Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
There seems to be no mood among Conservative MPs for a General Election.
But Theresa May has survived losing her overall majority at a General Election that she had never needed to call.
She has gone on to survive losing her Withdrawal Agreement by the largest anti-Government majority in the history of the House of Commons, and then losing it again, not once, but twice.
After that, a mere failure to pass a motion pursuant to the Fixed Term Parliaments Act would be nothing to her.
Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.
As the Member of Parliament for North West Durham, I would board a plane to Tehran and simply refuse to leave without Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. But she really does not have that long to wait.
As his MP in Glasgow, George Galloway once got Hassan Rouhani a council house. Yes, really. They go back a very long way. If George boarded a plane to Tehran and simply refused to leave without Nazanin, then he could bring her home.
Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.
The proposed increase in the age of marriage to 18 would be a step in the right direction.
We need a criminal offence of sexual activity with any person under the age of 18 who was more than two years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence equal to twice the difference in age, abolition of different rules for “positions of trust” and for one sex rather than the other, a ban on abortion or contraception for those under 18 without parental knowledge and consent, and the application of the law on indecent images equally to boys and to girls.
Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
The potential Labour members or supporters of a "Government of National Unity" are economically well to the right of the present Government, and would probably also be far more gung-ho militarily.
More broadly and more deeply, if the Government were a "Government of National Unity", then what would that make everyone else? And what measures would that justify against everyone else?
Have no truck with any of this. Instead, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.
My friend and staunch supporter, Bryan Gould, writes:
It is a truism that one of the most important issues in politics – particularly for the left – is the extent to which the state can and should intervene in the operation of the free market.
It is surprising, therefore, that the Labour Party has been so slow to recognise that the European Union takes a very particular and potentially damaging stance on that issue.
The EU’s attitude towards the role of the state has always been one of its cardinal features.
Paradoxically, one of the two fundamental building blocks of what was originally the Common Market was one of the largest state interventions ever put in place in a market economy.
The Common Agricultural Policy was a major use of state funding and policy, designed to provide a huge benefit to inefficient French agriculture (and we shouldn’t forget that the German factory worker, with three or four dairy cows in his basement or barn, also benefited greatly).
The CAP was regarded by President de Gaulle as so important that he maintained his veto on British membership of the Common Market until he could be sure that the CAP was set in concrete.
I was personally witness to this in my work at the time on British relations with Europe in both the Foreign Office and our Embassy in Brussels.
The corollary to the CAP, and the second leg of the Franco-German bargain on which the Common Market rested, was a guarantee that efficient German manufacturing could have unrestricted access to that total market.
That Franco-German bargain was of course completely inimical to British interests – something that would not have displeased, and may even have been seen as payback by, the two countries that had no reason to love the British, having been in one case defeated by them, and in the other, rescued but only with their help.
The bargain required Britain to forego access to cheap and efficiently produced food and raw materials from around the globe and instead to push up food prices to European levels, thereby negating the one competitive advantage enjoyed by British industry – the lower wages made possible by lower food costs.
The Common Market also meant that the British market was opened up to direct competition from powerful German manufacturing – and British industry (with the help of home-grown policy mistakes) was duly (and literally) decimated as a result.
It should come as no surprise that the question of state aid or otherwise should still be a live issue in the UK’s current and changing relationship with the EU.
The customs union established by the EU regulates and prohibits the use of tariffs to inhibit or distort the operation of the free market; and the single market was put in place to ensure that state aids could not be used as an alternative means of gaining a competitive advantage for one member economy at the expense of others.
The strict enforcement of these rules – commonly found as well in comprehensive trade agreements such as the TPPA and NAFTA – means that a major aspect of the state’s power to intervene in a free-market economy is removed.
The effect, if not the intention, was to create in the EU a land, if not “fit for heroes”, at the very least fit for multinationals – an aspect of the EU that seems hardly to have registered with the British left.
The issue of state aid or otherwise remains a live one as the UK attempts to extricate itself from the EU embrace (or perhaps “stranglehold” is more accurate).
One of the difficulties created by the need to avoid a “hard border” on the island of Ireland is that the so-called backstop would require the UK, for as long as the backstop was in place, to comply with the rules of the single market and therefore with the restrictions placed by the EU on state aids.
The problem would not end there; the EU, determined not to allow a competitive advantage to a non-EU member if they can help it, would retain the de facto power under the proposed exit agreement to dictate to the UK the extent to which state aids would be permitted, for as long as the transition period lasts.
These provisions, to which little attention has so far been paid, at least by the left, would deprive a British government, and particularly a Labour government, of many of the levers and instruments which would be needed if a newly independent British economy was to function efficiently in its changed circumstances.
In the modern world, an economy that wishes to remain competitive and efficient would certainly need the flexibility to keep pace with new developments and to take advantage of new opportunities.
An economy, for example, that wished to protect the environment and to build a new and flourishing green economy would need to be encouraged and directed into such areas.
The same can be said of any attempt to take advantage of new technologies, new materials and new skills, all of which would be necessary to the functioning of an efficient modern economy and which could best be encouraged and enabled by government policy and intervention.
But the use of taxes or subsidies or tax relief to promote certain kinds of investment would fall foul of the EU’s prescriptive and restrictive approach – so, too, might state investment in important infrastructure projects – road, rail, airports, for example – that might be seen as improving the competitiveness of British industry.
