Tuesday 31 May 2022

Digest This

Pupils on free school meals are not allowed certain items on the menu. Free school meals for all. Why would that be unaffordable? Unaffordable compared to what?

Like free prescriptions, free eye and dental checkups, free hospital parking, and so much else besides, free school meals for all will soon be "unaffordable" in England only, with abolition in Scotland or Wales advocated no more by the Conservatives than by anyone else. Why?

Strip

Terms such as "digital strip search" are contemptible. So much for disclosure. So much for due process. So much for a fair trial. So much for the presumption of innocence.

"If a woman says that she has been raped, then she has been." That has been the openly stated position for more than 50 years, mostly under Conservative Prime Ministers and Home Secretaries, and never with either office filled by anyone who was still on the Labour Left.

It is a kind of self-identification, and it requires that the accusation be the proof. Anything less than 100 per cent rates of prosecution and conviction must by definition be wrong.

Meanwhile, false allegations of sexual assault are so "rare" that every male from puberty upwards either knows or is someone to whom it has happened. This is not unconnected to the destruction of the stockades of male employment in and since the Thatcher years.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 227


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 227


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 258

258 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 298

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 298

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 298

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 298

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Transitional Demands

With the Bank of England, and the British Embassy in Washington, glistening from her CV, Rachel "Cripples Aren't Normal" Reeves is criticising Rishi Sunak for spending money on the beastly plebs. Meanwhile, at Warwick University, Nadhim Zahawi has had a run-in with the next generation, with Even Newer New Labour.

One Joel Cooper has taken issue with Zahawi's view, on which he has yet to deliver anything, that parents ought to be involved in the approach to transgender issues in school. Why is Joel's name Cooper when his parents are married? Has he had his Balls cut off? Faced with a member of the present Cabinet, this is all that Labour Students can find to heckle him about. Balls to the Labour Party, indeed.

In the fairly likely hung Parliament of 2024, or in the practically certain one of 2029, then it would be easy to cut a deal with a clique whose only political principle was its own birthright to rule. We should be aiming for that, we who sought to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. 

A coalition with the Conservative Party was what delivered the Leadership of Derby City Council to Chris Williamson. If the Bullingdon Boys or the Vote Leave Veterans were only 10 or 20 votes short, then let those be our 10 or 20 votes, and away with Remainerism, Greenery, identity politics in general, gender self-identification in particular, cancel culture, warmongering, assaults on civil liberties, and an inability to understand the money supply.

Explosive Thinking

We already knew that Russia would not use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. As much as anything else, why would it need to? It is going to get its satellite states in the south and east that Ukrainian Nationalists could not even really want, it is going to get a constitutionally neutral Ukraine, and it is going to get the necessary denazification, which no one at all is still pretending was the solution to a made-up problem. It never expressed the expectation, or even the hope, to "take Kiev in 72 hours". That one belongs with weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Speaking of weapons of mass destruction, Ukraine never gave up nuclear weapons. It never had any. Like Kazakhstan and Belarus, it merely hosted them. The launch codes were in Moscow, and they were never going anywhere else. Sorrow that Vladimir Putin has nukes is matched only by joy that the Azov Battalion does not. Sadly, sorrow that the RSS had them cannot be matched by joy that the ISI did not, or vice versa. But sorrow that they are in the hands of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un is matched by joy that they are not in the hands of the Nippon Kaigi, or of the heirs of  Park Chung-hee and Lee Teng-hui.

And if you felt safer because Boris Johnson's, Joe Biden's or Emmanuel Macron's finger was on the button, then you would not be a functioning adult. As seen in Saint-Denis, Macron's is the archetype for a Starmer or Streeting Government in Britain. There is a reason why the only ever uses of nuclear weapons have both been by Harry S. Truman. Whether it is tear-gassing at home or nuking abroad, this is what the liberal bourgeoisie does to assert or defend, even against an imaginary threat or an already defeated foe, its economic, social, cultural and political dominance. Such is the beginning of all Fascism. Consider the armed police whom Starmer had engaged to point their guns at delegates to last year's Labour Party Conference, and think on.

