Nick Clegg: The stubborn stain on the U-bend

Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has a new non-job at Facebook, ‘vice-president of global affairs and communications.’

Nick Clegg

Obviously, Clegg’s arrangement with Facebook is a dionanistic(1) partnership.  Facebook is pretending to exercise cooperation with the British establishment in order to lessen government interference in Facebook’s operations in the UK and Clegg pockets a hefty annual fee while raising his raggèd profile.  Neither partner in the arrangement could convince anyone of the veracity of the illusion of Clegg being qualified or able to do the job, whatever the job is.

Prior to the 2010 general election, as Labour’s incessant rightward tendency under Gordon Brown alienated many potential Labour voters, Nick Clegg lied brazenly about his party’s intent by claiming that the Liberal Democrats were to the left of Labour; the blatant lie conned enough people to allow a Tory/LibDem government as he and his party teamed up obsequiously with the Tories immediately after the election.

Tories are Tories and anyone voting Tory knows (and knew in 2010) that they are voting Tory.  But, in 2010, hundreds of thousands of people voted for what they thought was not a Tory party and got a (second) Tory party.  It was a con, fraud and anti-democratic. 

Clegg has still not paid for his gross deceit.  He should never be allowed to move on from that atrocious lie.  Nick Clegg’s single contribution to the history of British politics is one of the most despicably dishonest and consequentially devastating acts of any British politician.

Clegg’s only contribution to Britain’s political history doesn’t interest Facebook.  Zuckerberg and his colleagues saw a typical privately educated intellectually pliable establishment lackey who might help with a spot of PR.  In his public statement about his new appointment Clegg described the connection between social media and the political landscape.

“Facebook is at the heart of some of the most complex and difficult questions we face as a society: the privacy of the individual; the integrity of our democratic process; the tensions between local cultures and the global internet; the balance between free speech and prohibited content; the power and concerns around artificial intelligence.”

The platitudes above are standard PR fare but the gormless twerps in British politics and British media are more likely to listen to and to re-quote the comments because they were uttered by Clegg rather than by a faceless Facebook marketing person.  That is the only reason that he got the job.

Clegg congratulated himself on his ability to misrepresent his intent and his willingness to lie brazenly: “Throughout my public life I have relished grappling with difficult and controversial issues and seeking to communicate them to others. I hope to use some of those skills in my new role.”

The desperate centrist media were quick to celebrate Clegg’s new role.  In Rajan on Clegg BBC’s Amol Rajan gushed like Nicholas Witchell announcing a royal birth.  His only reference to Clegg’s criminal lie was a comment about tuition fees: “He became the embodiment of student anger of tuition fees.”  Rajan was much more concerned that Clegg’s tenure as a conspiratorial Tory gimp had been a “bruising experience” for Clegg.

Rajan quoted Clegg saying “I’m 51, and part of that generation of politicians – Osborne, Cameron, Danny Alexander, the Milibands – where you have to reinvent yourself.”  “Reinvent” means “develop a different set of lies.”

The Guardian gave Clegg a platform for more vacuous self-promotion.  In Clegg in Guardian he mentioned Brexit: “It is unthinkable that statesmen and stateswomen of the past would have placed our country in such a weak position.”  He actually said that.  With a straight face.  “Of the past.”

Clegg claimed that 

“Since the referendum, I have devoted my energies to making the case – often in uncompromising terms unavailable to those still in office – for a rethink of what I believe may turn out to be the greatest act of self-harm committed by a mature democracy.”

He must have been “devoting his energies” quietly.  Amol Rajan made the observation that Clegg “has been a ferocious campaigner against Brexit.”  When and where?  A few jollies to Brussels and well-paid columns in newspapers were not “ferocious campaigning.”

Since the people of Sheffield kicked him out with jeers in 2017 Clegg sat on his Westminster School arse raking in tax-payers’ money via the ex-deputy PM stipend while his agent tried to find him a highly paid illusory consultancy post.  As soon as such a post was attained, Clegg decided to bugger off.

In his post-appointment statements and interviews Clegg and his media fanboys made several references to liberal attitudes and values and tried to compare such values of Clegg and Facebook.  However, in the week that his appointment was announced, Facebook closed hundreds of well-established left-wing accounts and groups, without prior warning.  Clegg’s values are the values instilled in him at one of the top private schools in England and then via the Tory political establishment.  There is nothing ‘liberal’ about Clegg.

(1) dionanistic adj. Applied to two people or two institutions, mutually and closely supportive, conspiratorial and mutually beneficial

 

New Tory leader?

(Update May 24th 2019: Theresa May announced today that she will resign as Prime Minister on June 7th)

Not for the first time, bubble gossipers claim Theresa May is about to lose her job as Tory leader and prime minister. 

Let’s have a look at some of the possible candidates to replace her.

