Now that nominations have closed for the ludicrous, dangerous positions of Police and Crime Commissioner, I shall be voting for Labour's Ron Hogg, as recommended by the man I know who knows most about this sort of thing, my Parish Council colleague, Bob Glass. I assume that it is First Past The Post. If not, then my second preference will go to my erstwhile neighbour, Kingsley Smith. Unless he is one of those on whom see below. Is he? The Conservative candidate here in Durham is 21. Yes, you read aright. Twenty-one years old. And there is no Lib Dem at all. Signs of the times, brethren. Signs of the times.
I quite understand why Lord (Sir Ian) Blair wants people to abstain. But, as with Obama and Romney, someone is going to win. However, I wouldn't blame anyone who couldn't be bothered, and it looks as if most people are going to take that view. Once that pitiful turnout is a matter of record, Labour should promise to abolish these positions, as part of a comprehensive restoration of the powers of councillors, parliamentarians, magistrates and jurors.
I have been as critical as anyone of Andrew Gilligan, once the man
who exposed the Dodgy Dossier, since he went over to the Dark Side. More
than anything, it has been his painfully obvious desire to
overcompensate that has really proven an irritant. But he has done well in securing the withdrawal of a suspiciously well-funded "Independent" candidate in Lincolnshire, one Mervyn Barrett, a bought and paid for servant of G4S (which, terrifyingly, has already taken over Lincolnshire's custody suites, central control room and firearms licensing
department, but which tweeted about a fortnight ago that it had a candidate in every area) and of the Fund for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank. Now, how about a few exposés of
rather more prominent figures with distinctly questionable links to the
American neoconservative think tank circuit?
Take, for example, Michael Gove, a longstanding Blair groupie who once wrote that he wanted to swoon into the Great Man's arms, and a key player in the London subsidiary operation of the American Trotskyism that is the neoconservative movement. Gove came up through the 1980s New Right, which had few political and no sociological differences with the the New Left that eventually became New Labour. They both acted out their stated aims to legalise drugs, to abolish the age of consent, and so on.
The only difference was as to which foreign dictatorships they supported, and took payment from: the Soviet Bloc or China in one case, apartheid South Africa and various Latin American military juntas in the case of Gove and friends. A generation later, they could and did both agree on George W Bush. It is worth noting that for more than 20 years now, the only foreign interest willing or able to interfere financially in British political life has been the axis of American neoconservatives, who are not even in government in their win country, and the secular Israeli Far Right, which most unfortunately is very much in government in its own country.
The latter is funded entirely by the former, an arrangement which would be illegal in the other direction. It is also illegal here, but no one seems to care. They did, rightly, when the USSR used to fund the CPGB. They would if any other foreign interests were funding British politicians. But they don't care about this. Funny, that.
And then there are the links between the Coalition and the American healthcare companies. Go on, Andrew Gilligan. I dare you. You'd have to do a Paul Foot and publish it in Private Eye after your newspaper had refused to print it. But go on. I dare you.
Gove has just denounced Disraeli. Fine. By all means let Labour be the only party of the Tory populist tradition, far more of which was in any case carried over into it than into a party defined by the takeover of the Tory machine by successive waves of Country Whigs, Patriot Whigs, Liberal Unionists, Liberal Imperialists, National Liberals, Owenite refugees after the collapse of the SDP, and now Orange Book Lib Dems.
Take, for example, Michael Gove, a longstanding Blair groupie who once wrote that he wanted to swoon into the Great Man's arms, and a key player in the London subsidiary operation of the American Trotskyism that is the neoconservative movement. Gove came up through the 1980s New Right, which had few political and no sociological differences with the the New Left that eventually became New Labour. They both acted out their stated aims to legalise drugs, to abolish the age of consent, and so on.
The only difference was as to which foreign dictatorships they supported, and took payment from: the Soviet Bloc or China in one case, apartheid South Africa and various Latin American military juntas in the case of Gove and friends. A generation later, they could and did both agree on George W Bush. It is worth noting that for more than 20 years now, the only foreign interest willing or able to interfere financially in British political life has been the axis of American neoconservatives, who are not even in government in their win country, and the secular Israeli Far Right, which most unfortunately is very much in government in its own country.
The latter is funded entirely by the former, an arrangement which would be illegal in the other direction. It is also illegal here, but no one seems to care. They did, rightly, when the USSR used to fund the CPGB. They would if any other foreign interests were funding British politicians. But they don't care about this. Funny, that.
And then there are the links between the Coalition and the American healthcare companies. Go on, Andrew Gilligan. I dare you. You'd have to do a Paul Foot and publish it in Private Eye after your newspaper had refused to print it. But go on. I dare you.
Gove has just denounced Disraeli. Fine. By all means let Labour be the only party of the Tory populist tradition, far more of which was in any case carried over into it than into a party defined by the takeover of the Tory machine by successive waves of Country Whigs, Patriot Whigs, Liberal Unionists, Liberal Imperialists, National Liberals, Owenite refugees after the collapse of the SDP, and now Orange Book Lib Dems.
No comments:
Post a Comment