Extending Life

It turns out that we were right all along about coal-fired power stations. Who knew? Eventually, they will realise the need to harness the power of the State in order to deliver an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and this country's vast reserves of the coal that is also needed to make steel, for all that they are still officially planning to build their wind turbines out of bamboo and their electric cars out of marshmallow.

Around those twin poles of nuclear power and of the clean coal technology in which Britain was the world leader until the defeat of the Miners' Strike, let there be oil, gas, lithium, wind, solar, tidal, and everything else, bathing this country in heat and light. This is why we have a State.

And thanks to the all-of-the-above energy policy, let there be an all-of-the-above transport policy based around publicly owned railways running on the electricity that public ownership would also supply to charging points in every neighbourhood and village. Astonishingly, and yet not, the fewest charging points for electric vehicles are in the areas that still stand on a thousand years' worth of coal.

Monday 30 May 2022

Rotten and Vicious

The Sex Pistols were a boy band put together as a marketing exercise by a clothes shop the owner of which is now a Dame of the British Empire. They no more invented punk than Elvis invented the blues. If the Queen had a "Fascist regime" in 1977, then it was a Labour Government with Tony Benn in the Cabinet. There is no future in England's dreaming.

Not that that Government was ideal. 1977 was in fact the year that monetarism really kicked in, having been imposed on Britain by the Budget of December 1976. The General Election of 1979 changed nothing apart from the party label and the biological sex of the Prime Minister, and only the latter was a novelty. 

Going to the trouble of defacing a statue of Margaret Thatcher is as odd as putting one up after all these years. Neither the previous nor the subsequent Labour Government was anything to write home about, and she was notable only for being a woman, which these days anyone can be just by saying so.

The Labour Party has already embittered two generations of men who would have been in its vanguard if they had not been born with Y chromosomes. Telling them now that a penis would no longer be a disqualification well and truly adds insult to injury.

Soon after the 2005 General Election, thousands of us must have received terribly nice, personalised, unsolicited letters from our trade unions, telling us that we were exactly who the union would have wanted on the parliamentary panel, except that we were male. At the very least, I cannot believe that mine was the only one. Yet here we are. Some of us were born in the same year as Stella Creasy, who was selected from an all-women shortlist for the 2010 Election.

As for Thatcher, today is the Feast of Saint Joan of Arc. I always think of Thatcher as a latter-day Saint Joan. In the end, they were both burnt by the English. Even if not, in Thatcher's case, in one of the coal-fired power stations that it has been admitted this very day that we cannot do without after all. Ora pro nobis.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 226


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 226


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 257

257 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 297

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 297

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 297

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 297

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Sunday 29 May 2022

Progress Of A Sort

Christian Wakeford, who has still yet to cite a single policy reason for his defection, has been made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Shadow Secretary of State for Education.

During the Corbyn years, and even though there was almost no one who had been in the Labour Party longer than Jeremy Corbyn, the cry of the Right was that "I've given my life to this party" while the Left were arrivistes and entryists.

Well, Keir Starmer could not have been a member of any political party earlier than 2nd November 2013. And a mere four months after having joined the Labour Party, someone who was elected to this Parliament as a Conservative is now on Starmer's frontbench, having had no political change of mind whatever.

All in all, the Progressive Alliance is taking shape. It is taken as a given that a vote for any of Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the Greens, and between the SNP and the Greens therefore also Plaid Cymru, will be a vote to make Starmer Prime Minister.

But to what purpose? Rishi Sunak has introduced a windfall tax double that which Starmer had proposed, and Sunak has increased benefits by nine per cent when Starmer had called only for a six per cent increase. How delicious it is to see the Blairites triangulated.

Like the Government, the Progressive Alliance has backed the losing side in a war that need never have concerned us either way. We all know what it means that France and Germany are calling on Russia to negotiate at the very time that Ukrainian forces are preparing to pull out of Severodonetsk, as even the BBC is calling it. It may be the summer now, but in a few months' time, no one fancies dying in the dark, of a combination of hypothermia and starvation. The Government's unfitness for office over Ukraine is also the Progressive Alliance's, and specifically Starmer's.

And like the Government, Starmer obviously never believed a word of it about Covid-19. Yet it was true. Downing Street was a plague pit. The events there endangered the cleaning and security staff, while Boris Johnson himself contracted Covid-19. When not partying in Durham Miners' Hall, Starmer has had to self-isolate numerous times. The Government's unfitness for office over Covid-19 is also the Progressive Alliance's, and specifically Starmer's.