Same tired faces

• Michael Gove – Slimy, untrustworthy, obedient to anyone who pays him enough
• Boris Johnson – Thick, duplicitous, racist, professionally and personally venal
• Philip Hammond – Has hung around pointlessly for ages as if people have forgotten he is there
• David Davis – Too stupid to be aware of what is happening
• Jeremy Hunt – Gimp of vulture privateer health assassins, currently wandering about dimly as Foreign Secretary

Ambitious rising damp

• Gavin Williamson – Eager to please the arms dealer moneymen, mistakes rudeness and petulance for leadership
• Priti Patel – Would take a selfie while stabbing a trusting colleague in the back
• Dominic Raab – Robotic servant of wealth terrorists
• Liz Truss – Would continue to keep pushing a door that said ‘pull’ because pushing was the plan and no logic will persuade her otherwise, pork markets
• Esther McVey – Cruel, vindictive and shameless
• Sajid Javid – Banking industry plant who views the entire population of the world as tools to enrich financial gangsters
• Rory Stewart – The sandwalker, fake ‘moderate,’ Etonian
• Jacob Rees-Mogg – Unwitted, pseudo-pompous, ignorant, rabble-rousing Etonian swindler
• Andrea Leadsom – Weird, unprincipled, has ambition that is diametrically opposed to the quality of her intellectual skill-set

Third division

• Brendan Lewis – Swiss Tony’s evil twin riddled with unearned smugness and joy at the destruction the Tories have caused
• James Cleverly – Oxymoronically the opposite of nominative determinism, relentless liar
• Penny Mordant – Views mass starvation and victims of war as opportunities for financial gangsters to profit 
• Kwasi Kwarteng – Etonian astroturfer
• Johnny Mercer – Fanboy of Social Murder including its effects on military veterans, multi-jobber, whinger
• Chris Grayling – Repeated failure at everything he has ever tried, sued by Peter Principle for defamation of character

Unlikely, but might be keen

• Ken Clarke – Still alive, obdurately contrary
• Ruth Davidson – Entirely hollow, cannot maintain a consistent view for more than a few seconds, very ordinary, banal, dull, nothing
• Shaun Bailey – The reincarnation of Mary Whitehouse
• Iain Duncan-Smith – Gleeful architect of Social Murder policy via Centre For Social Justice, former Tory leader

Candidates assemble

Who has the guts to stand as a candidate to be Tory leader?  Who would be sufficiently popular among Tory MPs?  Who do the no-deal Brexit disaster capitalists favour?

For established ministers or former ministers, the boldness needed to declare as a candidate would exist only if there was clear backing from some MPs.  Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab are the most likely current (or former) ministers to have sufficient pre-election backing.

For other potential candidates, the decision to declare candidacy would be informed by misplaced arrogance and a desire to be momentarily more famous.  Therefore, the most likely contenders are James Cleverley, Johnny Mercer and Esther McVey.

Disaster capitalists would prefer Jacob Rees-Mogg, Michael Gove, Dominic Raab or Priti Patel.

Boris Johnson has no support.

The most likely scenario is that Theresa May will continue as leader of the Tories and as prime minister, dancing rhythmlessly.

Blogs on some of the above candidates
Shaun Bailey
Ruth Davidson
Sajid Javid
Johnny Mercer
Priti Patel
Dominic Raab
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Gavin Williamson

Johnny Mercer MP: Opportunist and conman

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Tory MP Johnny Mercer performed one of his occasional self-publicising stunts last week (October 2018)  with a very friendly undemanding so-called interview with Sebastian Whale for the Politics Home website.  Look at me, I’m Johnny Mercer was less an interview, more a cringeworthy marketing piece on Mercer by Whale wherein the former was presented (entirely falsely) as a rebel or outsider within the Tory party.
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Mercer pretended to be disillusioned with the state of his own party and with the qualities of the current prime minister. “The party will never really change until you have somebody who is leading the party who has won a seat and knows what it’s like to go out every weekend and advocate for what you’ve just voted for that week.  We’ve lost this ability to fight, to scrap for what we believe in.  Ultimately our core business as politicians is winning elections.  We’ve lost focus on that for some very good, very capable but ultimately technocrats and managers. That’s not what Britain’s about.”
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No Tory MP has ever “advocated what they have just voted for that week” because the Tories know they vote in parliament in favour of a small elite of wealthy financial gangsters.  Mercer is aware of that.  When Tories campaign they lie relentlessly to the voters about their intent, about the reasons for how they voted and about the intent of other parties.  They never present any valid, logical explanation of decisions taken in parliament.
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Mercer decided to position himself as separate from the true essence of being a Tory MP, both in his acts and in his politics.  “Politicians like this Prime Minister have had a fundamentally different journey to this place [parliament] and then undertake what I believe to be a fundamentally different job to an MP like me.”  According to Whale, during the 2015 general election campaign “Mercer targeted ‘centre, centre-right’ voters whose political inclinations, like his own, were malleable. He knocked on as many doors as he possibly could, and listened.”
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But, like his fellow con artists Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Dominic Grieve, Mercer has always been very obedient in parliamentary votes.  The excellent They Work For You website showed that “Johnny Mercer has never rebelled against the Tory party in the current parliament.”
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Mercer’s attitude to military veterans
Three years ago, when he was first elected to parliament, Mercer claimed that his reason for wanting to become an MP was to help military veterans.  In Telegraph interview Rosa Prince described Mercer’s first speech in parliament in which he “decried the shameful lack of care for returning veterans, which, he said, was directly responsible for suicide claiming more lives than those lost in combat.”  In her interview with him Mercer claimed “They [politicians] respected Remembrance and talked a reasonable game about the Armed Forces and then there was a complete vacuum of interest in looking after their mental health when they returned.  So I thought how am I going to change veterans’ care, how am I going to change mental health? Right, I’ll try and become an MP. It was a mad idea.”
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However, in the same interview he said “I do genuinely have a problem with a massive welfare state that saps the ambition and drive of a younger generation. That’s the issue for me. I realised I was a Conservative, I believed in aspiration, I believed in giving it a go.”
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Would the two stances quoted above lead to a contradiction?
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The They Work For You website revealed that Mercer has “almost always” voted in favour of vicious cuts to benefits including cuts that affect people with disabilities.
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Mercer’s full voting record on welfare is here: Mercer parliamentary votes on welfare.  The record showed his consistent support for relentless reductions and removal of benefits including support for benefit freezes, the bedroom tax and Universal Credit.
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All the Tory attacks on welfare have been life-changing (and often life-ending) for people with disabilities.  There have been many ex-servicemen and -women who returned from combat with physical disabilities or encountered mental disabilities as a result of combat.  The vicious reductions and removal of benefits for people with disabilities has caused a large rise in the number of homeless veterans and have caused many unnecessary deaths for ex-service personnel.  Via his voting choices, Mercer has helped to cause devastating changes to the lives of people with disabilities including former soldiers.  Like his Tory compatriots, he has voted to end the lives of military veterans by removing vital financial support.
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Whale’s “interview” with Mercer started with an account of an incident in Afghanistan where Mercer commanded the rescue of an injured soldier while under fire from Afghanis.  The purpose of the inclusion of the account of the rescue was to present Mercer as strong-willed and also as someone who cares for others even when his own safety in is doubt.  This depiction of Mercer’s personality contrasted starkly with his behaviour in parliamentary votes where Mercer has fallen into line without protest and has jeopardised the lives of disabled military veterans.
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Tory Bratboy?
Johnny Mercer is blandly typical of the younger members of the Tory parliamentary party.  He has voted obediently with no care for the consequences of his support for Tory policies.  Occasionally, aided by a PR team, he has popped up with a spot of hollow self-promotion to put a marker down for any future opportunities within or without politics.  His extra-curricula activities have included “writing” a book and appearing in “celebrity” reality TV shows.
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In the Telegraph interview Mercer said that “I’ve never been money-focused.”  Earlier this month (October) the Plymouth Herald newspaper revealed that he has a £85k per annum “job” with Crucial Academy Ltd, a cyber security firm.  This “job” is four hours “work” per week.  The company provides training for ex-service personnel.  So, Mercer’s help for military veterans is for him to be paid approximately £425 an hour providing “advice.”
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Mercer cannot just be dismissed as a lucky recipient of underserved parliamentary salary.  He has contributed actively and willingly to destitution, homelessness and deaths caused by welfare reductions and removals that he has supported persistently.  Many ex-service personnel have had their lives destroyed or ended by Mercer’s votes in parliament.
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Related blog: Tory Bratboys