Such interventions would come naturally to a government of the left – and such a government would be rendered completely ineffectual if it were denied the chance to pull such levers. Yet, that is exactly what is now proposed by the EU.
The British economy, perhaps struggling to adapt to a new trading situation, would find itself not only with perhaps reduced trading opportunities with the EU but also having to identify and secure new trading links elsewhere, and without the ability to adapt quickly to those new circumstances.
A new Labour government in Britain would find itself, in other words, denied one of its principal raisons d’être. It would face the new post-Brexit situation with one hand tied behind its back.
Having given up membership of the EU, it would still be subject to the EU’s prohibitions on state aids and could well find itself frustrated in doing what it wanted to equip the economy to face new challenges.
The solution to the problem is to defer the departure date until a new trade agreement for the future can be reached [To put it mildly, I am not sure about that].
That would remove the need for a transition period and avoid a hiatus during which the UK was still subject to EU prohibitions and therefore unable to take steps to protect itself in the new circumstances.
Sadly, there is a powerful strain of opinion on the left that regards the quest for economic efficiency and success as somehow unworthy of the high-minded.
Such bien-pensants appear to give priority to their dream of a European destiny and to disregard the interests of Labour voters.
Those voters may not share their insouciance. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
Even if you think you know all about the Chagos story – an entire population forcibly removed from their island homeland at British gunpoint to make way for a US Air Force nuclear base, the people dumped destitute over a thousand miles away, their domestic animals gassed by the British army, their homes fired and demolished – then I beg you still to read this.
This analysis shows there could be no more startling illustration of the operation of the brutal and ruthless British Establishment in an undisguisedly Imperialist cause, involving actions which all reasonable people can see are simply evil.
It points out that many of the key immoralities were perpetrated by Labour governments, and that the notion that either Westminster democracy or the British “justice” system provides any protection against the most ruthless authoritarianism by the British state, is utterly baseless.
Finally of course, there is the point that this is not only a historic injustice, but the injustice continues to the current day and continues to be actively promoted by the British state, to the extent that it is willing to take massive damage to its international standing and reputation in order to continue this heartless policy.
This analysis is squarely based on the recent Opinion of the International Court of Justice.
Others have done an excellent job of chronicling the human stories and the heartache of the Islanders deported into penury far away across the sea.
I will take that human aspect as read, although this account of one of the major forced transportations is worth reading to set the tone. The islanders were shipped out in inhuman conditions to deportation, starved for six days and covered in faeces and urine. This was not the 19th century, this was 1972.
The MV Nordvaer was already loaded with Chagossians, horses, and coconuts when it arrived at Peros Banhos. Approximately one hundred people were ultimately forced onto the ship. Ms. Mein, her husband, and their eight children shared a small, cramped cabin on the ship. The cabin was extremely hot; they could not open the portholes because the water level rose above them under the great weight of the overloaded boat. Many of the other passengers were not as fortunate as Ms. Mein and shared the cargo compartment with horses, tortoises, and coconuts. Ms. Mein remembers that the cargo hold was covered with urine and horse manure. The horses were loaded below deck while many human passengers were forced to endure the elements above deck for the entirety of the six-day journey in rough seas. The voyage was extremely harsh and many passengers became very sick. The rough conditions forced the captain to jettison a large number of coconuts in order to prevent the overloaded boat from sinking. Meanwhile, the horses were fed, but no food was provided for the Chagossians.
Rather than the human story of the victims, I intend to concentrate here, based squarely on the ICJ judgement, on the human story of the perpetrators.
In doing so I hope to show that this is not just a historic injustice, but a number of prominent and still active pillars of the British Establishment, like Jack Straw, David Miliband, Jeremy Hunt and many senior British judges, are utterly depraved and devoid of the basic feelings of humanity.
There is also a vitally important lesson to be learnt about the position of the British Crown and the utter myth that continuing British Imperialism is in any sense based on altruism towards its remaining colonies.
Before reading the ICJ Opinion, I had not fully realised the blatant and vicious manner in which the Westminster government had blackmailed the Mauritian government into ceding the Chagos Islands as a condition of Independence.
That blackmail was carried out by Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The court documentation makes plain that the United States was ordering the British Government on how to conduct the entire process, and that Harold Wilson deliberately “frightened” Mauritius into conceding the Chagos Islands. This is an excerpt from the ICJ Opinion:
104. On 20 September 1965, during a meeting on defence matters chaired by the United Kingdom Secretary of State, the Premier of Mauritius again stated that “the Mauritius Government was not interested in the excision of the islands and would stand out for a 99-year lease”. As an alternative, the Premier of Mauritius proposed that the United Kingdom first concede independence to Mauritius and thereafter allow the Mauritian Government to negotiate with the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States on the question of Diego Garcia. During those discussions, the Secretary of State indicated that a lease would not be acceptable to the United States and that the Chagos Archipelago would have to be made available on the basis of its detachment.
105. On 22 September 1965, a Note was prepared by Sir Oliver Wright, Private Secretary to the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, Sir Harold Wilson. It read: “Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam is coming to see you at 10:00 tomorrow morning. The object is to frighten him with hope: hope that he might get independence; Fright lest he might not unless he is sensible about the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago. I attach a brief prepared by the Colonial Office, with which the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office are on the whole content. The key sentence in the brief is the last sentence of it on page three.”