The Progressive Alliance is united around the proposition that, "J.K Rowling is wrong, a woman can have a penis." Yet Rowling's politics and Stella Creasy's are otherwise indistinguishable. Perhaps Rowling should contest Walthamstow at the next General Election?

If so, though, then she had better watch her back. You would hardly have known that the 10-week suspended sentence handed down to Claudia Webbe had been reduced to 80 hours of community service, and that her £1,000 compensation to the complainant against her had been reduced to £50, because the appellate judge had accepted that she had never threatened an acid attack. The nearest thing to an acid attack here has been by Starmer's Progressive Alliance.

Yet this is only under Starmer, whom Oliver Eagleton's terrifying The Starmer Project ought to disqualify from public life. It is already assumed that the next Leader is going to be Wes Streeting, who has never been anything other than a professional politician, and who makes Starmer look like Dennis Skinner. By the end of this Parliament, Labour might have had three Leaders, of whom the first would comfortably be reelected as an Independent, the second would not seek reelection at all, and the third would be Britain's most right-wing frontline politician since the War.

Thankfully, a hung Parliament need belong neither to Starmer nor to Streeting. Either of them would be welcome to the Lib Dems, or to the SNP, or to the Greens, or to Plaid Cymru. The rest of us could and should make alternative arrangements to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

It would not be difficult to cut a deal with a clique whose only political principle was its own birthright to rule, and which might need only 10 or 20 additional MPs to get it over the line, rendering irrelevant the dozens, or scores, or hundreds of Lib Dems, or Nationalists, or Greens, or indeed Labour Rightists. We owe the Progressive Alliance nothing.

Saturday 28 May 2022

Hell Even So


By killing lifelong marriage we are killing children. Liberal Britain cannot see this, but until somebody does, the tragedies will continue.

Last week great publicity was rightly given to a report on children’s social care. It predicted that the number of children in care, now 80,000, would rise to 100,000 by 2032, costing taxpayers a colossal £15 billion a year.

Of course many terrible things happen to children in so-called ‘care’ apart from actual violence and death. The general outcomes for children deprived of what we would once have called stable family life, and deprived of fathers, are just not very good.

No doubt plenty of social workers, foster parents and others do all they can, and I am not trying to criticise these individuals but they just cannot do what a loving, stable home can do.

The report does recognise that ‘it is loving relationships that hold the solutions for children and families overcoming adversity’. But how will they be created by bureaucracy and state cash – the solutions generally offered by those who run our society?

A long time ago the Blairites promised us ‘joined-up thinking’, but in fact modern dogmas, in which there is no right and wrong and the old Christian rules are spurned, often refuse to see vital connections.

The tragedy of care is a direct consequence of 50 years in which the law, and our culture, have encouraged the idea that lifelong marriage is dispensable – a cruel prison from which adults should be free to escape. The latest loosening of the marriage laws, effectively allowing divorce on demand, follows the same failed view.

Should we not connect the number of children in care to the fact that, in England and Wales, the numbers getting married fell in 2019 to the lowest rate since records began? Less than 20 per cent of these weddings were in a religious building, where the idea that marriage is for life is still pretty much insisted upon.

Many modern weddings are lavish affairs in beautiful places, but they simply do not demand the commitment that couples used to make. And many modern couples, seeing which way the wind is blowing, never bother to marry at all. Such commitment is generally discouraged, even viewed as foolish.

And of course this results in much freer lives for adults in their prime, no longer tied down by crabby old rules. But the children are the ones who suffer, and whose freedom from worry and insecurity has been sacrificed to allow for grown-up freedoms to do as we will.

Among the well-off, the damage is generally not so bad, though there is damage. But among the poor, and in the parts of the country where the schools are bad and the streets are grim, it is another story. And that story often ends in care, with all its miseries, loneliness, insecurity and disappointment.

It is not the same sort of hell as the workhouses and the orphanages of the past were, but it can be hell even so. We need a modern Charles Dickens to depict it. If more people realised how bad it was, we might start to wonder if the gradual dismantling of stable marriage was such a good idea after all.