James Harding’s tortoise

Former Murdoch hack James Harding completed his disturbance at the BBC at the end of last year having successfully dumbed down news coverage and ensured the continuity of an establishment bias.

Free to roam untethered, he has followed the herd of experienced media professionals and created an ephemeral news platform, called Tortoise, to be used as a facilitator of more right-of-centre views hogging TV, radio and newspaper space.

It is a simple little con: A think-tank or equivalent is created and peopled with a bland mob of profession right-of-centre talking heads; broadcasters and newspapers are persuaded (easily) to invite the heads to contribute to “debates” as “independent” voices.

New type of media?
Think-tank hopper Tim Montgomerie created Unherd last year as a tool to acquire media space for characters like himself and Henry Jackson Society‘s Douglas Murray with the mission statement 

“we aim to appeal to people who instinctively refuse to follow the herd and also want to investigate ‘unheard’ ideas, individuals and communities.”

Harding’s Tortoise declared

“we are building a different kind of journalism. One that opens up. Gives everyone a seat at the table. Creates a system of organised listening. News that reflects the way we really are and shapes the world we want to live in.”

The statements of intent above could have been written by the same marketing professional.  Both are meaningless hogwash.  A collection of concocted phrases juxtaposed eclectically.

Gimmicks
Tortoise has a few gimmicks.  There is a paywall protecting some of its content and, for a larger fee, members can have the pleasure of dinner with Tortoise founders.  It launched itself via a Kickstarter fundraising page.  Does this mean it will never receive any large donations from the usual sources of think-tank funding?  

“All the money you pledge will fund open journalism directly – literally, it will pay the reporters’ salaries so they can do their investigative work.”

Even if the claim above is taken as sincere, how could Tortoise expect enough fans of journalism to agree to pay for a group of familiar faces to do their jobs?  Does Tortoise think tired old ex-Murdoch hacks have big fanclubs?  Are Harding and his colleagues so deep in the bubble that they are that deluded?  

The answer to the last question above is ‘Yes.’  “There’s already a buzz about the project from other parts of the media.”

Listening?
“We’re committed to organised listening.”  Members of the public, who have paid the membership fee, will be able to join discussions, both online and at live events.  “We’re opening it up to you.”  This plan is mundanely similar, with a much smaller audience, to Victoria Derbyshire reading out viewers’ tweets on her BBC show in the mornings or phone-ins on Nigel Farage’s LBC radio show. 

Tortoise presented the “organised listening” plan as providing opportunities for other voices to be heard.

“The more people that come on board, the wider the range of voices contributing, the better the chance we’ll have to make this amazing.”
“We want to open up journalism to understand the issues and work on the ideas that make for a better 21st century.”

There exist, of course, many, many websites, newsgroups and public events organised by a wide variety of activists where a huge range of issues are discussed and debated, often internationally.  The world of political activism, organisation and sharing of ideas does not need to be led or patronised by characters like James Harding.  

One of Tortoise’s upcoming events is ‘The State of Racism in the UK’ at the end of this month.  What could the ex-editor of The Times contribute to such a debate?  What could fee-paying members of Tortoise contribute?  

