To The Death, But Not Yet

Unable to leave the house except to go to the doctor, pumped up on prescription-only painkillers, after a day for much of which I have barely been able to move, and with a bag permanently packed for if and when I have to go back into hospital, I expect blogging to be light until next week at the earliest. Needless to say, I am under strict doctor’s orders not to stand for Parliament. There will probably be another General Election in the autumn. There will certainly be several more in my lifetime. Unless, of course, I had chosen to kill myself by contesting this one. So the Facebook group will continue to exist, and donations towards our work via the PayPal button or other means will continue to be welcomed.

I will be voting for Councillor Watts Stelling, the Independent candidate, who in his time as Leader of the Opposition on the former Derwentside District Council was well-liked, well-respected, and closely allied to my friends in the Labour Leadership, not least against the lunatic faction that combined a sort of vulgarised sectarian Leftism with an allegiance to Kevan Jones. Most or all of those former Labour local leaders, rightly incandescent at the abolition of the Council (to which the Lib Dem leaflet pointedly makes direct reference), will be voting for Watts. He has a strong campaign presence in the Consett area, and even here, outside that base, he is expected to do well. In view of Labour’s smug invisibility, explicable in terms of the candidate’s lack of political experience but certainly not in terms of her agent’s, this seat could yet turn into a straight fight between Watts and the Lib Dem, Owen Temple, also a well-known and highly experienced local politician, and also now a sitting member of the unitary County Council.

I can confirm that Watts Stelling will give a voice to the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with either or both of Russia and China. I can confirm that Watts Stelling will give a voice to the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left’s traditional electoral base. I can confirm that Watts Stelling will give a voice to those who recognise that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level. And I can confirm that Watts Stelling will give a voice to those who refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

I can confirm that Watts Stelling advocates and will deliver traditional social democratic policies, such as: no one’s tax-free income to fall below half national median earnings; abolition of prescription charges; restoration of free eye and dental treatment; making employment rights begin on day one of employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, as promised by John Smith; saving council housing, and bringing all council services back in house; renationalising the utilities and the railways; building a national network of public transport free at the point of use; and removal of all nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons from British soil and waters.

I can confirm that Watts Stelling advocates and will deliver traditional conservative and patriotic policies, such as: restoration of the supremacy of British over EU law; returning to preventative policing based on foot patrols; making each offence carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or 15 years for life, in the context of restoring and defending civil liberties, so that convictions are once again harder to obtain and therefore more reliable; restoration of the grammar schools, restoration of O-levels, restoration of excellent Secondary Modern schools, defence and restoration of Special Needs Education, and defence of church schools both against New Labour and against the Liberal Democrats; a legal presumption of equal parenting, restoration of the tax allowance for fathers, and allowing paternity leave to be taken at any time in the first 18 years of the child’s life; helping farmers and small businesses through a windfall tax on the supermarkets; defending village services, saving shooting and fishing, repealing the hunting ban, and making Gypsies and Travellers obey the same planning laws as the rest of us; and preserving the historic regimental system, rebuilding the Royal Navy, and saving the Royal Air Force.

And I can confirm that Watts Stelling advocates and will deliver common sense policies, such as: nuclear power and clean coal technology; restoration of British overall control of our defence capability; docking of Ministers’ pay if either spending or outcomes are lower in the North East than in Scotland or the South East; immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq; no war against Iran; total opposition to lap-dancing clubs; and an MP’s office in Consett as well as in Crook.

I know that many of you had been hoping for a fully pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker, anti-war, Social Catholic and Distributist defender of Catholic schools and Catholic adoption agencies in this constituency, which includes major centres both of Irish Catholicism and of Recusancy as well as Ushaw College. Quite apart from the fact that I have fallen seriously ill anyway, you might care to direct expressions of your anger to the Editor of the Northern Cross (editor.norcross@btconnect.com), copied to the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle (office@rcdhn.org.uk) and to the Catholic press (editorial@catholicherald.co.uk; kevin.flaherty@totalcatholic.com; newsdesk@totalcatholic.com; norcross@btconnect.com; editor@faith.org.uk; editor@christianorder.com; thetablet@thetablet.co.uk), as well as to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, asking why his rag is still distributed on church premises, as it is almost exclusively, when he has conspired, colluded and campaigned to keep this seat in the hands of a supporter of abortion on demand up to and including partial birth, the only policy commitment required of candidates on Labour all-women shortlists.

And remember, if this seat returns a woman MP this time, then, thanks to Harriet Harman and her Equality Bill supported by both other parties, no man will ever again be permitted to be a parliamentary candidate here, whether for any party or as an Independent. It will take the emergence of new parties for that to be repealed. There can be no such emergence until those who could coalesce into such new formations are returned to Parliament.

Vote Watts Stelling.

This time.