No-fault divorce has come into effect courtesy of the Conservative Party, so we need to give any marrying couple the right to register their marriage as bound by the divorce law that obtained prior to 1969, give any religious organisation the right to specify that any marriage that it conducted would be so bound, give existing married couples the right to re-register their marriages as being so bound, and remove the restriction of civil partnerships to unrelated couples, since civil partnerships, as such, have no sexual aspect.

Weighed and Measured?

We await much taking of the opportunities of Brexit to pursue an egalitarian economic policy by harnessing the powers of the liberated British State. Brexit makes it possible to renationalise the railways, but no one is trying to do that anymore. Brexit ought to be a spur to pursue an independent and peaceable foreign policy. But after a very brief moment of hope, then no one is trying to do that anymore, either.

Instead, we have had blue passports, which we could always have had if we had wanted them, and which look nothing at all like the old ones, since those were black. The new, blue ones are being made in Poland by a company that is French and Dutch.

And now Boris Johnson is to reannounce the Conservative Party's vague suggestion from last year that it might repeal its own Act of Parliament outlawing some, but not all, use of the imperial system of weights and measures. Have you ever had any trouble buying a pint of beer? Good luck to any licensed premises that sought to revert to the old measures of spirits, since those were shorter.

The never threatened pint of milk or beer will always be readily available in the Irish Republic, which will never leave the EU. Our own and so many other traditional weights and measures survive for the sale of bread or beer all across Europe because they are perfectly adequate, and even ideal, for the sale of bread or beer. But they are at least arguably too imprecise for anything much more than that, and an international scientific and technological culture could not function without a universally accepted system of weights and measures.

Nor will imperial measures be taught again in schools, because who would teach them? But Britain is the only country in the world where the use of two completely different systems of weights and measures for all official and all unofficial purposes could result in anything other than total collapse. We should cherish the fact that in ordinary conversation everyone gave their height and weight in imperial measures when only the metric system had been taught in schools since before most people had been born.

Practically nothing will change here. Corporate retail giants have absolutely no intention of adopting the imperial system, but, as it should be, small traders will be free to use it if customers wanted it. At a significant markup, I expect. Almost no one under 60 will ask for imperial, since almost no one under 60 has ever been taught it, but by all means let those who wanted it have it. If they can afford it.

Although using much of the same vocabulary, the American system is different, because it is older than the imperial system. Far from being Arthurian, the latter dates only from 1824, making it not yet 200 years old. It suppressed numerous customary weights and measures across these Islands and the Empire, replacing them with ones that often bore the same names, as certain customary units on the Continent still have names such as livre, but which had most definitely been devised by a committee. Scottish pints and gallons were more than halved.

Corresponding to the lazy assumption that the imperial system is ancient is the lazy assumption that the metric system is foreign. Unlike, I believe that it is correct to say, any part of the imperial system, the metric system was invented by an Englishman. It has a very long history in this country, having been devised by John Wilkins, who manged to be both a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell and later a bishop in the Church of England. The first attempt to mandate it in Britain was made in 1818, six years before the imperial system existed. Britain legalised the use of the metric system in 1875. Numerous industries have used nothing else in living memory, if ever. Even leaving aside how long ago Imperial Britain's industrial zenith was, the bald claim that that was achieved entirely by the application of the imperial system does not stand up to the slightest analysis.

Britain joined the EU in 1973. New Zealand has had only metric road signs, which there has never been any serious suggestion that Britain might adopt, since 1972. Was that the work of the EU? Although New Zealanders still sometimes give their height in feet and inches, and by convention announce their children's birth weights in pounds and ounces, they have, again since 1972, measured even milk in the metric system, unlike the practice in Britain.

By 1973, all schools in Australia were teaching only the metric system. Was that the work of the EU, too? All road signs there converted to metric in July 1974, and all cars made after that year have had only metric speedometers. Australians now rarely even convert their babies' birth weights into pounds and ounces, and such units are employed for trading purposes only when exporting to the United States. Where there is residual use of imperial units in casual conversation in Australia, then it tends to be attributed to the cultural transmission of American English.