106. The key last sentence referred to above read: “The Prime Minister may therefore wish to make some oblique reference to the fact that H.M.G. have the legal right to detach Chagos by Order in Council, without Mauritius consent but this would be a grave step.” (Emphasis in the original.)
107. On 23 September 1965 two events took place. The first event was a meeting in the morning of 23 September 1965 between Prime Minister Wilson and Premier Ramgoolam. Sir Oliver Wright’s Report on the meeting indicated that Prime Minister Wilson told Premier Ramgoolam that “in theory there were a number of possibilities. The Premier and his colleagues could return to Mauritius either with Independence or without it. On the Defence point, Diego Garcia could either be detached by order in Council or with the agreement of the Premier and his colleagues….”
I have to confess this has caused me personally radically to revise my opinion of Harold Wilson. The ICJ at paras 94-97 make plain that the agreement to lease Diego Garcia to the USA as a military base precedes and motivates the rough handling of the Mauritian government.
Against this compelling argument, Britain nevertheless continued to argue before the court that the Chagos Islands had been entirely voluntarily ceded by Mauritius. The ICJ disposed of this fairly comprehensively:
172. …In the Court’s view, it is not possible to talk of an international agreement, when one of the parties to it, Mauritius, which is said to have ceded the territory to the United Kingdom, was under the authority of the latter. The Court is of the view that heightened scrutiny should be given to the issue of consent in a situation where a part of a non-self-governing territory is separated to create a new colony. Having reviewed the circumstances in which the Council of Ministers of the colony of Mauritius agreed in principle to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago on the basis of the Lancaster House agreement, the Court considers that this detachment was not based on the free and genuine expression of the will of the people concerned.
A number of the individual judges’ Opinions put his rather more bluntly, of which Judge Robinson gives perhaps the best account in a supporting Opinion which is well worth reading:
93. … The intent was to use power to frighten the Premier into submission. It is wholly unreasonable to seek to explain the conduct of the United Kingdom on the basis that it was involved in a negotiation and was simply employing ordinary negotiation strategies. After all, this was a relationship between the Premier of a colony and its administering Power. Years later, speaking about the so-called consent to the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago Sir Seewoosagur is reported to have told the Mauritian Parliament, “we had no choice”42It is also reported that Sir Seewoosagur told a news organization, the Christian Science Monitor that: “There was a nook around my neck. I could not say no. I had to say yes, otherwise the [noose] could have tightened.” It is little wonder then that, in 1982, the Mauritian Legislative Assembly’s Select Committee on the Excision of the Archipelago concluded that the attitude of the United Kingdom in that meeting could “not fall outside the most elementary definition of blackmailing”.
The International Court of Justice equally dismissed the British argument that the islanders had signed releases renouncing any claims or right to resettle, in return for small sums of “compensation” received from the British government.
Plainly having been forcibly removed and left destitute, they were in a desperate situation and in no position to assert or to defend their rights.
At paragraphs 121-3 the ICJ judgement recounts the brief period where the British government behaved in a legal and conscionable manner towards the islanders.
In 2000 a Chagos resident, Louis Olivier Bancoult, won a judgement in the High Court in London that the islanders had the right to return, as the colonial authority had an obligation to govern in their interest.
Robin Cook was then Foreign Secretary and declared that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office would not be appealing against the judgement.
Robin Cook went further.
He accepted before the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva that the UK had acted unlawfully in its treatment of the Chagos Islanders. And he repealed the Order in Council that de facto banned all occupation of the islands other than by the US military.
Cook commissioned work on a plan to facilitate the return of the islanders.
It seemed finally the British Government was going to act in a reasonably humanitarian fashion towards the islanders.
But then disaster happened. The George W Bush administration was infuriated at the idea of a return of population to their most secret base area, and complained bitterly to Blair.
This was one of the factors, added to Cook’s opposition to arms sales to dictatorships and insistence on criticising human rights abuses by Saudi Arabia, that caused Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell to remove Robin Cook as Foreign Secretary.
Robin Cook was replaced by the infinitely biddable Jack Straw.
There was never any chance that Straw – who received large donations to his office and campaign funds from British Aerospace – would stand against the interests of the arms industry or of the USA, particularly in favour of a few dispossessed islanders who would never be a source of personal donations.
Straw immediately threw Cook’s policy into reverse. Resettling the islanders was now declared “too expensive” an option.
The repealed Order in Council was replaced by a new one banning all immigration to, or even landing on, the islands on security grounds.
This “coincided” with the use of Diego Garcia, the Chagos island on which the US base is situate, as a black site for torture and extraordinary rendition.
Straw was therefore implicated not just in extending the agony of the deported island community, but doing so in order to ensure the secrecy of torture operations.
I don’t have the vocabulary to describe the depths of Straw’s evil. This was New Labour in action.
The estimable Mr Bancoult did not give up. He took the British Government again to the High Court to test the legality of the new Order in Council barring the islanders, which was cast on “National security” grounds.