The tone of the presentation of the “listening” theme is partly astroturfing, partly patronising and mainly an intent to stifle true debate by deliberately filling the debating chairs with detached ignorant bubble participants.

Drab
The essence of Tortoise is drab.  Other than being yet another tool to grab media time for the same voices, Tortoise has no more usefulness than Matthew D’Ancona’s dreadful Drugstore Culture magazine.

Progressive Centre UK think-tank

Centrism has always been the same product as standard conservatism with a different brand name. 

Sometimes – Blair in Britain and Trudeau in Canada – centrist governments have thrown a few pacifying crumbs down to keep the liberals happy and to pretend to differentiate themselves from the worst puppets of financial gangsterism. 

Sometimes centrism is blatant exploitative conservatism presently fraudulently during election campaigns as something else – Macron’s arch Thatcherite ideology in France.

Intrinsically, centrism is a con.  To perpetuate a con, its enablers need to be either people of quick wit and high intelligence who can focus expertly and relentlessly on a well-designed complicated ruse or else they need to be thick-as-mince platitude spouters who lack the intellectual capability to be distracted by reality or truth.

Chuka Umunna

Labour MP Chuka Umunna has appointed himself as chair of Progressive Centre UK with an annual salary of £65040.  Umunna is an archetypal centrist politician.  His career is dependent on him being ever so slightly shifted from visible conservatism while not offering anything of substance to the public.  It would be unfair to label him as just a careerist because his role has its use as a waster of time and a distraction.  

Progressive Centre UK’s Mission Statement is an art piece of meaningless drive.

“We bring together progressive policy-makers and policy-implementers to promote innovative responses to the most important trends shaping our society.  As a non-partisan, next generation ideas lab Progressive Centre UK develops and shares forward-looking thinking to address the challenges of the digital age, drawing on the latest innovations and best practice from around the globe.  Progressive Centre UK believes we can only build a better tomorrow with modern solutions tailored to our times.  At the heart of our mission is the pursuit of inclusive prosperity, opportunity for all, social justice, the defence of the rule of law, a green and sustainable society and fair migration policies.”

At whom could such a statement be aimed?  It means nothing to potential voters apart from a very small group of conservatives who try to convince themselves that they aren’t conservatives.  But Anna Soubry has only one vote in an election.

The intended recipients of the Mission Statement are compliant media hacks and members of other think-tanks who will willingly regurgitate the tripe to use up TV and radio airtime and newspaper column feet.

In Umunna’s philosophy woolly centrists were called “progressives,” the centre was depicted as an alternative to “far-right and far-left” and criticism of the useless centre was dismissed as “fashionable.”

A précis of Umunna’s explanation of his philosophy is “we are a bit of this and a bit of that” where the “that” is exploitative capitalism and the “this” is a counter balance to the “that.”  He is aware that such a stance is contrary to logic and unworkable and that the claim is at the heart of the centrist con.  “That” always wins.

“At the core of our beliefs is the value of work,” proclaimed Umunna.  Karl Marx discussed “labour value.”  It is certain Umunna and Marx had entirely different perspectives and understanding of what “labour value” meant.  Umunna perceives the world as employers and employees, a scenario he thinks is unchangeable.

As part of the marketing strategy of his non-politics, Umunna positioned himself and his like-minded colleagues as “leading the progressive charge internationally.”  He mentioned changes in government in Spain, Canada and New Zealand, where hard-right conservatives were replaced, and he discussed the policies and intent of the new governments.  Interestingly, the respective governments’ policies Umunna applauded are similar to some of the stated aims of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell but Umunna is vehemently opposed to those two.  Did that mean Umunna was deceptive in his appreciation of what he called other “progressives” in other countries or, more likely, does he support “progressives” who only address symptoms but not causes of exploitation?  His note that New Zealand’s prime minister said any changes would be “fiscally responsible” suggested the latter option is the correct answer to the question above.

Umunna was careful to not explicitly include himself in the “many [who] cite the election of Macron and the formation of En Marche in 2017 as further evidence of the progressive renaissance” as even he has recognised the ardent Thatcherite behaviour of Macron.

There was a defensive undertone to Umunna’s article.  He tried to prove he wasn’t useless by associating himself with others who actually exist actively in politics.  He concocted the phrase “popular progressive platform” because he thought “populism” is currently popular.  An air of desperation permeated his comments. 

The article was republished in the Independent from whom Umunna receives £12000 per year for his columns.  That is, he has been paid twice for the same article.

Progressive Centre UK is part of an international network called Global Progress that includes think-tanks

• Terra Nova (France)
• Canada 2020 (Canada)
• Volta (Italy)

Volta includes David Miliband as a board member and described itself as a challenge to “populism.”  The others have their own versions of David Miliband several times.  All are obsessed with cosmetic changes that are designed to con voters and deter them from considering genuine alternatives.

Progressive Centre UK’s other director is Matthew Laza, formerly of Policy Network and a former communications adviser to Ed Miliband.  He wrote this nonsense in 2016: Laza on Corbyn.

James Endersby is on the Progressive Centre UK Advisory Board.  He is CEO of Opinium.  Coincidentally, there is an uncredited blog called Opinium polling.  The blog stated that “specially commissioned research shows real appetite for a new [political] party.”  Coincidentally, the blog appeared a few days after the announcement of Independent Group.  Coincidentally, Progressive Centre UK director Chuka Umunna is a member of Independent Group.

