Stroking the dog

As someone who is not a pet lover, I find it mildly amusing when someone spends a lot of time stroking a dog, only to find it jumps up and bites them in the bum. A similar principle applies to this blog posting by Iain Dale. The Tories love 'free market' principles. They are the hallmark of Thatcherites everywhere. The strong survive, the weak get squeezed and go to the wall. So businesses grow at the expense of other businesses who are unable to compete with the sheer economic power of their rivals. The powerful exploit their position in the so-called 'free' market to the disadvantange of their weaker rivals. It's a jungle out there, Jim, but it's life as we know it. As Iain Dale notes, small specialist shops, like record shops and book shops cannot compete with supermarkets and the huge Internet based companies, so you are left with whatever they want you to read or hear. Surprisingly, Iain, it's no different for bakers, or butchers shops, or small delis... or even cinemas. These businesses cannot compete with the huge corporate buying power of Tescos, Sainsburys, Asda or MGM. But hey, perhaps there is hope yet. If we wait long enough for these giant conglomerates to keep swallowing up their rivals... all we will have to do is nationalise the one company and then we can start planning a proper society based on equity, justice and diversity.

Come on England

I would love it if the England football team win the World Cup. Not necessarily because they are the best team in the tournament, but just to shut up those who seem to spend their waking hours looking for a reason to attack the manager. Eriksson isn't in the same position as Mourinho, Wenger, Ferguson etc. He can't fill the team with overseas imports, or lash out £30 million on a new player to fill a gap. He is blessed with the players we've got, and in the few weeks a year he has them he has to try to blend them into a team. When he took over from Keegan six years ago we didn't even look like we were going to qualify for the World Cup Finals. Now, we are not only going, we have a realistic chance of getting to at least the semi-final stages, and if Rooney had been fit, we may even have gone all the way. I suspect most of the hostility to Sven is from the Londoncentric media because he doesn't pick all of their favourite Spurs players at the same time, or because he wasn't cheerful chirpy cockney Terry Veneables (one of THE most overrated managers in football history)... oh yes, and the usual diet of xenophobia that has persisted since his appointment, which prompted the useless Jeff Powell to write this crap at the time: "So, the mother country of football, birthplace of the greatest game, has finally gone from the cradle to the shame. We've sold our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their lives in darkness." If there was just one reason to win the tournament, it would be sufficient just to shove those words up Powell's rectum!

PS - Whilst we are talking football... I note that Karren Brady, Managing Director of the porno merchants football club, has criticised Birmingham City Councillors. Brady says that they are "leading the City into mediocrity". Whilst I wouldn't argue with the gorgeous pouting Karren's assessment of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition's dreadful record over the last two years, the words "glass", "houses" and "stones" come to mind.

The collected thoughts of Steve Freedom (sic) ... or should that be sick!

In a typically thorough way, Ministry of Truth has exposed Sandwell BNP Councillor Simon Smith (a.k.a. Steve Freedom) for what he really is. With views such as:

"The reason why Blacks disproportionately don’t vote is that the frontal part of the brain associated with postponing immediate gratification is not so well developed as in other races.
I mean having to go all the way down the street and marking cross on a piece of paper doesn’t bring sex, drugs or the latest pair of trainers."

It is a long, long post, but well worth the read. I suspect the Sandwell electorate were not exposed to this crap before they voted for him. It should also be required reading for those 'liberals' who thought it didn't matter if a few BNP racists were elected.... as long as you didn't vote Labour, eh?

Max loves Dave

Max Hastings writing in The Guardian, dribbles and drools unashamedly over the boy Cameron. The response below in the comments section says everything necessary:

"What a load of embarrassing sycophantic drivel. Were you paid to write this? Where's the insight and analysis? It reads like a slavering lobotomised Daily Mail editorial. Cameron is an ad man in a suit who sits down with a coterie of spindoctors to decide what records he'll play on Desert Island discs will hit the headlines. Everything about him has been transparently phoney - from the patronising "cycling to work" and Norweigian glacier photoshoots to his ridiculous attempts to set the news agenda with policy-lite speeches about "wellbeing". Is this the same "Dave" who helmed the last disgraceful xenophobic Tory election campaign that reeked of divisiveness and negativity? Note that whilst Cameron smiles to the camera, the same creepy Thatcherite Tories sit smugly in the wings - Hague, Redwood, Howard. Cameron thinks he's clever, but despite his manipulation of the media he's no intellect and has been clumsily inconsistent. Easy to feel good about life encouraging the plebs to forget money and be happy with their lot when you have millions stashed in the bank, for example. Then gatecrash a tacky Posh 'n' Becks' party."