On 11 May 2006, Bancoult won again in the High Court, and the judgement was splendidly expressed by Lord Hooper in a statement of decency and common sense with which you would hope it was impossible to disagree:
“The power to legislate for the “peace order and good government” of a territory has never been used to exile a whole population. The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an Order in Council, exile a whole population from a British Overseas Territory and claim that he is doing this for the “peace, order and good government” of the Territory is, to us, repugnant.” (Para 142)
The judgement did not address the sovereignty of the islands.
Unlike Robin Cook, Jack Straw did appeal against the judgement, and the FCO’s appeal was resoundingly and unanimously rebuffed by the Court of Appeal.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office then appealed again to the House of Lords, and to general astonishment the Law Lords found in favour of the British government and against the islanders, by a 3-2 judgement.
The general astonishment was compounded by the fact that a panel of only 5 Law Lords had sat on the case, rather than the 7 you would normally expect for a case of this magnitude.
It was very widely remarked among the legal fraternity that the 3 majority judges were the only Law Lords who might possibly have found for the government, and on any possible combination of 7 judges the government would have lost.
That view was given weight by the fact that the minority of 2 who supported the islanders included the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham.
The decision to impanel only 5 judges, and the selection of the UK’s three most right wing Law Lords for the panel, was taken by the Lord Chancellor’s Office. And the Lord Chancellor was now – Jack Straw.
The timing is such that it is conceivable that the decision was taken under Straw’s predecessor, Lord Falconer, but as he was Blair’s great friend and ex-flatmate and also close to Straw, it makes no difference to the Establishment stitch-up.
If your blood is not now sufficiently boiling, consider this. The Law Lords found against the islanders on the grounds that no restraint can be placed on the authority of the British Crown over its colonies.
The majority opinion was best expressed by Lord Hoffman. Lord Hoffman’s judgement is a stunning assertion of British Imperial power.
He states in terms that the British Crown exercises its authority in the interests of the UK and not in the interest of the colony concerned:
49. Her Majesty in Council is therefore entitled to legislate for a colony in the interests of the United Kingdom. No doubt she is also required to take into account the interests of the colony (in the absence of any previous case of judicial review of prerogative colonial legislation, there is of course no authority on the point) but there seems to me no doubt that in the event of a conflict of interest, she is entitled, on the advice of Her United Kingdom ministers, to prefer the interests of the United Kingdom. I would therefore entirely reject the reasoning of the Divisional Court which held the Constitution Order invalid because it was not in the interests of the Chagossians.
It is quite incredible to read that quote, and then to remember that the British government has just argued before the International Court of Justice that the ICJ does not have jurisdiction because the question is nothing to do with decolonisation but rather a bilateral dispute.
Thankfully, the ICJ found this quite incredible too.
You may think that by the time it fixed this House of Lords judgement the British government had exhausted the wells of depravity on this particular issue.
But no, David Miliband felt that he had to outdo his predecessors by being not only totally immoral, but awfully clever with it too.
Under Miliband, the FCO dreamed up the idea of pretending that the exclusion of all inhabitants from around the USA leased nuclear weapon and torture site, was for environmental purposes.
The propagation of the Chagos Marine Reserve in 2010 banned all fishing within 200 nautical miles of the islands and, as the islanders are primarily a fishing community, was specifically designed to prevent the islanders from being able to return, while at the same time garnering strong applause from a number of famous, and very gullible, environmentalists.
The sheer cynicism of this effort by Miliband to dress up genocide as environmentalism is simply breathtaking. If we were really cooncerned about the environment of Diego Garcia we would not have built a massive airbase and harbour on a fragile coral atoll and filled it with nuclear weapons.
In retrospect I am quite proud of that turn of phrase. David Miliband was dressing up genocide as environmentalism. I stand by that.
While the ruse was obvious to anyone half awake, it does not need speculation to know the British government’s motives because, thanks to Wikileaks release of US diplomatic cables, we know that British FCO and MOD officials together specifically briefed US diplomats that the purpose was to make the return of the islanders impossible.
7. (C/NF) Roberts acknowledged that “we need to find a way to get through the various Chagossian lobbies.” He admitted that HMG is “under pressure” from the Chagossians and their advocates to permit resettlement of the “outer islands” of the BIOT. He noted, without providing details, that “there are proposals (for a marine park) that could provide the Chagossians warden jobs” within the BIOT. However, Roberts stated that, according to the HGM,s current thinking on a reserve, there would be “no human footprints” or “Man Fridays” on the BIOT’s uninhabited islands. He asserted that establishing a marine park would, in effect, put paid to resettlement claims of the archipelago’s former residents. Responding to Polcouns’ observation that the advocates of Chagossian resettlement continue to vigorously press their case, Roberts opined that the UK’s “environmental lobby is far more powerful than the Chagossians’ advocates.” (Note: One group of Chagossian litigants is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) the decision of Britain’s highest court to deny “resettlement rights” to the islands’ former inhabitants. See below at paragraph 13 and reftel. End Note.)
Incredible to say, that is still not the end of the ignominy of the British Establishment.
As the irrepressible Chagossians continued their legal challenges, now to the “Marine reserve”, the UK’s new Supreme Court shamelessly refused to accept the US diplomatic cable in evidence, on the grounds it was a privileged communication under the Vienna Convention.
This was a ridiculous decision which would only have been valid if there were evidence that the communication were obtained by another State, rather than leaked to the public by a national of the state that produced it.