Umunna’s time as an MP is nearing its end.  He has no future in politics.  His future lies as a professional voice for an empty anti-ideology.

The dimensionless singularity known as the centre has no location; it is outside the political universe. 

Universal Credit: Social Murder by design

Universal Credit has been designed to cause destitution, homelessness, illness and death.  
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Massive cuts to necessary benefit payments, endless delays to payments and automated spurious suspensions and denial of payments are inserted features of Universal Credit.
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Universal Credit was never conceived as an attempt to simplify benefit payments.  That claim was always just a lie.
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It was never intended to save tax payers money.  Any reductions in total payments to all claimants have been offset by money handed to privateer vultures who administer Universal Credit and also by the millions spent by the government on legal cases fighting challenges to the implementation of it.
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Universal credit is merely the name attached to a policy of destroying the vital welfare safety net so that people who are in low-paid work become absolutely terrified of losing their jobs.
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A terrified employee is more easily exploited by an unscrupulous employer.  Thus, poor pay (often sub-minimum wage), appalling (often dangerous) working conditions, no job security, fake self-employed status and no access to unions have to be endured by millions of people because the alternative is no income and its consequential disastrous and possibly fatal effects on their lives. 
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The purpose of Universal Credit is to display its vicious effects to those who are working to keep them in line.  Every story of starvation, of exacerbated illnesses, of terminally ill people forced to work, of disabled people forced to look for work that they cannot do, of eviction, of homelessness, of destitution and of death is a story that sends the intended message to people who are working or looking for work: Accept any exploitation in the workplace and any denial of your human rights or else you could be next! 
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Universal Credit is a deliberate Social Murder policy.
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Iain Duncan-Smith

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Recommended reading
The Poor Side Of Life
DWP-related deaths
Universal Credit Sufferer
Ipswich Unemployed Action
Frank Zola blog
Universal Credit Diary
Fighting Universal Credit
Disability News Service
Blue Annoyed
Govt Newspeak blog
Kate Belgrave blog
LeftGreen blog
Politics And Insights
Calum’s List
List of newspaper articles on Universal Credit

The Philosophy of Shaun Bailey

Tory candidate for Mayor Of London Shaun Bailey wrote a paper called No Man’s Land in 2005 for right-wing think-tank Centre for Policy Studies (CPS).  
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CPS exists to promote hard-right destructive economic policies that urge the end of public ownership of vital public services and the handover of these services to privateers to provide a steady torrent of unearned income for the latter while the services decline rapidly and their costs rise for both users and for tax payers.  CPS is vehemently opposed to the NHS and is fully supportive of tax avoidance for corporations and for the wealthiest.  
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CPS board includes Fraser Nelson, Niall Ferguson and a member of the notorious tax-dodging Rothermere family. 
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CPS is very secretive about the identity of its wealthy corporate donors.  Its (lack of) transparency on donations was described as “very opaque” in a Transparify report (page 6) in 2017.
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All essays published by CPS must support policies and/or views that assist its ideology and methodology.  One tactic used by CPS is to publish articles or host speeches that are designed to deflect blame for problems away from the culprits (whom CPS works for) and onto invented targets as a distraction and as a means of division.  Shaun Bailey’s essay is an archetypal example of this tactic.
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Shaun Bailey at 2018 Tory conference

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In ‘No Man’s Land’ Bailey trotted out familiar offensive Conservative misdirectional clichés with familiar targets and familiar attempts at division.
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He summed up the philosophy in his essay with “the more Liberal we’ve been, the more our communities have suffered.  This liberalism is destroying our young people.”  So, not a lack of good schools, not a lack of jobs, not a lack of good housing, not institutionalised racism from police, border agency, employers and landlords?
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Sounding like a Norman Tebbit clone, Bailey claimed “there is a real culture of dependency [on the state] amongst the people on these estates.”  This comment was written in a paper produced by CPS, strident enablers and defenders of multi-million pound tax-dodging, whose aim is to enhance the welfare state for the wealthiest.
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He disapproved of people expecting to have the basic human right of somewhere to live: “The real reason it is so bad is because people expect to be housed and expect never to be kicked out.”  
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Parenting to blame?
In typical Tory fashion Bailey was keen to deposit the blame for any problems that young adults encountered onto their parents.  But, this directing of blame by Bailey was aimed only at low-income parents.  “Compare what the well-off expect from their children with what the poor think they can achieve: it is so vastly different that it is unbelievable.”
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Clearly, a reasonably wealthy person would assume that their child would have a better start in life and would have a bigger safety net than a non-wealthy person would assume of their child; that is logical economically.  It was intrinsically insulting and extremely class prejudiced for Bailey to claim to assume that “poor” people lack enthusiasm, optimism or drive regarding their children’s futures.  His comment was straight out of the nineteenth century.
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Bailey pretended to be a psychologist: “It [parental discipline] should start from birth. It goes wrong when they have no routine when their child is a baby; then it goes into the young years; and then into the teen years.”  Does Bailey look around his Tory party at the venal products of privileged backgrounds and wonder if any of them had the right type of parenting when they were young?  Was bad parenting the cause of the relentless lies from Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt, Brandon Lewis, Michael Gove, David Davis, Liam Fox, Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock, Priti Patel and James Cleverley; was it the cause of the racism of Etonians Boris Johnson, Zac Goldsmith and Jacob Rees-Mogg; was it the cause of the carefree Social Murder of Iain Duncan-Smith and Esther McVey?
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Single parents have always been a target for Tory attacks.  “None of this [discipline among young people] is helped by the lack of married families” declared Bailey before spouting the oft-repeated Tory drivel about single parents being financially better off if unemployed or being more able to find somewhere to live.
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“People with our lives, in our circles, understand that you are better off if you are a single parent.  It has reached the point where you get a lot of people who are not single parents but who present themselves in that manner because it makes financial sense.  If anybody thinks that people like us don’t sit around and have these discussions they are deluding themselves. We soon figure out which way it will make us the most money. And that’s an example of how we are trapped by government policy.  Because it discourages us from raising our children in nuclear families.”
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A few years later at a CPS event at the 2008 Tory conference Bailey said “gals getting knocked up to get housing?  It’s a cottage industry where I come from.”  Such a statement from Bailey was exactly what the enemies of public services at the CPS wanted to hear and he obliged obediently .
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Never go full Mary Whitehouse
Back in his ‘No Man’s Land’ essay Bailey’s search for other things to blame took him to a list of targets of which the late Mary Whitehouse would have heartily approved;
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Hip-hop music: “All they talk about is ‘you’re not the man’ unless you’ve got a gun, a hundred million pounds or are willing to put someone on their back.  It’s all about you and you’ll only get as far as what you do.  Ragga music is the same.”
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Video games and films: “Young people have sex and violence pushed down their necks. It is no surprise that they copy it.  It is commercial exploitation.  Our children are consuming far more sex and violence than ever before.  If you look at the violence in films, the violence in computer games and the violence in music it all adds up.” 
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Sexual content in magazines and television: “If you look at all the magazines they read they are full of sex, television is full of sex, computer games are full of sex.  One of the main things that drives teenage pregnancy is horny young men, young boys.  What we have is a creeping liberalisation of the law with regard to the sexual content of TV and magazines.  Children have far too much access to porn.”
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Full Mary Whitehouse: “Words fail me for how evil and wicked MTV is.”
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Mary Whitehouse