The point should be reiterated that the Americans' system of weights and measures is their own, for all that some shared vocabulary might give rise to confusion. Nor does it ring true that the United States went to the Moon using non-metric units. If, for the sake of argument, that were the case, then it was more than 50 years ago. There is no way that the Americans are doing anything remotely comparable in anything other than the metric system today, even if they were doing so in the 1960s, which itself strikes me as highly unlikely.

And so on. Let anyone who wanted to do so buy or sell a pound of potatoes, although that is not an arduous thing to do within the present law. But if this and the complete novelty of blue passports are all that we are getting out of Brexit, then we need a Government in the tradition of those who had always opposed the EU, and not made up of the fanboys of a Prime Minister who had gone off it only when we now know that she had been in her early dotage.

What's the Point of the Monarchy?

That was the title under which The Conservative Woman published and then unpublished the following, which I reproduce in exactly the agreed form:

The Platinum Jubilee is here, yet Peter Hitchens writes: ‘I have just stopped supporting the monarchy. I can’t do it any more. I am not a republican, or anything silly like that. I would like a proper monarchy. But the House of Windsor’s total mass conversion to Green orthodoxy has destroyed the case for this particular Royal Family. The whole point of the Crown is that it does not take sides in politics.’ Yet apart from what other political opinions he could have expected London toffs to hold, the political neutrality of the monarchy is like the impartiality of the BBC. When has there ever been any such thing?

The monarchy keeps sweet a lot of people who need to be kept sweet. But I am entirely at a loss as to why it has that effect. Either the Queen or her equally revered father has signed off every nationalisation, every aspect of the Welfare State, every retreat from Empire, every loosening of Commonwealth ties, every social liberalisation, every constitutional change, and every EU treaty. If they could not have done otherwise, why have a monarchy? What is it for? I support public ownership and the welfare state in principle, even if the practice has often fallen short. The same may be said of decolonisation, as a matter of historical interest. I find some social liberalisations and some constitutional changes a cause for joy, and others a cause for horror. I abhor the EU, and the weakening of the Commonwealth. But this is not about me.

Is it the job of a monarch, if not to acquire territory and subjects, at least to hold on to them? If so, George VI was by far the worst British monarch, and quite possibly the worst monarch the world has ever seen. Is it the job of a British monarch to maintain a Protestant society and culture in the United Kingdom? If so, no predecessor has begun to approach the abject failure of Elizabeth II, a failure so complete that no successor will be able to equal it.

For all her undoubted personal piety, the cult of the present Queen among Evangelical Protestants and among those who cleave to a more-or-less 1950s vision of Anglicanism, Presbyterianism or Methodism is baffling. What has the monarchy or the Queen ever done for them? During the present reign, Britain has become history’s most secular country, and the White British have become history’s most secular ethnic group, a trend even more marked among those with Protestant backgrounds than among us Catholics.

This has implications for the Windrush debate, and with eight Commonwealth Realms in the Caribbean, a fat lot of good being the Queen’s loyal subject has done anyone there; Barbados, proportionately the most Anglican country in the world, has recently become a republic. It also has implications for aspects of the debate around Brexit. If you wanted to preserve and restore a Christian culture in this country, you would welcome mass immigration from the Caribbean, from Africa, from Latin America, and from Eastern Europe.

On balance, I would not abolish the monarchy. It would no more be President Hitchens than President Corbyn. It would be a choice between the next Bullingdon Club member in line and someone who had casually given a trifling £50,000 to the most recently successful candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party. No one else would even make it on to the ballot paper, and I would not want either of those as my Head of State.

There would have to be a nomination process. Candidates would certainly require nomination by one tenth of the House of Commons, 65 MPs, and very probably by one fifth of that House, 130 MPs. Even in the first instance, in the wildly unlikely event of more than two candidates, the House would whittle them down to the two who would then be presented to the electorate. Almost certainly, only two parties are ever going to have 65 MPs. Certainly, only two are ever going to have 130. In practice, they would probably arrange to alternate the Presidency between them.

Nor would I want to abolish the Royal Prerogative. Rather, I want it to be exercised by a Prime Minister who aspired to strengthen families and communities through economic equality and international peace. But the monarchy, and with it the exercise of the Royal Prerogative by persons who most certainly did not share those aspirations, does not depend on the support of people like me. It depends on the support of people who, as long as the monarchy and especially the present Queen are simply there, are prepared to overlook the fact that hardly anything they really want happens, while all sorts of things that they do not want do happen, no matter who is in government.