For a court to choose to ignore a salient fact is an abhorrent thing, but it allowed the British Establishment yet another “victory”. It was short lived, however.
Mauritius challenged the UK to arbitration before a panel constituted under Article 287 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a Convention I am happy to say I was directly involved in bringing into force, by negotiating and helping draft the Protocol.
Mauritius argued that the UK could not ban fishing rights which it enjoyed both traditionally, and specifically as part of the agreement to cede the Chagos Islands.
The UK brought four separate challenges to the jurisdiction of the panel, and lost every one, and then lost the main judgement.
It is pleasant to note that acting for the Chagos Islands was Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the FCO Legal Adviser who had resigned her position, telling Jack Straw that the attack on Iraq constituted an illegal war of aggression.
Which brings us up to the present Opinion by the International Court of Justice after the government of Mauritius finally took resolute action to assert sovereignty over the islands.
Astonishingly, having repudiated the decision of the Arbitration Panel on the Law of the Sea, very much a British-inspired creation, Jeremy Hunt has now decided to strike at the very heart of international law itself by repudiating the International Court of Justice itself, something for which there is no precedent at all in British history.
I discuss the radical implications of this here with Alex Salmond.
This is apposite as throughout the 21st Century developments listed here in this continued horror story, the Chagossians’ cause was championed in the House of Commons by two pariah MPs outside the consensus of the British Establishment.
The Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on the Chagos Islands was Jeremy Corbyn MP. His Deputy was Alex Salmond MP.
Chagos really is a touchstone issue, a key litmus test of whether people are in or out of the British Establishment.
The attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the manufactured witch-hunt on anti-Semitism, all are designed to return the Labour Party to a leadership which will continue the illegal occupation of the Chagos Islands; the acid test of reliable pro-USA neo-conservative policy.
The SNP, at least under Salmond, was an open challenge to British imperialism and hopefully will remain so.
Chagos is a fundamental test of decency in British public life. If you know where a politician – or judge – stands on Chagos, most other questions are answered.
Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
The third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin at Durham Crown Court mere hours from now, most of them to be spent asleep, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Monday 1st April 2019. Despite supposedly being an open and shut case, it has been allocated “seven days plus”.
On 13th March 2017, in order to frighten me out of seeking election to Durham County Council, I was arrested for sending a death threat to a large number of members of that authority. On 13th April, to the shocked disbelief of the Police and after six or seven hours on the part of the Crown Prosecution Service, I was charged. The Police maintain to this day that they would not have charged me. I have never been charged with threats to kill, only with malicious communication.
The powers that be held my First Hearing somewhere that they assumed that I would be unable to reach on time by the public transport on which my disability made me dependent. But I was there. They sent me for an unrequested psychiatric assessment with a view to having me committed. But I was pronounced to have no mental health issues whatever.
I was supposed to stand trial on 6th December. It was “postponed”. I was supposed to stand trial on 11th April 2018, a year after I had been charged. That, too, was “postponed”. I am now due to stand trial two years after I was charged.
To deal with the johnny-come-lately charge of attempting (not conspiracy) to pervert the course of justice, which is the recently invented excuse for having prolonged this rubbish, it depends on an electronic correspondence that simply does not exist at all.
The supposed similarities between the letter and my published work were comprehensively refuted when the Police first interviewed me, on 13th March 2017. Those similarities either did not exist, or they were attributed quotations from the work of other people, including William Shakespeare.
The hypothetical possibility of a fingerprint was also dealt with and dismissed in full on that occasion. I was charged on the basis of the existence of two fingerprints that were supposed to have been mine beyond reasonable doubt, yet the Crown has produced only one fingerprint that may or may not have come from one of my hands but not from the other, on one side but not the other of a folded piece of paper. The contortions required would defeat even someone a very great deal less arthritic than I, if they would be possible at all.
So there is in fact no fingerprint evidence. There is no computer evidence. There is no electronic evidence of any kind. There is no handwriting evidence. There is no DNA evidence. There is no proof of postage. I shall say that again: there is no evidence that the letter was ever posted, not only by me, but by anyone.
The CPS caused all of my dozens of character witnesses to be disallowed, because it knew that the testimony of any one of them would have guaranteed my acquittal: past and present members of both Houses of Parliament, local councillors including several alleged victims in this case, senior members of the Catholic and Anglican clergy, distinguished academics, leading journalists, Justices of the Peace, a Presiding Justice in Court, and so on.
As a matter of record, every member of Durham County Council believes that this offence never took place; that it simply never happened. None of them has removed me as a friend on Facebook, nor has any of them stopped following me on Twitter. That includes the complainant in this case, who, entirely by his own choice, both remains my friend on Facebook, and continues to follow me on Twitter.
If there is no public interest in prosecuting the father of Poppi Worthington, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me. If there is no public interest in prosecuting the people who do not deny the overspending that made the difference between a hung Parliament and a Conservative overall majority in 2015, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me. If there is no public interest in prosecuting the Duke of Edinburgh for breaking a woman’s arm and for endangering the life of a baby, then there is certainly none in prosecuting me.
In 2007, the CPS claimed to have insufficient evidence to charge Tony Blair with selling peerages, even though he had done everything short of advertise them in Exchange and Mart. As a matter of policy, no one in County Durham is arrested, still less charged, with anything relating to the law against cannabis.