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Liberal schooling
Bailey’s attacks on teaching in Britain in 2005 were written in the middle of three Labour governments.  He was appalled, apparently, by too much liberalism in the classroom.
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“School was where young people could have learnt some moral fibre. This is where we are going wrong. Governments have got rid of schools that gave strong moral messages.” <
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For any Tory to preach morality is gross hypocrisy; for a ‘fellow’ of CPS to do so is even more offensive given the anti-society pro-financial gangsterism ideology of CPS.
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“Children in Jamaica and also Malaysian children love school.  They see it as their way out, they see it as a good thing.  The difference is that schools in those countries have what can only be described as hard moral guidelines.  Another is the respect that teachers carry in the community is huge and underlined by the position that the government accords them.”
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In the quote above Bailey attacked all British pupils and teachers, and the government.  What would he write now after several years of Tory governments have drastically reduced the quality of state education?  
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Ethics
The paragraph below is quoted word-for-word as a complete paragraph from Bailey’s essay with no omissions.
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“Removing religion and what it is to be British from school has been a disaster. Ethics should be taught in school.  Where else are young people going to learn ethics? Citizenship is not enough.  It’s trying not to be offensive to anybody.  Tough.  If they don’t like it, tough.  Tough, because that’s how we’ve had bombers here.  They’ve come here and have not been exposed to some of the good things about being British.”
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So many alarm bells ringing. 
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Bailey objects to religion being removed from state education – it hadn’t been – but does he mean all religions or just Christianity?
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How does not being offensive lead to people bombing?
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“They‘ve come here..”  They?  Who are they?
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Bailey answered these questions.
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“By removing the religion that British people generally take to [Christianity], by removing the ethics that generally go with it, we’ve allowed people to come to Britain and bring their culture, their country and any problems they might have, with them.”
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Tommy Robinson would approve of those comments.
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“They [recent immigrants to Britain] are alienated because they haven’t been exposed to the good things in Britain – our ethics.  That’s why we’ve now got a nation of people who wouldn’t do anything for the country.  They wouldn’t fight for their country. Why would they?  The nation has done nothing for them as far as they are concerned.  They are not aware of the fact that they have been clothed, educated, housed.”
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So, according to Bailey, basic human rights to clothing, education and housing means that the recipients should risk their lives in war.
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He mentioned “ethics” in his essay often but he meant “Christian ethics.”  He tried to argue that such “ethics” should be imposed on newcomers to Britain by claiming British law is “Christian-based.”  Just like extremist evangelicals in the USA, Bailey tried to confuse religious fundamentalism with the law as an excuse to be prejudiced against other religions.
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“I can see the argument of taking religion out of the state, out of politics, but as a moral guideline – arguably our laws are Christian-based – well, they need to be maintained. Losing them has meant that people have come here and had very little respect for us. That lack of integration and that lack of saying to people: if you are going to come to England, this is what we expect.”
“You bring your children to school and they learn far more about Diwali than Christmas.  I speak to the people who are from Brent and they’ve been having Muslim and Hindi days off.  What it does is rob Britain of its community.  Without our community we slip into a crime riddled cess pool.”
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Bailey mixed up Christianity, ethics, law and community in random combinations in his essay to try to distract the reader but his bigotry shone through with the last comment above.
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Abstinence
Bailey admitted that he had been invited to speak at girls’ schools where he talked about abstinence (from sex).  No-one from CPS, or any other secretly funded right-wing think-tank, should ever be invited to speak to school pupils.  
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Who is Shaun Bailey?
‘No Man’s Land’ was written thirteen years ago and discussed Bailey’s work that had happened earlier than that.  It is possible he has matured intellectually and morally since then; it is also possible that he hasn’t.  Some of the comments in the essay were straight from the Thatcher/Tebbit guidebook, some were closer to EDL/UKIP, some could have been spoken by Mary Whitehouse and some would have been applauded by Mike Pence and Sarah Palin. 
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Bailey’s essay was pessimistic and negative throughout.  Bizarrely, he was very self-congratulatory, particularly when comparing himself to the people he worked with and wrote about.
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Bailey produced exactly what CPS wanted from him: Misdirection, blame switching, othering and deliberate omissions.  