Add to that the fact that the Order of the Garter is entirely in the gift of the monarch. There is no ministerial involvement. The Queen alone has chosen to confer the honour on Tony Blair. Moreover, whatever Prince Andrew may or may not have done, he undeniably chose to move in the circles of Jeffrey Epstein, of Robert Maxwell’s daughter, of Peter Mandelson, and of the Clintons. It is the Anglo-American liberal elite, the right wings of the Labour and Democratic Parties, who are the Royal Family’s sort of people, even if they would never stoop to voting for those parties.

Culturally, no one is more Tory than a liberal Tory; politically, no one is more liberal. The people on whose support the monarchy depends have chosen to ignore the fact that that is what their heroes are. But if Hitchens’s column and the reaction to Blair’s Garter are anything go by, we are living through the end of all of that.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 224


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 224


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 255

255 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 295

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 295

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 295

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 295

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Thursday 26 May 2022

God Is Gone Up

Alleluja, alleluja. Ascendit Deus in jubilatione, et Dominus in voce tubæ. Alleluja.

Temporary Targeted?

Of course Rishi Sunak's windfall tax will raise twice as much as the one proposed by Labour and the Liberal Democrats would have raised.

Welcome to the Progressive Alliance, the Opposition from well to the Government's right.

In office, it would be at least as rude to cleaners and to security staff as ever the present rabble had been. Say that, and it is obvious.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 222


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 222


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 253

253 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 293

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 293

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 293

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 293

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

Since, as private citizens, none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West DurhamI invite each and all of the 12 archbishops and diocesan bishops of the Red Wall dioceses of Birmingham, Hallam, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Northampton, Nottingham, Salford, Shrewsbury, and Wrexham, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

And since none of them has resigned as a Patron of my parliamentary campaign at North West Durham, I invite each and all the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

The scandalous allegation against me on 2nd March 2020 was recanted under oath at Durham Crown Court on 11th of that month, calling gravely into question my convictions the next day by exposing that key character witness as unreliable, a fact that was not mentioned in closing statements or in summation. Unless, as is widely assumed, the real reason for them is the content of this book, then the sanctions imposed upon me in my absence on 2nd March 2020 are void. I had not received a written apology by 30th September 2021, nor was any such thing to be published in full in The Northern Cross.

Financially, I would then have settled for the reimbursement of my victim surcharges. One would not wish to have to sue the Church. But while I am not yet in a position to act on it, I must now declare my intention in principle to do so. And if I were to be defeated at the next General Election, then I would seek to have that result overturned in the courts on grounds of undue spiritual influence by the Safeguarding Office of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, naming all relevant persons in the court papers. It has come to this.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Caught In The Webbe

Claudia Webbe has lost her appeal. She never stood a chance. You cannot be acquitted of harassment. Two solicitors and a barrister have confirmed that to me, and I was told in writing that I would have no lawyer if I tried to plead not guilty. The crime consists in having made the complainant feel harassed. If she says that she was, then she was. That was literally the only evidence presented against Webbe. She was convicted, and that conviction has been upheld.

What matters is to be well enough connected that the Crown Prosecution Service will take up the case. That is not a problem if you are Keir Starmer. In any case, Magistrates rarely acquit, because that was not why they became Magistrates, and a District Judge is a salaried employee of the same State that brings the prosecution, sitting alone both to determine guilt and then to pass sentence. A District Judge, and the Chief one at that, for a single charge of harassment? Again, that is not a problem if you are Keir Starmer.

Webbe's suspended sentence was handed down in order to buy Starmer some time at Leicester East, where people are starting to wonder, or are preparing to say out loud, who funded Keith Vaz's two staffed offices. Those have had queues down the street since Webbe's trial began, on the assumption that he was already the MP again, bar the formality of a by-election. Knowing that his suspension would lapse with the dissolution of the Parliament that had imposed it, Vaz has continued to send a calendar of himself to every address in Leicester East, as has been his custom since 1987.