No one in this country would run much risk of arrest, never mind charge, never mind conviction, never mind anything more than the most derisory sentence, for what has long been the illegal activity of foxhunting, to which the Police act as escorts, arresting only anyone who might seek to obstruct this criminality or to object to it.
No one other than a Premier League footballer, and even then probably only one from the “wrong” club, would run any risk of arrest or prosecution for the “digital penetration” of a 15-year-old girl who had, furthermore, been out drinking with the complete impunity of everyone from her parents to the relevant licensees. No one other than a minister of religion, or possibly a teacher, would run any risk of arrest or prosecution for any kind of sexual activity with a 15-year-old boy.
And so on.
Nevertheless, while these proceedings have been ongoing, I have been elected unopposed as a Public Governor of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, and I have taken a creditable 203 votes for the Lanchester Ward of Durham County Council, as well as a more than creditable 302 votes for Lanchester Parish Council. Those figures are universally regarded as having been artificially reduced by the persecution of me. Even so, though, my neighbours voted for me in their hundreds. The verdict of my peers, indeed.
Onwards, then, to the even greater verdict of my peers, namely my election as the Member of Parliament for North West Durham. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
More than a week's worth of this post has mysteriously disappeared.
I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.
His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.
But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.
Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be.
From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.
This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.
Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:
"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.
This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.
On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged.
The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).
No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.
Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.
This post will appear here daily until further notice.
There are now only 42 hours, none of them the stuff of normal office work and nearly half of them to be spent asleep by most people, until the third attempt to put me on trial is theoretically supposed to begin, a year after the second one and two years after I was charged. But there has still been no disclosure.
Despite the supposedly open-and-shut case against me, my trial is expected to last "five days plus". It is now impossible to construct a defence to a case the presentation of which must therefore be expected to take at least two and a half working days, which is around 20 hours.
Like everything else, the morning of 1st April is the choice of the Crown. And it is most apposite for what the Crown is going to have to do at Durham Crown Court. Unless it is going to humiliate itself yet further by requesting a third "postponement". Is it? Might it stand even the slightest chance of being granted such a thing?
Well, of course the DUP would rather stay in the European Union than put up with the backstop. What do you think that the U stands for? Clue's in the name.
If, as seems increasingly likely, the United Kingdom did end up participating in the forthcoming European Elections, then expect Lexit people to put up.
That has happened before, but there were media blackouts. Such blackouts would not be possible this time.
And then on to the fight for the big prize. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
Not the DUP. And not the Remainer-Returners of the Lib Dems, "Change UK" or the SNP, either.
It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.
So Luxembourg is going to be on the Belt and Road, but we are not? So New Zealand is about to sign up to the Belt and Road, but we are not? So we are prepared to be less prosperous or powerful than Luxembourg (population 602,005) or New Zealand (population 4,950,970)? So we are more squeamish than the great liberal heroes, Xavier Bettel and Jacinda Ardern?
Look, this is not about liking the present regime in China. The New Silk Road will be there long after that has gone. At the very least, we need to be able to work for human rights from a position of strength, from a position inside the tent. In any case, this thing is coming, whether we like it or not. We must be on the bus, or we will certainly be under it.
If India tried something similar, well, then, India would be trying something similar, and we would have to be on that bus, too. I write as someone who cannot stand the present Indian Government and who sees little cause for optimism in the alternative, either. But the world is at it is, and the recognition of that fact is the beginning of the effort to make the world as we might wish it to be.
Another hung Parliament is also coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
No Labour MP has been deselected under Jeremy Corbyn. Not one. But for Nick Boles, and now also for Dominic Grieve, it is all over bar the paperwork. In Grieve's case, the whole thing has been organised by Jon Conway, who was the UKIP candidate against him in 2017.
No one who had been, say, a Green parliamentary candidate in 2017 would now be running the Constituency Labour Party for the seat in question. It is highly unlikely that such a person would be allowed in the Labour Party at all.
Take it from one who knows, having done an awful lot less than that, an awful lot longer ago. Not that I am complaining. Politically, it has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. But Labour really does not allow entryism, even by someone as obscure and innocuous as I am.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, would apparently now have no members at all if they were even mildly picky about whom to admit. And that state of affairs is now beginning to show itself in the selection of parliamentary candidates for safe seats.
Meanwhile, notice that whenever an Establishment MP is in difficulties with his or her local party, then the rest of them all come out in support, entirely regardless of party. If it is not #BLUKIP, then it is that old racket.
Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.
Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be.
From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.
This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.
Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:
"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.
This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.
On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged.
The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).
No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.
Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.
This post will appear here daily until further notice.
There are now no working days left before the third attempt to put me on trial is theoretically supposed to begin, a year after the second one and two years after I was charged. But there has still been no disclosure.
Despite the supposedly open-and-shut case against me, my trial is expected to last "five days plus". It is now impossible to construct a defence to a case the presentation of which must therefore be expected to take at least two and a half working days, which is around 20 hours.
Like everything else, the morning of 1st April is the choice of the Crown. And it is most apposite for what the Crown is going to have to do at Durham Crown Court. Unless it is going to humiliate itself yet further by requesting a third "postponement". Is it? Might it stand even the slightest chance of being granted such a thing?
