with walls glistening in condensation. The departmental staff in the registration office were little different.
Confirmed: Mad Al is Back #Blairite #Iraq #TheHague #DrDavidKelly #bbcnews #skynews #bbcqt #bbctw #Newsnight #bbcdp ow.ly/q7FG0 Alastair Campbell tells Total Politics he will help Labour in the run up to 2015, admitting he advised Miliband on his conference speech and fight...
“We are not communists, we are New Labour,” he told the gathering of corporate Americans. “We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes.”—Peter Mandelson
Quoted Circa 1997, from the Financial Times:
He's back: the Prince of Darkness returns: All political careers may end in failure, but the UK's new ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, isn't done yet. on.ft.com/4hkheUe
Peter Mandelson (born 1953), is a British Labour Party politician. He served as First Secretary of State from 2009 to 2010, and was President of the Board of Trade in 1998 and from 2008 to 2010. As the United Kingdom's member of the European Commission, Mandelson was European Commissioner for Trade from 2004 to 2008. Mandelson served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Hartlepool from 1992 to 2004, before being appointed to the House of Lords as a life peer in 2008. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mandelson
CC licensed portrait of Peter Mandelson by Christian Lambiotte via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/CyWM
Keir Starmer’s new cabinet is the most representative – in terms of education backgrounds – ever recorded. This new cabinet marks a historic moment in British politics, with a record number of state-educated ministers and the lowest proportion of privately educated ministers since 1945.
The majority of the new cabinet attended comprehensive schools, at 92%, with 4% attending grammar schools and 4% attending private schools.
In terms of university attendance, the cabinet are more likely to have attended a narrow range of elite universities than MPs as a whole, as well as the UK population. Of the Ministers in Keir Starmer’s cabinet, 40% went to Oxbridge, compared to 19% of Labour MPs, 29% of Conservative MPs, and 21% of Liberal Democrat MPs.
As an undergraduate, Keir Starmer went to the University of Leeds, a Russell Group institution. He continues the trend of every Prime Minister who has attended an English university since 1937 attending Oxford - where he got his postgraduate degree.
With the new government and cabinet now in place, we’ve analysed the educational backgrounds of MPs in the Commons as well as Ministers serving in the cabinet www.suttontrust.com/our-research/parliamentary-privilege-2024
The stomping ground of the political elite: Why does Oxford produce so many Prime Ministers? www.suttontrust.com/news-opinion/all-news-opinion/the-sto...
It's strange how you can pass something familiar by almost daily, without giving it a second glance or looking at it the way you might if you were in unfamiliar surroundings. Which is how it was for these gravel works that I have walked and cycled past a 'thousand' times - almost certainly literaly true. The gravel works and its slowly diminishing lake has been here for as long as I know, longer than I have.
It's not all bright and brash, modern and Blairite, but rather the works have mellowed into the landscape and the sand-bars that works are filling the lake up with have become a haven for birdlife.
For many of my Blipfoto contacts church seems to be a normal weekly event, but I am not a regular churchgoer. When I lived in England I had periods when I often attended church, but I never found a Swedish church that I felt at home in. However, when I do go it's often to this church, which was originally part of the Swedish State church, but was then sold to the free church who have much more lively and topical services. Jan wrote a fair bit about the service and the church in her blip so I won't repeat it all here.
Jan mentions the pastor, who is also a local politician and seems to dislike us because we aren't in his party, the Social Democrats. (In British terms he's a Blairite and we are Corbynists.) However, to be fair to him he spends a lot of time helping asylum seekers to get permission to stay, and helping "new Swedes" settle in. The congregation reflects this open attitude and is full of younger people from many parts of the world - most recently from Ukraine.
After church I returned to working on the porch roof at home and after another few hours it was done. I'd been using a head torch for the last two hours or so of fixing it so it was a bit dark to photograph it. Maybe it'll be a blip another day. Quite a lot of the work was done standing on a ladder and I notice my legs are really stiff! I think I'll sleep well tonight!
Much as I love their founder Sir Ian McKellen (well, doesn't everyone?), Stonewall's politics have always alienated me. There's something very Blairite about them, and very politically correct.
There's a banner from Bash Back! pictures in various places on like, which reads 'These faggots kill fascists'. More of that, please.
TRP artistic self portrait.
Artisitc ? possibly.
Pretentious - OH YES !
This could easily be a picture of the author on the rear cover of "The Invasion of Choco-Cerealism into the Full English Breakfast at Gourmet Motorway Service Stations along the M6 in post Blairite Britain.