Webbe is on borrowed time. Once Labour was good to go at Leicester East, then she would be banged up for breach. All that they would need would be another complaint of harassment. You cannot be acquitted of harassment. Two solicitors and a barrister have confirmed that to me, and I was told in writing that I would have no lawyer if I tried to plead not guilty. The crime consists in having made the complainant feel harassed. If she says that she was, then she was. That was literally the only evidence presented against Webbe. She was convicted. She will rapidly be convicted again, and therefore imprisoned. What matters is to be well enough connected that the Crown Prosecution Service will take up the case. That is not a problem if you are Keir Starmer.

Package Deal?

If Rishi Sunak had divided £15 billion among the 27.8 million households that the Government itself said that there were in this country, then each of them would have received £540, with practically no administrative costs.

Still, Happy Birthday, Jeremy Corbyn. You won the argument.

Wednesday 25 May 2022

To Cap It All?

In what sense is there any energy cap, if it keeps going up? A cap on what, exactly? We are preparing for an emergency Budget, to be called something else to save face, and for that to include a windfall tax on the energy companies, again to be called something else to save face, and in the week after the governing party's MPs had been whipped to vote against such a measure. Hugely popular both in general and among Red Wall voters, the case for public ownership is unanswerable.

That is also true of the rail service, where the forthcoming strike is to be for a pay rise in line with inflation. That is not some wildly militant demand. Wildly militant demands do not inspire 89 per cent votes for strike action on 79 per cent turnouts. The assault on civil liberties in general and on trade union rights in particular is not distinct from the cost of living crisis. There has never been any bread or butter unless we have fought for them, and there never will be. Anger against 1970s-style stagflation will find an outlet. The Government will come to wish that that were still 1970s-style trade unionism.

A Pretty Sensible Settlement

Never mind Genghis Khan. Imagine being to the right of Henry Kissinger. The latest to join Robert Kagan and the Pope in naming the root of the problem was once Ronald Reagan's and George H.W. Bush's Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

As everyone from Kissinger to Noam Chomsky now sees, the areas that a largely Ukrainian Soviet elite had put in the Ukrainian SSR in order to make its independence impossible should no longer be in a Ukraine that would be more coherent and stable both for its loss of them and for its own constitutional neutrality. The quicker that that state of affairs were brought about, the less painful it would be.

That would not satisfy those to whom, "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics." Nor those to whom, "The mission of Ukraine is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival against the Semite-led Untermenschen."

Rather, it would be exactly as had been advocated by "Vladimir Corbyn", who has a far more anti-Putin record than either the Conservatives or the Blairites. In any case, Keir Starmer can honestly retort that he had never made the slightest effort to make Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister. Quite the reverse, in fact. Nor is it is obvious exactly how much electoral mileage there would be in anti-Corbynism after another two years of the present economic direction of travel.

Theresa May is being canonised by comparison with Boris Johnson, but she brought him into the Cabinet. Her Hostile Environment is Windrushing hostility to Britain across the Caribbean while legitimising at home the sexual assault of black youth by the State. And she turned Manchester into the global centre of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. We know what came of that.

Once again, what we are encouraging abroad would, or at least should, meet our full force at home, and vice versa. In 2013, Pavlo Lapshyn murdered 82-year-old Mohammed Saleem in Birmingham, before putting bombs outside three mosques in this country. Lapshyn belonged, and presumably still does belong, to the Wotanjugend, which is closely allied to the Azov Battalion, being led by its "political ideologist", Alexey Levkin. 

In August 2020, Lapshyn pleaded guilty to a count of preparing an explosive substance in his cell. Our genius of a Foreign Secretary actively encourages our people to engage in the criminal act of going to Ukraine to join his organisation. Those who survive will bring home all of those weapons which we had sent them, together with both the knowledge and the desire to use them.

Not that Lapshyn would recognise things these days. Levkin and his ilk are bringing in IS fighters from Syria. Older readers will remember IS. Shamima Begum went off to join it in Syria when we were aiding and abetting it there while bombing it across the Sykes-Picot Line in Iraq, where our intervention had created it in the first place. It is now part of the side that we are backing in Ukraine, while, yet again, everyone who knows anything at all about the subject is pointing out that our position is suicidally insane. Our rulers never learn.