Sandwell BNP member Simon Smith claims I got it wrong when I quoted his confused mate saying the British Nazi Party were a German Party. Incredible really, because I was in the meeting, and Smith wasn't even in the room! More BNP lies masquerading as the truth.

One of the best...

As trade union General Secretary's go, Paul Mackney is right up there with the best. I sat briefly with Paul on negotiations about preventing redundancies at the Walsall College of Continuing Education. He was brilliant and I learnt so much about negotiating in those few hours a week. Paul will not be a candidate for General Secretary of the new University and College Union next year. His health has been bad over the last year, and he knows as well as anyone that the graveyards are full of comrades who thought they were irreplaceable, although when I saw him at the Chavez meeting a couple of weeks ago he was looking good. Well, Paul has just made his final speech as General Secretary of NATFHE after nine years at the helm. It reads like a good one.

Nazi blogger

Well, another Sandwell MBC Councillor has started a blog site. Recently elected British Nazi Party member Simon Smith is giving the world the benefit of his views, which seem to include a belief in flying saucers and the notion that the moon landings are a hoax! (Conspiracy theorist, you think?) Smith also thinks the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were concocted by the US to allow them an excuse for world domination. Convinced he is no doubt a target for the spooks, he concludes with: If I die in a car crash or other suspicicious circumstances you will know why ! Maybe...but will you care a toss!

Tangled up in blue

I'm afraid I didn't listen to 'Dave's' Desert Island Discs, like Hughesy, I stuck with Freddie and co. on the basis that even Monty spins better than Cameron. Anyway, over at Dave, Nice but Knave you can read the alternative lyrics to Tangled up in Blue.

Mad Mel

I am reluctant to give any oxygen to someone of such exterme right wing views, but Melanie Phillips does seem to have finally left the Planet Reason. Not the least of which because she holds this potty view that Britain has effectively capitulated to Islamofascists and become the Muslim terror capital of the world, or Londonistan as she calls it. Interestingly, in an article in The Observer, she traces the roots of alienation of British Muslims (which in Phillips' world view is taken for granted) to two events. The Rushdie affair over The Satanic Verses, and the slaughter of Muslims by Christians in Bosnia. Whilst I am sure both of those things have contributed to a degree of alienation felt by some Muslims, it is peculiar that Melanie doesn't give a name check to her favourite government in the whole world... Israel. If there is any single factor which has radicalised Muslim opinion, not just in the UK but across the world, it has been the disgust with which people have viewed the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people. Instead of delving into that sorry affair, Phillips still faithfully prints trash such as the blatant lies in a recent story that Jews in Iran are made to wear yellow ribbons, which even she was later forced to retract as false.

When I first became a shop steward in the 1960's it was at the Hardy Spicer drive shaft factory in Erdington, Birmingham. The Transport and General Workers Union convenor at the time was Bill Morris, who went on to become General Secretary of the TGWU, a Govenor of the Bank of England and Sir Bill. I always thought Bill was made to be a full-time official... always on the lookout for a moderate way solution. His equivalent in the National Society of Metal Mechanics, Graham Gould, was always far more robust, militant and aggressive, like Jimmy Cagney on speed. Strangely, whether by his choice or theirs, Graham never became a full time official, nor did he get the queen's gong. Hardy Spicer was taken over by GKN, and when the Harold Wilson referendum took place over continued membership of the Common Market, management dished out car stickers to everyone calling for a 'Yes' to Europe result. Enough to make anyone a Eurosceptic in my book and I forecast at the time that as soon as they got the 'yes' vote they would shift production to Europe (at last, 30 years later, I can say 'I told you so'). Anyway... it looks like the next document the workforce get from their employer is likely to be a P45. The deindustrialisation of Britain, started under Thatcher and continued unabated through Major and Blair, carries on relentlessly.