Quite so, Andrew Parker and Cressida Dick. There is indeed a threat from the violent extremists who blew up Iraq and Libya, and who continue to predominate massively on the floor of the House of Commons. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
There were only five Labour rebels, and there were only 34 Conservative rebels, including six Remainers to whom even this deal was not Remain enough. So the previous question, "A General Election between whom and about what?", no longer quite presents itself.
The Conservatives are as near as hardly matters to being united behind Theresa May, and Labour is as near as does not matter one jot to being united against her. A General Election between those two? Why not? I am not predicting one. But I can no longer see any reason, from that point of view, why there should not be one.
And who, exactly, were the last ditch Blue Brexiteers? Peter "Mrs Bone" Bone, Suella "Cultural Marxism" Braverman, Christopher "Upskirting" Chope, Mark "I Was In The Army, Me" Francois, Anne Marie "Woodpile" Morris, Priti "Golan Heights" Patel, Owen "The Badgers Moved The Goalposts" Paterson. Which of these people ought to be Prime Minister, and why? Of course, none of them ever will be.
Still, an overall majority would be impossible at a General Election across the three polities of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. That has nothing to do with who leads any party, or with any party's policy programme, or with anything very much at all. Another hung Parliament is coming, therefore, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
I expect to see "Change UK", the Independent Group's laughably misnamed party of the status quo of the last 20 years, here on the stump in North West Durham. Unless it considers that the electors of North West Durham deserve only the choice of me, Laura Pidcock, and, should they have the guts to put up, Toby Young and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon?
I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.
Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be.
From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.
This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.
Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:
"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.
This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.
On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged.
The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).
No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.
Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.
This post will appear here daily until further notice.
There is now only one working day to go until the third attempt to put me on trial is theoretically supposed to begin, a year after the second one and two years after I was charged. But there has still been no disclosure.
Despite the supposedly open-and-shut case against me, my trial is expected to last "five days plus". It is now impossible to construct a defence to a case the presentation of which must therefore be expected to take at least two and a half working days, which is around 20 hours.
Like everything else, the morning of 1st April is the choice of the Crown. And it is most apposite for what the Crown is going to have to do at Durham Crown Court. Unless it is going to humiliate itself yet further by requesting a third "postponement". Is it? Might it stand even the slightest chance of being granted such a thing?
She is the Chosen One, the Red Queen, the light at the centre of the Morning Star. She is Laura Pidcock, famous for Pidcock's Paragraph.
And as the Member of Parliament for a constituency that voted 55 per cent Leave, she voted for the Customs Union, for a second referendum, understandably enough for Labour's plan, for membership of EFTA and the EEA on the "Common Market 2.0" model, against No Deal, and against contingent preferential trade arrangements. She abstained on revoking Article 50, and on remaining in the EEA while rejoining EFTA outside the Customs Union.
By contrast, Dennis Skinner voted against the Customs Union, against a second referendum, for Labour's plan, against "Common Market 2.0", against revoking Article 50, for No Deal, against contingent preferential trade arrangements, and for EFTA outside the Customs Union.
Ronnie Campbell went even further. He voted for No Deal, and he voted for EFTA outside the Customs Union, but he voted against everything else, even including Labour's plan. By the way, I would have voted against EFTA as well. Get Frank Field on your table at the bingo, because he voted against all eight motions, and they were all defeated.
Pidcock would have you believe that she was of Skinner's and Campbell's ilk, and that she was in their league. But she is neither. And Campbell will retire at the next General Election, while Skinner, not to put too fine a point on it, is 87. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
The DUP is writing out the death warrant of Northern Ireland. Tory England wants Brexit a whole lot more than it wants to hold on to that expensive and ungrateful stepchild.
But the tune would have changed after five years of Theresa May's deal, and she knows it. By then, it would be a matter of begging to be let back into the EU, on absolutely any terms that the EU institutions or any member state chose to set.
The euro, Schengen, no rebate (which was always a red herring, designed to distract from Margaret Thatcher's Single European Act), an even worse deal on fisheries, goodbye to Gibraltar, the lot. And the readers of the Daily Mail would dance in the streets as it came into force.
Assuming, that is, that May's deal had been passed five years earlier, thereby making this new order necessary from the Mail's point of view. If that deal were still never to be approved, then would May stand down as Prime Minister?
If May were indeed to resign as Prime Minister and as Leader of the Conservative Party, then the former position would have to be filled on the spot. As it would be, on her recommendation.
May's chosen successor would then go into any Conservative Leadership Election, an unlikely event in itself, having already been seen kissing the Queen's hands on the front page of the Daily Mail.
The members of the Conservative Party would never vote against someone like that. It would strike them as downright treasonable to do so. But in any case, they would be most unlikely to be asked.
And there is absolutely no chance of anyone even loosely attached to the pro-Brexit Right, such as Boris Johnson or Michael Gove, being one of the two names sent out to the party in the country by the MPs. Never mind the real thing, such as Dominic Raab or Jacob Rees-Mogg.
The last time that almost exactly that same body of MPs was asked, then it could think of no name except that of Theresa May. And David Cameron had not already had the Queen appoint May as Prime Minister, as May will have had her own preferred successor appointed. Welcome to British parliamentary democracy.
Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.
Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be.
From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.
This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.
Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:
"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.
This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.
On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.
Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged.