Whatever The Initial Intent

Towards the end, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher both threatened to stay on as Prime Minister, "and you can have whoever you like to lead your precious party," or words to that effect. But only Boris Johnson might go through with it.

Johnson would not resign as Prime Minister, rather than as Leader of the Conservative Party, if he had lost a vote of no confidence among Conservative MPs. He would not resign as Prime Minister if he had lost a Leadership Election.

Even if he could enact no legislation, then who is to say that he would resign as Prime Minister if he had lost a General Election, or even if he had lost his own seat? Who would there be to make him? A 96-year-old? Simon Case? Martin Reynolds? Keir Starmer? Tobias Ellwood?

Gray Area

Partying from four o'clock in the afternoon until half past four in the morning? I cannot imagine where they found the energy.

It is little more than a detail that this was during a lockdown, yet the Opposition and Lobby line, so to speak, is that the problem was that while the rest of us were missing funerals and so on, Downing Street was "behaving as normal".

Being found passed out by the cleaners due to never having gone home, throwing up, plastering the walls with wine, playing on a swing, and having a fight, because that is what "a minor altercation" means: all of these are apparently normal behaviour in a workplace in general, and at the heart of government in particular.

Had there not been a lockdown in place, then none of this would have raised an eyebrow either from the Opposition or from a Lobby that, like the Police, must have known all about it while it was happening.

Tuesday 24 May 2022

Toast?

How many workplaces still allow alcohol? But do not be distracted by the definition of a party. The regulations in force at the time were perfectly clear as to what was and was not permitted. A Downing Street staffer has already been served with a Fixed Penalty Notice for attendance at Lee Cain's leaving do. We are expected to believe that Boris Johnson was lawfully present at an unlawful event.

This is the stuff of Richard Nixon. Regardless of its normal legal status, nothing can be illegal when it is done by the Prime Minister. The last people in any position to complain about this are those who are back in charge of the Official Opposition, since they have always said that about Tony Blair, especially but not exclusively in relation to Iraq, and they continue to do so. Likewise, "You'll believe any old rubbish as long as it's delivered in a public school accent" is not an argument that a Blairite is entitled to advance.

Downing Street is one of the most policed places in the world, so the Met was present in some numbers. Nor has tonight's Panorama been made in 24 hours. As with James Slack's "work event" because he was off to become the Deputy Editor of The Sun, Cain's sendoff from being the Downing Street Director of Communications will not only have been known to the Lobby at the time, but will have been attended by at least some of its members. Like the Police, they could have brought down the Government the next day. Johnson's every day in office since then has been, and is, their conscious and calculated political choice.

Chris Grieve Watch: Day 220


I have never heard of you, and I was not in Durham that Thursday evening. Or any evening in that period. I was on a tag.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Adam Langleben Watch: Day 220


I have never heard of you, and "JLM" sounds like a pop group, although not one with which I have ever communicated.

Why do people feel the need to suck up to Kamm like this?

This post will appear daily until you account for yourself.

Labour Candidate Watch: Day 251

251 days after the Cabinet reshuffle that called a General Election for May 2023 (even if it may or may not now have been put back a year), there is still no Labour candidate at North West Durham, which in 2019 Labour lost for the first time and by only 1,144 votes.

By contrast, I have been a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election since even before the last one, fighting to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.  

Or contact nwdclp.campaigns@gmail.com if you wanted permanent austerity at home, if you wanted forever war abroad, and if you did not want a mixed-race MP for this seat. This post will appear daily until someone had proven to be so pro-austerity, so pro-war, and so racist, that even the Labour Party was sufficiently impressed.

The Adrian Hilton Challenge: Day 291

Adrian Hilton, I had to Google you, and I still have little or no idea who you are, so when, exactly, have I ever "stalked" you at all, much less "for longer than [you] care to remember"? 

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Oliver Kamm Challenge: Day 291

Oliver Kamm, whose signature to this do you claim that I forged? Name the name.

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever been found to have accused anyone of child abuse?

Oliver Kamm, when, exactly, have I ever called for anyone to be murdered?

And Oliver Kamm, since I am a declared and active candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, are you? If not, why not?

I could go on at very great length, but these questions will do for now.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 291

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

This post will appear daily until further notice.