The Observer and Theresa May

Today (7th October 2018), The Guardian’s sister newspaper The Observer gave a platform to hard-right charlatan Theresa May.  

Observer editor Paul Webster

The purpose of providing the platform was to assist the Tory prime minister to promote her party’s con trick of pretending to not be focussed on extreme exploitative hard-right economic ideology.  

Theresa May’s article restated and expanded on lies, con-tricks and blatant fraud from her conference speech.  The Observer was fully aware of the intent of May’s misrepresentation in her speech and very keen to present the Tories as not being corrupt gimps of wealth terrorists intent on destroying society.  This does not necessarily mean that the newspaper agreed with actual Tory policy but it re-revealed how committed it is to objecting to a left-of-centre government.  

For the centre and for liberals, fear of socialism trumps fear of any other political ideology.

Observing The Observer

Rightly, left-of-centre activists and journalists criticised The Observer’s decision to be the prime minister’s enabler.  The reaction from the centrist bubble to this criticism was petulant.  A few examples below; all are actual word-for-word quotes.

David Aaronovitch: “She’s the prime minister, you utter buffoon.”

Nick Cohen: “She’s the prime minister you wombat-thick pillock.”

Gaby Hinsliff: “I see a lot of people who think all moderates are Tories, are outraged that a Tory leader would pitch for moderates’ votes in the Observer.”

Jane Merrick: “I’m pretty sure Observer readers are open-minded enough to cope with a newspaper that prints articles from all parties.  It’s not like it’s the Canary.”

The only reason the newspaper prostrated itself was desperation in its fight against socialism.  The centrist politicians – Lib Dems, Progress, etc. – are so utterly pointless and absurd that pretending the Tories are something they aren’t is all that the anti-socialists have to grasp onto.

Related blog: CPC 2018: Empty May speech with fraudulent soundbites for compliant media

CPC 2018: Austerity is over, or not? What is austerity?

At their Autumn (2018) conference the Tories couldn’t decide whether austerity would end soon or not.  Theresa May claimed in her fraudulent speech that it will end after Brexit but chancellor Philip Hammond announced another dump of vicious cuts. 
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Persistent relentless lies from May are the norm but what would it mean if austerity were to end?
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Numberwang!

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End of austerity?
What will not happen if, somehow, austerity ended?
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All the police stations, fire stations, hospital buildings, libraries and other former public buildings, that had been handed over to offshore property developers and donors of the Tory party, will not miraculously return to public ownership and miraculously redevelop themselves back to their original purposes.
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All the huge cuts in staff numbers in the health service, fire service, police service and education will not magically be reversed.
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All the people made homeless due to savage cuts to welfare, particularly for people with disabilities, will not suddenly find homes.
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All the young people from less well off backgrounds saddled with massive student loans will not see their debts wiped.
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The people whose lives and livelihoods were ruined due to the racist Windrush policy will not be able to return to their former lives.
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All the people who died due to reckless cuts to the NHS will not come back to life.
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All the people who died due to welfare cuts will not come back to life.
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All the residents who perished in the Grenfell Tower fire will not come back to life.
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None of the billions of pounds of avoided tax will be paid.
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The removal of legal aid will not be reversed.
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Zero hours contracts will not be outlawed and will continue to replace real employment.
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Huge cuts to central government funding for councils will not be reversed.
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There will be no new affordable and/or council homes.
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Gas, electricity and water will continue to be a cash cow for tax haven gangsters with poor service and rip-off prices.
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Public transport will continue to be a cash cow for tax haven gangsters with poor service and rip-off prices.
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Universal Credit will still exist causing further destitution, evictions and death.
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The Tory policy of Social Murder will continue.
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The only consequence of austerity ending, even if it were to happen in the sense the liar May means, is that the current misery will persist.  Nothing will improve.  Nothing will return to any previous state.  Residual effects will exacerbate the pain.
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But, May is a liar.  The Tory policy described as austerity is not about to end.
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Brexit austerity
The Tories are keen on a no-deal Brexit.  They have spent two years avoiding making any progress in discussions with the EU by deliberately making spurious suggestions for a post-Brexit relationship with the EU that they know the EU cannot agree to.
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A cliff-fall no-deal Brexit suits the Tories because it suits criminally minded disaster capitalists who make money out of acquiring public service infrastructure for free if a country faces a negative jolt to its fiscal economy.  The disaster capitalists’ PR and marketing teams – right-wing think-tanks Institute Of Economic Affairs, Tax Payers Alliance, Centre For Policy Studies, Adam Smith Institute, Initiative For Free Trade – employ senior cabinet members including Brexit Secretary and Minister For Health Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock.
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Regardless of the veracity of May’s comment about austerity ending, or not, its effects will be enhanced after Brexit.  Hastened destruction of all public services and giveaways of public service infrastructure will be immediate consequences of no-deal Brexit.  The NHS will be destroyed.  Unemployment will increase rapidly.  The ensuing effects will be an intensification of austerity.  All the current sociopathic savagery will be reinvigorated.
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These effects of a no-deal Brexit will be deliberate .
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Tory austerity isn’t austerity; it’s ideology
The Tories’ definition of austerity, a definition supported by most of the media and by many opposition politicians, means a reduction in the percentage of fiscal revenue (raised by taxation, borrowing, etc.) that is spent on services.  The Tories have claimed, backed by the same hapless cheerleaders, that such a reduction means fiscal debt can be reduced.
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There are several problems in the Tories’ definition of austerity and of its stated intent.