The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).
No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.
Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.
This post will appear here daily until further notice.
It is clear that nothing is going to come today. So there are now only two working days to go until the third attempt to put me on trial is theoretically supposed to begin, a year after the second one and two years after I was charged. But there has still been no disclosure.
Despite the supposedly open-and-shut case against me, my trial is expected to last "five days plus". It is now impossible to construct a defence to a case the presentation of which must therefore be expected to take at least two and a half working days, which is around 20 hours.
Like everything else, the morning of 1st April is the choice of the Crown. And it is most apposite for what the Crown is going to have to do at Durham Crown Court. Unless it is going to humiliate itself yet further by requesting a third "postponement". Is it? Might it stand even the slightest chance of being granted such a thing?
Who told the Mail on Sunday that, by fighting alongside militias that used child soldiers in Yemen, British Special Forces were now at least witnesses to war crimes? That question answers itself. They did not sign up for this. And for all its faults, this is why we should cherish the free press.
At least many Labour MPs, plus most of the rest including the entire Government, cannot see what is wrong with the British role in the war in Yemen. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
Racism was fundamental to all of the forces that destroyed Yugoslavia. So it is no surprise that the successor states that were founded by and for each of them are notorious for it, as manifested when the England football team plays theirs.
The Yugoslav Wars were also pivotal to the emergence of "al-Qaeda", whence came the so-called Islamic State. There is nothing odd in the fact that our own Far Right, and do not believe one word about how that is an unorganised little world of "lone wolves", is copying the means and methods of IS.
They know each other of old. They are practically family. The Islamists in Bosnia and Kosovo were among those who were noted for their black shirts in deference to their SS fathers and grandfathers, and for deploying Nazi iconography in general. There is nothing incongruous in today's Far Right support for Israel, any more than there was in Israel's support for all of that in the 1990s. Israel is arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine today.
Most Labour and practically all other MPs do not understand one word of this. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
A complete economic and social free-for-all is being spread throughout the world by a force of arms to which none of the traditional constraints applies. That New Order is also secured at home by means of limitlessly draconian measures against “terrorism,” “antisocial behaviour”, “Russian collusion”, “online abuse,” and so forth. The Left is assumed to begin and end with Marxism, which is itself reduced to Antonio Gramsci and Max Shachtman, marginalising the great issues of economic inequality, class consciousness, international exploitation, and war. That New Left underwrites a liberalism that is reduced to Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. And that neoliberalism is upheld by a conservatism that is reduced to Carl Schmitt, “the crown jurist of the Third Reich”, and to his friend and correspondent, Leo Strauss, who passed straight from Plato, Thucydides and Xenophon to Machiavelli and Nietzsche, bypassing Christianity altogether in order to create an elite that was morally obliged to lie to the rest of us. Welcome to neoconservatism, which was begotten by neoliberalism, which was begotten by the New Left.
People sometimes suggest that I am somehow standing against the present MP for North West Durham, rather than simply standing for the seat where I have lived since before she was born, against whoever might be any of the other candidates. When they make that suggestion, then I say that, yes, I obviously wrote the above paragraph with her as its intended reader.
Anyway, I see that it is that time of year again, when Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon, Machiavelli and Nietzsche are said to be facing banishment from the groves of academe, along with all the others who are deemed to be too pale (if, say, Saint Augustine was any such thing), too male, and too stale.
This one has been doing the rounds for as long as I can remember, but it has never happened yet. Indeed, there is currently something of a rediscovery of things like Classics as important to the formation of great radical movements in the past and in the future. But if the Liberal Establishment that has no desire for such movements is indeed trying to sideline the Great Books, then enough of its intended victims already seem to know enough to protest.
Even if it were true, which it is not, that "nowhere teaches Shakespeare anymore", then there has always been more than enough time to teach yourself anything you liked in the gaps in the BA, or during the schools' inviolable weekends, their three-month holidays, and their evenings that began at three o'clock. Never mind once they have moved to a four-day week. And now, there is the Internet.
In that time, and by those means, the culture and politics of the future are taking shape. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
20 years ago, or thereabouts, I sat and listened to the two most hardline Thatcherite speeches that I have ever heard. They were delivered by John Bercow and Oliver Letwin. Make of that what you will.
This House of Commons was elected a year after the EU referendum. Between them, the Conservative Party and the DUP have an overall majority.
But the only positions on Brexit that could command majority support in it are the revoking of Article 50 in order to cancel the whole thing altogether, and a referendum between Theresa May's deal and Remain.
In effect, that would be a referendum between Remain and Return, since it would not be 10 years, and probably not five, before life under Theresa May's deal had Britain begging to be let back into the EU on absolutely any terms that any member state chose to set.
A referendum between that and Remain might command majority support in this House of Commons, elected a year after the last referendum, and with a Conservative and DUP overall majority.
Or simply revoking Article 50 and forgetting that there was ever any such word as "Brexit"might command majority support in this House of Commons, elected a year after the Brexit referendum, and with a Conservative and DUP overall majority.
But nothing else could. Except, at a push, May's deal without a referendum, finally nodded through by the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, joining the already signed up figures of David Davis and Nadine Dorries.
Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
Lanchester, Liberated County Durham, United Kingdom
Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly) third attempt to murder me. davidaslindsay@hotmail.com