Keep it in your trousers

There's an interesting vacancy being advertised working in the office of a rising star of an MP that people may find 'interesting' . OK, it may be that he's a backbencher now, but as we all know, big things are predicted. Interestingly, the post come with an offer of accommodation.... but you may want to give that some careful consideration.

If Iain Dale and co. are putting together a follow-up volume to their book of Labour sleaze... they might want to start by looking at Conservative controlled Walsall where an employee who questioned the authority for Council spending was told "This is an email which will self-destruct if an auditor comes within 10ft of it." One question stands out like a sore thumb. Why wait until the day of the Employment Tribunal before coughing up with a six-figure payment to him? Answers, headed, 'Stating the Bleeding Obvious', to the Leader of the Council, Walsall.

You couldn't make it up (continued)

I've just come back from a Council Scrutiny meeting to consider the work programme for the coming year, which was attended by one of our new 'colleagues'. In response to an allegation from a member of the public that the Council should scrutinise how Nazis get on the Council, he took umbrage and said, "I would like to remind you that I am in the British National Party... the British Nazi Party is German!!!" Doh!

Pain in the arse

Steve at Occupied Country, in one of his visits to this world, says that the Opus Dei pracice of wearing such a medievil, barbaric device as a cilice might just explain why "Ruth Kelly's got a face like a slapped arse". This got me looking at other sadistic practices this sect embark on, and there's a list of some of their Corporal Mortification's here. I think if I was ever daft enough to think about joining I might want to try the entry level... such as drinking coffee without milk or sugar, or not buttering one's toast.

Fly the Flag (Part deux)

I'll risk the wrath of the 'wrap yourself in our flag' brigade again... Nowadays, when you see an England flag on a car, sprawled across a T-shirt, or flapping from a novelty hat, you no longer assume the owner is a dot-brained xenophobe. Instead you assume he's just an idiot. And you're right. He is.

I saw a car in West Brom yesterday with two Soviet hammer and sickle red flags in the rear windows... Mick, I didn't know you could drive!

Fly your Flag

I've just caught up with this via Shooting Parrots. Apparently, from May 2006 there's a new bad motorist award.

A smooth and orderly transition

Steve Bell on Honest John the power broker. His Home Secretary cartoon today is pure genius.

Eyes on the Prize

New estimates of the oil reserves in the ground under Venezuela mean, according to US writer Steve Lendman that...

"the US is now planning a fourth attempt to oust Hugo Chavez by whatever means it has in mind. I think the wheels of its plan are now in motion, but we won't know what will unfold until the fireworks begin. With the information now available and published here, I feel more certain than ever that US instigated serious trouble is heading toward Venezuela and maybe harsher than we might expect. Venezuela's likely total oil reserves are potentially so great that the country has to be the grandest of grand prizes for the US. It's a virtual certainty the US will do anything it takes to try to seize and control it. For those of us who respect the sovereign rights of all nations and the obligation their leaders have above all else to serve the needs of their people, we can only hope Hugo Chavez is prepared for what he knows is coming and will again succeed in deterring it."

You couldn't make it up...

Most people won't have heard of the England First party. There's no real reason that you should have done because they're crackers, but they did persuade the people of Blackburn and Dawen to elect two of these divvies on to their local Council. Anyway, I digress. They are anxious that you distinguish between the 'England First Party'... and the 'English First' Party (there's a touch of the Judean People's Front in this I think)... because English First Party is run by.... a Welshman! What the England First Party don't tell you on their web site is.... one of their newly elected councillors whose manifesto called for a ban on mixed-race marriages.... is of African descent.

Paperback writer

One of my favourite authors is the excellent Joe R. Lansdale, and I'm currently reading Sunset and Sawdust (which you can blag second hand off Amazon for less than a couple of quid). Lansdale is pretty pissed about people who want his autograph, or for him to sign a book, but don't include a s.a.e. or a book. They sometimes threaten to not buy his books if he does not respond. He will not be blackmailed. If they had a book, they would send it. If they have a book and won't send it with return postage, they may keep it and use it to level their washing machine or boxed autograph collection. They can save themselves the purchase of future Lansdale books. This would please him. The choice is theirs.