• The fiscal debt under the last eight years of Tory government has increased more so than in any time in Britain’s history
• Money not spent on public services has not been saved but handed over to privateer fraudsters via Tory privatisation
• The Tories have spent hundreds of millions of tax payers’ money on legal cases fighting against people who have tried to resist savage cuts to vital public services
• Tax avoiders and tax evaders have been encouraged and assisted by the Tories to steal billions of pounds from the British people

Tory austerity has never been about saving money.  Tory austerity is an ideology.  It is the ideology of using tax payers, public service users and most of the people in Britain as sources of income for a handful of wealth terrorists.  It is a tool to enrich an elite few at the expense of everyone else.  It is a criminal racket.

CPC 2018: Empty May speech with fraudulent soundbites for compliant media

“Guilty feet have got no rhythm.” – George Michael

Every dishonest word spat out by Tory prime minister Theresa May in her conference speech today was predicted easily. 

She knew she could talk utter drivel, she knew she could lie shamelessly and relentlessly, she knew she could make false promises that the Tories have no intention of fulfilling (on education, housing, Brexit consequences, etc.), she knew she could make any absurd claim whatsoever about post-Brexit Britain, she knew she could make libellous accusations about Labour on antisemitism while ignoring the institutionalised racism of the Tories (including May’s racist attacks on the Windrush generation when Home Secretary), she knew she could make fraudulent claims about Tories funding public services that are just sleight of hand con tricks and she knew she could happily make thinly disguised bigotted pleas to grab far-right support.  She knew she could do all that because she knew that the media would lap it up and twist it into positive soundbites for the Tories.

“Money, money, money; it’s a rich man’s world.” – ABBA

May’s speech was, predictably, one of the most hollow speeches ever delivered by a British prime minister and one of the most dishonest and fraudulent ever.  But there was no need for May to fear being exposed because of the lickspittle behaviour of the media and of political commentators.  Right-wing media’s support for the Tories is the norm but support from the centre and from TV broadcasters is guaranteed as well.

BBC‘s Laura Kuenssberg was impressed with May’s performance.

ITV‘s Robert Peston was similarly wilfully self-fooled

In a BBC article Kuenssberg was gushing in her praise of May’s vacancy.

“Well today she found it [her voice], and in the words of one of her cabinet colleagues, not a particularly close ally, ‘she found her mojo.’  From the moment she danced on to the stage – who would have thought we’d ever see that – she looked comfortable in her own skin, actually happy to be there.”

Kuenssberg joyfully lapped up the lies and deceit that May presented.

“There was a consistent message – this was May the moderate of summer 2016.  A direct appeal to Labour voters, and indeed Labour MPs, who may be uncomfortable with the direction of Jeremy Corbyn’s travel. Overtly centre-ground stuff, a pitch for an era after Brexit when, perhaps, perhaps, the tensions and bitterness of the last couple of years could fade.”

The conclusion to Kuenssberg’s drivel might have been written by Theresa May’s script writer or Philip May’s accountant.

“Theresa May looks today like a prime minister who knows what she wants and might, just might, have an idea how to get there.”

Tories in the centre?
There is no shifting to an imaginary “centre” from the Tory government.  The reality is that May needs the Tories to continue to be hard-right enablers of a no-deal Brexit with the constant concomitant necessity of finding others to blame. 

Equally, the savage Social Murder policies of the last eight years, falsely referred to as austerity, will continue and will increase in ferocity. 

For the Tories, taxes are free money to be handed to their wealth terrorist friends via abuse of public services otherwise known as Tory privatisation.  The vulnerable, the elderly, the disabled and the ill – people who need good public services and support –  are used by the Tories as pawns for further transfer of public money into offshore accounts of a tiny financial elite.  Destitution, homelessness and death have become normal consequences of eight years of Tory destruction of public services and society.

At the Tory conference further huge cuts to the NHS funding were announced, further cuts to education funding were announced and there were no plans to address the desperate shortage of affordable homes.  A succession of ministers lied blatantly about funding and cuts led by stain on humanity Esther McVey.  Barely-disguised racism spluttered from the mouths of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Michael Gove performed a bizarre prepared pantomime that accused Labour of racism while he conveniently forgot about Windrush and forgot the Tory MEPs’ love-in with anti-Semite Viktor Orban.

Meanwhile, Brexit Minister Dominic Raab spent the conference week in a dionanistic experience with various extreme right-wing think-tanks who are funded by the most despicable disaster capitalists.  These vermin are salivating at the prospect of a cliff-fall no-deal Brexit providing them with cheap fire-sale purchases of public service infrastructure as the country collapses.

The Tories are as far-right economically as any previous British government.  To claim they are near the centre is offensively fraudulent.

Theresa May’s lies and deception are screamingly obvious but the media – right-wing and centrist – are always desperate to cling onto anything to help her and the Tories survive.